STS-60 commander Charles F. Bolden is seen at the commander’s station on the forward flight deck of the space shuttle Discovery. He is wearing the orange launch and entry suit. Bolden and his crewmates performed proximity operations with the Russian Mir space station. via NASA https://ift.tt/Honmk2S
Planetary nebulae like Heckathorn-Fesen-Gull 1 (HFG1) and Abell 6 in the constellation Cassiopeia are remnants from the last phase of a medium sized star like our Sun. In spite of their shapes, planetary nebulae have nothing in common with actual planets. Located in the bottom left part of the featured photo, HFG1 was created by […]
Why would the shadow of a rocket’s launch plume point toward the Moon? In early 2001 during a launch of the space shuttle Atlantis, the Sun, Earth, Moon, and rocket were all properly aligned for this photogenic coincidence. First, for the space shuttle’s plume to cast a long shadow, the time of day must be […]
On January 18, 2024, during its 72nd flight in the thin Martian atmosphere, autonomous Mars Helicopter Ingenuity rose to an altitude of 12 meters (40 feet) and hovered for 4.5 seconds above the Red Planet. Ingenuity’s 72nd landing was a rough one though. During descent it lost contact with the Perseverance rover about 1 meter […]
“… Being able to see the world from a different perspective is incredible, and getting to fly in space was the culmination of that, seeing the world from an entirely new vantage point.” — Bob Hines, Astronaut, NASA’s Johnson Space Center via NASA https://ift.tt/6rNiy7H
Not all roses are red of course, but they can still be very pretty. Likewise, the beautiful Rosette Nebula and other star forming regions are often shown in astronomical images with a predominately red hue, in part because the dominant emission in the nebula is from hydrogen atoms. Hydrogen’s strongest optical emission line, known as […]
The crewmen of the third and final manned Skylab mission relax on the USS New Orleans, prime recovery ship for their mission, about an hour after their Command Module splashed down at 10:17 a.m. (CDT), Feb. 8, 1974. The splashdown, which occurred 176 statute miles from San Diego, ended 84 record-setting days of flight activity […]
Globular star cluster 47 Tucanae is a jewel of the southern sky. Also known as NGC 104, it roams the halo of our Milky Way Galaxy along with some 200 other globular star clusters. The second brightest globular cluster (after Omega Centauri) as seen from planet Earth, 47 Tuc lies about 13,000 light-years away. It […]
Are these two galaxies really attracted to each other? Yes, gravitationally, and the result appears as an enormous iconic heart — at least for now. Pictured is the pair of galaxies cataloged as NGC 4038 and NGC 4039,known as the Antennae Galaxies. Because they are only 60 million light years away, close by intergalactic standards, […]
Astronaut Bruce McCandless II approaches his maximum distance from the Earth-orbiting Space Shuttle Challenger in this 70mm frame photographed by his fellow crewmembers onboard the reusable vehicle. McCandless is in the midst of the first “field” tryout of the nitrogen-propelled, hand-controlled back-pack device called the manned maneuvering unit (MMU). Astronaut Robert L. Stewart got a […]