Alpha News

How do stars and planets form? New clues have been found in the protoplanetary system Herbig-Haro 30 by the James Webb Space Telescope in concert with Hubble and the Earth-bound ALMA . The observations show , among other things, that large dust grains are more concentrated into a central disk where they can form planets. The featured image from Webb shows many attributes of the active HH-30 system. Jets of particles are being expelled vertically, shown in red, while a dark dust-rich disk is seen across the center, blocking the light from the star or stars still forming there. Blue-reflecting dust is seen in a parabolic arc above and below the central disk, although why a tail appears on the lower left is currently unknown. Studying how planets form in HH 30 can help astronomers better understand how planets in our own Solar System once formed, including our Earth . from NASA https://ift.tt/34OWkz9

Seen as a seagull and a duck, these nebulae are not the only cosmic clouds to evoke images of flight. But both are winging their way across this broad celestial landscape, spanning almost 7 degrees across planet Earth 's night sky toward the constellation of the Big Dog ( Canis Major ). The expansive Seagull (top center) is itself composed of two major cataloged emission nebulas . Brighter NGC 2327 forms the head with the more diffuse IC 2177 as the wings and body. Impressively, the Seagull's wingspan would correspond to about 250 light-year s at the nebula's estimated distance of 3,800 light-years. At the lower right, the Duck appears much more compact and would span only about 50 light-years given its 15,000 light-year distance estimate. Blown by energetic winds from an extremely massive, hot star near its center, the Duck nebula is cataloged as NGC 2359. Of course, the Duck's thick body and winged appendages also lend it the slightly more dramatic popular moni...

What's happened to the sky? Last Monday, the photogenic launch plume from a SpaceX rocket launch created quite a spectacle over parts of southern California and Arizona . Looking at times like a giant space fish , the impressive rocket launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base near Lompoc , California, was so bright because it was backlit by the setting Sun. The Falcon 9 rocket successfully delivered to low Earth orbit 23 Starlink communications satellites. The plume from the first stage is seen on the right, while the soaring upper stage rocket is seen at the apex of the plume toward the left. Venus appears at the top of the frame, while a bright streetlight shines on the far right. The featured image was captured toward the west after sunset from near Phoenix , Arizona. from NASA https://ift.tt/HYDiTCK

Here comes Jupiter. NASA 's robotic spacecraft Juno is continuing on its highly elongated orbits around our Solar System's largest planet. The featured video is from perijove 11 in early 2018, the eleventh time Juno passed near Jupiter since it arrived in mid-2016. This time-lapse, color-enhanced movie covers about four hours and morphs between 36 JunoCam images. The video begins with Jupiter rising as Juno approaches from the north. As Juno reaches its closest view -- from about 3,500 kilometers over Jupiter's cloud tops -- the spacecraft captures the great planet in tremendous detail. Juno passes light zones and dark belts of clouds that circle the planet, as well as numerous swirling circular storms, many of which are larger than hurricanes on Earth . After the perijove, Jupiter recedes into the distance, then displaying the unusual clouds that appear over Jupiter's south. To get desired science data , Juno swoops so close to Jupiter that its instruments ar...

Three suns seem to hug the horizon in this otherworldly winterscape. But the evocative scene was captured during a February 3rd snowmobile exploration of the mountainous region around Abisko National Park, northern Sweden, planet Earth . The two bright spots on either side of Earth's Sun are parhelia (singular parhelion), also known as mock suns or sun dogs. The parhelia are caused by hexagonal ice crystals suspended in the hazy atmosphere that reflect and refract sunlight. Commonly seen in winter and at high latitudes, the bright parhelia lie along the visible 22 degree ice halo of the Sun . from NASA https://ift.tt/frYAN2W

The Rosette Nebula, NGC 2237, is not the only cosmic cloud of gas and dust to evoke the imagery of flowers , but it is probably the most famous. At the edge of a large molecular cloud in Monoceros some 5,000 light years away, the petals of this cosmic rose are actually a stellar nursery. The lovely, symmetric shape is sculpted by the winds and radiation from its central cluster of hot young, O-type stars . Stars in the energetic cluster , cataloged as NGC 2244 , are only a few million years young, while the central cavity in the Rosette Nebula, is about 50 light-years in diameter. The nebula can be seen with a small telescope toward the constellation of Monoceros , the Unicorn. This natural appearing telescopic portrait of the Rosette Nebula was made using broadband color filters, but sometimes roses aren't red . from NASA https://ift.tt/mW06lGS

