Astronomy Picture of the Day - March 10th, 2023 - Orion and the Running Man (Narrated by Brian) Few cosmic vistas excite the imagination like The Great Nebula in Orion. Visible as a faint celestial smudge to the naked-eye, the nearest large star-forming region sprawls across this sharp telescopic image, recorded on a cold January night in dark skies from West Virginia, planet Earth. Also known as M42, the Orion Nebula's glowing gas surrounds hot, young stars. About 40 light-years across, it lies at the edge of an immense interstellar molecular cloud only 1,500 light-years away within the same spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy as the Sun. Along with dusty bluish reflection nebula NGC 1977 and friends near the top of the frame, the eye-catching nebulae represent only a small fraction of our galactic neighborhood's wealth of star-forming material. Within the well-studied stellar nursery, astronomers have also identified what appear to be numerous infant solar systems. Image Credit & Copyright: Abraham Jones Source: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap230310.html This video was auto generated using data from NASA Open API. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRMd0uo9VxA

Astronomy Picture of the Day - December 31st, 2021 - JWST on the Road to L2 (Narrated by Brian) This timelapse gif tracks the James Webb Space Telescope as it streaks across the stars of Orion on its journey to a destination beyond the Moon. Recorded on December 28, 12 consecutive exposures each 10 minutes long were aligned and combined with a subsequent color image of the background stars to create the animation. About 2.5 days after its December 25 launch, JWST cruised past the altitude of the Moon's orbit as it climbed up the gravity ridge from Earth to reach a halo orbit around L2, an Earth-Sun Lagrange point. Lagrange points are convenient locations in space where the combined gravitational attraction of one massive body (Earth) orbiting another massive body (Sun) is in balance with the centripetal force needed to move along with them. So much smaller masses, like spacecraft, will tend to stay there. One of 5 Lagrange points, L2 is about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth directly along the Earth-Sun line. JWST will arrive at L2 on January 23, 29 days after launch. While relaxing in Earth's surface gravity you can follow the James Webb Space Telescope's progress and complicated deployment online. Image Credit & Copyright: Malcolm Park Source: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap211231.html This video was auto generated using data from NASA Open API. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNBGDQ2tcj4

Astronomy Picture of the Day - April 24th, 2021 - Streak and Plume from SpaceX Crew-2 Launch (Narrated by Emma) What's happening in the sky? The pre-dawn sky first seemed relatively serene yesterday morning over Indian Harbor Beach in Florida, USA. But then it lit up with a rocket launch. Just to the north, NASA's SpaceX Crew-2 Mission blasted into space aboard a powerful Falcon 9 rocket. The featured time-lapse video -- compressing 12-minutes into 8-seconds -- shows the bright launch plume starting on the far left. The rocket rises into an increasingly thin atmosphere, causing its plume to spread out just as it is lit by the rising Sun. As the Crew-2 capsule disappears over the horizon, the landing plume of the returning first stage of the Falcon 9 descending toward the SpaceX barge in the Atlantic Ocean can be seen. Up in space, the Endeavour crew capsule is expected to dock with the International Space Station (ISS) this morning, delivering four astronauts. The Crew-2 astronauts join Expedition 65 to help conduct, among other tasks, drug tests using tissue chips -- small microfluidic chips that simulate human organs -- that run rapidly in ISS's microgravity. Image Credit & Copyright: Eric Holland Source: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210424.html This video was auto generated using data from NASA Open API. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PhgfrJacww

Wikipedia Picture of the Day - June 14th, 2020 - Christ Church Cathedral (Narrated by Emma) Christ Church Cathedral, located in Stanley, Falkland Islands, is the southernmost Anglican cathedral in the world. Designed by Sir Arthur Blomfield and consecrated in 1892, special services are held at the cathedral throughout the year, including one to commemorate Liberation Day on 14 June, marking the end of the Falklands War in 1982. A monument comprising an arch made of the jaw bones of two blue whales, erected in 1933 to observe a century of British rule, stands in front of the building. Photograph credit: Andrew Shiva Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:POTD/2020-06-14 This video was auto generated using data and media from Wikipedia. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw8uuQ2RJeQ