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On flight day 13 (November 28) of the Artemis 1 mission the Orion spacecraft reached its maximum distance from Earth. In fact, over 430,000 kilometers from Earth its distant retrograde orbit also put Orion nearly 70,000 kilometers from the Moon. In the same field of view in this video frame from flight day 13, planet and large natural satellite even appear about the same apparent size from the uncrewed spacecraft's perspective . Today (December 1) should see Orion depart its distant retrograde orbit. En route to planet Earth it will head toward a second powered fly by of the Moon. Splashdown on the home world is expected on December 11. from NASA https://ift.tt/TXmNKVv

By Elie Dolgin from NYT Science https://ift.tt/GrVwzpn

This colorful skyscape spans about four full moons across nebula rich starfields along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy in the royal northern constellation Cepheus . Near the edge of the region's massive molecular cloud some 2,400 light-years away, bright reddish emission region Sharpless (Sh) 155 is at the center of the frame, also known as the Cave Nebula . About 10 light-years across the cosmic cave's bright walls of gas are ionized by ultraviolet light from the hot young stars around it. Dusty reflection nebulae, like vdB 155 to the right, and dense obscuring clouds of dust also abound on the interstellar canvas. Astronomical explorations have revealed other dramatic signs of star formation , including the bright reddish fleck of Herbig-Haro (HH) 168. Below and right of center, the Herbig-Haro object emission is generated by energetic jets from a newborn star . from NASA https://ift.tt/fxbBLaT

Because the Gum Nebula is the closest supernova remnant , it is actually hard to see. Spanning 40 degrees across the sky, the nebula appears so large and faint that it is easily lost in the din of a bright and complex background. The Gum Nebula is highlighted nicely in red emission toward the right of the featured wide-angle, single-image photograph taken in late May. Also visible in the frame are the Atacama Desert in Chile in the foreground, the Carina Nebula in the plane of our Milky Way galaxy running diagonally down from the upper left, and the neighboring Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) galaxy. The Gum Nebula is so close that we are much nearer the front edge than the back edge, each measuring 450 and 1500 light years respectively. The complicated nebula lies in the direction of the constellations of Puppis and Vela . Oddly, much remains unknown about the Gum Nebula , including the timing and even number of supernova explosions that formed it. from NASA https://ift...

Where will the next meteor appear? Even during a meteor shower, it is practically impossible to know. Therefore, a good way to enjoy a meteor shower is to find a place where you can sit comfortably and monitor a great expanse of dark sky. And it may be satisfying to share this experience with a friend. The meteor shower depicted was the 2022 Leonids which peaked earlier this month, and the view is from Hainan , China looking out over the South China Sea . Meteor streaks captured over a few hours were isolated and added to a foreground image recorded earlier. From this place and time, Leonid meteors that trace back to the constellation of Leo were seen streaking across other constellations including Orion . The bright red planet Mars appears near the top of the image. Bonding over their love of astronomy, the two pictured meteor enthusiasts, shown celebrating their common birthday this month, are now married. from NASA https://ift.tt/wxKVPpC

Yes, but can your rainbow do this? After the remnants of Hurricane Florence passed over the Jersey Shore, New Jersey , USA in 2018, the Sun came out in one direction but something quite unusual appeared in the opposite direction: a hall of rainbows . Over the course of a next half hour, to the delight of the photographer and his daughter, vibrant supernumerary rainbows faded in and out, with at least five captured in this featured single shot. Supernumerary rainbows only form when falling water droplets are all nearly the same size and typically less than a millimeter across. Then, sunlight will not only reflect from inside the raindrops, but interfere , a wave phenomenon similar to ripples on a pond when a stone is thrown in. In fact, supernumerary rainbows can only be explained with waves, and their noted existence in the early 1800s was considered early evidence of light's wave nature . from NASA https://ift.tt/1SoXZCt

Saturn is still bright in planet Earth's night skies. Telescopic views of the distant gas giant and its beautiful rings often make it a star at star parties . But this stunning view of Saturn's rings and night side just isn't possible from telescopes closer to the Sun than the outer planet. They can only bring Saturn's day into view. In fact, this image of Saturn's slender sunlit crescent with night's shadow cast across its broad and complex ring system was captured by the Cassini spacecraft. A robot spacecraft from planet Earth, Cassini called Saturn orbit home for 13 years before it was directed to dive into the atmosphere of the gas giant on September 15, 2017. This magnificent mosaic is composed of frames recorded by Cassini's wide-angle camera only two days before its grand final plunge . Saturn's night will not be seen again until another spaceship from Earth calls. from NASA https://ift.tt/WfRa7lZ

Beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 6744 is nearly 175,000 light-years across. That's larger than the Milky Way . It lies some 30 million light-years distant in the southern constellation Pavo, with its galactic disk tilted towards our line of sight. This Hubble close-up of the nearby island universe spans about 24,000 light-years or so across NGC 6744's central region. The Hubble view combines visible light and ultraviolet image data. The giant galaxy's yellowish core is dominated by the visible light from old, cool stars. Beyond the core are star-forming regions and young star clusters scattered along the inner spiral arms. NGC 6744's young star clusters are bright at ultraviolet wavelengths, shown in blue and magenta hues. Spiky stars scattered around the frame are foreground stars and well within our own Milky Way. from NASA https://ift.tt/zn9iKLe

Stars are forming in Lynds Dark Nebula ( LDN ) 1251. About 1,000 light-years away and drifting above the plane of our Milky Way galaxy, the dusty molecular cloud is part of a complex of dark nebulae mapped toward the Cepheus flare region. Across the spectrum , astronomical explorations of the obscuring interstellar clouds reveal energetic shocks and outflows associated with newborn stars, including the telltale reddish glow from scattered Herbig-Haro objects hiding in the image. Distant background galaxies also lurk on the scene, almost buried behind the dusty expanse. This alluring view spans over four full moons on the sky, or 35 light-years at the estimated distance of LDN 1251. from NASA https://ift.tt/MYXqUEu

Eight billion people are about to disappear in this snapshot from space. Taken on November 21, the sixth day of the Artemis 1 mission , their home world is setting behind the Moon's bright edge as viewed by an external camera on the outbound Orion spacecraft. The Orion was headed for a powered flyby that took it to within 130 kilometers of the lunar surface. Velocity gained in the flyby maneuver will be used to reach a distant retrograde orbit around the Moon. That orbit is considered distant because it's another 92,000 kilometers beyond the Moon, and retrograde because the spacecraft will orbit in the opposite direction of the Moon's orbit around planet Earth. Orion will enter its distant retrograde orbit on Friday, November 25. Swinging around the Moon , Orion will reach a maximum distance (just over 400,000 kilometers) from Earth on Monday November 28 exceeding a record set by Apollo 13 for most distant spacecraft designed for human space exploration . from NASA h...

Few star clusters this close to each other. Visible to the unaided eye from dark sky areas, it was cataloged in 130 BC by Greek astronomer Hipparchus . Some 7,000 light-years away, this pair of open star cluster s is also an easy binocular target, a striking starfield in the northern constellation of the mythical Greek hero Perseus . Now known as h and chi Persei , or NGC 869 (above right) and NGC 884 , the clusters themselves are separated by only a few hundred light-years and contain stars much younger and hotter than the Sun . In addition to being physically close together, the clusters ' ages based on their individual stars are similar - evidence that both clusters were likely a product of the same star-forming region. from NASA https://ift.tt/7CPsp1i

Stars can make beautiful patterns as they age -- sometimes similar to flowers or insects. NGC 6302, the Butterfly Nebula, is a notable example. Though its gaseous wingspan covers over 3 light-year s and its estimated surface temperature exceeds 200,000 degrees C , the aging central star of NGC 6302, the featured planetary nebula , has become exceptionally hot, shining brightly in visible and ultraviolet light but hidden from direct view by a dense torus of dust. This sharp close-up was recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope and is processed here to show off remarkable details of the complex planetary nebula , highlighting in particular light emitted by oxygen (shown as blue), hydrogen (green), and nitrogen (red). NGC 6302 lies about 3,500 light-years away in the arachnologically correct constellation of the Scorpion ( Scorpius ). Planetary nebula s evolve from outer atmospheres of stars like our Sun , but usually fade in about 20,000 years. from NASA https://ift.tt/83b0F...

By Amanda Holpuch from NYT Science https://ift.tt/DaGWMhR

Why would the sky look like a giant target? Airglow . Following a giant thunderstorm over Bangladesh in late April, giant circular ripples of glowing air appeared over Tibet , China , as pictured here . The unusual pattern is created by atmospheric gravity waves , waves of alternating air pressure that can grow with height as the air thins, in this case about 90-kilometers up. Unlike auroras powered by collisions with energetic charged particles and seen at high latitudes, airglow is due to chemiluminescence , the production of light in a chemical reaction. More typically seen near the horizon, airglow keeps the night sky from ever being completely dark . from NASA https://ift.tt/ktxI6Pd

