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Why does Saturn appear so big? It doesn't -- what is pictured are foreground clouds on Earth crossing in front of the Moon . The Moon shows a slight crescent phase with most of its surface visible by reflected Earthlight , known as Da Vinci glow . The Sun directly illuminates the brightly lit lunar crescent from the bottom, which means that the Sun must be below the horizon and so the image was taken before sunrise. This double take -inducing picture was captured on 2019 December 24, two days before the Moon slid in front of the Sun to create a solar eclipse . In the foreground, lights from small Guatemala n towns are visible behind the huge volcano Pacaya . from NASA https://ift.tt/9pZ4MgQ

Galaxies of the NGC 7771 Group are featured in this intriguing skyscape . Some 200 million light-years distant toward the constellation Pegasus, NGC 7771 is the large, edge-on spiral near center, about 75,000 light-years across, with two smaller galaxies below it. Large spiral NGC 7769 is seen face-on to the right. Galaxies of the NGC 7771 group are interacting, making repeated close passages that will ultimately result in galaxy-galaxy mergers on a cosmic timescale. The interactions can be traced by distortions in the shape of the galaxies themselves and faint streams of stars created by their mutual gravitational tides. But a clear view of this galaxy group is difficult to come by as the deep image also reveals extensive clouds of foreground dust sweeping across the field of view. The dim, dusty galactic cirrus clouds are known as Integrated Flux Nebulae. The faint IFN reflect starlight from our own Milky Way Galaxy and lie only a few hundred light-years above the galactic plane...

The Moon's south pole is toward the top left of this detailed telescopic moonscape . Captured on August 23, it looks across the rugged southern lunar highlands. The view's foreshortened perspective heightens the impression of a dense field of craters and makes the craters themselves appear more oval shaped close to the lunar limb. Prominent near center is 114 kilometer diameter crater Moretus. Moretus is young for a large lunar crater and features terraced inner walls and a 2.1 kilometer high, central peak, similar in appearance to the more northerly young crater Tycho . Mountains visible along the lunar limb at the top can rise about 6 kilometers or so above the surrounding terrain. Close to the lunar south pole, permanently shadowed crater floors with expected reservoirs of water-ice have made the rugged south polar region of the Moon a popular target for exploration . from NASA https://ift.tt/0P5sQ6S

A nearby star factory known as Messier 17 lies some 5,500 light-years away in the nebula-rich constellation Sagittarius . At that distance, this 1.5 degree wide field-of-view would span about 150 light-years. In the sharp color composite image faint details of the region's gas and dust clouds are highlighted with narrowband image data against a backdrop of central Milky Way stars. The stellar winds and energetic radiation from hot, massive stars already formed from M17's stock of cosmic gas and dust have slowly carved away at the remaining interstellar material, producing the nebula's cavernous appearance and the undulating shapes within. A popular stop on telescopic tours of the cosmos, M17 is also known as the Omega or the Swan Nebula. from NASA https://ift.tt/vqL9p18

When can you see a black hole, a tulip, and a swan all at once? At night -- if the timing is right, and if your telescope is pointed in the right direction . The complex and beautiful Tulip Nebula blossoms about 8,000 light-years away toward the constellation of Cygnus the Swan. Ultraviolet radiation from young energetic stars at the edge of the Cygnus OB3 association , including O star HDE 227018, ionizes the atoms and powers the emission from the Tulip Nebula. Stewart Sharpless cataloged this nearly 70 light-years across reddish glowing cloud of interstellar gas and dust in 1959 , as Sh2-101 . Also in the featured field of view is the black hole Cygnus X-1 , which to be a microquasar because it is one of strongest X-ray sources in planet Earth's sky. Blasted by powerful jets from a lurking black hole , its fainter bluish curved shock front is only faintly visible beyond the cosmic Tulip's petals, near the right side of the frame. from NASA https://ift.tt/6WzT2mV...

What if Saturn disappeared? Sometimes, it does. It doesn't really go away, though, it just disappears from view when our Moon moves in front . Such a Saturnian eclipse, more formally called an occultation , was visible along a long swath of Earth -- from Peru , across the Atlantic Ocean, to Italy -- only a few days ago. The featured color image is a digital fusion of the clearest images captured during the event and rebalanced for color and relative brightness between the relatively dim Saturn and the comparatively bright Moon. Saturn and the comparative bright Moon . The exposures were all taken from Breda , Catalonia , Spain , just before occultation. Eclipses of Saturn by our Moon will occur each month for the rest of this year. Each time, though, the fleeting event will be visible only to those with clear skies -- and the right location on Earth . from NASA https://ift.tt/04jnMQE

