I just saw the moon

[CrazyDiamond]

Sorry for the delay, I've been having to prepare for the six apple trees that are coming in a few days that I have to plant...on to the images...

This fantastic skyscape lies near the edge of NGC 2174 a star forming region about 6,400 light-years away in the nebula-rich constellation of Orion. It follows mountainous clouds of gas and dust carved by winds and radiation from the region's newborn stars, now found scattered in open star clusters embedded around the center of NGC 2174, off the top of the frame. Though star formation continues within these dusty cosmic clouds they will likely be dispersed by the energetic newborn stars within a few million years. Recorded at infrared wavelengths by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2014, the interstellar scene spans about 6 light-years.

What powers this unusual nebula? CTB-1 is the expanding gas shell that was left when a massive star toward the constellation of Cassiopeia exploded about 10,000 years ago. The star likely detonated when it ran out of elements, near its core, that could create stabilizing pressure with nuclear fusion. The resulting supernova remnant, nicknamed the Medulla Nebula for its brain-like shape, still glows in visible light by the heat generated by its collision with confining interstellar gas. Why the nebula also glows in X-ray light, though, remains a mystery. One hypothesis holds that an energetic pulsar was co-created that powers the nebula with a fast outwardly moving wind. Following this lead, a pulsar has recently been found in radio waves that appears to have been expelled by the supernova explosion at over 1000 kilometers per second.

This image shows a pair of interacting galaxies known as Arp 271. Individually, these galaxies are named NGC 5426 and NGC 5427; both are spirals, and both are roughly the same size.
Some astronomers believe that these galaxies are in the process of merging to form a single entity. This interaction will create increasing numbers of new stars over the next few million years, some of which can be seen within the “bridge” of gas connecting the two galaxies. This kind of collision and interaction might also happen to our own galaxy, the Milky Way, which is likely to collide with the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy in about five billion years time.

Nuzzled in the chest of the constellation Virgo (the Virgin) lies a beautiful cosmic gem — the galaxy Messier 61. This glittering spiral galaxy is aligned face-on towards Earth, thus presenting us with a breathtaking view of its structure. The gas and dust of the intricate spiral arms are studded with billions of stars. This galaxy is a bustling hub of activity with a rapid rate of star formation, and both a massive nuclear star cluster and a supermassive black hole buried at its heart.
Messier 61 is one of the largest members of the Virgo Cluster, which is made up of more than a thousand galaxies, and is itself at the center of the Virgo Supercluster — to which our Milky Way also belongs. This dazzling beauty was first discovered in 1779, and it has been capturing astronomers’ interest ever since. Set against a dark sky littered with galaxies, this image shows the awe-inspiring M61 in its full glory — even at its distance of over 50 million light-years.

Captured in astounding detail by ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), the eerie Skull Nebula is showcased in this new image in beautiful pink and red tones. This planetary nebula, also known as NGC 246, is the first known to be associated with a pair of closely bound stars orbited by a third outer star.

This highly detailed image of the fantastic NGC 2899 planetary nebula was captured using the FORS instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope in northern Chile. This object has never before been imaged in such striking detail, with even the faint outer edges of the planetary nebula glowing over the background stars.

 

[cybrguy]

I sincerely Loves me some Nebula...

 

[CrazyDiamond]

It is one of the more massive galaxies known. A mere 46 million light-years distant, spiral galaxy NGC 2841 can be found in the northern constellation of Ursa Major. This sharp view of the gorgeous island universe shows off a striking yellow nucleus and galactic disk. Dust lanes, small, pink star-forming regions, and young blue star clusters are embedded in the patchy, tightly wound spiral arms. In contrast, many other spirals exhibit grand, sweeping arms with large star-forming regions. NGC 2841 has a diameter of over 150,000 light-years, even larger than our own Milky Way. The featured composite image merges exposures from the orbiting 2.4-meter Hubble Space Telescope and the ground-based 8.2-meter Subaru Telescope. X-ray images suggest that resulting winds and stellar explosions create plumes of hot gas extending into a halo around NGC 2841.

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 a few million years, 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 explosion which created this supernova remnant would have been first seen in planet Earth's sky about 350 years ago, although it took that light about 11,000 years to reach us. This false-color image, composed of X-ray and optical image data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope, shows the still hot filaments and knots in the remnant. It spans about 30 light-years at the estimated distance of Cassiopeia A. High-energy X-ray emission from specific elements has been color coded, silicon in red, sulfur in yellow, calcium in green and iron in purple, to help astronomers explore the recycling of our galaxy's star stuff. Still expanding, the outer blast wave is seen in blue hues. The bright speck near the center is a neutron star, the incredibly dense, collapsed remains of the massive stellar core.

