NASA astronauts (from top) Chris Cassidy and Bob Behnken work on U.S. spacesuits. via wordpress https://wp.me/p4wJUi-6SQ

What if you could see X-rays? The night sky would seem a strange and unfamiliar place. X-rays are about 1,000 times more energetic than visible light photons and are produced by violent explosions and high temperature astronomical environments. Instead of the familiar steady stars, the sky would seem to be filled with exotic stars, active […]

What are those dark streaks in this composite image of yesterday’s solar eclipse? They are reversed shadows of mountains at the edge of the Moon. The center image, captured from Xiamen, China, has the Moon’s center directly in front of the Sun’s center. The Moon, though, was too far from the Earth to completely block […]

Astronomers have discovered evidence for thousands of black holes located near the center of our Milky Way galaxy using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. via wordpress https://wp.me/p4wJUi-6PL

Today’s solstice brings summer to planet Earth’s northern hemisphere. But the northern summer solstice arrived for ringed planet Saturn over three years ago on May 24, 2017. Orbiting the gas giant, Saturn’s moon Titan experiences the Saturnian seasons. Larger than inner planet Mercury, Titan was captured in this Cassini spacecraft image about two weeks after […]

It may look like Earthrise, but it’s actually Venus-set. Just after sunrise two days ago, both the Moon and Venus also rose. But then the Moon overtook Venus. In the featured image sequence centered on the Moon, Venus is shown increasingly angularly close to the Moon. In the famous Earthrise image taken just over 50 […]

Pilots Troy Asher and Wayne Ringelberg walk out of NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center’s (AFRC) hangar in Palmdale, California, toward the flight line. via wordpress https://wp.me/p4wJUi-6Pv

Transfusing sunlight through a darkened sky, this beautiful display of noctilucent clouds was captured earlier this week, reflected in calm waters from Nykobing Mors, Denmark. From the edge of space, about 80 kilometers above Earth’s surface, the icy clouds themselves still reflect sunlight, though the Sun is below the horizon as seen from the ground. […]

This telescopic close-up shows off the central regions of otherwise faint emission nebula IC 410, captured under backyard suburban skies with narrowband filters. It also features two remarkable inhabitants of the cosmic pond of gas and dust. Below and right of center are the tadpoles of IC 410. Partly obscured by foreground dust, the nebula […]

This artist’s concept shows an astronaut on Mars, as viewed through the window of a spacecraft. via wordpress https://wp.me/p4wJUi-6P7