Riding high in the constellation of Auriga, beautiful, blue VdB 31 is the 31st object in Sidney van den Bergh's 1966 catalog of reflection nebulae . It shares this well-composed celestial still life with dark, obscuring clouds B26, B27, and B28, recorded in Edward E. Barnard's 1919 catalog of dark markings in the sky. All are these nebulae are interstellar dust clouds. Barnard's dark nebulae block the light from background stars. For VdB 31 the dust preferentially reflects bluish starlight from embedded, hot, variable star AB Aurigae. Exploring the environs of AB Aurigae with the Hubble Space Telescope has revealed the several million year young star is itself surrounded by a flattened dusty disk with evidence for the ongoing formation of a planetary system. AB Aurigae is about 470 light-years away. At that distance this cosmic canvas would span about eight light-years. from NASA https://ift.tt/q8j7NW2

What can a space rock tell us about life on Earth? NASA 's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft made a careful approach to the near-Earth asteroid 101955 Bennu in October of 2020 to collect surface samples. In September 2023, the robotic spaceship returned these samples to Earth . A recent analysis has shown , surprisingly, that the samples contained 14 out of the 20 known amino acid s that are the essential building blocks of life. The presence of the amino acids re-introduces a big question: Could life have originated in space? However, the protein building blocks themselves held another surprise -- they contained an even mixture of left-handed and right-handed amino acids -- in contrast to our Earth which only has left-handed ones. This raises another big question: Why does life on Earth have only left-handed amino acids? Research on this is sure to continue . from NASA https://ift.tt/pSQlFrE

Will the spider ever catch the fly? Not if both are large emission nebulas toward the constellation of the Charioteer ( Auriga ). The spider -shaped gas cloud in the image center is actually an emission nebula labelled IC 417 , while the smaller fly-shaped cloud on the left is dubbed NGC 1931 and is both an emission nebula and a reflection nebula. About 10,000 light-years distant, both nebulas harbor young star clusters. For scale, the more compact NGC 1931 (Fly) is about 10 light-years across. The featured deep image , captured over 20 hours during late January in Berkshire UK , also shows more diffuse and red-glowing interstellar gas and dust. from NASA https://ift.tt/lhCXyWQ

Is this the largest hummingbird ever? Although it may look like a popular fluttering nectarivore , what is pictured is actually a beautifully detailed and colorful aurora , complete with rays reminiscent of feathers. This aurora was so bright that it was visible to the unaided eye during blue hour -- just after sunset when the sky appears a darkening blue. However, the aurora only looked like a hummingbird through a sensitive camera able to pick up faint glows. As reds typically occurring higher in the Earth's atmosphere than the greens, the real 3D shape of this aurora would likely appear unfamiliar. Auroras are created when an explosion on the Sun causes high energy particles to flow into the Earth's atmosphere and excite atoms and molecules of nitrogen and oxygen. The featured image was captured about two weeks ago above Lyngseidt , Norway . from NASA https://ift.tt/bDXZC7k

What strange world is this? E a r t h . In the foreground of the featured image are the Pinnacles , unusual rock spires in Nambung National Park in Western Australia . Made of ancient sea shells ( limestone ), how these human-sized picturesque spires formed remains unknown. In the background, just past the end of the central Pinnacle, is a bright crescent Moon. The eerie glow around the Moon is mostly zodiacal light , sunlight reflected by dust grains orbiting between the planets in the Solar System . Arching across the top is the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy . Many famous stars and nebulas are also visible in the background night sky. The featured 29-panel panorama was taken and composed in 2015 September after detailed planning that involved the Moon, the rock spires, and their corresponding shadow s. Even so, the strong zodiacal light was a pleasant surprise . from NASA https://ift.tt/yawM6pU

A waxing crescent Moon and a waning crescent Venus are found at opposite corners of this twilight telephoto field of view . The close conjunction of the two brightest celestial beacons in planet Earth's western evening sky was captured on February 1 from Rosario, Argentina. On that date, the slender crescent Moon was about 3 days old. But the Moon's visible sunlit crescent will grow to a bright Full Moon by February 14. Like the Moon, Venus cycles through phases as it orbits the Sun. And while its visible sunlit crescent narrows, the inner planet's apparent size increases as it gets closer to Earth. In a Valentine from the Solar System, Venus, named for the Roman goddess of Love, will also reach its peak brightness in planet Earth's evening skies around February 14. from NASA https://ift.tt/j3HyDFZ

