Astronomy Picture of the Day

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

You say poe-TAY-toe, I say pah-TAH-toe.  Either way, it's a cool picture:



From a very cool site supported by YOUR TAXES.  It'd be a waste, if you didn't take advantage of your own money, wouldn't it? <grin> (link is to NASA's site, so it's safe for work)

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Here's the caption for the above photo:

Janus: Potato Shaped Moon of Saturn
Credit: CICLOPS, JPL, ESA, NASA

Explanation: Janus is one of the stranger moons of Saturn. First, Janus travels in an unusual orbit around Saturn where it periodically trades places with its sister moon Epimetheus, which typically orbits about 50 kilometers away. Janus, although slightly larger than Epimetheus, is potato-shaped and has a largest diameter of about 190 kilometers. Next, Janus is covered with large craters but strangely appears to lack small craters. One possible reason for this is a fine dust that might cover the small moon, a surface also hypothesized for Pandora and Telesto. Pictured above, Janus was captured in front of the cloud tops of Saturn in late September.

[Aphos]

Poor little moon has been hammered pretty thoroughly by meteors.

[Aphos]

The little black spot in the middle of the picture is Mercury, the big thing behind it is the Sun.  This gives you some perspective on just how big the Sun is.

[Opsa]

Cool! I didn't know The Black Spot was Mercury! 

Nice photos. The first one makes me reach for the sour cream.

[Opsa]

here's a link to some toadily aewsome Hubble photos:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/galleries/index.html?in_gallery_id=9139&in_page_id=1055

My Dad sent these to me. He helped with the Hubble's robotic arm, so I am very proud of him.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Today's APOTD is very cool: