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.

                               2019 October 10

                        Mid-Air Meteor and Milky Way
                    Image Credit & Copyright: Eric Wagner

   Explanation: On September 24, a late evening commercial flight from
   Singapore to Australia offered stratospheric views of the southern
   hemisphere's night sky, if you chose a window seat. In fact, a
   well-planned seating choice with a window facing toward the Milky Way
   allowed the set up of a sensitive digital camera on a tripod mount to
   record the galaxy's central bulge in a series of 10 second long
   exposures. By chance, one of the exposures caught this bright fireball
   meteor in the starry frame. Reflected along the wing of the A380
   aircraft, the brilliant greenish streak is also internally reflected in
   the double layer window, producing a fainter parallel to the original
   meteor track. In the southern sky Jupiter is the bright source beneath
   the galactic bulge and seen next to a green beacon, just off the wing
   tip.

                     Tomorrow's picture: pixels in space
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       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
            NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.
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                             & Michigan Tech. U.

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