The giant galaxy cataloged as LEDA 1313424 is about two and a half times the size of our own Milky Way. Its remarkable appearance in this recently released Hubble Space Telescope image strongly suggests its nickname "The Bullseye Galaxy". Known as a collisional ring galaxy it has nine rings confirmed by telescopic observations, rippling from its center like waves from a pebble dropped into a pond. Of course, the pebble dropped into the Bullseye galaxy was a galaxy itself. Telescopic observations identify the blue dwarf galaxy at center-left as the likely collider, passing through the giant galaxy's center and forming concentric rings in the wake of their gravitational interaction. The Bullseye Galaxy lies some 567 million light-years away toward the constellation Pisces. At that distance , this stunning Hubble image would span about 530,000 light-years. from NASA https://ift.tt/9cmlDYe

Grand spiral galaxies often seem to get all the glory, flaunting their young, bright, blue star clusters in beautiful, symmetric spiral arms. But small, irregular galaxies form stars too. In fact dwarf galaxy IC 2574 shows clear evidence of intense star forming activity in its telltale reddish regions of glowing hydrogen gas. Just as in spiral galaxies, the turbulent star-forming regions in IC 2574 are churned by stellar winds and supernova explosions spewing material into the galaxy's interstellar medium and triggering further star formation. A mere 12 million light-years distant, IC 2574 is part of the M81 group of galaxies, seen toward the northern constellation Ursa Major. Also known as Coddington's Nebula, the lovely island universe is about 50,000 light-years across, discovered by American astronomer Edwin Coddington in 1898. from NASA https://ift.tt/TIkydf0

Where is Comet ATLAS going? In the featured time-lapse video , the comet is not itself moving very much, but the Earth's rotation makes it appear to be setting over a hill . The Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) sequence was captured with an ordinary camera on January 22 from the Araucanía Region in central Chile . Comet ATLAS has been an impressive site in the evening skies of Earth 's Southern Hemisphere over the past few weeks, so bright and awe-inspiring that it may eventually become known as the Great Comet of 2025. Unfortunately, Comet G3 ATLAS is not going anywhere anymore because its central nucleus broke up during its close pass to the Sun last month. Some of the comet's scattered remains of rocks and ice will continue to orbit the Sun , some in nearly the same outward section of the orbit that the comet's nucleus would have taken. from NASA https://ift.tt/pVYvJjC

Yes, but can your rainbow do this? Late in the day, the Sun set as usual toward the west. However, on this day, the more interesting display was 180 degrees around -- toward the east. There, not only was a rainbow visible, but an impressive display of anticrepuscular rays from the rainbow's center. In the featured image from Lekeitio in northern Spain , the Sun is behind the camera. The rainbow resulted from sunlight reflecting back from falling rain. Anticrepuscular rays result from sunlight, blocked by some clouds, going all the way around the sky , overhead, and appearing to converge on the opposite horizon -- an optical illusion. Rainbows by themselves can be exciting to see, and anticrepuscular rays a rare treat , but capturing them both together is even more unusual -- and can look both serene and surreal. from NASA https://ift.tt/KQ6JeDV

Some stars explode in slow motion. Rare, massive Wolf-Rayet stars are so tumultuous and hot that they are slowly disintegrating right before our telescopes. Glowing gas globs each typically over 30 times more massive than the Earth are being expelled by violent stellar winds . Wolf-Rayet star WR 124 , visible near the featured image center and spanning six light years across, is thus creating the surrounding nebula known as M1-67 . Details of why this star has been slowly blowing itself apart over the past 20,000 years remains a topic of research. WR 124 lies 15,000 light-years away towards the constellation of the Arrow ( Sagitta ). The fate of any given Wolf-Rayet star likely depends on how massive it is, but many are thought to end their lives with spectacular explosions such as supernovas or gamma-ray bursts . from NASA https://ift.tt/b0kC4Lw

What's happening to Comet G3 ATLAS? After passing near the Sun in mid-January, the head of the comet has become dimmer and dimmer. By late January, Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) had become a headless wonder -- even though it continued to show impressive tails after sunset in the skies of Earth 's Southern Hemisphere . Pictured are images of Comet G3 ATLAS on successive January nights taken from Río Hurtado , Chile . Clearly, the comet's head is brighter and more centrally condensed on the earlier days (left) than on later days (right). A key reason is likely that the comet's nucleus of ice and rock , at the head 's center, has fragmented . Comet G3 ATLAS passed well inside the orbit of planet Mercury when at its solar closest, a distance that where heat destroys many comets . Some of comet G3 ATLAS' scattering remains will continue to orbit the Sun . from NASA https://ift.tt/xAVCR3X

Vivid and lustrous, wafting iridescent waves of color wash across this skyscape from northern Sweden. Known as nacreous clouds or mother-of-pearl clouds, they are rare. But their unforgettable appearance was captured in this snapshot on January 12 with the Sun just below the local horizon. A type of polar stratospheric cloud , they form when unusually cold temperatures in the usually cloudless lower stratosphere form ice crystals. Still sunlit at altitudes of around 15 to 25 kilometers, the clouds diffract the sunlight even when the Sun itself is hidden from direct view. from NASA https://ift.tt/TkCy7Bi