Did you see it? One of the more common questions during a meteor shower occurs because the time it takes for a meteor to flash is similar to the time it takes for a head to turn. Possibly, though, the glory of seeing bright meteors shoot across the sky -- while knowing that they were once small pebbles on another world -- might make it all worthwhile, even if your observing partner(s) can't always share in your experience. The featured video is composed of short clips taken in Inner Mongolia , China during the 2023 Perseid Meteor Shower . Several bright meteors were captured while live-reaction audio was being recorded -- just as the meteors flashed . This year's 2024 Perseids also produced many beautiful meteors . Another good meteor shower to watch for is the Geminids which peak yearly in mid-December, this year with relatively little competing glow from a nearly new Moon. from NASA https://ift.tt/nETdyMX

Do underground oceans vent through canyons on Saturn's moon Enceladus? Long features dubbed tiger stripes are known to be spewing ice from the moon's icy interior into space, creating a cloud of fine ice particles over the moon's South Pole and creating Saturn 's mysterious E-ring . Evidence for this has come from the robot Cassini spacecraft that orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017. Pictured here , a high resolution image of Enceladus is shown from a close flyby. The unusual surface features dubbed tiger stripes are visible in false-color blue. Why Enceladus is active remains a mystery, as the neighboring moon Mimas , approximately the same size, appears quite dead . An analysis of ejected ice grains has yielded evidence that complex organic molecules exist inside Enceladus. These large carbon-rich molecules bolster -- but do not prove -- that oceans under Enceladus' surface could contain life . from NASA https://ift.tt/rfQcbjy

The full Moon and Earth's shadow set together in this island skyscape. The alluring scene was captured Tuesday morning, August 20, from Fiji, South Pacific Ocean, planet Earth. For early morning risers shadowset in the western sky is a daily apparition . Still, the grey-blue shadow is often overlooked in favor of a brighter eastern horizon. Extending through the dense atmosphere, Earth's setting shadow is bounded above by a pinkish glow or anti-twilight arch . Known as the Belt of Venus, the arch's lovely color is due to backscattering of reddened light from the opposite horizon's rising Sun. Of course, the setting Moon's light is reddened by the long sight-line through the atmosphere. But on that date the full Moon could be called a seasonal Blue Moon, the third full Moon in a season with four full Moons. And even though the full Moon is always impressive near the horizon, August's full Moon is considered by some the first of four consecutive full Supermoon...

There is a quiet pulsar at the heart of CTA 1. The supernova remnant was discovered as a source of emission at radio wavelengths by astronomers in 1960 and since identified as the result of the death explosion of a massive star. But no radio pulses were detected from the expected pulsar, the rotating neutron star remnant of the massive star's collapsed core. Seen about 10,000 years after the initial supernova explosion, the interstellar debris cloud is faint at optical wavelengths. CTA 1's visible wavelength emission from still expanding shock fronts is revealed in this deep telescopic image , a frame that spans about 2 degrees across a starfield in the northern constellation of Cepheus. While no pulsar has since been found at radio wavelengths, in 2008 the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected pulsed emission from CTA 1, identifying the supernova remnant's rotating neutron star. The source has been recognized as the first in a growing class of pulsars that are qui...

In silhouette against a crowded star field along the tail of the arachnological constellation Scorpius , this dusty cosmic cloud evokes for some the image of an ominous dark tower. In fact, monstrous clumps of dust and molecular gas collapsing to form stars may well lurk within the dark nebula, a structure that spans almost 40 light-years across this gorgeous telescopic portrait . A cometary globule , the swept-back cloud is shaped by intense ultraviolet radiation from the OB association of very hot stars in NGC 6231 , off the upper right corner of the scene. That energetic ultraviolet light also powers the globule's bordering reddish glow of hydrogen gas . Hot stars embedded in the dust can be seen as bluish reflection nebulae . This dark tower and associated nebulae are about 5,000 light-years away. from NASA https://ift.tt/EgUHGAj

Forget X-ray vision — imagine what you could see with gamma-ray vision! The featured all-sky map shows what the universe looks like to NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope . Fermi sees light with energies about a billion times what the human eye can see, and the map combines 12 years of Fermi observations. The colors represent the brightness of the gamma-ray sources , with brighter sources appearing lighter in color. The prominent stripe across the middle is the central plane of our Milky Way galaxy . Most of the red and yellow dots scattered above and below the Milky Way’s plane are very distant galaxies , while most of those within the plane are nearby pulsars . The blue background that fills the image is the diffuse glow of gamma-rays from distant sources that are too dim to be detected individually. Some gamma-ray sources remain unidentified and topics of research — currently no one knows what they are. from NASA https://ift.tt/oLVUQw8

