You’ve surely seen it, but you might not have noticed it. During a cloudless twilight, just before sunrise or after sunset, part of the atmosphere above the horizon appears slightly dark and off-color. Called the Belt of Venus, this transitional band between the dark eclipsed sky and the bright day sky can be seen most […]
Does lightning occur only on Earth? No. Spacecraft in our Solar System have detected lightning on other planets, including Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, and lightning is likely on Venus, Uranus, and Neptune. Lightning is a sudden rush of electrically charged particles from one location to another. On Earth, drafts of colliding ice and water droplets […]
The multicolor, stereo imaging Mastcam-Z on the Perseverance rover zoomed in to capture this 3D close-up (get out your red/blue glasses) of the Mars Ingenuity helicopter on mission sol 45. That’s Earth-date 2021 April 5. Casting a shadow on the Martian surface, Ingenuity is standing alone on its four landing legs next to the rover’s […]
The teeming stars of the globular cluster NGC 6544 glisten in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. via NASA https://ift.tt/LIk4ndY
Over 500,000 light years across, NGC 6872 (top right) is a truly enormous barred spiral galaxy, at least 5 times the size of our own very large Milky Way. The appearance of this giant galaxy’s distorted and stretched out spiral arms suggests the magnificent wings of a giant bird. Of course its popular moniker is […]
During the Skylab 2 crew’s final fly-around inspection on June 22, 1973, they saw this overhead view of the Skylab Space Station. via NASA https://ift.tt/sFwd5vD
Cosmic dust clouds cross a rich field of stars in this telescopic vista near the northern boundary of Corona Australis, the Southern Crown. Part of a sprawling molecular cloud complex this star forming region is a mere 500 light-years away. That’s about one third the distance of the more famous stellar nursery known as the […]
As sunlight and warmth increase in the spring and summer, the North Sea starts to gain swirls and tendrils of color. via NASA https://ift.tt/p3AlFOJ
Does the Sun follow the same path every day? No. The Sun’s path changes during the year, tracing a longer route during the summer than the winter. Pictured here, the Sun’s arc was captured from noon to sunset on three days, from highest in the sky to lowest: summer solstice, equinox, and winter solstice. The […]
Astronauts Reid Wiseman of NASA (left), Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency (middle), and Victor Glover of NASA (right) pay close attention to Moon samples as they receive a lesson in the Apollo Lunar Lab at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on May 9, 2023. via NASA https://ift.tt/kMmIxor