Unlike most globular clusters, Ruprecht 106 may be what astronomers call a single population globular cluster. via NASA https://ift.tt/C2H1uk8

This colorful telescopic field of view features a trio of interacting galaxies almost 90 million light-years away, toward the constellation Virgo. On the right two spiky, foreground Milky Way stars echo the extragalactic hues, a reminder that stars in our own galaxy are like those in distant island universes. With sweeping spiral arms and obscuring […]

Galaxy clusters contain hundreds of galaxies and huge amounts of hot gas and dark matter. via NASA https://ift.tt/yZAxpeb

These cosmic clouds of gas and dust drift through rich star fields along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy toward the high flying constellation Cygnus. They’re too faint to be seen with the unaided eye though, even on a clear, dark night. Image data from a camera and telephoto lens using narrowband filters was […]

The International Space Station orbits into a dawn 261 miles above a cloudy Pacific Ocean in this image from April 2022. via NASA https://ift.tt/xH9A8UT

What are those unusual streaks? Some images of planet Earth show clear bright streaks that follow the paths of ships. Known as ship tracks, these low and narrow bands are caused by the ship’s engine exhaust. Water vapor condenses around small bits of exhaust known as aerosols, which soon grow into floating water drops that […]

This November 1996 image from Magellan shows Dickinson, an impact crater in the northeastern Atalanta Region of Venus. via NASA https://ift.tt/GBvKVmM

Do dragons fight on the altar of the sky? Although it might appear that way, these dragons are illusions made of thin gas and dust. The emission nebula NGC 6188, home to the glowing clouds, is found about 4,000 light years away near the edge of a large molecular cloud unseen at visible wavelengths, in […]

The rocket is scheduled to launch later in 2022. via NASA https://ift.tt/aDTwjJL

Will our Milky Way Galaxy collide one day with its larger neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy? Most likely, yes. Careful plotting of slight displacements of M31’s stars relative to background galaxies on recent Hubble Space Telescope images indicate that the center of M31 could be on a direct collision course with the center of our home […]