Comet McNaught, the Great Comet of 2007, grew a spectacularly long and filamentary tail. The magnificent tail spread across the sky and was visible for several days to Southern Hemisphere observers just after sunset. The amazing ion tail showed its greatest extent on long-duration, wide-angle camera exposures. During some times, just the tail itself was […]
While hunting for comets in the skies above 18th century France, astronomer Charles Messier diligently kept a list of the things encountered during his telescopic expeditions that were definitely not comets. This is number 27 on his now famous not-a-comet list. In fact, 21st century astronomers would identify it as a planetary nebula, but it’s […]
An astronaut aboard the International Space Station shot this photo of large meanders of the Alabama River while orbiting over the southern United States. The river’s smooth water surface reflects sunlight back toward the astronaut’s camera, producing an optical phenomenon known as sunglint. via NASA https://ift.tt/5MNohqD
Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS) is growing brighter in planet Earth’s sky. Fondly known as comet A3, this new visitor to the inner Solar System is traveling from the distant Oort cloud. The comet reached perihelion, its closest approach to the Sun, on September 27 and will reach perigee, its closest to our fair planet, on […]
Chirag Parikh, Deputy Assistant to the President and Executive Secretary of the National Space Council, left, and NASA Astronauts Frank Rubio, center, and Marcos Berrios, right, speak at a staff engagement event that took place during a White House Hispanic Heritage month on Sept. 30, 2024. via NASA https://ift.tt/CW2plDu
The second solar eclipse of 2024 began in the Pacific. On October 2nd the Moon’s shadow swept from west to east, with an annular eclipse visible along a narrow antumbral shadow path tracking mostly over ocean, crossing land near the southern tip of South America, and ending in the southern Atlantic. The dramatic total annular […]
It is the largest satellite galaxy of our home Milky Way Galaxy. If you live in the south, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is quite noticeable, spanning about 10 degrees across the night sky, which is 20 times larger than the full moon towards the southern constellation of the dolphinfish (Dorado). Being only about 160,000 […]
“This is why [Aubrey Gemignani] and I started Faces of NASA: We wanted to make that connection. It’s not just rockets, astronauts, and telescopes. Hundreds of thousands of people come together to make these missions possible, and that’s the part that’s really interesting for me.” – Thalia Patrinos, Communications Strategist, PCI Productions, NASA Headquarters via […]
How far can black hole jets extend? A new record was found just recently with the discovery of a 23-million light-year long jet pair from a black hole active billions of years ago. Dubbed Porphyrion for a mythological Greek giant, the impressive jets were created by a type of black hole that does not usually […]
The new comet has passed its closest to the Sun and is now moving closer to the Earth. C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS) is currently moving out from inside the orbit of Venus and on track to pass its nearest to the Earth in about two weeks. Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, pronounced “Choo-cheen-shahn At-less,”, is near naked-eye visibility and […]