[{"copyright":"Jeff Dai\n(TWAN)","date":"2022-03-01","explanation":"What are these two bands in the sky? The more commonly seen band is the one on the right and is the central band of our Milky Way galaxy. Our Sun orbits in the disk of this spiral galaxy, so that from inside, this disk appears as a band of comparable brightness all the way around the sky. The Milky Way band can also be seen all year -- if out away from city lights.  The less commonly seem band, on the left, is zodiacal light -- sunlight reflected from dust orbiting the Sun in our Solar System.  Zodiacal light is brightest near the Sun and so is best seen just before sunrise or just after sunset.  On some evenings in the north, particularly during the months of March and April, this ribbon of zodiacal light can appear quite prominent after sunset.  It was determined only this century that zodiacal dust was mostly expelled by comets that have passed near Jupiter.  Only on certain times of the year will the two bands be seen side by side, in parts of the sky, like this.  The featured image, including the Andromeda galaxy and a meteor, was captured in late January over a frozen lake in Kanding, Sichuan, China.","hdurl":"https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2203/DuelingBands_Dai_2000.jpg","media_type":"image","service_version":"v1","title":"Dueling Bands in the Night","url":"https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2203/DuelingBands_Dai_960.jpg"},{"date":"2022-03-02","explanation":"What's happened to our Sun?  Last month, it produced the largest prominence ever imaged together with a complete solar disk. The record image, featured, was captured in ultraviolet light by the Sun-orbiting Solar Orbiter spacecraft. A quiescent solar prominence is a cloud of hot gas held above the Sun's surface by the Sun's magnetic field.  This solar prominence was huge -- spanning a length rivaling the diameter of the Sun itself. Solar prominences may erupt unpredictably and expel hot gas into the Solar System via a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME).  When a CME strikes the Earth and its magnetosphere, bright auroras may occur. This prominence did produce a CME, but it was directed well away from the Earth. Although surely related to the Sun's changing magnetic field, the energy mechanism that creates and sustains a solar prominence remains a topic of research.","hdurl":"https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2203/SunEruption_SolarOrbiter_960.jpg","media_type":"image","service_version":"v1","title":"Record Prominence Imaged by Solar Orbiter","url":"https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2203/SunEruption_SolarOrbiter_960.jpg"},{"copyright":"Vitali Pelenjow","date":"2022-03-03","explanation":"A mere 46 million light-years distant, spiral galaxy NGC 2841 can be found in the northern constellation of Ursa Major. This deep view of the gorgeous island universe was captured during 32 clear nights in November, December 2021 and January 2022. It shows off a striking yellow nucleus, galactic disk, and faint outer regions.  Dust lanes, small star-forming regions, and young star clusters are embedded in the patchy, tightly wound spiral arms. In contrast, many other spirals exhibit grand, sweeping arms with large star-forming regions.  NGC 2841 has a diameter of over 150,000 light-years, even larger than our own Milky Way. X-ray images suggest that resulting winds and stellar explosions create plumes of hot gas extending into a halo around NGC 2841.","hdurl":"https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2203/NGC2841_20220114_72H.jpg","media_type":"image","service_version":"v1","title":"Spiral Galaxy NGC 2841","url":"https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2203/NGC2841_20220114_72H_1024.jpg"},{"date":"2022-03-04","explanation":"The Crab Nebula is cataloged as M1, the first object on Charles Messier's famous list of things which are not comets. In fact, the Crab is now known to be a supernova remnant, expanding debris from massive star's death explosion, witnessed on planet Earth in 1054 AD. This brave new image offers a 21st century view of the Crab Nebula by presenting image data from across the electromagnetic spectrum as wavelengths of visible light. From space, Chandra (X-ray) XMM-Newton (ultraviolet), Hubble (visible), and Spitzer (infrared), data are in purple, blue, green, and yellow hues. From the ground, Very Large Array radio wavelength data is shown in red. One of the most exotic objects known to modern astronomers, the Crab Pulsar, a neutron star spinning 30 times a second, is the bright spot near picture center. Like a cosmic dynamo, this collapsed remnant of the stellar core powers the Crab's emission across the electromagnetic spectrum. Spanning about 12 light-years, the Crab Nebula is 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus.","hdurl":"https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2203/multiWcrab_lg2048.jpg","media_type":"image","service_version":"v1","title":"The Multiwavelength Crab","url":"https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2203/multiWcrab_lg1024c.jpg"},{"date":"2022-03-05","explanation":"From