Vivid and lustrous, wafting iridescent waves of color wash across this skyscape from Kilpisjärvi, Finland. Known as nacreous clouds or mother-of-pearl clouds, they are rare. But their unforgettable appearance was captured looking south at 69 degrees north latitude at sunset on January 24. A type of polar stratospheric cloud, they form when unusually cold temperatures […]
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata is pictured in his Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or spacesuit, during his second spacewalk on Feb. 2, 2023. via NASA https://ift.tt/W9KjPVs
Take an incredible journey to explore the Wolf Rayet Star WR 40 and its Nebula RCW 58, located towards the constellation of Carina. This star ejects its atmosphere at speeds of nearly 100 kilometers per second, forming an expanding oval-shaped nebula. Learn more about this incredible phenomenon in this article!
Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) is now beyond its closest approach to the Sun and Earth, but there is still time to see it with binoculars or a small telescope! Find out where and when to look for Comet ZTF before it fades away.
Officials from NASA, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), and the Indian Embassy visit a clean room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Feb. 3, 2023, to view the scientific instrument payload for the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission. via NASA https://ift.tt/pHc3OVZ
The featured image of the Rosette Nebula’s bright cluster of stars captures its central region in tremendous detail. It was taken in mid-January using multiple exposures and very specific colors of Sulfur (shaded red), Hydrogen (green), and Oxygen (blue). A hot wind of particles streams away from the cluster stars and contributes to an already complex menagerie of gas and dust filaments.
This moon is shining by the light of its planet. Specifically, a large portion of Enceladus pictured here is illuminated primarily by sunlight first reflected from the planet Saturn. The result is that the normally snow-white moon appears in the gold color of Saturn’s cloud tops. As most of the illumination comes from the image […]
Centered in this colorful cosmic canvas, NGC 2626 is a beautiful, bright, blue reflection nebula in the southern Milky Way. Next to an obscuring dust cloud and surrounded by reddish hydrogen emission from large H II region RCW 27 it lies within a complex of dusty molecular clouds known as the Vela Molecular Ridge. NGC […]
This Jan. 10, 2013, composite image of the giant barred spiral galaxy NGC 6872 combines visible light images from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope with far-ultraviolet data from NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) and infrared data acquired by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. via NASA https://ift.tt/19gtZHo
Stars trace concentric arcs around the North Celestial Pole in this three hour long night sky composite, recorded with a digital camera fixed to a tripod on January 31, near Àger, Lleida, Spain. On that date Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) was near its northernmost declination in planet Earth’s sky. That put the comet about 10 degrees from Earth’s North Celestial Pole making the comet’s position circumpolar, always above the horizon, from all locations on planet Earth at more than 10 degrees northern latitude. In the startrail image, the extension of Earth’s axis of rotation into space is at the left. North star Polaris traces the short, bright, concentric arc less than a degree from the North Celestial Pole. The trail of Comet ZTF is indicated at the right, its apparent motion mostly reflecting Earth’s rotation like the stars. But heading for its closest approach to planet Earth on February 1, the comet is also moving significantly with respect to the background stars. The diffuse greenish trail of Comet ZTF is an almost concentric arc mingled with startrails as it sweeps through the long-necked constellation Camelopardalis.