A supermoon occurred yesterday. And tonight's moon should also look impressive. Supermoons appear slightly larger and brighter than most full moons because they reach their full phase when slightly nearer to the Earth -- closer than 90 percent of all full moons . This supermoon was also a blue moon given the definition that it is the third of four full moons occurring during a single season. Blue moons are not usually blue, and a different definition holds that a blue moon is the second full moon that occurs during a single month. The featured image captured the blue supermoon right near its peak size yesterday as it was rising beyond the Temple of Poseidon in Greece . This supermoon is particularly unusual in that it is the first of four successive supermoons, the next three occurring in September, October, and November. from NASA https://ift.tt/eiTORE1

Inside the Cocoon Nebula is a newly developing cluster of stars. Cataloged as IC 5146 , the beautiful nebula is nearly 15 light-year s wide. Soaring high in northern summer night skies , it's located some 4,000 light years away toward the constellation of the Swan ( Cygnus ). Like other star forming regions, it stands out in red, glowing, hydrogen gas excited by young, hot stars, and dust-reflected starlight at the edge of an otherwise invisible molecular cloud . In fact, the bright star found near the center of this nebula is likely only a few hundred thousand years old, powering the nebular glow as it clears out a cavity in the molecular cloud 's star forming dust and gas. A 48-hour long integration resulted in this exceptionally deep color view tracing tantalizing features within and surrounding the dusty stellar nursery . from NASA https://ift.tt/mH0ryvT

One of the most spectacular solar sights is an erupting prominence. In 2011, NASA's Sun-orbiting Solar Dynamic Observatory spacecraft imaged an impressively large prominence erupting from the surface. The dramatic explosion was captured in ultraviolet light in the featured time lapse video covering 90 minutes, where a new frame was taken every 24 seconds. The scale of the prominence is huge -- the entire Earth would easily fit under the flowing curtain of hot gas. A solar prominence is channeled and sometimes held above the Sun's surface by the Sun's magnetic field . A quiescent prominence typically lasts about a month and may erupt in a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) expelling hot gas into the Solar System . The energy mechanism that creates a solar prominence is a continuing topic of research . Our Sun is again near solar maximum and so very active, featuring numerous erupting prominences and CMEs, one of which resulted in picturesque auroras just over the past ...

On August 11 a Rocket Lab Electron rocket launched from a rotating planet. With a small satellite on board its mission was dubbed A Sky Full of SARs (Synthetic Aperture Radar satellites), departing for low Earth orbit from Mahia Peninsula on New Zealand's north island. The fiery trace of the Electron's graceful launch arc is toward the east in this southern sea and skyscape, a composite of 50 consecutive frames taken over 2.5 hours. Fixed to a tripod, the camera was pointing directly at the South Celestial Pole, the extension of planet Earth's axis of rotation in to space. But no bright star marks that location in the southern hemisphere's night sky. Still, the South Celestial Pole is easy to spot. It lies at the center of the concentric star trail arcs that fill the skyward field of view. from NASA https://ift.tt/0UaAtnF

A single exposure made with a camera pointed almost due north on August 12 recorded this bright Perseid meteor in the night sky west of Halifax, Nova Scotia , Canada. The meteor's incandescent trace is fleeting . It appears to cross the stars of the Big Dipper , famous northern asterism and celestial kitchen utensil, while shimmering curtains of aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights, dance in the night. Doubling the wow factor for night skywatchers near the peak of this year's Perseid meteor shower auroral activity on planet Earth was enhanced by geomagnetic storms . The intense space weather was triggered by flares from an active Sun . from NASA https://ift.tt/W5AI86U

Bright Mars and even brighter Jupiter are in close conjunction just above the pine trees in this post-midnight skyscape from Vallentuna , Sweden. Taken on August 12 during a geomagnetic storm, the snapshot records the glow of aurora borealis or northern lights, beaming from the left side of the frame. Of course on that date Perseid meteors rained through planet Earth's skies, grains of dust from the shower's parent, periodic comet Swift-Tuttle . The meteor streak at the upper right is a Perseid plowing through the atmosphere at about 60 kilometers per second . Also well-known in in Earth's night sky, the bright Pleides star cluster shines below the Perseid meteor streak. In Greek myth, the Pleiades were seven daughters of the astronomical titan Atlas and sea-nymph Pleione. The Pleiades and their parents' names are given to the cluster's nine brightest stars. from NASA https://ift.tt/vLVB1Ht

This was an unusual night. For one thing, the night sky of August 11 and 12, earlier this week, occurred near the peak of the annual Perseid Meteor Shower . Therefore, meteors streaked across the dark night as small bits cast off from Comet Swift-Tuttle came crashing into the Earth's atmosphere . Even more unusually, for central Germany at least, the night sky glowed purple . The red-blue hue was due to aurora caused by an explosion of particles from the Sun a few days before. This auroral storm was so intense that it was seen as far south as Texas and Italy , in Earth's northern hemisphere. The featured image composite was built from 7 exposures taken over 26 minutes from Ense , Germany . The Perseids occur predictably every August, but auroras visible this far south are more unusual and less predictable. from NASA https://ift.tt/NiS9EJI