The Milky Way contains many regions of starbirth — areas where new stars are springing to life within collapsing clumps of gas and dust. One such region, named Gum 26, is shown here as imaged by the FORS instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile.
Gum 26 is located roughly 20,000 light-years away in the southern constellation of Vela (The Sails). It is something known as an HII region or emission nebula, where the intense ultraviolet radiation streaming from newly-formed stars ionizes the surrounding hydrogen gas, causing it to emit a faint pinkish glow. By catching new stars “pink-handed” in this manner, astronomers can learn more about the conditions under which stars arise, and study how they influence their cosmic environment.

Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, created using images taken when ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft was 27.8 km from the comet.

This wide-field view shows the region of the sky, in the constellation of Auriga, where the star-forming region AFGL 5142 is located. This view was created from images forming part of the ESO Digitized Sky Survey 2.

@cybrguy this one is really freakin full of stars. There is a 1.5GB file of this same image (yes you read that right, a 1.5GB image!) at https://www.eso.org/public/archives/images/original/eso1920a.tif
Taken with the HAWK-I instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope in the Chilean Atacama Desert, this stunning image shows the Milky Way’s central region with an angular resolution of 0.2 arcseconds. This means the level of detail picked up by HAWK-I is roughly equivalent to seeing a soccer ball in Zurich from Munich, where ESO’s headquarters are located.
The image combines observations in three different wavelength bands. The team used the broadband filters J (centered at 1250 nanometres, in blue), H (centered at 1635 nanometres, in green), and Ks (centered at 2150 nanometers, in red), to cover the near infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum. By observing in this range of wavelengths, HAWK-I can peer through the dust, allowing it to see certain stars in the central region of our galaxy that would otherwise be hidden.

 

[CrazyDiamond]

How did this strange-looking galaxy form? Astronomers turn detectives when trying to figure out the cause of unusual jumbles of stars, gas, and dust like NGC 1316. Inspection indicates that NGC 1316 is an enormous elliptical galaxy that somehow includes dark dust lanes usually found in a spiral galaxy. Detailed images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope shows details, however, that help in reconstructing the history of this gigantic tangle. Deep and wide images show huge collisional shells, while deep central images reveal fewer globular clusters of stars toward NGC 1316's interior. Such effects are expected in galaxies that have undergone collisions or merging with other galaxies in the past few billion years. The dark knots and lanes of dust, prominent in the featured image, indicate that one or more of the devoured galaxies were spiral galaxies. NGC 1316 spans about 50,000 light years and lies about 60 million light years away toward the constellation of the Furnace (Fornax).

How far do magnetic fields extend up and out of spiral galaxies? For decades astronomers knew only that some spiral galaxies had magnetic fields. However, after NRAO's Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope (popularized in the movie Contact) was upgraded in 2011, it was unexpectedly discovered that these fields could extend vertically away from the disk by several thousand light-years. The featured image of edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 5775, observed in the CHANG-ES (Continuum Halos in Nearby Galaxies) survey, also reveals spurs of magnetic field lines that may be common in spirals. Analogous to iron filings around a bar magnet, radiation from electrons trace galactic magnetic field lines by spiraling around these lines at almost the speed of light. The filaments in this image are constructed from those tracks in VLA data. The visible light image, constructed from Hubble Space Telescope data, shows pink gaseous regions where stars are born. It seems that winds from these regions help form the magnificently extended galactic magnetic fields.

Located in the constellation of Virgo (The Virgin), around 50 million light-years from Earth, the galaxy NGC 4535 is truly a stunning sight to behold. Despite the incredible quality of this image, taken from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, NGC 4535 has a hazy, somewhat ghostly, appearance when viewed from a smaller telescope. This led amateur astronomer Leland S. Copeland to nickname NGC 4535 the “Lost Galaxy” in the 1950s.
The bright colors in this image aren’t just beautiful to look at, as they actually tell us about the population of stars within this barred spiral galaxy. The bright blue-ish colors, seen nestled amongst NGC 4535’s long, spiral arms, indicate the presence of a greater number of younger and hotter stars. In contrast, the yellower tones of this galaxy’s bulge suggest that this central area is home to stars which are older and cooler.
This galaxy was studied as part of the Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) survey, which aims to clarify many of the links between cold gas clouds, star formation, and the overall shape and other properties of galaxies. On January 11, 2021 the first release of the PHANGS-HST Collection was made publicly available