The interstellar cloud of dust and gas captured in this sharp telescopic snapshot is seen to change its appearance noticeably over periods as short as a few weeks. Discovered over 200 years ago and cataloged as NGC 2261, bright star R Monocerotis lies at the tip of the fan-shaped nebula. About one light-year across and 2500 light-years away, NGC 2261 was studied early last century by astronomer Edwin Hubble and the mysterious cosmic cloud is now more famous as Hubble's Variable Nebula. So what makes Hubble's nebula vary? NGC 2261 is composed of a dusty reflection nebula fanning out from the star R Monocerotis . The leading variability explanation holds that dense knots of obscuring dust pass close to R Mon and cast moving shadows across the dust clouds in the rest of Hubble's Variable Nebula . from NASA https://ift.tt/xd6Y1ju

Gorgeous spiral galaxy Messier 33 seems to have more than its fair share of glowing hydrogen gas. A prominent member of the local group of galaxies, M33 is also known as the Triangulum Galaxy and lies a mere 3 million light-years away. The galaxy's central 60,000 light-years or so are shown in this sharp galaxy portrait . The portrait features M33's reddish ionized hydrogen clouds or HII regions . Sprawling along loose spiral arms that wind toward the core, M33's giant HII regions are some of the largest known stellar nurseries, sites of the formation of short-lived but very massive stars. Intense ultraviolet radiation from the luminous, massive stars ionizes the surrounding hydrogen gas and ultimately produces the characteristic red glow. In this image, broadband data were combined with narrowband data recorded through a filter that transmits the light of the strongest visible hydrogen and oxygen emission lines . from NASA https://ift.tt/E51nj2s

What are those strange rings? Rich in dust, the rings are likely 3D shells -- but how they were created remains a topic of research . Where they were created is well known: in a binary star system that lies about 6,000 light years away toward the constellation of the Swan (Cygnus) -- a system dominated by the Wolf-Rayet star WR 140 . Wolf-Rayet stars are massive, bright, and known for their tumultuous winds . They are also known for creating and dispersing heavy elements such as carbon , which is a building block of interstellar dust . The other star in the binary is also bright and massive -- but not as active . The two great stars joust in an oblong orbit as they approach each other about every eight years. When at closest approach, the X-ray emission from the system increases, as, apparently, does the dust expelled into space -- creating another shell . The featured infrared image by the Webb Space Telescope resolves greater details and more dust shells than ever bef...

Comets can be huge. When far from the Sun, a comet's size usually refers to its hard nucleus of ice and rock, which typically spans a few kilometers -- smaller than even a small moon . When nearing the Sun , however, this nucleus can eject dust and gas and leave a thin tail that can spread to an enormous length -- even greater than the distance between the Earth and the Sun . Pictured, C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) sports a tail of sunlight-reflecting dust and glowing gas that spans several times the apparent size of a full moon , appearing even larger on long duration camera image s than to the unaided eye. The featured image shows impressive Comet ATLAS over trees and a grass field in Sierras de Mahoma , San Jose , Uruguay about a week ago. After being prominent in the sunset skies of Earth's southern hemisphere, Comet G3 ATLAS is now fading as it moves away from the Sun, making its impressive tails increasingly hard to see. from NASA https://ift.tt/gWY7Zn8

Stars come in bunches. The most famous bunch of stars on the sky is the Pleiades , a bright cluster that can be easily seen with the unaided eye . The Pleiades lies only about 450 light years away, formed about 100 million years ago, and will likely last about another 250 million years. Our Sun was likely born in a star cluster , but now, being about 4.5 billion years old, its stellar birth companions have long since dispersed. The Pleiades star cluster is pictured over Half Dome , a famous rock structure in Yosemite National Park in California , USA . The featured image is a composite of 28 foreground exposures and 174 images of the stellar background, all taken from the same location and by the same camera on the same night in October 2019. After calculating the timing of a future juxtaposition of the Pleiades and Half Dome , the astrophotographer was unexpectedly rewarded by an electrical blackout , making the background sky unusually dark . from NASA https://ift.tt/T5r...