When the Artemis 1 mission's Orion spacecraft makes its November 21 powered flyby of the Moon, denizens of planet Earth will see the Moon in a waning crescent phase . The spacecraft will approach to within about 130 kilometers of the lunar surface on its way to a distant retrograde orbit some 70,000 kilometers beyond the Moon. But the Moon was at last quarter for the November 16 launch and near the horizon in the dark early hours after midnight. It's captured here in skies over Kennedy Space Center along with the SLS rocket engines and solid rocket boosters lofting the uncrewed Orion to space . Ragged fringes appearing along the bright edge of the sunlit lunar nearside are caused as pressure waves generated by the rocket's passage change the index of refraction along the camera's line of sight . from NASA https://ift.tt/cC7UejD

The protostar within dark cloud L1527 is a mere 100,000 years old, still embedded in the cloud of gas and dust that feeds its growth. In this NIRCam image from the James Webb Space Telescope, the dark band at the neck of the infrared nebula is a thick disk that surrounds the young stellar object . Viewed nearly edge-on and a little larger than our Solar System, the disk ultimately supplies material to the protostar while hiding it from Webb's direct infrared view. The nebula itself is seen in stunning detail though. Illuminated by infrared light from the protostar, the hourglass-shaped nebula's cavities are created as material ejected in the star-forming process plows through the surrounding medium. As the protostar gains mass it will eventually become a full-fledged star, collapsing and igniting nuclear fusion in its core. A likely analog to our own Sun and Solar System in their early infancy, the protostar within dark cloud L1527 lies some 460 light-years distant in the T...

A Space Launch System rocket left planet Earth on Wednesday, November 16 at 1:47am EST carrying the Orion spacecraft on the Artemis 1 mission, the first integrated test of NASA’s deep space exploration systems. Over an hour after liftoff from Kennedy Space Center's historic Launch Complex 39B, one of Orion's external video cameras captured this view of its new perspective from space . In the foreground are Orion's Orbital Maneuvering System engine and auxillary engines, at the bottom of the European Service Module. Beyond one of the module's 7-meter long extended solar array wings lies the spacecraft's beautiful home world. The Artemis 1 mission will last almost four weeks, testing capabilities to enable human exploration of the Moon and Mars. The uncrewed Orion spacecraft is expected to fly by the Moon on November 21, performing a close approach to the lunar surface on its way to a retrograde orbit 70,000 kilometers beyond the Moon.   from NASA https:...

Spiral galaxy NGC 1097 shines in southern skies, about 45 million light-years away in the heated constellation Fornax . Its blue spiral arms are mottled with pinkish star forming regions in this colorful galaxy portrait . They seem to have wrapped around a small companion galaxy above and right of center, about 40,000 light-years from the spiral's luminous core. That's not NGC 1097's only peculiar feature, though. This very deep exposure hints of faint, mysterious jets, seen to extend well beyond the bluish arms. In fact, four faint jets are ultimately recognized in optical images of NGC 1097. The jets trace an X centered on the galaxy's nucleus, but probably don't originate there. Instead, they could be fossil star streams , trails left over from the capture and disruption of a much smaller galaxy in the large spiral's ancient past. A Seyfert galaxy , NGC 1097's nucleus also harbors a supermassive black hole . from NASA https://ift.tt/PhGslvW

The mysterious blue reflection nebula found in catalogs as VdB 152 or Ced 201 really is very faint. It lies at the tip of the long dark nebula Barnard 175 in a dusty complex that has also been called Wolf's Cave . At the center of this deep telescopic view , the cosmic apparitions are nearly 1,400 light-years away along the northern Milky Way in the royal constellation Cepheus. Interstellar dust in the region blocks light from background stars and scatters light from the embedded bright star, giving the end nebula its characteristic blue color. Though stars do form in molecular cloud s, this star seems to have only accidentally wandered into the area, as its measured velocity through space is very different from the cloud's velocity. At the image bottom is the planetary nebula Dengel-Hartl 5 , while red glowing gas from an ancient supernova remnant is also visible along the image's right side. from NASA https://ift.tt/w9MulKo

What powers are being wielded in the Wizard Nebula? Gravitation strong enough to form stars, and stellar winds and radiations powerful enough to create and dissolve towers of gas . Located only 8,000 light years away, the Wizard nebula, featured here , surrounds developing open star cluster NGC 7380 . Visually, the interplay of stars, gas, and dust has created a shape that appears to some like a fictional medieval sorcerer . The active star forming region spans 100 about light years , making it appear larger than the angular extent of the Moon . The Wizard Nebula can be located with a small telescope toward the constellation of the King of Aethiopia ( Cepheus ). Although the nebula may last only a few million years, some of the stars being formed may outlive our Sun. from NASA https://ift.tt/BZGmyLn