Inside star cluster NGC 602, a star-forming region in the Small Magellanic Cloud, bright, blue, newly formed stars are blowing a cavity in this nebula,sculpting the inner edge of its outer portions, slowly eroding it away and eating into the material beyond. The diffuse outer reaches of the nebula prevent the energetic outflows from streaming away from the cluster. Elephant trunk–like dust pillars point toward the hot blue stars and are telltale signs of their eroding effect. Star formation started at the center of the cluster and propagated outward, with the youngest stars still forming today along the dust ridges.

This cloud-strewn new image of RCW 36 (or Gum 20) was captured by ESO’s Focal Reducer and low dispersion Spectrograph (FORS). It shows one of the sites of massive-star formation closest to our Solar System, about 2300 light-years away. Located in the constellation of Vela (The Sails), the RCW 36 emission nebula is only part of an even larger star formation complex, known as the Vela Molecular Ridge.
Some areas in the clouds of RCW 36 are dense enough to block out background light, creating patches and wisps of inky black. Despite the dark appearance of these clouds, they are the only places in the Universe in which star formation occurs; clumps of molecular hydrogen and cosmic dust collapse and come together to form stars encircled by small families of planets, as in our own Solar System.

Milky Way with zooming technique.

 

[Vitolo]

It is one of the more massive galaxies known. ....

Glorious and revealing images!

 

[CrazyDiamond]

Big, beautiful spiral galaxy Messier 66 lies a mere 35 million light-years away. The gorgeous island universe is about 100 thousand light-years across, similar in size to the Milky Way. This reprocessed Hubble Space Telescope close-up view spans a region about 30,000 light-years wide around the galactic core. It shows the galaxy's disk dramatically inclined to our line-of-sight. Surrounding its bright core, the likely home of a supermassive black hole, obscuring dust lanes and young, blue star clusters sweep along spiral arms dotted with the tell-tale glow of pinksh star forming regions. Messier 66, also known as NGC 3627, is the brightest of the three galaxies in the gravitationaly interacting Leo Triplet.

Celestial sights of the southern sky shine above a cloudy planet Earth in this gorgeous night sky view. The scene was captured from an airliner's flight deck at 38,000 feet on a steady westbound ride to Lima, Peru. To produce the sharp airborne astrophotograph, the best of a series of short exposures were selected and digitally stacked. The broad band of the southern Milky Way begins at top left with the dark Coalsack Nebula and Southern Cross. Its expanse of diffuse starlight encompasses the the Carina Nebula and large Gum Nebula toward the right. Canopus, alpha star of Carina and second brightest star in Earth's night is easy to spot below the Milky Way, as is the dwarf galaxy known as the Large Magellanic Cloud. The Small Magellanic cloud just peeks above the cloudy horizon. Of course, the South Celestial Pole also lies within the starry southern frame.

This image from NASA's Juno spacecraft captures several storms in Jupiter's southern hemisphere (main image). Some of these storms, including the Great Red Spot at upper left, have been churning in the planet's atmosphere for many years, but when Juno obtained this view of Jupiter, the smaller, oval-shaped feature at the center of the image was brand new.
The new feature was discovered by amateur astronomer Clyde Foster of Centurion, South Africa. Early on the morning of May 31, 2020, while imaging Jupiter with his telescope, Foster noticed a new spot, which appeared bright as seen through a filter sensitive to wavelengths of light where methane gas in Jupiter's atmosphere has strong absorption. The spot was not visible in images captured just hours earlier by astronomers in Australia.
On June 2, 2020, just two days after Clyde Foster's observations, Juno performed its 27th close flyby of Jupiter. The spacecraft can only image a relatively thin slice of Jupiter's cloud tops during each pass. Although Juno would not be traveling directly over the outbreak, the track was close enough that the mission team determined the spacecraft would obtain a detailed view of the new feature, which has been informally dubbed "Clyde's Spot."
The feature is a plume of cloud material erupting above the upper cloud layers of the Jovian atmosphere. These powerful convective "outbreaks" occasionally erupt in this latitude band, known as the South Temperate Belt.