Why does this comet have so many tails? C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) has developed several long and intricate tails visible from Earth's southern hemisphere over the past two weeks. Many observers reported seeing the impressive comet without any optical aid above the western horizon just after sunset. At least six different tails appear in the featured image captured five days ago from the dark skies above Paranal Observatory in Chile . One possible cause for the multiple tails is dust and gas being expelled from the comet's rotating nucleus . The outward push of the Sun 's complex solar wind may also play a role. The huge iceberg-like nucleus of Comet ATLAS appears to have broken up near its closest approach to the Sun two weeks ago. Unfortunately, Comet ATLAS and its tails are expected to fade significantly over the coming weeks. from NASA https://ift.tt/zrYUWpA

Clouds of stardust drift through this deep skyscape , across the Perseus molecular cloud some 850 light-years away. Dusty nebulae reflecting light from embedded young stars stand out in the nearly 4 degree wide field of view. With a characteristic bluish color reflection nebula NGC 1333 is prominent near center. Hints of contrasting red emission from Herbig-Haro objects, the jets and shocked glowing gas emanating from recently formed stars, are scattered across the dusty expanse . While many stars are forming in the molecular cloud, most are obscured at visible wavelengths by the pervasive dust. The chaotic environment surrounding NGC 1333 may be similar to one in which our own Sun formed over 4.5 billion years ago. At the estimated distance of the Perseus molecular cloud, this cosmic scene would span about 80 light-years. from NASA https://ift.tt/VJ7kdMQ

Comet C/2024 G3 ATLAS has made a dramatic appearance in planet Earth's skies. A visitor from the distant Oort Cloud , the comet reached its perihelion on January 13. On January 19, the bright comet was captured here from ESO Paranal Observatory in the Atacama desert in Chile. Sporting spectacular sweeping dust tails, this comet ATLAS is setting in the southern hemisphere twilight and was clearly visible to the unaided eye. In the foreground is the closed shell of one of the observatory's famous auxiliary telescopes. Still wowing southern hemisphere observers, the comet's bright coma has become diffuse , its icy nucleus apparently disintegrating following its close approach to the Sun . from NASA https://ift.tt/yoHQm21

Point your telescope toward the high flying constellation Pegasus and you can find this cosmic expanse of Milky Way stars and distant galaxies . NGC 7814 is centered in the sharp field of view that would almost be covered by a full moon. NGC 7814 is sometimes called the Little Sombrero for its resemblance to the brighter more famous M104, the Sombrero Galaxy . Both Sombrero and Little Sombrero are spiral galaxies seen edge-on, and both have extensive halos and central bulges cut by a thin disk with thinner dust lanes in silhouette. In fact , NGC 7814 is some 40 million light-years away and an estimated 60,000 light-years across. That actually makes the Little Sombrero about the same physical size as its better known namesake, appearing smaller and fainter only because it is farther away. from NASA https://ift.tt/bd7PH0L

The North America nebula on the sky can do what the North America continent on Earth cannot -- form stars. Specifically, in analogy to the Earth-confined continent, the bright part that appears as the east coast is actually a hot bed of gas, dust, and newly formed stars known as the Cygnus Wall . The featured image shows the star forming wall lit and eroded by bright young stars and partly hidden by the dark dust they have created. The part of the North America nebula (NGC 7000) shown spans about 50 light years and lies about 1,500 light years away toward the constellation of the Swan ( Cygnus ). from NASA https://ift.tt/eImqlno

What's that in the sky? Above the city, above most clouds, far in the distance: it's a comet. Pictured , the impressive tail of Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) was imaged from Brasília , Brazil four days ago. Last week the evolving comet rounded the Sun well inside the orbit of planet Mercury, going so close there was early concern that it might break up -- and recent evidence that it really did. At one point near perihelion, Comet ATLAS was so bright that sightings were even reported during the day -- over the bright sky near the Sun -- by careful observers . Over the past few days, Comet ATLAS has developed a long tail that has been partly visible with unaided eyes after sunset, most notably in Earth's southern hemisphere . from NASA https://ift.tt/c3xslPI

Why does Comet ATLAS have such colorful tails? Last week Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) passed its closest to the Sun -- well inside the orbit of Mercury -- and brightened dramatically . Unfortunately, the comet was then so angularly near the Sun that it was very hard for human s to see. But NASA's SOHO spacecraft saw it. Pictured is a SOHO ( LASCO C3) image of Comet ATLAS that is a composite of several different color filters. Of the several tails visible, the central white tails are likely made of dust and just reflecting back sunlight. The red, blue, and green tails are likely ion tails with their colors dominated by light emitted by specific gases that were ejected from the comet and energized by the Sun. Currently, Comet ATLAS is showing long tails in southern skies but fading as it moves out of the inner Solar System . from NASA https://ift.tt/ulKMhwt

