Astronomy Shares 19.12.2013

Time flies, and because I'm so busy, the news I need to keep up with keeps piling up. Today, there have been nearly 400 news stories in just a few days. I have so many beautiful photos to share. I'm sure you'll enjoy them as much as I do. Check this out: “Ignorance Brought by Abundance of Information” Let me write a second version of my post. I realized there were things I left out.

When the Cassini spacecraft first launched, I read about it in a science and technology magazine in high school. I was incredibly excited. I imagined what discoveries it would make and what beautiful images it would take once it settled into Saturn's orbit. And it bore fruit. It captured wonderful images and discoveries, just like this image. Here we see the impact of the Prometheus moon (86 km diameter) on the F ring. Daphnis (8 km diameter) is also in this image, but it's too small to be noticed. We can only see it by the trace it left on the ring. This image was taken by the Cassini spacecraft in visible light on August 5th.

This image was not to be missed. NASA's lunar impact monitoring program recorded the brightest meteor impact on the lunar surface in eight years. And now the moon has a new crater.

Let's continue with images of the moon. Normally, the moon appears in shades of gray and white. However, with a little color filtering, we can achieve a beautifully colorful moon image. These filters and colors are created by the light absorption of materials on the moon's surface. Blue areas represent titanium-rich regions, while orange areas represent titanium-deficient regions.

What you're seeing isn't a laser show. It's a composite image of the sky taken with long exposures. As you know, the Earth rotates, and everything we see in the sky moves because of this. If you hold your camera in place and expose for hours, you'll get something like this. I think these photos deserve the name "shooting star" even more.