What's that on the horizon? When circling the Earth on the International Space Station early last month , astronaut Matthew Dominick saw an unusual type of lightning just beyond the Earth's edge: a gigantic jet. The powerful jet appears on the left of the featured image in red and blue. Giant jet lightning has only been known about for the past 23 years. The atmospheric jets are associated with thunderstorms and extend upwards towards Earth's ionosphere . The lower part of the frame shows the Earth at night , with Earth's thin atmosphere tinted green from airglow. City lights are visible, sometimes resolved, but usually creating diffuse white glows in intervening clouds. The top of the frame reveals distant stars in the dark night sky. The nature of gigantic jets and their possible association with other types of Transient Luminous Events (TLEs) such as blue jets and red sprites remains an active topic of research . from NASA https://ift.tt/2VTWywN

What's happening in the sky above Stonehenge? A meteor shower: specifically, the Perseid meteor shower . A few nights ago, after the sky darkened , many images of meteors from this year's Perseids were captured separately and merged into a single frame. Although the meteors all traveled on straight paths, these paths appear slightly curved by the wide-angle lens of the capturing camera. The meteor streaks can all be traced back to a single point on the sky called the radiant , here just off the top of the frame in the constellation of Perseus . The same camera took a deep image of the background sky that brought up the central band of our Milky Way galaxy running nearly vertical through the image center. The featured image was taken from Wiltshire , England , being careful to include, at the bottom, the famous astronomical monument of Stonehenge . Although the Perseids peaked last night, some Perseid meteors should still be visible for a few more nights. from NASA ht...

Messier 20 , popularly known as the Trifid Nebula, 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, blue reflection nebulae produced by dust reflecting starlight, and dark nebulae where dense dust clouds appear in silhouette. The reddish emission region, roughly separated into three parts by obscuring dust lanes, is what lends the Trifid its popular name . The cosmic cloud complex is over 40 light-years across and would cover the area of a full moon on planet Earth's sky. But the Trifid Nebula is too faint to be seen by the unaided eye. Over 75 hours of image data captured under dark night skies was used to create this stunning telescopic view . from NASA https://ift.tt/K0s9weD

Denizens of planet Earth typically watch meteor showers by looking up . But this remarkable view , captured on August 13, 2011 by astronaut Ron Garan, caught a Perseid meteor by looking down. From Garan's perspective on board the International Space Station orbiting at an altitude of about 380 kilometers, the Perseid meteors streak below, swept up dust from comet Swift-Tuttle . The vaporizing comet dust grains are traveling at about 60 kilometers per second through the denser atmosphere around 100 kilometers above Earth's surface. In this case, the foreshortened meteor flash is near frame center, below the curving limb of the Earth and a layer of greenish airglow, just below bright star Arcturus . Want to look up at a meteor shower? You're in luck , as the 2024 Perseid meteor shower is active now and predicted to peak near August 12. With interfering bright moonlight absent, this year you'll likely see many Perseid meteors under clear, dark skies after midnight. f...

A Halley-type comet with an orbital period of about 133 years, Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle is recognized as the parent of the annual Perseid Meteor Shower. The comet's last visit to the inner Solar System was in 1992 . Then, it did not become easily visible to the naked eye, but it did become bright enough to see from most locations with binoculars and small telescopes. This stunning color image of Swift-Tuttle's greenish coma, long ion tail and dust tail was recorded using film on November 24, 1992 . That was about 16 days after the large periodic comet's closest approach to Earth. Comet Swift-Tuttle is expected to next make an impressive appearance in night skies in 2126. Meanwhile, dusty cometary debris left along the orbit of Swift-Tuttle will continue to be swept up creating planet Earth's best-known July and August meteor shower . from NASA https://ift.tt/LEz0j1v

To some, they look like battlements, here protecting us against the center of the Milky Way . The Three Merlon s, also called the Three Peaks of Lavaredo , stand tall today because they are made of dense dolomite rock which has better resisted erosion than surrounding softer rock. They formed about 250 million years ago and so are comparable in age with one of the great extinctions of life on Earth . A leading hypothesis is that this great extinction was triggered by an asteroid about 10-km across, larger in size than Mount Everest , impacting the Earth. Humans have gazed up at the stars in the Milky Way and beyond for centuries, making these battlefield-like formations, based in the Sexten Dolomites , a popular place for current and ancient astronomers . from NASA https://ift.tt/eZroCLk

What makes this storm cloud so colorful? First, the cloud itself is composed of millions of tiny droplets of water and ice. Its bottom is almost completely flat -- but this isn't unusual. Bottom flatness in clouds is generally caused by air temperature dropping as you go up, and that above a specific height, water-saturated air condenses out water droplets. The shape of the cloud middle is caused by a water-droplet-laden column of air being blown upward. Most unusual , though, are the orange and yellow colors. Both colors are caused by the cloud's water drops reflecting sunlight. The orange color in the cloud's middle and bottom sections are reflections of a nearly red sunset . In contrast, the yellow color of the cloud's top results from reflection of light from a not-yet-setting Sun , where some -- but less -- blue light is being scattered away . Appearing to float above the plains in Texas , the featured impressive image of a dynamic cumulonimbus cloud was c...

