Deep shadows create dramatic contrasts between light and dark in this high-resolution close-up of the martian surface. Recorded on January 24, 2014 by the HiRISE camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the scene spans about 1.5 kilometers. From 250 kilometers above the Red Planet the camera is looking down at a sand dune field […]
This Hubble Space Telescope image depicts a small section of the Cygnus supernova blast wave, the result of the “death” of a star 20 times more massive than our Sun 10,000 to 20,000 years ago. Light from this supernova takes around 2,400 years to reach Earth. via wordpress https://wp.me/p4wJUi-7fX
This exciting and unfamiliar view of the Orion Nebula is a visualization based on astronomical data and movie rendering techniques. Up close and personal with a famous stellar nursery normally seen from 1,500 light-years away, the digitally modeled frame transitions from a visible light representation based on Hubble data on the left to infrared data […]
In this large celestial mosaic taken by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and published in 2019, there’s a lot to see, including multiple clusters of stars born from the same dense clumps of gas and dust. via wordpress https://wp.me/p4wJUi-7fj
This intergalactic skyscape features a peculiar system of galaxies cataloged as Arp 227 some 100 million light-years distant. Swimming within the boundaries of the constellation Pisces, Arp 227 consists of the two galaxies prominent right of center, the curious shell galaxy NGC 474 and its blue, spiral-armed neighbor NGC 470. The faint, wide arcs or […]
What does this Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope Spirograph have in common with Women’s Equality Day? via wordpress https://wp.me/p4wJUi-7f9
A newly discovered, roughly Earth-sized planet orbiting our nearest neighboring star might be habitable, according to a team of astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s 3.6-meter telescope at La Silla, Chile. via wordpress https://ift.tt/2YuEIiX
What would it look like to circle a black hole? If the black hole was surrounded by a swirling disk of glowing and accreting gas, then the great gravity of the black hole would deflect light emitted by the disk to make it look very unusual. The featured animated video gives a visualization. The video […]
In this image, one of the radiation detectors for the Radi-N2 experiment floats in the space station. This device will help researchers explore the radition risk to humans in space. via wordpress https://wp.me/p4wJUi-7ew
How come the crescent Moon doesn’t look like this? For one reason, because your eyes can’t simultaneously discern bright and dark regions like this. Called earthshine or the da Vinci glow, the unlit part of a crescent Moon is visible but usually hard to see because it is much dimmer than the sunlit arc. In […]