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On December 5, 2022, a camera on board the uncrewed Orion spacecraft captured this view as Orion approached its return powered flyby of the Moon. Beyond one of Orion's extended solar arrays lies dark, smooth, terrain along the western edge of the Oceanus Procellarum. Prominent on the lunar nearside Oceanus Procellarum , the Ocean of Storms, is the largest of the Moon's lava-flooded maria . The lunar terminator, the shadow line between lunar night and day, runs along the left of this frame. The 41 kilometer diameter crater Marius is top center, with ray crater Kepler peeking in at the edge, just right of the solar array wing. Kepler's bright rays extend to the north and west, reaching the dark-floored Marius . By December 11, 2022 the Orion spacecraft had returned to its home world . The historic Artemis 1 mission ended with Orion's successful splashdown in planet Earth's water-flooded Pacific Ocean. from NASA https://ift.tt/ZhqCoxA

In a Finnish myth , when an arctic fox runs so fast that its bushy tail brushes the mountains, flaming sparks are cast into the heavens creating the northern lights. In fact the Finnish word "revontulet", a name for the aurora borealis or northern lights , can be translated as fire fox. So that evocative myth took on a special significance for the photographer of this northern night skyscape from Finnish Lapland near Kilpisjarvi Lake. The snowy scene is illuminated by moonlight. Saana, an iconic fell or mountain of Lapland, rises at the right in the background. But as the beautiful nothern lights danced overhead, the wild fire fox in the foreground enthusiastically ran around the photographer and his equipment, making it difficult to capture in this lucky single shot. from NASA https://ift.tt/Slb0GKo

Large galaxies grow by eating small ones. Even our own galaxy engages in a sort of galactic cannibalism , absorbing small galaxies that are too close and are captured by the Milky Way's gravity. In fact, the practice is common in the universe and illustrated by this striking pair of interacting galaxies from the banks of the southern constellation Eridanus , The River . Located over 50 million light years away, the large, distorted spiral NGC 1532 is seen locked in a gravitational struggle with dwarf galaxy NGC 1531, a struggle the smaller galaxy will eventually lose . Seen nearly edge-on, in this sharp image spiral NGC 1532 spans about 100,000 light-years. The NGC 1532/1531 pair is thought to be similar to the well-studied system of face-on spiral and small companion known as M51 . from NASA https://ift.tt/PIXrCLG

Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation, this dusty interstellar molecular cloud has by chance has assumed an immediately recognizable shape. Fittingly known as The Horsehead Nebula , it lies some 1,500 light-years distant, embedded in the vast Orion cloud complex. About five light-years "tall," the dark cloud is cataloged as Barnard 33, first identified on a photographic plate taken in the late 19th century. B33 is visible primarily because its obscuring dust is silhouetted against the glow of emission nebula IC 434. Hubble space telescope images from the early 21st century find young stars forming within B33. Of course, the magnificent interstellar cloud will slowly shift its apparent shape over the next few million years. But for now the Horsehead Nebula is a rewarding though difficult object to view with small telescopes from planet Earth . from NASA https://ift.tt/HEr35gh

This cosmic close-up looks deep inside the Soul Nebula. The dark and brooding dust clouds outlined by bright ridges of glowing gas are cataloged as IC 1871. About 25 light-year s across, the telescopic field of view spans only a small part of the much larger Heart and Soul nebulae. At an estimated distance of 6,500 light-years, the star-forming complex lies within the Perseus spiral arm of the Milky Way , seen in planet Earth's skies toward the constellation of the Queen of Aethiopia ( Cassiopeia ). An example of triggered star formation , the dense star-forming clouds of IC 1871 are themselves sculpted by the intense winds and radiation of the region's massive young stars. This color image adopts a palette made popular in Hubble images of star-forming regions. from NASA https://ift.tt/AL6doB7

Many wonders are visible when flying over the Earth at night. Such visual spectacles occur every day for astronauts in low Earth orbit, but the featured video captured several from the International Space Station (ISS) in 2011 and set them to rousing music. Passing below are white clouds , orange city lights , lightning flashes in thunderstorm s, and dark blue seas . On the horizon is the golden haze of Earth's thin atmosphere , frequently decorated by dancing auroras as the video progresses. The green parts of auroras typically remain below the space station, but the station flies right through the red and purple auroral peaks. Solar panels of the ISS are seen around the frame edges. The ominous wave of approaching brightness at the end of each sequence is just the dawn of the sunlit half of Earth , a dawn that occurs every 90 minutes. from NASA https://ift.tt/4AwenmK

It is still not known why the Sun's light is missing some colors. Here are all the visible colors of the Sun , produced by passing the Sun's light through a prism -like device. The spectrum was created at the McMath-Pierce Solar Observatory and shows, first off, that although our white -appearing Sun emits light of nearly every color , it appears brightest in yellow-green light. The dark patches in the featured spectrum arise from gas at or above the Sun's surface absorbing sunlight emitted below. Since different types of gas absorb different colors of light , it is possible to determine what gasses compose the Sun. Helium , for example, was first discovered in 1868 on a solar spectrum and only later found here on Earth . Today, the majority of spectral absorption lines have been identified - but not all . from NASA https://ift.tt/isXW58J

