A cataclysmic cosmic collision takes center stage in this image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. via NASA https://ift.tt/3h4iFs6

How far can you see? The Andromeda Galaxy, 2.5 million light years away, is the most distant object easily seen by the unaided eye. Other denizens of the night sky, like stars, clusters, and nebulae, are typically hundreds to thousands of light-years distant. That’s far beyond the Solar System but well within our own Milky […]

In this June 2021 image, our Sun’s glint beams off the Indian Ocean as the International Space Station orbited 269 miles above south of western Australia. via NASA https://ift.tt/3xRaSVs

Grand design spiral galaxy Messier 99 looks majestic on a truly cosmic scale. This recently processed full galaxy portrait stretches over 70,000 light-years across M99. The sharp view is a combination of ultraviolet, visible, and infrared image data from the Hubble Space Telescope. About 50 million light-years distant toward the well-groomed constellation Coma Bernices, the […]

How do stars form? Most form in giant molecular clouds located in the central disk of a galaxy. The process is started, influenced, and limited by the stellar winds, jets, high energy starlight, and supernova explosions of previously existing stars. The featured video shows these complex interactions as computed by the STARFORGE simulation of a […]

Spacewalkers Shane Kimbrough of NASA (left) and Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency worked to install new roll out solar arrays on the space station. via NASA https://ift.tt/3gQS9Cp

How are jets created during star formation? No one is sure, although recent images of the young star system HD 163296 are quite illuminating. The central star in the featured image is still forming but seen already surrounded by a rotating disk and an outward moving jet. The disk is shown in radio waves taken […]

NASA Expedition 65 astronaut Shane Kimbrough is pictured during the Friday, June 18, 2021, spacewalk. via NASA https://ift.tt/35DBblK

Why does this galaxy have such a long tail? In this stunning vista, based on image data from the Hubble Legacy Archive, distant galaxies form a dramatic backdrop for disrupted spiral galaxy Arp 188, the Tadpole Galaxy. The cosmic tadpole is a mere 420 million light-years distant toward the northern constellation of the Dragon (Draco). […]

Today the Sun reaches its northernmost point in planet Earth’s sky. Called a solstice, many cultures mark this date as a change of seasons — from spring to summer in Earth’s Northern Hemisphere and from fall to winter in Earth’s Southern Hemisphere. Precisely, the single time of solstice occurs today for some parts of the […]