What would it look like to land on Saturn's moon Titan? The European Space Agency 's Huygens probe set down on the Solar System's cloudiest moon in 2005, and a time-lapse video of its descent images was created. Huygens separated from the robotic Cassini spacecraft soon after it achieved orbit around Saturn in late 2004 and began approaching Titan . For two hours after arriving, Huygens plummeted toward Titan 's surface, recording at first only the shrouded moon's opaque atmosphere. The computerized truck-tire sized probe soon deployed a parachute to slow its descent, pierced the thick clouds, and began transmitting images of a strange surface far below never before seen in visible light . Landing in a dried sea and surviving for 90 minutes, Huygen's returned unique images of a strange plain of dark sandy soil strewn with smooth, bright, fist-sized rocks of ice. from NASA https://ift.tt/QpLBuHj

On January 13 a Full Moon and a Full Mars were close, both bright and opposite the Sun in planet Earth's sky. In fact Mars was occulted, passing behind the Moon, when viewed from some locations in North America and northwest Africa. As seen from Richmond, Virginia, USA, this composite image sequence follows the evening lunar occultation before, during, and after the much anticipated celestial spectacle . The telescopic time series is constructed from an exposure made every two minutes while tracking the Moon over the hours encompassing the event. As a result, the Red Planet's trajectory seems to follow a gently curved path due to the Moon's slightly different rate of apparent motion. The next lunar occultation of bright planet Mars will be on February 9 when the moon is in a waxing gibbous phase. Lunar occultations are only ever visible from a fraction of the Earth's surface, though. The February 9 occultation of Mars will be seen from parts of Russia, China, easte...

Massive stars in our Milky Way Galaxy live spectacular lives. Collapsing from vast cosmic clouds, their nuclear furnaces ignite and create heavy elements in their cores. After only a few million years for the most massive stars, the enriched material is blasted back into interstellar space where star formation can begin anew. The expanding debris cloud known as Cassiopeia A is an example of this final phase of the stellar life cycle . Light from the supernova explosion that created this remnant would have been first seen in planet Earth's sky about 350 years ago, although it took that light 11,000 years to reach us. This sharp NIRCam image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows the still hot filaments and knots in the supernova remnant. The whitish, smoke-like outer shell of the expanding blast wave is about 20 light-years across. A series of light echoes from the massive star's cataclysmic explosion are also identified in Webb's detailed images of the surrounding ...

Beautiful and bright spiral galaxy M83 lies a some twelve million light-years away, near the southeastern tip of the very long constellation Hydra . Prominent spiral arms traced by dark dust lanes and blue star clusters lend this galaxy its popular name, The Southern Pinwheel. Still, reddish star forming regions that dot this cosmic pinwheel's spiral arms have suggested another nickname, the Thousand-Ruby Galaxy . A mere 40,000 light-years across, smaller than the Milky Way, M83 is a member of a group of galaxies that includes active galaxy Centaurus A . In fact, the core of M83 itself is bright at x-ray energies , showing a high concentration of neutron stars and black holes left from an intense burst of star formation. This sharp color image also features spiky foreground Milky Way stars and distant background galaxies. The image data was captured with the Dark Energy Camera and Blanco 4-meter telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. from NASA https://ift.tt/V...

Does the Moon ever engulf Mars? Yes, but only in the sense that it moves in front, which happens on rare occasions . This happened just yesterday, though, as seen from some locations in North America and western Africa . This occultation was notable not only because the Moon was a fully lit Wolf Moon , but because Mars was near its largest and brightest, moving to opposition -- the closest to the Earth in its orbit -- only tomorrow. The engulfing , more formally called an occultation , typically lasting about an hour. The featured image was taken from near Chicago , Illinois , USA just as Earth's largest satellite was angularly moving away from the much more distant red planet . Our Moon occasionally moves in front of all of the Solar System 's planets. Given the temporary alignment of orbital planes , the next time our Moon eclipses Mars will be a relatively soon February 9. from NASA https://ift.tt/bKLuCMO

Why is Polaris called the North Star? First, Polaris is the nearest bright star toward the north spin axis of the Earth. Therefore, as the Earth turns, stars appear to revolve around Polaris , but Polaris itself always stays in the same northerly direction -- making it the North Star . Since no bright star is near the south spin axis of the Earth, there is currently no bright South Star . Thousands of years ago, Earth's spin axis pointed in a slightly different direction so that Vega was the North Star . Although Polaris is not the brightest star on the sky, it is easily located because it is nearly aligned with two stars in the cup of the Big Dipper . Polaris is near the center of the five-degree wide featured image, a digital composite of hundreds of exposures that brings out faint gas and dust of the Integrated Flux Nebula (IFN) all over the frame. The surface of Cepheid Polaris slowly pulsates , causing the famous star to change its brightness by a few percent over...

