The Graceful Night Sky

Make No Mistake

Credit: Adam Block/Mount Lemmon SkyCenter/University of Arizona

Monday, April 14, 2014: Barred spiral galaxy Messier 91 (M91) lies in the constellation of constellation of Coma Berenices. The galaxy’s bar stands out quite noticeably. The galaxy represents the faintest object in Charles Messier’s catalog, and he discovered it in 1781. Notably, a rare error by Messier caused the galaxy to go “missing” for centuries, until amateur astronomer William C. Williams determined NGC 4548 (catalogued by William Herschel in 1784) was M91 in 1969. Image obtained January-March 2014 by Adam Block and participants of the March 2014 "Astrophotography with Adam" courses.

Such a Delicate Thing

Credit: Solar Dynamics Observatory/NASA

Friday, April 11, 2014: A blob of plasma above the sun underwent twisting and pulling by powerful magnetic forces until the plasma was flung out into space on March 26, 2014. Delicate traces swirled in the wake of the activity. Before the blob broke away, it easily measured larger than several Earths. Solar Dynamics Observatory watched the event in extreme ultraviolet light over about 5.5 hours.

Bar None

Credit: NASA, ESA, and S. Smartt (Queen's University Belfast); Acknowledgement: Brian Campbell

Friday, April 4, 2014: This new Hubble image displays an almost face-on view of the galaxy NGC 1084, a spiral galaxy with no bar-shaped structure of stars at its center. Spiral galaxies lacking a central bar make up about half of all such galaxies. Astronomers have observed five supernova explosions which took place in NGC 1084 over the past half century. The supernova remnants bear names reflecting the year in which they took place:
1963P, 1996an, 1998dl, 2009H and 2012ec.~ Tom Chao

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