That's no moon . On the ground, that's the Lars Homestead in Tunisia . And that's not just any galaxy. That's the central band of our own Milky Way galaxy . Last, that's not just any meteor. It is a bright fireball likely from last year's Perseids meteor shower . The featured image composite combines consecutive exposures taken by the same camera from the same location. This year's Perseids peak during the coming weekend is expected to show the most meteors after the first quarter moon sets, near midnight. To best experience a meteor shower, you should have clear and dark skies, a comfortable seat , and patience. from NASA https://ift.tt/jMLqpAX

What would it look like to return home from outside our galaxy? Although designed to answer greater questions , data from ESA's robotic Gaia mission is helping to provide a uniquely modern perspective on humanity's place in the universe. Gaia orbits the Sun near the Earth and resolves stars' positions so precisely that it can determine a slight shift from its changing vantage point over the course of a year, a shift that is proportionately smaller for more distant stars -- and so determines distance . In the first sequence of the video , an illustration of the Milky Way is shown that soon resolves into a three-dimensional visualization of Gaia star data . A few notable stars are labelled with their common names , while others stars are labelled with numbers from a Gaia catalog . Eventually, the viewer arrives in our stellar neighborhood where many stars were tracked by Gaia, and soon at our home star Sol, the Sun . At the video's end, the reflective glow of ...

On a road trip up Mount Uludağ in Bursa province, Turkey these motorcyclists found themselves above low clouds and fog in late June. With the bright Sun directly behind them, the view down the side of the great mountain revealed a beautiful, atmospheric glory and fog bow. Known to some as the heiligenschein or the Specter of the Brocken , a glory can also sometimes be seen from airplanes or even high buildings. It often appears to be a dark giant surrounded by a bright halo. Of course the dark giant is just the shadow of the observer (90MB video) cast opposite the Sun. The clouds and fog are composed of very small water droplets, smaller than rain drops, that refract and reflect sunlight to create the glory's colorful halo and this more extensive fog bow. from NASA https://ift.tt/bSsPwB2

As Mars wanders through Earth's night, it passes about 5 degrees south of the Pleiades star cluster in this composite astrophoto. The skyview was constructed from a series of images captured over a run of 16 consecutive clear nights beginning on July 12. Mars' march across the field of view begins at the far right, the planet's ruddy hue. showing a nice contrast with the blue Pleiades stars. Moving much faster across the sky against the distant stars, the fourth planet from the Sun easily passes seventh planet Uranus, also moving across this field of view. Red planet Mars and the ice giant world were in close conjunction, about 1/2 degree apart, on July 16. Continuing its rapid eastward trek, Mars has now left the sister stars and outer planet behind though, passing north of red giant star Aldebaran. Mars will come within about 1/3 degree of Jupiter in planet Earth's sky on August 14. from NASA https://ift.tt/YyOl5ri

A visitor to the inner solar system every 70 years or so Comet 13P/Olbers reached its most recent perihelion, or closest approach to the Sun, on June 30 2024. Now on a return voyage to the distant Oort cloud the Halley-type comet is recorded here sweeping through northern summer night skies over historic Kunetice Castle , Czech Republic. Along with a broad dust tail, and brighter coma, this comet's long ion tail buffeted by storms and winds from the Sun, is revealed in the composite of tracked exposures for comet and sky, and fixed exposures for foreground landscape recorded on July 28. The comet is about 16 light-minutes beyond the castle and seen against faint background stars below the northern constellation Ursa Major. The hilltop castle dates to the 15th century, while Heinrich Olbers discovered the comet in 1815. Captured here low in northwestern skies just after sunset Comet Olbers, for now, offers skywatchers on planet Earth rewarding telescopic and binocular views. ...