Comet ATLAS is really bright now, but also really close to the Sun. Outside the glow of the Sun, Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) would be one of the more remarkable comet sights of recent years, reflecting about as much sunlight to Earth as Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS did in October, and now rivaling even planet Venus . But the giant snowball is now so close to the Sun that it can only be seen through the light of the early morning dawn or the early evening dusk. Today, Comet ATLAS is at perihelion -- its closest ever to the Sun. Although the future brightness of comets is notoriously hard to predict, there is hope that Comet ATLAS will survive its close pass near the Sun and remain bright enough to be seen with the unaided eye over the next few days -- and possibly a good camera comet for weeks. The featured image was taken early yesterday morning near Tornaľa , Slovakia . from NASA https://ift.tt/GhF8Aw5

Whatever hit Mimas nearly destroyed it. What remains is one of the largest impact craters on one of Saturn 's smallest round moons. Analysis indicates that a slightly larger impact would have destroyed Mimas entirely. The huge crater, named Herschel after the 1789 discoverer of Mimas, Sir William Herschel , spans about 130 kilometers and is featured here . Mimas ' low mass produces a surface gravity just strong enough to create a spherical body but weak enough to allow such relatively large surface features. Mimas is made of mostly water ice with a smattering of rock - so it is accurately described as a big dirty snowball. The featured image was taken during the closest-ever flyby of the robot spacecraft Cassini past Mimas in 2010 while in orbit around Saturn . from NASA https://ift.tt/0367cUF

Only Mercury is missing from a Solar System parade of planets in this early evening skyscape . Rising nearly opposite the Sun, bright Mars is at the far left. The other naked-eye planets Jupiter, Saturn, and Venus, can also be spotted, with the the position of too-faint Uranus and Neptune marked near the arcing trace of the ecliptic plane . On the far right and close to the western horizon after sunset is a young crescent Moon whose surface is partly illuminated by earthshine. In the foreground of the composite panorama captured on 2 January, planet Earth is represented by Mount Etna's lower Silvestri Crater . Of course Earth's early evening skies are full of planets for the entire month of January . On 13 January, a nearly Full Moon will appear to pass in front of Mars for skywatchers in the continental U.S. and Eastern Canada. from NASA https://ift.tt/sX4p0nx

An unassuming region in the constellation Taurus holds these dark and dusty nebulae. Scattered through the scene, stars in multiple star systems are forming within their natal Taurus molecular cloud complex some 450 light-years away. Millions of years young and still going through stellar adolescence, the stars are variable in brightness and in the late phases of their gravitational collapse. Known as T-Tauri class stars they tend to be faint and take on a yellowish hue in the image. One of the brightest T-Tauri stars in Taurus, V773 (aka HD283447) is near the center of the telescopic frame that spans over 1 degree. Toward the top is the dense, dark marking on the sky cataloged as Barnard 209. from NASA https://ift.tt/KSyBuGD

The colorful, spiky stars are in the foreground of this image taken with a small telescope on planet Earth . They lie well within our own Milky Way Galaxy . But the two eye-catching galaxies in the frame lie far beyond the Milky Way, at a distance of over 300 million light-years. The galaxies' twisted and distorted appearance is due to mutual gravitational tides as the pair engage in close encounters. Cataloged as Arp 273 (also as UGC 1810 ), these galaxies do look peculiar , but interacting galaxies are now understood to be common in the universe. Closer to home, the large spiral Andromeda Galaxy is known to be some 2 million light-years away and inexorably approaching the Milky Way. In fact the far away peculiar galaxies of Arp 273 may offer an analog of the far future encounter of Andromeda and Milky Way. Repeated galaxy encounters on a cosmic timescale ultimately result in a merger into a single galaxy of stars. From our perspective , the bright cores of the Arp 273 galaxies...

What happens after a star explodes? A huge fireball of hot gas shoots out in all directions. When this gas slams into the existing interstellar medium , it heats up so much it glows. Two different supernova remnant s (SNRs) are visible in the featured image, taken at the Oukaïmeden Observatory in Morocco . The blue soccer ball -looking nebula toward the upper left is SNR G179.0+02.6 , which appears to be the smaller one. This supernova , about 11,000 light years distant, detonated about 50,000 years ago. Although composed mostly of hydrogen gas, the blue light is emitted by a trace amount of oxygen . The seemingly larger SNR, dominating the lower right of the frame, is the Spaghetti Nebula, cataloged as Simeis 147 and sh2-240. This supernova, only about 3,000 light years away, exploded about 40,000 years ago. Comparatively, even though they appear different sizes , both supernova remnants are not only roughly the same age, but about the same size, too. from NASA https://ift.tt/...

