The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) will help determine if intentionally crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid is an effective way to change its course. via NASA https://ift.tt/3r3Xf58
Why are the regions above sunspots so hot? Sunspots themselves are a bit cooler than the surrounding solar surface because the magnetic fields that create them reduce convective heating. It is therefore unusual that regions overhead — even much higher up in the Sun’s corona — can be hundreds of times hotter. To help find […]
The Flame Nebula, also called NGC 2024, is a large star-forming region in the constellation Orion that lies about 1,400 light-years from Earth. It’s a part of the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex. via NASA https://ift.tt/3FIDtAd
Why is the Moon on top of this building? Planning. It took the astrophotographer careful planning — including figuring out exactly where to place the camera and exactly when to take the shot — to create this striking superposition. The single image featured was taken in the early morning hours of November 19, near the […]
Here comes Comet Leonard. Comet C/2021 A1 (Leonard) was discovered as a faint smudge in January 2021 when it was out past Mars — but its orbit will take the giant shedding ice-ball into the inner Solar System, passing near both Earth and Venus in December before it swoops around the Sun in early January […]
Predawn hours of November 19 found the Moon in partly cloudy skies over Cancun, Mexico. Captured in this telephoto snapshot, the lunar disk is not quite entirely immersed in Earth’s dark umbral shadow during a long partial lunar eclipse. The partial eclipse was deep though, deep enough to show the dimmed but reddened light in […]
NASA astronaut Victor Glover speaks with students about his time aboard the International Space Station, Thursday, Nov. 18, 2021, at Ben’s Chili Bowl in Washington. via NASA https://ift.tt/3FvR2Tf
In visible light the stars have been removed from this narrow-band image of NGC 281, a star forming region some 10,000 light-years away toward the constellation Cassiopeia. Stars were digitally added back to the resulting starless image though. But instead of using visible light image data, the stars were added with X-ray data (in purple) […]
A pair of U.S. spacesuits are pictured inside the International Space Station’s Quest airlock ready for an upcoming spacewalk. via NASA https://ift.tt/3DvwNog
A photographer in silhouette stands in bright moonlight as the Full Moon rises in this well-planned telephoto image. Of course, the Full Moon is normally the brightest lunar phase. But on November 18/19, the Full Moon’s light will be dimmed during a deep partial lunar eclipse seen across much of planet Earth. At maximum eclipse […]