Why are these clouds multi-colored? A relatively rare phenomenon in clouds known as iridescence can bring up unusual colors vividly — or even a whole spectrum of colors simultaneously. These polar stratospheric clouds also, known as nacreous and mother-of-pearl clouds, are formed of small water droplets of nearly uniform size. When the Sun is in […]
Found among the rich starfields of the Milky Way, star cluster NGC 7789 lies about 8,000 light-years away toward the constellation Cassiopeia. A late 18th century deep sky discovery of astronomer Caroline Lucretia Herschel, the cluster is also known as Caroline’s Rose. Its visual appearance in small telescopes, created by the cluster’s complex of stars […]
A glow from the summit of Mount Etna, famous active stratovolcano of planet Earth, stands out along the horizon in this mountain and night skyscape. Bands of diffuse light from congeries of innumerable stars along the Milky Way galaxy stretch across the sky above. In silhouette, the Milky Way’s massive dust clouds are clumped along […]
The beautiful Trifid Nebula is a cosmic study in contrasts. Also known as M20, it lies about 5,000 light-years away toward the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius. A star forming region in the plane of our galaxy, the Trifid does illustrate three different types of astronomical nebulae; red emission nebulae dominated by light from hydrogen atoms, […]
Technicians used a 30-ton crane to lift NASA’s Orion spacecraft on Friday, June 28, 2024, from the Final Assembly and System Testing cell to the altitude chamber inside the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The spacecraft, which will be used for the Artemis II mission to […]
Big, bright, and beautiful, spiral galaxy M83 lies a mere twelve million light-years away, near the southeastern tip of the very long constellation Hydra. About 40,000 light-years across, M83 is known as the Southern Pinwheel for its pronounced spiral arms. But the wealth of reddish star forming regions found near the edges of the arms’ […]
NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick captured this image of Hurricane Beryl in the Caribbean on July 1, 2024, while aboard the International Space Station, and posted it to X. The Category 4 hurricane had winds of about 130 mph (215 kph). via NASA https://ift.tt/o9CN064
The clouds may look like an oyster, and the stars like pearls, but look beyond. Near the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy some 200 thousand light-years distant, lies this 5 million year old star cluster NGC 602. Surrounded by its birth shell of gas and dust, star cluster NGC 602 is […]
Saturn and its rings completely fill the field of view of Cassini’s narrow angle camera in this natural color image taken on March 27, 2004. This was the last single “eyeful” of Saturn and its rings achievable with the narrow angle camera on approach to the planet. via NASA https://ift.tt/hUDqzM7
What’s happened since the universe started? The time spiral shown here features a few notable highlights. At the spiral’s center is the Big Bang, the place where time, as we know it, began about 13.8 billion years ago. Within a few billion years atoms formed, then stars formed from atoms, galaxies formed from stars and […]