The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Hinode spacecraft got a unique angle on yesterday’s solar eclipse from its sun-synchronous polar orbit four hundred miles above the Earth (image credit: JAXA/Hinode).

Happy Earth Day!

(via infinity-imagined)

Researchers at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Dartmouth College ran dynamic simulations to discover what might happen when a binary star system with planets is disrupted by Sagittarius A, the massive black hole at our galaxy’s heart, and found that these worlds could be thrown clear of their parent stars and of our galaxy, at hypervelocities approaching 30 million miles per hour (image credit: David A. Aguilar/Harvard-Smithsonian CfA).

At the edge of the Vallis Alpes on the Moon lies Trouvelot Crater (center right in this image), named for French astronomer, amateur entomologist, and artist Étienne Léopold Trouvelot. Though he spent his latter years producing thousands of astronomical illustrations, M. Trouvelot is more (in)famous for his role in accidentally introducing the European gypsy moth to North America. In the late 1860s he imported gypsy moth eggs to his home in Medford, Massachusetts, intending to cross-breed silk-producing moths with the disease resistant pests. Some of the insects escaped from his backyard and began to spread and multiply. By now, the pests cause an estimated $868 million per year in damage to trees of North America.

M. Trouvelot’s misfortune in his entomological endeavours led him to pursue a new career in astronomical observation and illustration, beginning in the 1870s (image credit: NASA/Lunar Orbiter 4/Lunar Planetary Institute).

Outcrops at the edge of an impact crater on the floor of the much-larger Trouvelot Crater on the planet Mars, named for French astronomer, amateur entomologist, and artist Étienne Léopold Trouvelot. Though he spent his latter years producing thousands of astronomical illustrations, M. Trouvelot is more (in)famous for his role in accidentally introducing the European gypsy moth to North America. In the late 1860s he imported gypsy moth eggs to his home in Medford, Massachusetts, intending to cross-breed silk-producing moths with the disease resistant pests. Some of the insects escaped from his backyard and began to spread and multiply. By now, the pests cause an estimated $868 million per year in damage to trees of North America.

M. Trouvelot’s misfortune in his entomological endeavours led him to pursue a new career in astronomical observation and illustration, beginning in the 1870s (image credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona).

The Moon’s Mare Humorum, or Sea of Moisture, as observed by French astronomer, amateur entomologist, and artist Étienne Léopold Trouvelot in 1875. Though he spent his latter years producing thousands of astronomical illustrations, M. Trouvelot is more (in)famous for his role in accidentally introducing the European gypsy moth to North America. In the late 1860s he imported gypsy moth eggs to his home in Medford, Massachusetts, intending to cross-breed silk-producing moths with the disease resistant pests. Some of the insects escaped from his backyard and began to spread and multiply. By now, the pests cause an estimated $868 million per year in damage to trees of North America.

M. Trouvelot’s misfortune in his entomological endeavours led him to pursue a new career in astronomical illustration, after he observed several aurorae in 1870. He joined the staff at the Harvard College Observatory in 1872, and was invited to use the 26 inch refractor at the U.S. Naval Observatory for a year in 1875. A portfolio of his pastel astronomical observations was published in 1881 (image credit: The Trouvelot astronomical drawings: Atlas/NYPL Digital Gallery).

Mars, as observed by French astronomer, amateur entomologist, and artist Étienne Léopold Trouvelot on September 3rd, 1877. Though he spent his latter years producing thousands of astronomical illustrations, M. Trouvelot is more (in)famous for his role in accidentally introducing the European gypsy moth to North America. In the late 1860s he imported gypsy moth eggs to his home in Medford, Massachusetts, intending to cross-breed silk-producing moths with the disease resistant pests. Some of the insects escaped from his backyard and began to spread and multiply. By now, the pests cause an estimated $868 million per year in damage to trees of North America.

M. Trouvelot’s misfortune in his entomological endeavours led him to pursue a new career in astronomical illustration, after he observed several aurorae in 1870. He joined the staff at the Harvard College Observatory in 1872, and was invited to use the 26 inch refractor at the U.S. Naval Observatory for a year in 1875. A portfolio of his pastel astronomical observations was published in 1881 (image credit: The Trouvelot astronomical drawings: Atlas/NYPL Digital Gallery).

Northern Native American tribes like the Algonquin knew tonight’s full moon as the Worm Moon, the last moon of winter coinciding with the spring thaw, when earthworm casts began to appear, along with the robins.

The psychological phenomenon known as pareidolia led to cultures of the Northern Hemisphere imagining a “Man in the Moon” beaming down at us, his facial features made up of maria, ancient seas of dark lava.

A new research paper from Caltech proposes that the reason that those maria are mostly located on the side facing the Earth may be due to the same tidal forces that slowed the moon’s rotational day to be about the same as its orbital period, flexing lava across one face of the moon in a tidal bulge (image credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio).

From above Mars (that brilliant red light in the sky overhead lately just east of the full Moon), NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter caught this pic of a half mile high twister making its way across the Amazonis Plantia region of the northern Martian desert. Dust devils like this, scribbling through the red oxide dust covering Mars, leave black lines all over its surface that astronomers at the dawn of the 20th Century took for canals irrigating a dying civilization (image credit: NASA/JPL—CalTech/University of Arizona).

Mars reaches opposition tonight in our sky at 20 hours universal time, when the Earth passes directly between the red planet and the Sun. Tips on where to find Mars in the sky here (image credit: NASA).

Colorful blocks of layered bedrock lie strewn across dunes near the center of 104 mile wide Becquerel Crater on Mars, as imaged Sunday by the HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The crater was named for Antoine Henri Becquerel, French physicist who discovered radioactivity along with Marie and Pierre Curie (image credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona).

This week’s waxing Moon, its night side lit by reflected light from our planet even as its day side reflects the brilliant light of our Sun. Compare to this image of Saturn’s moon Enceladus, with its night side lit by sunlight reflected by the gas giant (image credit: Mick Hyde - reposted with permission).

Vestan Dawn: the rising sun casts long shadows across the giant asteroid Vesta, as seen from very low orbit by NASA’s ion-engined Dawn spacecraft, now only 124 miles above the surface. Rockslides are visible on the sunlit side of the impact crater to the right, and chains of pits across Vesta’s surface mid-image show the aftermath of another impact that threw material across the asteroid’s face (image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA).

On Tuesday this week, our Moon passed between the Sun and NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory orbiting our planet, giving earthbound team scientists a rare opportunity to calibrate the telescope’s optics. In this view in extreme ultraviolet, the sharp edge of the lunar disc partly covered an active region of sunspot activity (image credit: NASA/SDO).