What’s that at the end of the road? The Sun. Many towns have roads that run east – west, and on two days each year, the Sun rises and sets right down the middle. Today is one of those days: an equinox. Not only is today a day of equal night (“aequus”-“nox”) and day time, […]
2MASS J17554042+6551277 doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue but that’s the name, a coordinate-based catalog designation, of the star centered in this sharp field of view. Fans of the distant universe should get used to its spiky appearance though. The diffraction pattern is created by the 18 hexagonal mirror segments of the James Webb Space […]
Earth’s Moon is seen rising behind NASA’s Space Launch System rocket. via NASA https://ift.tt/iktxpDN
Bluish reflection nebulae seem to fill this dusty expanse. The sharp telescopic frame spans over 1 degree on the sky toward the faint but fanciful constellation Monoceros, the Unicorn. Seen within the Monoceros R1 cloud complex some 2,500 light-years away, bluish IC 447 is on the left, joined by a long dark filament of dust […]
NASA’s Space Launch Syste rocket with the Orion spacecraft aboard is seen atop a mobile launcher in High Bay 3 of the Vehicle Assembly Building. via NASA https://ift.tt/hWl72Jr
A mere 11 million light-years away, Centaurus A is the closest active galaxy to planet Earth. Spanning over 60,000 light-years, the peculiar elliptical galaxy also known as NGC 5128, is featured in this sharp telescopic view. Centaurus A is apparently the result of a collision of two otherwise normal galaxies resulting in a fantastic jumble […]
Dr. Eugene N. Parker, visionary of heliophysics and namesake of NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, has passed away. He was 94. via NASA https://ift.tt/gR2W6En
How far can you see? Everything you can see, and everything you could possibly see, right now, assuming your eyes could detect all types of radiations around you — is the observable universe. In light, the farthest we can see comes from the cosmic microwave background, a time 13.8 billion years ago when the universe […]
In this image from August 2021, NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei sits and reads while on the International Space Station. via NASA https://ift.tt/HUfxGc8
Pictured — a very scenic road to the stars. The road approaches La Silla Observatory in Chile, with the ESO’s 3.6-meter telescope just up ahead. To the left are some futuristic-looking support structures for the planned BlackGEM telescopes, an array of optical telescopes that will help locate optical counterparts to gravitational waves detections by LIGO […]