What are these two bands in the sky? The more commonly seen band is the one on the right and is the central band of our Milky Way galaxy. Our Sun orbits in the disk of this spiral galaxy, so that from inside, this disk appears as a band of comparable brightness all the way […]
“Oh my God! Look at that picture over there! Here’s the Earth coming up. Wow is that pretty!” Soon after that pronouncement, 50 years ago today, one of the most famous images ever taken was snapped from the orbit of the Moon. Now known as “Earthrise”, the iconic image shows the Earth rising above the […]
Large spiral galaxy NGC 4945 is seen nearly edge-on in this cosmic galaxy close-up. It’s almost the size of our Milky Way Galaxy. NGC 4945’s own dusty disk, young blue star clusters, and pink star forming regions stand out in the colorful telescopic frame. About 13 million light-years distant toward the expansive southern constellation Centaurus, […]
This striking image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope showcases Arp 298, a stunning pair of interacting galaxies. Arp 298 – which comprises the two galaxies NGC 7469 and IC 5283 – lies roughly 200 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus. via NASA https://ift.tt/6enUPtz
There are few artists in the aerospace industry whose career was as varied or accomplished as Ted Brown. via NASA https://ift.tt/TtwDzaW
Beta Cygni is a single bright star to the naked eye. About 420 light-years away it marks the foot of the Northern Cross, famous asterism in the constellation Cygnus. But a view through the eyepiece of a small telescope will transform it into a beautiful double star, a treasure of the night sky in blue […]
This image from 2020 shows a flame that was one of many ignited as part of the Flame Design investigation on the space station. via NASA https://ift.tt/x5sN7l8
What will the huge Green Bank Telescope discover tonight? Pictured, the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) on the lower right is the largest fully-pointable single-dish radio telescope in the world. With a central dish larger than a football field, the GBT is nestled in the hills of West Virginia, USA in a radio […]
Melba Roy Mouton (1929-1990) was a mathematician and computer programmer in NASA’s Trajectory and Geodynamics Division. via NASA https://ift.tt/pawedYi
What did the first quasars look like? The nearest quasars are now known to involve supermassive black holes in the centers of active galaxies. Gas and dust that falls toward a quasar glows brightly, sometimes outglowing the entire home galaxy. The quasars that formed in the first billion years of the universe are more mysterious, […]