somewhere else in the Milky Way galaxy, Comet 2I/Borisov was just visiting the Solar System. Discovered by amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov on August 30, 2019, the first known interstellar comet is seen in these two Hubble Space Telescope images from November and December 2019. On the left, a distant background galaxy near the line-of-sight to Borisov is blurred as Hubble tracked the speeding comet and dust tail about 327 million kilometers from Earth. At right, 2I/Borisov appears shortly after perihelion, its closest approach to Sun. European Southern Observatory observations indicate that this comet may never have passed close to any star before its 2019 perihelion passage. Borisov's closest approach to our fair planet, a distance of about 290 million kilometers, came on December 28, 2019. Even though Hubble's sharp images don't resolve the comet's nucleus, they did lead to estimates of less than 1 kilometer for its diameter.","hdurl":"https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2203/borisovStsci1826.jpg","media_type":"image","service_version":"v1","title":"Interstellar Comet 2I Borisov","url":"https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2203/borisovStsci1315.jpg"},{"date":"2022-03-06","explanation":"This was a very unusual type of solar eclipse.  Typically, it is the Earth's Moon that eclipses the Sun.  In 2012, though, the planet Venus took a turn.  Like a solar eclipse by the Moon, the phase of Venus became a continually thinner crescent as Venus became increasingly better aligned with the Sun.  Eventually the alignment became perfect and the phase of Venus dropped to zero.  The dark spot of Venus crossed our parent star.  The situation could technically be labeled a Venusian annular eclipse with an extraordinarily large ring of fire.  Pictured here during the occultation, the Sun was imaged in three colors of ultraviolet light by the Earth-orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory, with the dark region toward the right corresponding to a coronal hole. Hours later, as Venus continued in its orbit, a slight crescent phase appeared again.  The next Venusian transit across the Sun will occur in 2117.","hdurl":"https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2203/SunVenusUv3_SdoDove_960.jpg","media_type":"image","service_version":"v1","title":"Venus and the Triply Ultraviolet Sun","url":"https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2203/SunVenusUv3_SdoDove_960.jpg"},{"copyright":"Maroun Mahfoud","date":"2022-03-07","explanation":"Yes, but can you see the lion? A deep exposure shows the famous dark indentation that looks like a horse's head, visible just left and below center, and known unsurprisingly as the Horsehead Nebula.  The Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33) is part of a vast complex of dark absorbing dust and bright glowing gas.  To bring out details of the  Horsehead's pasture, an astrophotographer artistically combined light accumulated for over 20 hours in hydrogen (orange), oxygen (blue), and sulfur (green). The resulting spectacular picture captured from Raachine, Lebanon, details an intricate tapestry of gaseous wisps and dust-laden filaments that were created and sculpted over eons by stellar winds and ancient supernovas.  The featured composition brings up another pareidolic animal icon -- that of a lion's head -- in the expansive orange colored gas above the horse's head.  The Flame Nebula is visible just to the left of the Horsehead.  The Horsehead Nebula lies 1,500 light years distant towards the constellation of Orion.","hdurl":"https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2203/HorseFlameLion_Mahfoud_4639.jpg","media_type":"image","service_version":"v1","title":"A Lion in Orion","url":"https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2203/HorseFlameLion_Mahfoud_960.jpg"},{"copyright":"Dawid Glawdzin","date":"2022-03-08","explanation":"Which moon is this? It's Earth's moon -- but in inverted colors. Here, the pixel values corresponding to light and dark areas have been translated in reverse, or inverted, producing a false-color representation reminiscent of a black and white photographic negative.  However, this is an inverted color image -- where the muted colors of the moon are real but digitally exaggerated before inversion.  Normally bright rays from the large crater Tycho dominate the southern (bottom) features as easily followed dark green lines emanating from the 85-kilometer diameter impact site.  Normally dark lunar mare appear light and silvery.  The image was acquired in Southend-on-Sea, England, UK.  Historically, astronomical images recorded on photographic plates were directly examined on inverted-color negatives because it helped the eye pick out faint details.","hdurl":"https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2203/InvertedMoon_Glawdzin_2048.jpg","media_type":"image","service_version":"v1","title":"Moon in Inverted Colors","url":"https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2203/InvertedMoon_Glawdzin_960.jpg"}]