By Anthony Ham from NYT Science https://ift.tt/fdN9nIw

A flying saucer from outer space crash-landed in the Utah desert after being tracked by radar and chased by helicopters. The year was 2004, and no space aliens were involved. The saucer, pictured here , was the Genesis sample return capsule, part of a human-made robot Genesis spaceship launched in 2001 by NASA itself to study the Sun. The unexpectedly hard landing at over 300 kilometers per hour occurred because the parachutes did not open as planned. The Genesis mission had been orbiting the Sun collecting solar wind particles that are usually deflected away by Earth's magnetic field . Despite the crash landing, many return samples remained in good enough condition to analyze. So far, Genesis -related discoveries include new details about the composition of the Sun and how the abundance of some types of elements differ across the Solar System . These results have provided intriguing clues into details of how the Sun and planets formed billions of years ago. from NA...

A darker Moon sets over Manhattan in this night skyscape. The 16 frame composite was assembled from consecutive exposures recorded during the November 8 total lunar eclipse . In the timelapse sequence stars leave short trails above the urban skyline, while the Moon remains immersed in Earth's shadow . But the International Space Station was just emerging from the shadow into the sunlit portion of its low Earth orbit. As seen from New York City, the visible streak of this ISS flyover starts near a star in Taurus and tracks right to left, through the belt of Orion and over Sirius, alpha star of Canis Major. Gaps along the bright trail of the fast moving orbital outpost (and an aircraft flying closer to the horizon) mark the time between individual exposures in the sequence. The trail of bright planet Mars is at the top of the frame. Pleiades star cluster trails are high over the eclipsed Moon and Empire State Building . from NASA https://ift.tt/pTQi2hn

On November 8 the Full Moon turned blood red as it slid through Earth's shadow in a beautiful total lunar eclipse. During totality it also passed in front of, or occulted, outer planet Uranus for eclipse viewers located in parts of northern America and Asia. For a close-up and wider view these two images were taken just before the occultation began, captured with different telescopes and cameras from the same roof top in Shanghai, China. Normally very faint compared to a Full Moon, the tiny, pale, greenish disk of the distant ice giant is just to the left of the Moon's edge and about to disappear behind the darkened, red lunar limb. Though only visible from certain locations across planet Earth, lunar occultations of planets are fairly common . But for this rare "lunar eclipse occultation" to take place, at the time of the total eclipse the outer planet had to be both at opposition and very near the ecliptic plane to fall in line with Sun, Earth, and Moon . fr...

The beginning, middle, and end of a journey through planet Earth's colorful umbral shadow is captured in this timelapse composite image of a total lunar eclipse . Taken on November 8 from Kitt Peak National Observatory this eclipse's 1 hour and 25 minute long total phase starts on the right and finishes on the left. Reddened sunlight, scattered into the central shadow by Earth's dusty atmosphere produces the dramatic dark red hues reflected by the lunar disk. For this eclipse, additional reddening is likely due to scattering from ash lingering in the atmosphere after a large volcanic eruption in the southern Pacific earlier this year. Seen at the right and left, the Earth's shadow is still lighter along its edge though. That faint bluish fringe along the lunar limb is colored by sunlight filtered through Earth's stratospheric ozone layer . from NASA https://ift.tt/gMOLYQ8

Why does the nebula around the star WR-18 shine brighter on one side? Also known as NGC 3199 , this active star and its surrounding nebula lie about 12,000 light-years away toward the nautical southern constellation of Carina . The featured deep image has been highly processed to bring out filamentary details of the glowing gas in the bubble-shaped nebula. The nebula is about 75 light-years across. Near the nebula's center is a Wolf-Rayet star , WR-18, which is a massive, hot, short-lived star that generates an intense and complex stellar wind. In fact, Wolf-Rayet star s are known to create nebulas with interesting shapes as their powerful winds sweep up surrounding interstellar material . In this case, the bright right edge was initially thought to indicate that a bow shock was being produced as the star plowed through a uniform medium, like a boat through water. Recent measurements and analys e s , however, have shown the star is not moving quickly toward the bright edge. ...

How many galaxies are interacting here? This grouping of galaxies is called the Wild Triplet , not only for the discoverer , but for the number of bright galaxies that appear. It had been assumed that all three galaxies, collectively cataloged as Arp 248, are interacting , but more recent investigations reveal that only the brightest two galaxies are sparring gravitationally: the big galaxies at the top and bottom. The spiral galaxy in the middle of the featured image by the Hubble Space Telescope is actually far in the distance, as is the galaxy just below it and all of the other numerous galaxies in the field. A striking result of these giants jousting is a tremendous bridge of stars, gas, and dust that stretches between them -- a bridge almost 200,000 light-years long. Light we see today from Wild's Triplet left about 200 million years ago , when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. In perhaps a billion years or so, the two interacting galaxies will merge to form a single l...