What is creating these unusual spots? Light-colored spots on Martian rocks , each surrounded by a dark border, were discovered earlier this month by NASA 's Perseverance Rover currently exploring Mars . Dubbed leopard spots because of their seemingly similarity to markings on famous Earth-bound predators , these curious patterns are being studied with the possibility they were created by ancient Martian life . The pictured spots measure only millimeter s across and were discovered on a larger rock named Cheyava Falls . The exciting but unproven speculation is that long ago, microbe s generated energy with chemical reactions that turned rock from red to white while leaving a dark ring, like some similarly appearing spots on Earth rocks . Although other non-biological explanations may ultimately prevail, speculation focusing on this potential biological origin is causing much intrigue . from NASA https://ift.tt/vsZAueI

To some, it looks like a penguin. But to people who study the universe, it is an interesting example of two big galaxies interacting. Just a few hundred million years ago, the upper NGC 2936 was likely a normal spiral galaxy : spinning, creating stars, and minding its own business. Then it got too close to the massive elliptical galaxy NGC 2937, below, and took a dive. Together known as Arp 142 , they are featured in this new Webb infrared image, while a visible light Hubble image appears in comparison. NGC 2936 is not only being deflected, but distorted , by this close gravitational interaction. When massive galaxies pass near each other, gas is typically condensed from which new stars form . A young group of stars appears as the nose of the penguin toward the right of the upper galaxy, while in the center of the spiral , bright stars together appear as an eye. Before a billion years, the two galaxies will likely merge into one larger galaxy. from NASA https://ift.tt/1BsJ6g...

What's happening above Uluru? A United Nations World Heritage Site , Uluru is an extraordinary 350-meter high mountain in central Australia that rises sharply from nearly flat surroundings. Composed of sandstone , Uluru has slowly formed over the past 300 million years as softer rock eroded away. The Uluru region has been a home to humans for over 22,000 years. Recorded last month, the starry sky above Uluru includes the central band of our Milky Way galaxy , complete with complex dark filaments of dust , bright red emission nebulas , and billions of stars. from NASA https://ift.tt/usjH1QB

Sometimes, the surface of our Sun seems to dance. In the middle of 2012, for example, NASA's Sun-orbiting Solar Dynamic Observatory spacecraft imaged an impressive prominence that seemed to perform a running dive roll like an acrobatic dancer. The dramatic explosion was captured in ultraviolet light in the featured time-lapse video covering about three hours. A looping magnetic field directed the flow of hot plasma on the Sun . The scale of the dancing prominence is huge -- the entire Earth would easily fit under the flowing arch of hot gas. A quiescent prominence typically lasts about a month and may erupt in a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME), expelling hot gas into the Solar System . The energy mechanism that creates a solar prominence is still a topic of research . Like in 2012, this year the Sun's surface is again quite active and features many filaments and prominences . from NASA https://ift.tt/71wJXVy

Saturn now rises before midnight in planet Earth's sky. On July 24, the naked-eye planet was in close conjunction, close on the sky , to a waning gibbous Moon. But from some locations on planet Earth the ringed gas giant was occulted, disappearing behind the Moon for about an hour from skies over parts of Asia and Africa. Because the Moon and bright planets wander through the sky near the ecliptic plane , such occultation events are not uncommon, but they can be dramatic . In this telescopic view from Nanjing, Jiangsu, China, Saturn is caught moments before its disappearance behind the lunar disk. The snapshot gives the illusion that Saturn hangs just above Glushko crater , a 43 kilometer diameter , young, ray crater near the Moon's western edge. Of course, the Moon is 400 thousand kilometers away, compared to Saturn's distance of 1.4 billion kilometers. from NASA https://ift.tt/Q71CUeA

From our vantage point in the Milky Way Galaxy , we see NGC 6946 face-on . The big, beautiful spiral galaxy is located just 20 million light-years away, behind a veil of foreground dust and stars in the high and far-off constellation Cepheus. In this sharp telescopic portrait , from the core outward the galaxy's colors change from the yellowish light of old stars in the center to young blue star clusters and reddish star forming regions along the loose, fragmented spiral arms. NGC 6946 is also bright in infrared light and rich in gas and dust, exhibiting a high star birth and death rate. In fact, since the early 20th century ten confirmed supernovae, the death explosions of massive stars, were discovered in NGC 6946. Nearly 40,000 light-years across, NGC 6946 is also known as the Fireworks Galaxy . from NASA https://ift.tt/zisgX0R

These cosmic clouds have blossomed 1,300 light-years away in the fertile starfields of the constellation Cepheus . Called the Iris Nebula, NGC 7023 is not the only nebula to evoke the imagery of flowers . Still, this deep telescopic image shows off the Iris Nebula's range of colors and symmetries embedded in surrounding fields of interstellar dust. Within the Iris itself, dusty nebular material surrounds a hot, young star. The dominant color of the brighter reflection nebula is blue, characteristic of dust grains reflecting starlight. Central filaments of the reflection nebula glow with a faint reddish photoluminescence as some dust grains effectively convert the star's invisible ultraviolet radiation to visible red light. Infrared observations indicate that this nebula contains complex carbon molecules known as PAHs . The dusty blue petals of the Iris Nebula span about six light-years. from NASA https://ift.tt/MCaEmfS