Fifty three years ago , in December of 1972, Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt spent about 75 hours on the Moon exploring the Taurus-Littrow valley, while colleague Ronald Evans orbited overhead . This snapshot from another world was taken by Cernan as he and Schmitt roamed the lunar valley's floor. The image shows Schmitt next to the lunar rover parked at the southeast rim of Shorty Crater . That location is near the spot where geologist Schmitt discovered orange lunar soil. The Apollo 17 crew returned with 110 kilograms of rock and soil samples , more than was returned from any of the other lunar landing sites. And for now , Cernan and Schmitt are the last to walk on the Moon . from NASA https://ift.tt/dOi4y5Z

Blasting outward from variable star KX Andromedae, these stunning bipolar jets are 19 light-years long. Recently discovered , they are revealed in unprecedented detail in this deep telescopic image centered on KX And and composed from over 692 hours of combined image data . In fact, KX And is spectroscopically found to be an interacting binary star system consisting of a bright, hot B-type star with a swollen cool giant star as its co-orbiting, close companion. The stellar material from the cool giant star is likely being transferred to the hot B-type star through an accretion disk , with spectacular symmetric jets driven outward perpendicular to the disk itself. The known distance to KX And of 2,500 light-years, angular size of the jets, and estimated inclination of the accretion disk lead to the size estimate for each jet of an astonishing 19 light-years . from NASA https://ift.tt/idAcswl

An example of violence on a cosmic scale, enormous elliptical galaxy NGC 1316 lies about 75 million light-years away toward Fornax , the southern constellation of the Furnace. Investigating the startling sight, astronomers suspect the giant galaxy of colliding with smaller neighbor NGC 1317 seen just right of the large galaxy's center, producing far flung star streams in loops and shells. Light from their close encounter would have reached Earth some 100 million years ago. In the sharp telescopic image , the central regions of NGC 1316 and NGC 1317 appear separated by over 100,000 light-years. Complex dust lanes visible within also indicate that NGC 1316 is itself the result of a merger of galaxies in the distant past. Found on the outskirts of the Fornax galaxy cluster , NGC 1316 is known as Fornax A. One of the visually brightest of the Fornax cluster galaxies it is one of the strongest and largest celestial radio sources with radio emission extending well beyond this one ...

What would it look like to plunge into a monster black hole? This image from a supercomputer visualization shows the entire sky as seen from a simulated camera plunging toward a 4-million-solar-mass black hole, similar to the one at the center of our galaxy . The camera lies about 16 million kilometers from the black hole’s event horizon and is moving inward at 62% the speed of light . Thanks to gravity’s funhouse effects , the starry band of the Milky Way appears both as a compact loop at the top of this view and as a secondary image stretching across the bottom. Move the cursor over the image for additional explanations. Visualizations like this allow astronomers to explore black holes in ways not otherwise possible. from NASA https://ift.tt/R50nxAg

What's happening in the center of nearby spiral galaxy M77? The face-on galaxy lies a mere 47 million light-years away toward the constellation of the Sea Monster ( Cetus ). At that estimated distance, this gorgeous island universe is about 100 thousand light-years across. Also known as NGC 1068 , its compact and very bright core is well studied by astronomers exploring the mysteries of supermassive black holes in active Seyfert galaxies . M77's active core glows bright at x-ray , ultraviolet , visible , infrared , and radio wavelengths. The featured sharp image of M77 was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope . The image shows details of the spiral's winding spiral arms as traced by obscuring red dust clouds and blue star clusters , all circling the galaxy's bright white luminous center . from NASA https://ift.tt/FMW3Nca

How typical is our Solar System? Studying 3I/ATLAS , a comet just passing through, is providing clues. Confirmed previous interstellar visitors include an asteroid , a comet , a meteor , and a gas wind dominated by hydrogen and helium. Comet 3I/ATLAS appears relatively normal when compared to Solar System comets , therefore providing more evidence that our Solar System is a somewhat typical star system. For example, Comet 3I/ATLAS has a broadly similar chemical composition and ejected dust . The featured image was captured last week from Texas and shows a green coma , a wandering blue-tinted ion tail likely deflected by our Sun's wind , and a slight anti-tail , all typical cometary attributes. The comet, visible with a telescope , passed its closest to the Sun in late October and will pass its closest to the Earth in mid-December, after which it will return to interstellar space and never return. from NASA https://ift.tt/DXdjEah

If you could stand on Titan -- what would you see? The featured color view from Titan gazes across an unfamiliar and distant landscape on Saturn's largest moon . The scene was recorded by ESA 's Huygens probe in 2005 after a 2.5-hour descent through a thick atmosphere of nitrogen laced with methane. Bathed in an eerie orange light at ground level, rocks strewn about the scene could well be composed of water and hydrocarbons frozen solid at an inhospitable temperature of negative 179 degrees C. The large light-toned rock below and left of center is only about 15 centimeters across and lies 85 centimeters away. The saucer-shaped spacecraft is believed to have penetrated about 15 centimeters into a place on Titan's surface that had the consistency of wet sand or clay. Huygen's batteries enabled the probe to take and transmit data for more than 90 minutes after landing. Titan's bizarre chemical environment may bear similarities to planet Earth's before ...

