Total Solar Eclipse 2020

Along a narrow path crossing southern South America through Chile and Argentina, the final New Moon of 2020 moved in front of the Sun on December 14 in the year's only total solar eclipse. Within about 2 days of perigee, the closest point in its elliptical orbit, the New Moon's surface is faintly lit by earthshine in this dramatic composite view. The image is a processed composite of 55 calibrated exposures ranging from 1/640 to 3 seconds. Covering a large range in brightness during totality, it reveals the dim lunar surface and faint background stars, along with planet-sized prominences at the Sun's edge, an enormous coronal mass ejection, and sweeping coronal structures normally hidden in the Sun's glare. Look closely for an ill-fated sungrazing Kreutz family comet (C/2020 X3 SOHO) approaching from the lower left, at about the 7 o'clock position. In 2021 eclipse chasers will see an annular solar eclipse coming up on June 10. They'll have to wait until December 4 for the only total solar eclipse in 2021 though. That eclipse will be total along a narrow path crossing the southernmost continent of Antarctica.

from NASA https://ift.tt/3q0DPKj

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The Pencil Nebula Supernova Shock Wave

This supernova shock wave plows through interstellar space at over 500,000 kilometers per hour. Near the middle and moving up in this sharply detailed color composite , thin, bright, braided filaments are actually long ripples in a cosmic sheet of glowing gas seen almost edge-on. Cataloged as NGC 2736 , its elongated appearance suggests its popular name, the Pencil Nebula . The Pencil Nebula is about 5 light-years long and 800 light-years away, but represents only a small part of the Vela supernova remnant . The Vela remnant itself is around 100 light-years in diameter, the expanding debris cloud of a star that was seen to explode about 11,000 years ago. Initially, the shock wave was moving at millions of kilometers per hour but has slowed considerably, sweeping up surrounding interstellar material. In the featured narrow-band, wide field image , red and blue colors track, primarily, the characteristic glows of ionized hydrogen and oxygen atoms , respectively. from NASA https...

This surprising sky has almost everything. First, slanting down from the upper left and far in the distance is the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy . More modestly, slanting down from the upper right and high in Earth's atmosphere is a bright meteor . The dim band of light across the central diagonal is zodiacal light : sunlight reflected from dust in the inner Solar System . The green glow on the far right is aurora high in Earth's atmosphere . The bright zigzagging bright line near the bottom is just a light that was held by the scene-planning astrophotographer . This " almost everything " sky was captured over rocks on Castle Hill , New Zealand late last month. The featured finished frame is a combination of 10 exposures all taken with the same camera and from the same location. But what about the astrophotographer himself? He's pictured too -- can you find him ? from NASA https://ift.tt/8TFhCw3

Lightning and Orion Beyond Uluru

What's happening behind Uluru? A United Nations World Heritage Site , Uluru is an extraordinary 350-meter high mountain in central Australia that rises sharply from nearly flat surroundings. Composed of sandstone , Uluru has slowly formed over the past 300 million years as softer rock eroded away. In the background of the featured image taken in mid-May, a raging thunderstorm is visible. Far behind both Uluru and the thunderstorm is a star-filled sky highlighted by the constellation of Orion. The Uluru region has been a home to humans for over 22,000 years. Local indigenous people have long noted that when the stars that compose the modern constellation of Orion first appear in the night sky, a hot season involving lightning storm s will soon be arriving. from NASA https://ift.tt/3uy2PLM

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