During its 24th close flyby of Jupiter, NASA's Juno spacecraft captured this view of a chaotic, stormy area of the planet's northern hemisphere known as a folded filamentary region. Jupiter has no solid surface in the same way Earth does. Data collected by Juno indicate that some of the giant planet's winds run deeper and last longer than similar atmospheric processes on Earth.

This spectacular portrait of the Centaurus A galaxy was captured under clear skies by the newest operational ESO observatory, SPECULOOS (Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars), located at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. The state of the art observatory is fitted an array of four one-metre telescopes, each named after one of the four Galilean moons. The SPECULOOS telescopes are neighbors of two of ESO’s most powerful telescopes, the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and VISTA. SPECULOOS is set to survey up to ten times more red dwarf stars than the TRAPPIST telescope (located at ESO La Silla Observatory) currently does. It is predicted statistically that it will then find at least twelve solar systems of a similar size to the now famous TRAPPIST-1 system.
The Centaurus A galaxy (NGC 5128) is one of the brightest galaxies in the southern hemisphere night sky, located in the constellation of Centaurus. It was discovered in 1826 by Scottish astronomer James Dunlop at the former Parramata Observatory. At a distance of 11 million light-years, it is the closest active galactic nucleus (AGN) to us. Astronomers theorize that what was originally an elliptical galaxy collided with a relatively smaller spiral shaped galaxy, giving it the peculiar shape we see now. NGC 5128 has an impressive collection of stars. From this image, you can observe red/pink star-forming regions on the bottom left of the image and young blue star clusters on the top right of the image; with dust lanes captured in stunning detail.
Towards the center of the galaxy, leftover cosmic dust is slowly being eaten by the supermassive black hole, which has a mass of roughly 100 million solar masses. This accretion of matter results in powerful radio waves being emitted from the AGN.

This image highlights Baily's Beads, a feature of total solar eclipses that are visible at the very beginning and the very end of totality. It's composed of a series of images taken during a total solar eclipse visible from ESO's La Silla Observatory on 2 July 2019.
Baily's Beads are caused by the Moon's mountains, valleys, and craters. These surface features create an uneven edge of the Moon, where small "beads" of sunlight still shine through the lowest parts for a few moments after the rest of the Sun is covered. In this picture, multiple images taken in quick succession show that the beads disappear and appear in stages, with only the very deepest valley and craters allowing the sunlight to shine through closest to totality. The phenomenon is named after Francis Baily, a British astronomer whose observations in the early 1800s first widely publicized their existence.

This red-hued cloud of gas is named Abell 24, and is located in the constellation of Canis Minor (The Lesser Dog). It is something known as a planetary nebula — a burst of gas and dust created when a star dies and throws its outer layers into space. Despite the name, planetary nebulae have nothing to do with planets. The term was coined by William Herschel, who also famously discovered Uranus; in a time of low-resolution astronomy, these nebulous objects appeared to resemble giant planets swimming in a dark cosmos.

 

[Vitolo]

The shapes and colors are downright astounding!
Remarkable clarity as well.

 

[CrazyDiamond]

Meteors can be colorful. While the human eye usually cannot discern many colors, cameras often can. Pictured is a Quadrantids meteor captured by camera over Missouri, USA, early this month that was not only impressively bright, but colorful. The radiant grit, likely cast off by asteroid 2003 EH1, blazed a path across Earth's atmosphere. Colors in meteors usually originate from ionized elements released as the meteor disintegrates, with blue-green typically originating from magnesium, calcium radiating violet, and nickel glowing green. Red, however, typically originates from energized nitrogen and oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere. This bright meteoric fireball was gone in a flash -- less than a second -- but it left a wind-blown ionization trail that remained visible for several minutes.

This picture of the waning gibbous Moon was taken on Jan 29, 2021, the day after its full Moon phase as the International Space Station orbited 264 miles above China near the Mongolian border. Humanity's only orbital laboratory, the space station, orbits the Earth about 90 minutes or about 16 times every 24 hours.

This wide-field image shows the surroundings of the young star HR8799 in the constellation of Pegasus. This picture was created from material forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The location of HR 8799 is shown.

If you had a brand new state-of-the-art telescope facility, what would you look at first? Researchers at the SPECULOOS Southern Observatory — which comprises four small telescopes, each with a 1-metre primary mirror — chose to view the Lagoon Nebula. This magnificent picture is the result, and is one of the SPECULOOS’ first ever observations. The nebula is a cloud of dust and gas in our galaxy where new stars are being born, and is found roughly 5000 light-years from us.
This striking image is made even more impressive by the fact that the SPECULOOS isn’t actually designed to study nebulae. The name says it all — SPECULOOS, the Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars. In other words, the primary mission of this telescope facility is to find Earth-like planets orbiting faint nearby stars. The candidates it discovers will be passed over to larger telescopes, such as ESO’s forthcoming Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), to be studied in more detail.