This is not a screen from a video game . Nestled below the tree-line, the small mountain church does look like it might be hiding from Moon though. In the well-composed telephoto snapshot, taken on November 23, the church walls are partly reflecting light from terrestrial flood lights. Of course, the Moon is reflecting light from the Sun. At any given time the Sun illuminates fully half of the Moon's surface, also known as the lunar dayside, but on that night only a sliver of its sunlit surface was visible. About three days after New Moon, the Moon was in a waxing crescent phase . The single exposure was captured shortly after sunset in skies near Danta di Cadore, northern Italy, planet Earth. from NASA https://ift.tt/FBo3v6R

NGC 6888, also known as the Crescent Nebula, is a about 25 light-years across, a cosmic bubble blown by winds from its central, massive star. This deep telescopic image includes narrowband image data, to isolate light from hydrogen and oxygen atoms . The oxygen atoms produce the blue-green hue that seems to enshroud the nebula's detailed folds and filaments. Visible within the nebula, NGC 6888's central star is classified as a Wolf-Rayet star (WR 136). The star is shedding its outer envelope in a strong stellar wind , ejecting the equivalent of the Sun's mass every 10,000 years. In fact, the Crescent Nebula's complex structures are likely the result of this strong wind interacting with material ejected in an earlier phase. Burning fuel at a prodigious rate and near the end of its stellar life, this star should ultimately go out with a bang in a spectacular supernova explosion. Found in the nebula rich constellation Cygnus, NGC 6888 is about 5,000 light-years awa...

Big, beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 1055 is a dominant member of a small galaxy group a mere 60 million light-years away toward the aquatically intimidating constellation Cetus . Seen edge-on, the island universe spans over 100,000 light-years, a little larger than our own Milky Way galaxy. The colorful, spiky stars decorating this cosmic portrait of NGC 1055 are in the foreground, well within the Milky Way. But telltale pinkish star forming regions and young blue star clusters are scattered through winding dust lanes along the distant galaxy's thin disk. With a smattering of even more distant background galaxies, the deep image also reveals a boxy halo that extends far above and below the central bulge and disk of NGC 1055. The halo itself is laced with faint, narrow structures, and could represent the mixed and spread out debris from a satellite galaxy disrupted by the larger spiral some 10 billion years ago . from NASA https://ift.tt/TK5lAwP

Stars, like bees, swarm around the center of bright globular cluster M15. The central ball of over 100,000 stars is a relic from the early years of our Galaxy , and continues to orbit the Milky Way's center . M15 , one of about 150 globular cluster s remaining, is noted for being easily visible with only binoculars , having at its center one of the densest concentrations of stars known, and containing a high abundance of variable stars and pulsars . The featured image of M15 was taken by combining very long exposures -- 122 hours in all -- and so brings up faint wisps of gas and dust in front of the giant ball of stars. M15 lies about 35,000 light years away toward the constellation of the Winged Horse ( Pegasus ). from NASA https://ift.tt/8I2A9iE

What did Comet Lemmon look like when it was at its best? One example is pictured here, featuring three celestial spectacles all at different distances. The closest spectacle is the snowcapped Meili Mountains , part of the Himalayas in China . The middle marvel is Comet Lemmon near its picturesque best early this month, showing not only a white dust tail trailing off to the right but its blue solar wind-distorted ion tail trailing off to the left. Far in the distance on the left is the magnificent central plane of our Milky Way Galaxy , featuring dark dust , red nebula , and including billions of Sun -like stars. Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) is already fading as it heads back into the outer Solar System, while the Himalayan mountains will gradually erode over the next billion years. The Milky Way Galaxy , though, will live on -- forming new mountains and comets -- for many billions of years into the future. from NASA https://ift.tt/CIqRDG0

What created this unusual space sculpture? Stars . This unusual system of swirls and shells, known as Apep , was observed in unprecedented detail by NASA ’s James Webb Space Telescope in infrared light in 2024. Observations indicate that the unusual shape originates from two massive Wolf-Rayet star s orbiting each other every 190 years with each close passes causing a new shell of dust and gas to be expelled . Holes in these shells are thought to be caused by a third orbiting star . This stellar dust dance will likely continue for hundreds of thousands of years, possibly ending only when one of the massive stars runs out of internal nuclear fuel and explodes in a supernova punctuated by a burst of gamma-rays . from NASA https://ift.tt/KztZqMY