If you’ve ever gazed up at the night sky and tried to pick out stars to wish on, you might want to reconsider your targets. Sure, we’ve all heard about wishing on that bright star (you know the one) but right next door, hiding in plain sight, is Messier 4—a cosmic gem that would make […]
Hey there, space enthusiasts! 🌌 Today, let’s take a virtual trip to the Andromeda Galaxy, or as the cool kids call it, M31.
### Floating in Space: John B. Herrington’s Out-of-This-World Spacewalk
Have you ever paused to wonder about the fascinating worlds of comets and meteors?
Hey there, space enthusiasts! 🚀 Last Friday, November 8, 2024, something pretty awesome went down at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
This floating ring is the size of a galaxy. In fact, it is a galaxy — or at least part of one: the photogenic Sombrero Galaxy is one of the largest galaxies in the nearby Virgo Cluster of Galaxies. The dark band of dust that obscures the mid-section of the Sombrero Galaxy in visible light […]
This robot prototype was built at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California to demonstrate the feasibility of a mission concept called SWIM, short for Sensing With Independent Micro-swimmers. SWIM envisions a swarm of dozens of self-propelled, cellphone-size robots exploring the waters of icy moons like Jupiter’s Europa and Saturn’s Enceladus. via NASA https://ift.tt/b6iP8oG
One of the most identifiable nebulas in the sky, the Horsehead Nebula in Orion, is part of a large, dark, molecular cloud. Also known as Barnard 33, the unusual shape was first discovered on a photographic plate in the late 1800s. The red glow originates from hydrogen gas predominantly behind the nebula, ionized by the […]
What lies at the center of our galaxy? In Jules Verne’s science fiction classic, A Journey to the Center of the Earth, Professor Liedenbrock and his fellow explorers encounter many strange and exciting wonders. Astronomers already know of some of the bizarre objects that exist at our Galactic Center, including vast cosmic dust clouds, bright […]
In an interplanetary first, on July 19, 2013 Earth was photographed on the same day from two other worlds of the Solar System, innermost planet Mercury and ringed gas giant Saturn. Pictured on the left, Earth is the pale blue dot just below the rings of Saturn, as captured by the robotic Cassini spacecraft then […]