This dazzling region of newly-forming stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) was captured by the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. The relatively small amount of dust in the LMC and MUSE’s acute vision allowed intricate details of the region to be picked out in visible light.
The image is a color composite made from exposures from the Digitized Sky Survey 2, and shows the region surrounding LHA 120-N 180B, visible at the center of the image.

The faint, ephemeral glow emanating from the planetary nebula ESO 577-24 persists for only a short time — around 10,000 years, a blink of an eye in astronomical terms. ESO’s Very Large Telescope captured this shell of glowing ionized gas — the last breath of the dying star whose simmering remains are visible at the heart of this image. As the gaseous shell of this planetary nebula expands and grows dimmer, it will slowly disappear from sight.
This stunning planetary nebula was imaged by one of the VLT’s most versatile instruments, FORS2. The instrument captured the bright, central star, Abell 36, as well as the surrounding planetary nebula. The red and blue portions of this image correspond to optical emission at red and blue wavelengths, respectively.
An object much closer to home is also visible in this image — an asteroid wandering across the field of view has left a faint track below and to the left of the central star. And in the far distance behind the nebula a glittering host of background galaxies can be seen.

 

[cybrguy]

New (to me) image of the Coalsack Nebula. Beautius...

 

[CrazyDiamond]

Thank you @cybrguy you inspired me to find some more of the Coalsack...without further ado...

The Coalsack is one of the most prominent dark nebula visible to the unaided eye. A beautiful sight in the southern sky, the Coalsack casts a dark silhouette against the Milky Way’s bright stripe of stars. The Coalsack is located approximately 600 light-years away from Earth in the southern part of the constellation of Crux (the Southern Cross).
This seemingly starless dark patch is actually an opaque interstellar dust cloud that obscures the light of the background Milky Way stars. Dust grains in the cloud redden the starlight that reaches us by absorbing blue light preferentially, so that the red stars shimmering in the northern and darkest part of the Coalsack appear more crimson than they would in the absence of this dust.
The first European to see this remarkable object was probably the Spanish navigator and explorer Vincente Yanez Pinzon when he sailed to the South American coast in 1499. The Coalsack earned the nickname "Black Magellanic Cloud” in the 16th century, apparently rivaling the prominence of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, the two dwarf irregular galaxies that shine brightly in the skies of the Southern Hemisphere. The Incas tell that the god Ataguchu, in a fit of temper, kicked the Milky Way and a fragment flew off, forming the Small Magellanic Cloud where it landed on the sky, and leaving the black mark of the Coalsack behind. Beware of Inca gods in a bad mood!

This image from the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope shows part of the huge cloud of dust and gas known as the Coalsack Nebula. The dust in this nebula absorbs and scatters the light from background stars.

The Coalsack in the constellation of Crux is one of the most prominent dark nebulae visible to the unaided eye. A beautiful sight in the southern sky, the Coalsack casts a dark silhouette against the Milky Way’s bright stripe of stars. The Coalsack is located approximately 600 light-years away from Earth.

Shining in the southern sky, the four bright stars portrayed in the left part of this image represent a useful orientation mark which helps identifying the South Celestial Pole. Because of the rather distinctive asterism they form, these stars have been officially classified as the Crux constellation, or the Southern Cross.
The vast dark cloud, visible in the lower part of the image, is usually referred to as the Coalsack Nebula; it also has a preeminent role in the Australian Aboriginal culture, representing the head of an emu in the traditional constellation of the "Emu in the Sky".
The ruddy object glowing in the upper part of the image owes its color to the blaze of hydrogen gas. Catalogued as IC 2948, this emission nebula hosts a sparkling cluster of young stars.

Best for last imho...
This image shows a view of part of the southern hemisphere view of the Milky Way, around the constellations of Centaurus, Crux, and Carina. In the center of the image, the majestic Southern Cross (Crux) constellation takes the central stage with the dark Coalsack Nebula close by. On the left, the brightest stars of Centaurus can be seen with their typical colors. The brighter one is Alpha Centauri, one of the closest stars to our Sun. The right part of the view belongs to the prominent Carina Nebula, one of the most significant of its type in the whole sky.

