Sometimes the Sun’s surface becomes a whirlwind of activity. Pictured is a time-lapse video of the Sun’s surface taken over a two hour period in early May, run both forwards and backwards. The Sun’s surface was blocked out so that details over the edge could be imaged in greater detail. Hot plasma is seen swirling over the solar limb in an ongoing battle between changing magnetic fields and constant gravity. The featured prominence rises about one Earth-diameter over the Sun’s surface. Energetic events like this are becoming less common as the Sun nears a minimum in its 11-year activity cycle. via NASA https://ift.tt/2JX9Luy

What’s happened to Mars? In 2001, Mars underwent a tremendous planet-wide dust storm — one of the largest ever recorded from Earth. To show the extent, these two Hubble Space Telescope storm watch images from late June and early September (2001) offer dramatically contrasting views of the martian surface. At left, the onset of smaller « seed » storms can be seen near the Hellas basin (lower right edge of Mars) and the northern polar cap. A similar surface view at right, taken over two months later, shows the fully developed extent of the obscuring global storm. Although this storm eventually waned, in recent days a new large dust storm has been taking hold of the red planet. via NASA https://ift.tt/2MzmyFo

It’s storm season on Mars. Dusty with a chance of dust is the weather report for Gale crater as a recent planet-scale dust storm rages. On June 10 looking toward the east-northeast crater rim, the Curiosity rover’s Mastcam captured this image of its local conditions so far. Meanwhile over 2,000 kilometers away, the Opportunity rover ceased science operations as the storm grew thicker at its location on the west rim of Endeavour crater, and has stopped communicating, waiting out the storm for now. Curiosity is powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, but the smaller Opportunity rover uses solar panels to charge its batteries. For Opportunity, the increasingly severe lack of sunlight has caused its batteries to run low. via NASA https://ift.tt/2ybKDii

Engines blazing, a large rocket bids farewell to this little planet. Of course, the little planet is really planet Earth and the large rocket is a Soyuz-FG rocket. Launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on June 6 it carried a Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft into orbit. On board were International Space Station Expedition 56-57 crew members Sergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos, Serena Aunon-Chancellor of NASA and Alexander Gerst of ESA. Their spacecraft successfully docked with humanity’s orbiting outpost just two days later. The little planet projection is the digitally warped and stitched mosaic of images covering 360 by 180 degrees, captured during the 2018 Star Trek car expedition. via NASA https://ift.tt/2JQphs3

The five naked-eye planets, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, have been seen since ancient times to wander the night skies of planet Earth. So it could be remarkable that on this night, standing at the side of a clear, calm lake, six planets can be seen with the unaided eye. Have a look. Very bright and easy to spot for skygazers, yellowish Mars is left of a pale Milky Way. Saturn is immersed in the glow of the Milky Way’s diffuse starlight. Jupiter is very near the horizon on the right, shining beyond the trees against the glow of distant city lights. Last weekend, while admiring this night time view across beautiful, high-altitude Lake Tanaya in Yosemite National Park, a thoughtful and reflective observer could probably see three planets more. via NASA https://ift.tt/2JJ38fi

What kind of rainbow is this? In this case, no rain was involved — what is pictured is actually a red cloudbow. The unusual sky arc was spotted last month during sunset in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, USA. When the photographer realized that what he was seeing was extraordinary, he captured it with the only camera available — a cell phone. Clouds are made of water droplets, and in a cloudbow a cloud-droplet group reflects back light from the bright Sun (or Moon) on the opposite side of the sky. Similar phenomena include fogbows and airplane glories. Here, the red color was caused by atmospheric air preferentially scattering away blue light — which simultaneously makes most of the sky appear blue. A careful inspection reveals a supernumery bow just inside the outermost arc, a bow caused by quantum diffraction. via NASA https://ift.tt/2JwjLPn

How big is our Sun compared to other stars? In dramatic and popular videos featured on YouTube, the relative sizes of planets, stars, and even the universe are shown from smallest to largest. The featured video begins with Earth’s Moon and progresses through increasingly larger moons and planets in our Solar System. Soon, the Sun is shown and compared to many of the brighter stars in our neighborhood of the Milky Way Galaxy. Finally, star sizes are shown in comparison with the Milky Way Galaxy, galaxies across the observable universe, and speculatively, regions of a potentially greater multiverse. Note that the true sizes of most stars outside of the Sun and Betelgeuse are not known by direct observation, but rather inferred by measurements of their perceived brightness, temperature, and distance. Although an inspiring learning tool that is mostly accurate, APOD readers are encouraged to complete the learning experience — and possibly help make future versions more accurate — by pointing out slight inaccuracies in the video. via NASA https://ift.tt/2y5NR70

Mars shines brightly now in planet Earth’s sky. Seen with a yellowish hue it rises over the hills and far away in this serene night skyscape, a countryside panorama recorded last month from Parque Nacional de Cabaneros in Spain. The Milky Way too extends above the distant hills into a starry sky. Its faint pinkish nebulae, cosmic rifts and rivers of dust are mingled with the pale, diffuse glow of starlight. Mimicking Mars’ yellow tint, bright star Antares shines to the right of the central Milky Way starclouds. Of course, CubeSats from Earth are on their way to the Red Planet. via NASA https://ift.tt/2JJK589

NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope was launched into orbit on June 11th, 2008. Its instruments detect gamma-rays — light that is thousands to hundreds of billions of times more energetic than what we see with our eyes. In the last decade Fermi’s high-energy voyage of exploration has resulted in a cornucopia of astonishing discoveries, from extreme environments above our fair planet and across the distant Universe. Now you can vote for Fermi’s best result so far. To mark Fermi’s 10th anniversary, images representing 16 scientific results have been selected and seeded to create brackets. Follow this link to cast your first round vote for your favorite out of each pair and then return every two weeks to vote in the next round. The winner of the Fermi Final will be announced on August 6, the 10th anniversary of the first science data from Fermi. via NASA https://ift.tt/2kTc07c

Marked by an unusually bright central region, swirling dust lanes, and far flung tidal tails, peculiar NGC 3256 is the aftermath of a truly cosmic collision. The 500 million year old clash of two separate galaxies spans some 100 thousand light-years in this sharp Hubble view. Of course when two galaxies collide, individual stars rarely do. Giant galactic clouds of molecular gas and dust do interact though, and produce spectacular bursts of star formation. In this galaxy clash, the two original spiral galaxies had similar masses. Their disks are no longer distinct and the two galactic nuclei are hidden by obscuring dust. On the timescale of a few hundred million years the nuclei will likely also merge as NGC 3256 becomes a single large elliptical galaxy. NGC 3256 itself is nearly 100 million light-years distant toward the southern sailing constellation Vela. The frame includes many even more distant background galaxies and spiky foreground stars. via NASA https://ift.tt/2sNJlUK