Grains of cosmic dust streaked through night skies in early May. Swept up as planet Earth plowed through the debris streams left behind by periodic Comet Halley, the annual meteor shower is known as the Eta Aquarids. This year, the Eta Aquarids peak was visually hampered by May’s bright Full Moon, though. But early morning […]
A team member from the Environmental Management Branch at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center works to remove a mangrove seedling deposited by tropical winds on the shoreline of KARS Park at Kennedy in this image from April 12, 2023. via NASA https://ift.tt/qmvsIPO
Fomalhaut is a bright star, a 25 light-year voyage from planet Earth in the direction of the constellation Piscis Austrinus. Astronomers first noticed Fomalhaut’s excess infrared emission in the 1980s. Space and ground-based telescopes have since identified the infrared emission’s source as a disk of dusty debris surrounding the hot, young star related to the […]
Vance I. Oyama holds a readout from the gas chromatograph in the life detection laboratory at NASA’s Ames Research Center in this picture from April 22, 1965. via NASA https://ift.tt/nrFxbfj
For ten years the stargazer dreamed of taking a picture like this. The dreamer knew that the White Desert National Park in Egypt’s Western Desert is a picturesque place hosting numerous chalk formations sculpted into surreal structures by a sandy wind. The dreamer knew that the sky above could be impressively dark on a clear […]
Spacewalkers Stephen Bowen and Sultan Alneyadi are pictured in their Extravehicular Mobility Units, or spacesuits, exiting the International Space Station’s Quest airlock and beginning a spacewalk. via NASA https://ift.tt/RSLDoUT
Can you find two Earth shadows in today’s image? It’s a bit tricky. To find the first shadow, observe that the top part of the atmosphere appears pink and the lower part appears blue. This is because the top half is exposed to direct sunlight, while the lower part is not. The purple area in […]
Popocatépetl, one of Mexico’s most active volcanoes, has been erupting since 2005. via NASA https://ift.tt/7N91zQG
If not perfect, then this spiral galaxy is at least one of the most photogenic. An island universe containing billions of stars and situated about 40 million light-years away toward the constellation of the Dolphinfish (Dorado), NGC 1566 presents a gorgeous face-on view. Classified as a grand design spiral, NGC 1566 shows two prominent and […]
Will our Sun look like this one day? The Helix Nebula is one of brightest and closest examples of a planetary nebula, a gas cloud created at the end of the life of a Sun-like star. The outer gasses of the star expelled into space appear from our vantage point as if we are looking […]