 

[NYC_Frank]

Milky Way photo taken on the ice at Lake Elton, a salt lake in Volgograd Oblast, Russia, near the border with Kazakhstan. It has an area of 152 km² and is from 0.5 to 0.7 m deep ... love this shot

 

[CrazyDiamond]

These are awesome to zoom in on lol...

This gorgeous island universe lies about 85 million light-years distant in the southern constellation Fornax. Inhabited by young blue star clusters, the tightly wound spiral arms of NGC 1350 seem to join in a circle around the galaxy's large, bright nucleus, giving it the appearance of a cosmic eye. In fact, NGC 1350 is about 130,000 light-years across. That makes it as large or slightly larger than the Milky Way. For earth-based astronomers, NGC 1350 is seen on the outskirts of the Fornax cluster of galaxies, but its estimated distance suggests that it is not itself a cluster member. Of course, the bright spiky stars in the foreground of this telescopic field of view are members of our own spiral Milky Way galaxy.

If our Sun were part of this star cluster, the night sky would glow like a jewel box of bright stars. This cluster, known as M53 and cataloged as NGC 5024, is one of about 250 globular clusters that survive in our Galaxy. Most of the stars in M53 are older and redder than our Sun, but some enigmatic stars appear to be bluer and younger. These young stars might contradict the hypothesis that all the stars in M53 formed at nearly the same time. These unusual stars are known as blue stragglers and are unusually common in M53. After much debate, blue stragglers are now thought to be stars rejuvenated by fresh matter falling in from a binary star companion. By analyzing pictures of globular clusters like the featured image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers use the abundance of stars like blue stragglers to help determine the age of the globular cluster and hence a limit on the age of the universe. M53, visible with a binoculars towards the constellation of Bernice's Hair (Coma Berenices), contains over 250,000 stars and is one of the furthest globulars from the center of our Galaxy.

Stars can be like artists. With interstellar gas as a canvas, a massive and tumultuous Wolf-Rayet star has created the picturesque ruffled half-circular filaments called WR23, on the image left. Additionally, the winds and radiation from a small cluster of stars, NGC 3324, have sculpted a 35 light year cavity on the upper right, with its right side appearing as a recognizable face in profile. This region's popular name is the Gabriela Mistral Nebula for the famous Chilean poet. Together, these interstellar clouds lie about 8,000 light-years away in the Great Carina Nebula, a complex stellar neighborhood harboring numerous clouds of gas and dust rich with imagination inspiring shapes. The featured telescopic view captures these nebula's characteristic emission from ionized sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms mapped to the red, green, and blue hues.

Would the Rosette Nebula by any other name look as sweet? The bland New General Catalog designation of NGC 2237 doesn't appear to diminish the appearance of this flowery emission nebula, at the top of the image, atop a long stem of glowing hydrogen gas. Inside the nebula lies an open cluster of bright young stars designated NGC 2244. These stars formed about four million years ago from the nebular material and their stellar winds are clearing a hole in the nebula's center, insulated by a layer of dust and hot gas. Ultraviolet light from the hot cluster stars causes the surrounding nebula to glow. The Rosette Nebula spans about 100 light-years across, lies about 5000 light-years away, and can be seen with a small telescope towards the constellation of the Unicorn (Monoceros).

The tip of the "wing" of the Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy is dazzling in this 2013 view from NASA's Great Observatories. The Small Magellanic Cloud, or SMC, is a small galaxy about 200,000 light-years way that orbits our own Milky Way spiral galaxy.
The colors represent wavelengths of light across a broad spectrum. X-rays from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory are shown in purple; visible-light from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is colored red, green and blue; and infrared observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope are also represented in red.
The spiral galaxy seen in the lower corner is actually behind this nebula. Other distant galaxies located hundreds of millions of light-years or more away can be seen sprinkled around the edge of the image.
The SMC is one of the Milky Way's closest galactic neighbors. Even though it is a small, or so-called dwarf galaxy, the SMC is so bright that it is visible to the unaided eye from the Southern Hemisphere and near the equator. Many navigators, including Ferdinand Magellan who lends his name to the SMC, used it to help find their way across the oceans.

 

[Greenteam]

Looking forward to watch the live landing coverage of the Perseverance Mars Rover.
For those who are interested:

NASA Live - NASA

NASA live: Follow live television broadcasts on NASA+, the agency's streaming service, and NASA's social media channels with this schedule of upcoming live events including news briefings, launches and landings.

www.nasa.gov

 

[CrazyDiamond]

Very much looking forward to this, the helicopter, and hopefully a successful SN10 landing.

