Astronomy Picture of the Day - August 24th, 2020 - Crescent Moon HDR (Narrated by Emma) How come the crescent Moon doesn't look like this? For one reason, because your eyes can't simultaneously discern bright and dark regions like this. Called earthshine or the da Vinci glow, the unlit part of a crescent Moon is visible but usually hard to see because it is much dimmer than the sunlit arc. In our digital age, however, the differences in brightness can be artificially reduced. The featured image is actually a digital composite of 15 short exposures of the bright crescent, and 14 longer exposures of the dim remainder. The origin of the da Vinci glow, as explained by Leonardo da Vinci about 510 years ago, is sunlight reflected first by the Earth to the Moon, and then back from the Moon to the Earth. Image Credit & Copyright: Miguel Claro Source: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap200824.html This video was auto generated using data from NASA Open API. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bF5NEGd7nio

Astronomy Picture of the Day - January 31st, 2021 - Asteroids in the Distance (Narrated by Brian) Rocks from space hit Earth every day. The larger the rock, though, the less often Earth is struck. Many kilograms of space dust pitter to Earth daily. Larger bits appear initially as a bright meteor. Baseball-sized rocks and ice-balls streak through our atmosphere daily, most evaporating quickly to nothing. Significant threats do exist for rocks near 100 meters in diameter, which strike the Earth roughly every 1000 years. An object this size could cause significant tsunamis were it to strike an ocean, potentially devastating even distant shores. A collision with a massive asteroid, over 1 km across, is more rare, occurring typically millions of years apart, but could have truly global consequences. Many asteroids remain undiscovered. In the featured image, one such asteroid -- shown by the long blue streak -- was found by chance in 1998 by the Hubble Space Telescope. A collision with a large asteroid would not affect Earth's orbit so much as raise dust that would affect Earth's climate. One likely result is a global extinction of many species of life, possibly dwarfing the ongoing extinction occurring now. Source: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210131.html This video was auto generated using data from NASA Open API. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guF7rWdhqdE

Wikipedia Picture of the Day - August 26th, 2020 - MS Silja Serenade (Narrated by Matthew) MS Silja Serenade is a cruiseferry built in 1991 by Masa-Yards at Turku New Shipyard, Finland, and owned by the Estonian shipping company Tallink Group. She is operated under their Silja Line brand, and has typically been used on a route connecting Helsinki to Stockholm via Mariehamn. Since June 2020, she has been operating on a route between Helsinki and Riga, sailing on alternate days from each capital city throughout the summer. This photograph shows Silja Serenade sailing through the Stockholm archipelago. Photograph credit: Wladyslaw Sojka Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:POTD/2020-08-26 This video was auto generated using data and media from Wikipedia. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3I4AKN2iHQ

Astronomy Picture of the Day - February 26th, 2022 - Nearby Spiral Galaxy NGC 4945 (Narrated by Emma) Large spiral galaxy NGC 4945 is seen nearly edge-on in this cosmic galaxy close-up. It's almost the size of our Milky Way Galaxy. NGC 4945's own dusty disk, young blue star clusters, and pink star forming regions stand out in the colorful telescopic frame. About 13 million light-years distant toward the expansive southern constellation Centaurus, NGC 4945 is only about six times farther away than Andromeda, the nearest large spiral galaxy to the Milky Way. Though this galaxy's central region is largely hidden from view for optical telescopes, X-ray and infrared observations indicate significant high energy emission and star formation in the core of NGC 4945. Its obscured but active nucleus qualifies the gorgeous island universe as a Seyfert galaxy and home to a central supermassive black hole. Image Credit & Copyright: Dietmar Hager Source: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap220226.html This video was auto generated using data from NASA Open API. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UM2-Hee7PUk