THE PICTURE OF THE DAY

[GENESIS]

Looking at the Whale
Warren Keller captured the galactic pair NGC 4631 and NGC 4627, located in the constellation Canes Venatici.

NGC 4631, also known as the Herring Galaxy and Whale Galaxy, is a huge edge-on spiral galaxy, which is apparently distorted by its small elliptical companion, NGC 4627.

[GENESIS]

Moonrise above Zion National Park
While vacationing at Zion National Park in Utah, Michel Hersen imaged the Moon. The park is comprised of more than 146,000 acres. Located at the junction of the Colorado Plateau, Great Basin, and Mojave Desert provinces, the park possess a wide variety of plant and animal life.

Hersen imaged the Moon June 8, 2006.

Equipment used: Canon Rebel XT digital camera for a 1/1000-second exposure

[charlie]

Fenomenalno! Svaka cast na izboru!  

[gucic]

odlicno!
jako lepo!

[GENESIS]

Use warm nights to share Jupiter
Warm evenings this summer makes Jupiter a fine target for casual viewing. Show it off to your friends and neighbors. They may never have seen a planet through a telescope â€" particularly one as impressive as Jupiter. The sight will let them experience the same thrill of discovery Galileo had 400 years ago, when he saw, for the first time, four tiny moons orbiting the giant planet.

Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto wander back and forth in the plane of Jupiter's equator. Because they revolve in different periods, this produces a fascinating mix of patterns. Io, for example, takes less than 2 days to complete one orbit. You can see its motion over the course of 1 evening. Callisto, the outermost major moon, takes nearly 17 days to finish one orbit and remains roughly in the same position during a single night.

[Maxscope]

Jesam li ja jedini kome se cini da je fotografija "izlaska Meseca u parku u americkoj drzavi Utah" zapravo montaza?
Ivica planina mi uopste ne izgleda prirodno u odnosu na plavu pozadinu neba. Takodje Mesec i ptica su mi nekako proporcionalno neujednaceni.
Ili je Mesec priblizen, ili ptica i nije ptica vec po velicini pre odgovara pterosaurusu "quetzacoatlus" sa rasponom krila od 12 metara koji jeste ziveo u okolini Utaha pre nekih 60 miliona godina.
A mozda i gresim..............................

[Sich]

Ptica zaista deluje veliko. Mozda je ipak bila blize aparatu, nego planini.
Sto se tice boja ona su malo tweakovane tako da to meni izgleda ok.

[GENESIS]

Shuttle readies for launch
Space shuttle Discovery got clearance from NASA's senior managers to fly to the International Space Station on mission STS-121 following a Flight Readiness Review that included safety training and exercises for the crew.

The seven astronauts slated to navigate Discovery into space on its upcoming 12-day mission spent June 14 participating in safety training at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Shuttle commander Steven Lindsay introduced crew members to the media Wednesday morning on Launch Pad 39 B. After fielding questions that included flight-readiness inquiries, crew members familiarized themselves with fire-suppression procedures, an emergency escape walkdown, and launch-pad escape routes.

A complete dress rehearsal for Discovery's July launch was on Thursday's agenda for the crew, which includes commander Steven Lindsay, pilot Mark Kelly, European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Reiter, and mission specialists Mike Fossum, Stephanie Wilson, Piers Sellers, and Lisa Nowak.

Discovery mission STS-121 is scheduled to launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida July 1 at 3:48 P.M. EDT.

[GENESIS]

[GENESIS]

Jupiter in June and July
Efrain Morales captured Jupiter June 13, 2006, as it climbed through the sky above Puerto Rico.

In July, the subtle charms of the evening twilight sky soon get overshadowed by Jupiter's strong performance. The giant planet dominates as soon as the sky starts to darken. Shining brilliantly at magnitude -2.2, it's the brightest object in the sky apart from the Moon. Look for it low in the southwest as twilight fades. It remains on view until after midnight throughout July. A waxing gibbous Moon passes 5° south of Jupiter July 5.

Jupiter resumes its eastward motion against the background stars this month. Any telescope will deliver a fine view of Jupiter's disk, which spans 39" in mid-July. The alternating dark belts and bright zones in Jupiter's atmosphere change their appearance in subtle ways from night to night. Tracing these changes can be one of the more enjoyable aspects of observing with a small telescope.

Warm evenings also make the giant planet a fine target for casual viewing. Show it off to your friends and neighbors. They may never have seen a planet through a telescope - particularly one as impressive as Jupiter.

[GENESIS]

Canada's shuttle robot arm and the Space Radar Laboratory are lit up by brilliant green aurora during a 1994 mission aboard Endeavour.

[GENESIS]

Fly me to the Moon
After numerous attempts over the years, Anthony Ayiomamitis captured a jet nearing the lunar crater Tycho.

Tycho is a young crater, as suggested by the rays of material radiating from it across the lunar surface. The crater is surrounded by a bright ejecta blanket.

Equipment used: AstroPhysics 160 StarFire refractor and Canon EOS 300d digital camera for a 1/125th-second exposure