One of the biggest astronomical highlights this week was a hybrid solar eclipse, a rather rare type. The phenomenon was not visible from Brazil, but don’t worry about having missed the show: amid the astronomical photos highlighted by NASA this week, there is a fascinating sequence of images of the total stage of the eclipse.
Other beautiful photos bring the movement of Mars in the sky, an aurora borealis that impresses with its color and sharpness, a nebula shaped like a seahorse and, of course, much more.
Check out:
Saturday (15/04) — Mars in motion
The composite photo above shows Mars, photographed from August 2022 to March 2023. If you follow the movement of the planet in the image, you might think that, at a certain point, it “inverted” the direction of its orbit. However, this is just an illusion caused by the Earth’s orbital motion.
Sunday (16/04) — Butterfly Nebula
At first glance, the planetary nebula M2-9 draws attention due to the beauty of its structure. It lies about 2,100 light-years from us and is formed by a star that is shedding its layers as it nears the end of its life. It is accompanied by another, and this stellar duo moves inside a gaseous disk.
Monday (04/17) — ELVES Phenomenon
What caused this reddish ring in the sky? If you believe that this is some kind of phenomenon related to electrical discharges, you are right. This is an ELVE, a luminous phenomenon that occurs when electrically charged clouds emit electromagnetic pulses, which reach the ionosphere. With that, the nitrogen molecules glow and form this structure.
Tuesday (18/04) — Eclipse map
The dark bands on the map represent the path of the Moon’s shadow during the annular solar eclipse, which will happen in April, and the total, which will happen in 2024. As you can see, both are visible from different places in North America, and whoever is in the regions indicated by the dark markings will be able to see the maximum of the solar disk covered by the Moon during the phenomenon.
Wednesday (19/04) — Colorful Aurora in Finland
Colorful auroras flashed across the skies over Lapland, Finland, after a geomagnetic storm. They are caused by interactions between electrically charged particles coming from the Sun and the Earth’s atmosphere; the colors, on the other hand, indicate the reactions that occur between the electrons and atoms of the atmosphere, such as oxygen and nitrogen.
Thursday (20/04) — Seahorse Nebula
This is Barnard 150, a dark nebula located about 1,200 light years from us — but if you prefer, you can call it the “Sea Horse Nebula”. It is formed by high-density dust and gas and, in its interior, houses low-mass stars in formation.
Friday (21/04) — Rare solar eclipse
A solar eclipse took place overnight from Wednesday (19) to Thursday (20), and began at 22:36 at Brasilia time. As it was at night, it was not possible to observe the phenomenon in Brazil, but you can check out some of it in the sequence of photos above.
The eclipse was of the hybrid type and, in these photos, the beginning, middle and end of the total phase appear.
- Learn more about hybrid solar eclipse photo
Source: ETC