By Shannon Hall from NYT Science https://ift.tt/qDJrgoO

By Dennis Overbye from NYT Science https://ift.tt/xQU7s32

By Sofia Quaglia from NYT Science https://ift.tt/sFDU2po

Does this strange dark ball look somehow familiar? If so, that might be because it is our Sun. In the featured image from 2012, a detailed solar view was captured originally in a very specific color of red light, then rendered in black and white, and then color inverted . Once complete, the resulting image was added to a starfield , then also color inverted. Visible in the image of the Sun are long light filaments , dark active regions, prominences peeking around the edge, and a moving carpet of hot gas. The surface of our Sun can be a busy place, in particular during Solar Maximum , the time when its surface magnetic field is wound up the most. Besides an active Sun being so picturesque, the plasma expelled can also become picturesque when it impacts the Earth's magnetosphere and creates auroras . from NASA https://ift.tt/Q7WCDNy

Last May 16 the Moon slid through Earth's shadow, completely immersed in the planet's dark umbra for about 1 hour and 25 minutes during a total lunar eclipse. In this composited timelapse view , the partial and total phases of the eclipse were captured as the Moon tracked above the horizon from Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. There it shared a cold and starry south polar night with a surging display of the aurora australis and central Milky Way. In the foreground are the BICEP (right) and South Pole telescopes at the southernmost station's Dark Sector Laboratory. But while polar skies can be spectacular, you won't want to go to the South Pole to view the total lunar eclipse coming up on November 8 . Instead, that eclipse can be seen from locations in Asia, Australia, the Pacific, the Americas and Northern Europe. It will be your last chance to watch a total lunar eclipse until 2025 . from NASA https://ift.tt/0RYhbpE

By Kenneth Chang from NYT Science https://ift.tt/tmhO08C

The Mars InSight lander returned its first image from the Red Planet's flat, equatorial Elysium Planitia after a successful touchdown on November 26, 2018. The history making mission to explore the martian Interior using Seismic investigations, geodesy, and heat transport has been operating for over 1,400 martian days or sols. In that time the InSight mission has detected more than 1,300 marsquakes and recorded data from Mars-shaking meteoroid impacts, observing how the seismic waves travel to provide a glimpse inside Mars. Analyzing the archive of data collected is expected to yield discoveries for decades. But InSight's final operational sol is likely not far off. The reason is evident in this selfie recorded earlier this year showing its deck and large, 2-meter-wide solar panels covered with dust. Kicked up by martian winds the dust continues to accumulate and drastically reduce the power that can be generated by InSight's solar panels. from NASA https://ift.tt...

By Emily Baumgaertner and Jamie Kelter Davis from NYT Science https://ift.tt/4XLY8aB

The small, northern constellation Triangulum harbors this magnificent face-on spiral galaxy, M33. Its popular names include the Pinwheel Galaxy or just the Triangulum Galaxy . M33 is over 50,000 light-years in diameter, third largest in the Local Group of galaxies after the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), and our own Milky Way. About 3 million light-years from the Milky Way, M33 is itself thought to be a satellite of the Andromeda Galaxy and astronomers in these two galaxies would likely have spectacular views of each other's grand spiral star systems. As for the view from the Milky Way, this sharp image combines data from telescopes on and around planet Earth to show off M33's blue star clusters and pinkish star forming regions along the galaxy's loosely wound spiral arms. In fact, the cavernous NGC 604 is the brightest star forming region, seen here at about the 1 o'clock position from the galaxy center. Like M31, M33's population of well-measured variable stars h...

Watch for three things in this unusual eclipse video. First, watch for a big dark circle to approach from the right to block out more and more of the Sun. This dark circle is the Moon , and the video was made primarily to capture this partial solar eclipse last week . Next, watch a large solar prominence hover and shimmer over the Sun's edge . A close look will show that part of it is actually falling back to the Sun . The prominence is made of hot plasma that is temporarily held aloft by the Sun's changing magnetic field . Finally, watch the Sun's edge waver . What is wavering is a dynamic carpet of hot gas tubes rising and falling through the Sun's chromosphere -- tubes known as spicule s. The entire 4-second time-lapse video covers a time of about ten minutes, although the Sun itself is expected to last another 5 billion years . from NASA https://ift.tt/6vAnpEI