 

[CrazyDiamond]

Success on landing!!! Awesome job JPL/NASA!

 

[cybrguy]

First Photo!!!!

 

[cybrguy]

Couple more...

That last one is from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and the inset shows Perseverance still unseperated and dropping by parachute.

 

[cybrguy]

I was gonna add this to the post above, but I think it deserves a post of it's own. Wow. Just Wow.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1362814591940648960

 

[Bazinga]

Please do not post photos of Uranas.

 

[CrazyDiamond]

Slung beneath its rocket powered descent stage Perseverance hangs only a few meters above the martian surface, captured here moments before its February 18 touchdown on the Red Planet. The breath-taking view followed an intense seven minute trip from the top of the martian atmosphere. Part of a high resolution video, the picture was taken from the descent stage itself during the final skycrane landing maneuver. Three taut mechanical cables about 7 meters long are visible lowering Perseverance, along with an electrical umbilical connection feeding signals (like this image), to a computer on board the car-sized rover. Below Perseverance streamers of martian dust are kicked-up from the surface by the descent rocket engines. Immediately after touchdown, the cables were released allowing the descent stage to fly to a safe distance before exhausting its fuel as planned.

The constellation of Orion (The Hunter) is one of the most recognizable collections of stars in the night sky. We have noted Orion’s prominent stars for tens of thousands of years at least, and likely far longer. Chinese astronomers called it 参宿 or Shēn, literally “three stars”, for its three bright dots (which form the Hunter’s belt). The ancient Egyptians regarded it as the gods Sah and Sopdet, manifestations of Osiris and Isis, respectively, whereas Greek astronomers saw a brave hunter — the eponymous Orion — with his sword above his head, ready to strike.
Mythology aside, Orion is a fascinating patch of sky. This image, from ESO's Very Large Telescope, shows a reflection nebula nestled at the heart of the constellation — NGC 2023. Located close to the well-known Horsehead and Flame Nebulae, NGC 2023 lurks about 1500 light-years away from Earth, and is one of the largest reflection nebulae in the sky.
Reflection nebulae are clouds of interstellar dust that reflect the light from nearby or internal sources, like fog around a car headlight. NGC 2023 is illuminated by a massive young star named HD 37903. The star is extremely hot — several times hotter than the Sun — and its bright blue-white light causes NGC 2023’s milky glow. Such nebulae are often the birthplaces of stars, and contain a clumpy distribution of gas that’s significantly denser than the surrounding medium. Under the influence of gravity, these clumps attract one another and merge, eventually creating a new star. In a few million years time, Orion's Belt may gain a new star!

Hidden in one of the darkest corners of the Orion constellation, this Cosmic Bat is spreading its hazy wings through interstellar space two thousand light-years away. It is illuminated by the young stars nestled in its core — despite being shrouded by opaque clouds of dust, their bright rays still illuminate the nebula. Too dim to be discerned by the naked eye, NGC 1788 reveals its soft colors to ESO's Very Large Telescope in this image — the most detailed to date.

This dazzling region of newly-forming stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) was captured by the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. The relatively small amount of dust in the LMC and MUSE’s acute vision allowed intricate details of the region to be picked out in visible light.

This first light image from the Europa telescope at the SPECULOOS Southern Observatory (SSO) shows M83, the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy. M83 is a picturesque and often-imaged galaxy — this object was also a first light image the SPECULOOS prototype telescope, TRAPPIST-South at ESO’s La Silla Observatory.
The SSO is installed at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in the vast Atacama Desert, Chile, and consists of four 1-metre planet-hunting telescopes. The project’s telescopes are named after Jupiter’s Galilean moons, and are neighbors of ESO's Very Large Telescope and VISTA . SPECULOOS will focus on detecting Earth-sized planets orbiting nearby ultra-cool stars and brown dwarfs.

This first light image from the Europa telescope at the SPECULOOS Southern Observatory (SSO) shows the heart of the Carina Nebula.

 

[CrazyDiamond]

A quick one since I just saw this....

If you didn’t know any better, you could be forgiven for thinking that the image is a map of the sky showing thousands of stars. In reality however, each of those white dots is an active supermassive black hole in its own galaxy.
Taken by an international team of astronomers using LOFAR – a Europe-wide network of state-of-the-art telescopes used to observe the Universe in unprecedented detail at low radio frequencies – the map shows 25,000 supermassive black holes in just 4 percent of the northern half of the sky.

