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Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available.

The Easterbunny Comes to NGC 4725

Explanation: At first called “Easterbunny” by its discovery team, officially named Makemake is the second brightest dwarf planet of the Kuiper belt . The icy world appears twice in this astronomical image, based on data taken on June 29 and 30 of the bright spiral galaxy NGC 4725. Makemake is marked by short red lines, its position shifting across a homemade telescope's field-of-view over two nights along a distant orbit . On those dates nearly coincident with the line-of-sight to the spiral galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices, Makemake was about 52.5 astronomical units or 7.3 light-hours away. NGC 4725 is over 100,000 light-years across and 41 million light-years distant. Makemake is now known to have at least one moon. NGC 4725 is a famous one-armed spiral galaxy.

Look Up! Perseid Meteor Shower

Date August 12, 2016
Credit Image Credit & Copyright: Bob English
Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC,
NASA Science Activation & Michigan Tech. U.