It was a new year, and the sky was doubly red. The new year meant that the Earth had returned to its usual place in its orbit on January 1, a place a few days before its closest approach to the Sun . The first of the two red skyglows, on the left, was a red aurora , complete with vertical rays , caused by a blast from the Sun pushing charged particles into Earth's atmosphere. The second red glow, most prominent on the far right, was possibly a SAR arc caused by a river of charged particles flowing across Earth's atmosphere . Although both appear red, the slight color difference is likely due to the aurora being emitted by both oxygen and nitrogen, whereas the higher SAR arc was possibly emitted more purely by atmospheric oxygen. The featured image was taken on January 1 from near Pieve di Cadore in Italy . from NASA https://ift.tt/ZBsWGdi

Billions of years from now, only one of these two galaxies will remain. Until then, spiral galaxies NGC 2207 and IC 2163 will slowly pull each other apart, creating tides of matter, sheets of shocked gas , lanes of dark dust , bursts of star formation , and streams of cast-away stars . The featured image in scientifically assigned colors is a composite of Hubble exposures in visible light and Webb exposures in infrared light. Astronomers predict that NGC 2207, the larger galaxy on the right, will eventually incorporate IC 2163, the smaller galaxy on the left. In the most recent encounter that about peaked 40 million years ago, the smaller galaxy is swinging around counter-clockwise and is now slightly behind the larger galaxy. The space between stars is so vast that when galaxies collide , the stars in them usually do not collide. from NASA https://ift.tt/zuPLMiN

Have you ever seen a rocket launch -- from space? A close inspection of the featured time-lapse video will reveal a rocket rising to Earth orbit as seen from the International Space Station (ISS). The Russia n Soyuz-FG rocket was launched in November 2018 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan , carrying a Progress MS-10 (also 71P ) module to bring needed supplies to the ISS. Highlights in the 90-second video (condensing about 15-minutes) include city lights and clouds visible on the Earth on the lower left, blue and gold bands of atmospheric airglow running diagonally across the center, and distant stars on the upper right that set behind the Earth. A lower stage can be seen falling back to Earth as the robotic supply ship fires its thrusters and begins to close on the ISS , a space laboratory that celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2023. Astronauts who live aboard the Earth-orbiting ISS conduct, among more practical duties, numerous science experiments that expand ...

Earth's orbit around the Sun is not a circle, it's an ellipse. The point along its elliptical orbit where our fair planet is closest to the Sun is called perihelion. This year perihelion is today, January 4, at 13:28 UTC, with the Earth about 147 million kilometers from the Sun. For comparison , at aphelion on last July 3 Earth was at its farthest distance from the Sun, some 152 million kilometers away. But distance from the Sun doesn't determine Earth's seasons. It's only by coincidence that the beginning of southern summer (northern winter) on the December solstice - when this H-alpha picture of the active Sun was taken - is within 14 days of Earth's perihelion date. And it's only by coincidence that Earth's perihelion date is within 11 days of the historic perihelion of NASA's Parker Solar Probe . Launched in 2018, the Parker Solar Probe flew within 6.2 million kilometers of the Sun's surface on 2024 December 24, breaking its own record fo...

Eclipses tend to come in pairs. Twice a year, during an eclipse season that lasts about 34 days, Sun, Moon, and Earth can nearly align. Then the full and new phases of the Moon , separated by just over 14 days, create a lunar and a solar eclipse. But only rarely is the alignment at both new moon and full moon phases during a single eclipse season close enough to produce a pair with both total (or a total and an annular) lunar and solar eclipses. More often, partial eclipses are part of any eclipse season. In fact, the last eclipse season of 2024 produced this fortnight-separated eclipse pair: a partial lunar eclipse on 18 September and an annular solar eclipse on 2 October. The time-lapse composite images were captured from Somerset, UK (left) and Rapa Nui planet Earth. The 2025 eclipse seasons will see a total lunar eclipse on 14 March paired with a partial solar eclipse on 29 March, and a total lunar eclipse on 8 September followed by a partial solar eclipse on 21 September. ...

Recorded during 2024, this year-spanning series of images reveals a pattern in the seasonal drift of the Sun's daily motion through planet Earth's sky. Known to some as an analemma , the figure-eight curve was captured in exposures taken only at 1pm local time on clear days from Kayseri, Turkiye. Of course the Sun's position on the 2024 solstice dates was at the top and bottom of the curve. They correspond to the astronomical beginning of summer and winter in the north. The points along the curve half-way between the solstices, but not the figure-eight curve crossing point, mark the 2024 equinoxes and the start of spring and fall. Regional peaks and dormant volcano Mount Erciyes lie along the southern horizon in the 2024 timelapse skyscape . from NASA https://ift.tt/db4Xw3N