Why is Venus so different from Earth? To help find out, Japan launched the robotic Akatsuki spacecraft which entered orbit around Venus late in 2015 after an unplanned five-year adventure around the inner Solar System. Even though Akatsuki was past its original planned lifetime, the spacecraft and instruments were operating so well that much of […]
It was one of the better skies of this long night. In parts of Antarctica, not only is it winter, but the Sun can spend weeks below the horizon. At China’s Zhongshan Station, people sometimes venture out into the cold to photograph a spectacular night sky. The featured image from one such outing was taken […]
This tantalizing trio of galaxies sometimes called the Draco Group, is located in the northern constellation of (you guessed it) Draco, the Dragon. From left to right are face-on spiral NGC 5985, elliptical galaxy NGC 5982, and edge-on spiral NGC 5981, all found within this single telescopic field of view that spans a little more […]
The highly irregular galaxy ESO 174-1, which resembles a lonely, hazy cloud against a backdrop of bright stars, dominates this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. via NASA https://ift.tt/sDGTu20
Are asteroids dangerous? Some are, but the likelihood of a dangerous asteroid striking the Earth during any given year is low. Because some past mass extinction events have been linked to asteroid impacts, however, humanity has made it a priority to find and catalog those asteroids that may one day affect life on Earth. Pictured […]
Teams install the heat shield on the Artemis II Orion spacecraft at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on June 22, 2023. via NASA https://ift.tt/CLVhEep
Monitoring 68 pulsars with very large radio telescopes, the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) has uncovered evidence for the gravitational wave (GW) background by carefully measuring slight shifts in the arrival times of pulses. These shifts are correlated between different pulsars in a way that indicates that they are caused by GWs. […]
Students from 20 middle and high schools watched as their experiments launched aboard a high-altitude balloon on June 14 as part of NASA’s TechRise Student Challenge. via NASA https://ift.tt/yQUrWbL
Unlike most entries in Charles Messier’s famous catalog of deep sky objects, M24 is not a bright galaxy, star cluster, or nebula. It’s a gap in nearby, obscuring interstellar dust clouds that allows a view of the distant stars in the Sagittarius spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy. Direct your gaze through this gap […]
A young alligator rests on a concrete structure at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 25, 2023. via NASA https://ift.tt/pLsW8xw