Our Moon doesn't really have craters this big. Earth's Moon , Luna, also doesn't naturally show this spikey texture, and its colors are more subtle. But this digital creation is based on reality. The featured image is a digital composite of a good Moon image and surface height data taken from NASA's Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) mission -- and then exaggerated for educational understanding . The digital enhancements, for example, accentuate lunar highlands and show more clearly craters that illustrate the tremendous bombardment our Moon has been through during its 4.6-billion-year history . The dark areas , called maria , have fewer craters and were once seas of molten lava . Additionally, the image colors , although based on the moon's real composition, are changed and exaggerated. Here, a blue hue indicates a region that is iron rich , while orange indicates a slight excess of aluminum . Although the Moon has shown the same side to the Earth for bill...

What powers the Crab Nebula? A city-sized magnetized neutron star spinning around 30 times a second. Known as the Crab Pulsar , it is the bright spot in the center of the gaseous swirl at the nebula's core. About 10 light-years across, the spectacular picture of the Crab Nebula (M1) frames a swirling central disk and complex filaments of surrounding and expanding glowing gas. The picture combines visible light from the Hubble Space Telescope in red and blue with X-ray light from the Chandra X-ray Observatory shown in white, and diffuse X-ray emission detected by Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) in diffuse purple. The central pulsar powers the Crab Nebula 's emission and expansion by slightly slowing its spin rate, which drives out a wind of energetic electrons . The featured image released today, the 25th Anniversary of the launch of NASA's flagship-class X-ray Observatory: Chandra . from NASA https://ift.tt/7ygJGdh

Sometimes the dark dust of interstellar space has an angular elegance. Such is the case toward the far-south constellation of Chamaeleon . Normally too faint to see , dark dust is best known for blocking visible light from stars and galaxies behind it. In this 36.6-hour exposure , however, the dust is seen mostly in light of its own, with its strong red and near- infrared colors creating a brown hue. Contrastingly blue, the bright star Beta Chamaeleontis is visible on the upper right, with the dust that surrounds it preferentially reflecting blue light from its primarily blue-white color. All of the pictured stars and dust occur in our own Milky Way Galaxy with one notable exception : the white spot just below Beta Chamaeleontis is the galaxy IC 3104 which lies far in the distance. Interstellar dust is mostly created in the cool atmospheres of giant stars and dispersed into space by stellar light, stellar winds , and stellar explosions such as supernovas . from NASA https:/...

This rock structure is not only surreal -- it's real. Perhaps the reason it's not more famous is that it is smaller than one might guess: the capstone rock overhangs only a few meters . Even so, the King of Wings outcrop, located in New Mexico , USA , is a fascinating example of an unusual type of rock structure called a hoodoo . Hoodoo s may form when a layer of hard rock overlays a layer of eroding softer rock. Figuring out the details of incorporating this hoodoo into a night-sky photoshoot took over a year. Besides waiting for a suitably picturesque night behind a sky with few clouds, the foreground had to be artificially lit just right relative to the natural glow of the background. After much planning and waiting, the final shot, featured here , was taken in May 2016. Mimicking the horizontal bar, the background sky features the band of our Milky Way Galaxy stretching overhead. from NASA https://ift.tt/dZE9uB5

Have you seen a panorama from another world lately? Assembled from high-resolution scans of the original film frames, this one sweeps across the magnificent desolation of the Apollo 11 landing site on the Moon's Sea of Tranquility . The images were taken 55 years ago by Neil Armstrong looking out his window on the Eagle Lunar Module shortly after the July 20, 1969 landing . The frame at the far left ( AS11-37-5449 ) is the first picture taken by a person on another world. Thruster nozzles can be seen in the foreground on the left (toward the south), while at the right (west), the shadow of the Eagle is visible. For scale, the large, shallow crater on the right has a diameter of about 12 meters. Frames taken from the Lunar Module windows about an hour and a half after landing, before walking on the lunar surface , were intended to document the landing site in case an early departure was necessary. from NASA https://ift.tt/luN8EcY

For some , these subtle bands of light and shadow stretched across the sky as the Sun set on July 11. Known as anticrepuscular rays, the bands are formed as a large cloud bank near the western horizon cast long shadows through the atmosphere at sunset. Due to the camera's perspective, the bands of light and shadow seem to converge toward the eastern (opposite) horizon at a point seen just above a 14th century hilltop castle near Brno, Czech Republic. In the foreground, denizens of planet Earth are enjoying the region's annual Planet Festival in the park below the Brno Observatory and Planetarium. And while crepuscular and anticrepuscular rays are a relatively common atmospheric phenomenon, this festival's 10 meter diameter inflatable spheres representing bodies of the Solar System are less often seen on planet Earth . from NASA https://ift.tt/XoeOz6u

