#451 Tomorrow's picture: September 12, 1996“ Mercury's surface looks similar to our Moon's. Each is heavily cratered and made of rock. Mercury's diameter is about 4800 km, while the Moon's is slightly

#442 Tomorrow's picture: September 03, 1996“It is the most famous star cluster on the sky. The Pleiades can be seen without binoculars from even the depths of a light-polluted city. Also known as the Seven

#434 Tomorrow's picture: August 26, 1996“What's a Wolf-Rayet star, and how did it create that spherical bubble and sweeping arc? A Wolf-Rayet star is a star that originated with a mass over 40 times that

#427 Tomorrow's picture: August 19, 1996“Welcome to Planet Earth, the third planet from a star named the Sun. The Earth is shaped like a sphere and composed mostly of rock. Over 70 percent of the Earth's

#418 Tomorrow's picture: August 10, 1996“Spiral galaxy M66 is largest galaxy in the a group known as the Leo Triplet. M66 is somewhat peculiar because of its asymmetric spiral arms. Usually dense waves

#409 Tomorrow's picture: August 01, 1996“You are flying through space and come to ... the Hydra Cluster of Galaxies. Listed as Abell 1060, the Hydra Cluster contains well over 100 bright galaxies. Clusters

#399 Tomorrow's picture: July 22, 1996“The Viking 2 spacecraft was launched on the Road to Utopia in September of 1975 (30 years after Bing, Dotty, and Bob). In August of 1976, after making the second

#392 Tomorrow's picture: July 15, 1996“In buildings eight stories tall rest mirrors ten meters across that are slowly allowing humanity to map the universe. Alone, each is the world's largest optical

#385 Tomorrow's picture: July 08, 1996“The spiral galaxy M33 is a mid-sized member of our Local Group of galaxies. M33 is also called the Triangulum Galaxy for the constellation in which it resides. About

#378 APOD News: July 01, 1996“Within the last few years, observational astronomy has given humanity evidence of the existence of worlds beyond the solar system. Indeed, solar-type stars are now inferred

#371 Tomorrow's picture: June 24, 1996“Color information from the Soviet Venera landers and radar data from the Magellan spacecraft were used to construct this striking perspective view of the Venusian

#363 Tomorrow's picture: June 16, 1996“The first Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) appeared one year ago today. Pictured above are Robert Nemiroff (left) and Jerry Bonnell (right), engaged in creating

#353 Tomorrow's picture: June 06, 1996“Here's a familiar shape in an unfamiliar location! This emission nebula is famous partly because it resembles Earth's North American Continent. To the right of the

#338 Tomorrow's picture: May 22, 1996“mbedded in the center of the colorful and photogenic Rosette Nebula is a bright, young open cluster. The bright blue stars in this cluster, labelled NGC 2244, emit

#328 Tomorrow's picture: May 12, 1996“These five pairs of Hubble Space Telescope images track some of Saturn's moons as they orbit the ringed planet. A pair of images was taken every 97 minutes on November

#313 Tomorrow's picture: April 27, 1996“Brilliant sunlight glints off tracks gently winding across the the Moon's Frau Maro highlands. The tracks were made by the Apollo 14 crew's two-wheeled Modularized

#303 Information: April 17, 1996“The Helix nebula (New General Catalog number 7293) is estimated to be a mere 450 light-years from the Sun, in the direction of the constellation Aquarius. At that distance

#294 Latest Comet Hyakutake images: April 08, 1996“Oberon is the most distant and second largest moon of Uranus. Discovered by William Herschel in 1787, the properties of the world remained relatively

#286 Latest Comet Hyakutake images: March 31, 1996“During April Comet Hyakutake heads in toward the Sun after passing the Earth. At this time the comet's orbit places it north of the Earth. Remaining visible

#277 Latest Comet Hyakutake images: March 22, 1996“People the world over are preparing to witness the closest approach of the brightest comet of the past twenty years. Comet Hyakutake, discovered just