Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation, the star factory known as Messier 17 lies some 5,500 light-years away in the nebula-rich constellation Sagittarius. At that distance, this 1/3 degree wide field of view spans over 30 light-years. The sharp composite, color image highlights faint details of the region’s gas and dust clouds against a backdrop […]
Hubble’s colorful image of the globular star cluster Terzan 12 is a spectacular example of how dust in space affects starlight coming from background objects. via NASA https://ift.tt/PwTpJb9
The 16th century Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan and his crew had plenty of time to study the southern sky during the first circumnavigation of planet Earth. As a result, two fuzzy cloud-like objects easily visible to southern hemisphere skygazers are known as the Clouds of Magellan, now understood to be satellite galaxies of our much […]
A recovery team member takes part in field rehearsals in preparation for the retrieval of the sample return capsule from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission in this image from Aug. 29, 2023. via NASA https://ift.tt/4X1WiI0
They may look like modern mechanical dinosaurs, but they are enormous swiveling eyes that watch the sky. The High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) Observatory is composed of four 12-meter reflecting-mirror telescopes surrounding a larger telescope housing a 28-meter mirror. They are designed to detect strange flickers of blue light — Cherenkov radiation –emitted when charged […]
Voyager 1 Lifts Off Toward an Interstellar Journey via NASA https://ift.tt/6XAMWTa
The last full moon was doubly unusual. First of all, it was a blue moon. A modern definition of a blue moon is a second full moon to occur during one calendar month. Since there are 13 full moons in 2023, one month has to have two — and that month was August. The first […]
As stars die, they create clouds. Two stellar death clouds of gas and dust can be found toward the high-flying constellation of the Swan (Cygnus) as they drift through rich star fields in the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy. Caught here within the telescopic field of view are the Soap Bubble (lower left) and […]
Periodic comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 has broken up at least twice. A cosmic souffle of ice and dust left over from the early solar system, this comet was first seen to split into several large pieces during the close-in part of its orbit in 1995. However, in the 2006 passage, it disintegrated into dozens of fragments […]
These cosmic clouds have blossomed 1,300 light-years away in the fertile starfields of the constellation Cepheus. Called the Iris Nebula, NGC 7023 is not the only nebula to evoke the imagery of flowers. Still, this deep telescopic image shows off the Iris Nebula’s range of colors and symmetries embedded in surrounding fields of interstellar dust. […]