Some 13,000 light-years away toward the southern constellation Pavo, the globular star cluster NGC 6752 roams the halo of our Milky Way galaxy. Over 10 billion years old, NGC 6752 follows clusters Omega Centauri, 47 Tucanae, and Messier 22 as the fourth brightest globular in planet Earth’s night sky. It holds over 100 thousand stars […]
A super blue moon rises above NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday, Aug. 18, 2024. Although not actually appearing blue, as the third full moon in a season with four full moons, this is called a “blue” moon. via NASA https://ift.tt/28s4u7w
A mere seven hundred light years from Earth toward the constellation Aquarius, a star is dying. The once sun-like star’s last few thousand years have produced the Helix Nebula. Also known as NGC 7293, the cosmic Helix is a well studied and nearby example of a Planetary Nebula, typical of this final phase of stellar […]
The city lights of Melbourne, Australia are pictured from the International Space Station as it orbited 271 miles above. via NASA https://ift.tt/D9Seg0X
Nearly four decades ago, astronomers spotted one of the brightest exploding stars in more than 400 years. The titanic supernova, called Supernova 1987A (SN 1987A), blazed with the power of 100 million suns for several months following its discovery on Feb. 23, 1987. via NASA https://ift.tt/Feiy6W5
These dark pillars may look destructive, but they are creating stars. This pillar-capturing picture of the Eagle Nebula combines visible light exposures taken with the Hubble Space Telescope with infrared images taken with the James Webb Space Telescope to highlight evaporating gaseous globules (EGGs) emerging from pillars of molecular hydrogen gas and dust. The giant […]
A drone camera captures NASA’s mobile launcher 1 atop the agency’s crawler-transporter 2 moving from Launch Complex 39B to the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024. The mobile launcher has been at the launch pad since August 2023 undergoing upgrades and tests in preparation for NASA’s […]
The tails of Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS were a sight to behold. Pictured, C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS) was captured near peak impressiveness last week over the Eastern Sierra Mountains in California, USA. The comet not only showed a bright tail, but a distinct anti-tail pointing in nearly the opposite direction. The globular star cluster M5 can be seen […]
Is our universe haunted? It might look that way on this dark matter map. The gravity of unseen dark matter is the leading explanation for why galaxies rotate so fast, why galaxies orbit clusters so fast, why gravitational lenses so strongly deflect light, and why visible matter is distributed as it is both in the […]
These six panels follow daily apparitions of comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS as it moved away from our fair planet during the past week. The images were taken with the same camera and lens at the indicated dates and locations from California, planet Earth. At far right on October 12 the visitor from the distant Oort […]