Unlike most entries in Charles Messier's famous catalog of deep sky objects, M24 is not a bright galaxy, star cluster, or nebula. It's a gap in nearby, obscuring interstellar dust clouds that allows a view of the distant stars in the Sagittarius spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy. Direct your gaze through this gap with binoculars or small telescope and you are looking through a window over 300 light-years wide at stars some 10,000 light-years or more from Earth. Sometimes called the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud, M24's luminous stars are left of center in this gorgeous starscape . Covering over 6 degrees or the width of 12 full moons in the constellation Sagittarius, the telescopic field of view includes dark markings B92 and B93 near the center of M24, along with other clouds of dust and glowing nebulae toward the center of the Milky Way. from NASA https://ift.tt/YwmjW2A

When Vulcan , the Roman god of fire, swings his blacksmith's hammer, the sky is lit on fire . A recent eruption of Chile 's Villarrica volcano shows the delicate interplay between this fire -- actually glowing steam and ash from melted rock -- and the light from distant stars in our Milky Way galaxy and the Magellanic Clouds galaxies. In the featured timelapse video, the Earth rotates under the stars as Villarrica erupts . With about 1350 volcanoes , our planet Earth rivals Jupiter's moon Io as the most geologically active place in the Solar System . While both have magnificent beauty, the reasons for the existence of volcanoes on both worlds are different. Earth's volcanoes typically occur between slowly shifting outer shell plates , while Io 's volcanoes are caused by gravitational flexing resulting from Jupiter 's tidal gravitational pull . from NASA https://ift.tt/a0LlKZw

What are these unusual interstellar structures? Bright-rimmed, flowing shapes gather near the center of this rich starfield toward the borders of the nautical southern constellations Pupis and Vela . Composed of interstellar gas and dust, the grouping of light-year sized cometary globules is about 1300 light-year s distant. Energetic ultraviolet light from nearby hot stars has molded the globules and ionized their bright rims. The globules also stream away from the Vela supernova remnant which may have influenced their swept-back shapes. Within them, cores of cold gas and dust are likely collapsing to form low mass stars, whose formation will ultimately cause the globules to disperse . In fact, cometary globule CG 30 (on the upper left) sports a small reddish glow near its head, a telltale sign of energetic jets from a star in the early stages of formation . from NASA https://ift.tt/NwH8ocl

Why does this galaxy have such a long tail? In this stunning vista, based on image data from the Hubble Legacy Archive , distant galaxies form a dramatic backdrop for disrupted spiral galaxy Arp 188, the Tadpole Galaxy. The cosmic tadpole is a mere 420 million light-years distant toward the northern constellation of the Dragon ( Draco ). Its eye-catching tail is about 280 thousand light-year s long and features massive, bright blue star clusters. One story goes that a more compact intruder galaxy crossed in front of Arp 188 - from right to left in this view - and was slung around behind the Tadpole by their gravitational attraction. During the close encounter , tidal forces drew out the spiral galaxy's stars, gas, and dust forming the spectacular tail. The intruder galaxy itself, estimated to lie about 300 thousand light-years behind the Tadpole, can be seen through foreground spiral arms at the upper right. Following its terrestrial namesake , the Tadpole Galaxy will l...

The galaxy was never in danger. For one thing, the Triangulum galaxy (M33), pictured, is much bigger than the tiny grain of rock at the head of the meteor. For another, the galaxy is much farther away -- in this instance 3 million light year s as opposed to only about 0.0003 light seconds. Even so, the meteor's path took it angularly below the galaxy. Also the wind high in Earth's atmosphere blew the meteor's glowing evaporative molecule train away from the galaxy, in angular projection . Still, the astrophotographer was quite lucky to capture both a meteor and a galaxy in a single exposure -- which was subsequently added to two other images of M33 to bring up the spiral galaxy 's colors. At the end, the meteor was gone in a second, but the galaxy will last billions of years. from NASA https://ift.tt/PHuwiUy

In 1990, cruising four billion miles from the Sun, the Voyager 1 spacecraft looked back to make this first ever Solar System family portrait . The complete portrait is a 60 frame mosaic made from a vantage point 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane . In it, Voyager's wide-angle camera frames sweep through the inner Solar System at the left, linking up with ice giant Neptune , the Solar System's outermost planet, at the far right. Positions for Venus, Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are indicated by letters, while the Sun is the bright spot near the center of the circle of frames. The inset frames for each of the planets are from Voyager's narrow-field camera. Unseen in the portrait are Mercury, too close to the Sun to be detected, and Mars, unfortunately hidden by sunlight scattered in the camera's optical system. Closer to the Sun than Neptune at the time, small, faint Pluto's position was not covered. In 2024 Voyager 1, NASA’s longest-running and ...