And another just cuz...

In the heart of the Rosette Nebula lies a bright open cluster of stars that lights up the nebula. The stars of NGC 2244 formed from the surrounding gas only a few million years ago. The featured image taken in January using multiple exposures and very specific colors of Sulfur (shaded red), Hydrogen (green), and Oxygen (blue), captures the central region in tremendous detail. A hot wind of particles streams away from the cluster stars and contributes to an already complex menagerie of gas and dust filaments while slowly evacuating the cluster center. The Rosette Nebula's center measures about 50 light-years across, lies about 5,200 light-years away, and is visible with binoculars towards the constellation of the Unicorn (Monoceros).

 

[cybrguy]

Alright guys (and gals), there are a million new images, so I am just gonna give you a link to the raw images page and let you play at your oun speed. This is just crazy exciting for those of us who really geek out on this stuff!!!!

Raw Images | Multimedia – NASA Mars Exploration

View raw images taken by NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover.

mars.nasa.gov

Coming back to correct myself. Many of those images are from previous (and ongoing) missions from other spacecraft, especially Curiosity. This may be a better link for Mars 2020 specifically...

Images from the Mars Perseverance Rover - NASA

Raw images of Mars taken by the Perseverance rover and Ingenuity Mars helicopter in Jezero Crater.

mars.nasa.gov

 

[Ramahs]

 

[CrazyDiamond]

SN9 (rip) and SN10 captured near their Boca Chica, Texas launchpad last month posing below January's full Wolf Moon.

This is the first high-resolution, color image to be sent back by the Hazard Cameras on the underside of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover after its landing on Feb. 18, 2021.

This is the first 360-degree panorama taken by Mastcam-Z, a zoomable pair of cameras aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover. The panorama was stitched together on Earth from 142 individual images taken on Sol 3, the third Martian day of the mission (Feb. 21, 2021).

This wind-carved rock seen in first 360-degree panorama taken by the Mastcam-Z instrument shows just how much detail is captured by the camera systems.

Appearing as a bird in flight, with wings outstretched in the expanse of space, SU Aur, a star much younger and more massive than the Sun, is surrounded by a giant planet-forming disc. This image, captured by the SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), shows the disc around SU Aur in unprecedented detail, including the long dust trails connected to it. The star itself is obscured by the instrument’s coronagraph, a device that blocks the light from the central star to allow the less bright features around it to stand out.
The dust trails are composed of material from an encompassing nebula flowing into the disc. This nebula is likely the outcome of a collision between the star and a huge cloud of gas and dust, resulting in the unique shape of this planet-forming disc and the surrounding dust structure. A new study of SU Aur, which used the VLT and data from other telescopes, including the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array, showed that the nebula is still feeding material to the planet-forming disc. These new observations highlight how complex planet-forming discs can be.

A cluster of stars named Westerlund 1, one of the most massive young star clusters known to reside in the Milky Way, imaged by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, combined with data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

This image is a color composite made from exposures from the Digitized Sky Survey 2 (DSS2), and shows the region surrounding 2XMM J160050.7-514245, nicknamed “Apep”. The field of view is approximately 2.4 x 2.0 degrees.

 

[CrazyDiamond]

This wide-field image shows the surroundings of the red dwarf known as Barnard’s Star in the constellation of Ophiuchus (the Serpent-Bearer). This picture was created from material forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The center of the image (literally, the tiny multi-color dot pretty much dead center) shows Barnard’s Star captured in three different exposures. The star is the fastest moving star in the night sky and its large apparent motion can be seen as its position changes between successive observations — shown in red, yellow and blue.

This vivid picture of an active star forming region — NGC 2467, otherwise known as the Skull and Crossbones nebula — is as sinister as it is beautiful. This image of dust, gas and bright young stars, gravitationally bound into the form of a grinning skull, was captured with the FORS instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT).

Another image of NGC 2467

This colorful image shows a part of the Rosette Nebula (a different image of this nebula is a few posts back) in the constellation of Monoceros (The Unicorn). It is an emission nebula, composed of clouds of gas that are made to glow by the radiation emanating from stars within. The Rosette Nebula is a fairly typical example of an emission nebula — but typical does not mean boring! Nebulae are some of the most beautiful celestial objects out there, and they frequently show up spectacularly in images taken by astronomical telescopes, as seen here.
In nebula such as this, gas and dust are combining to produce a new generation of stars. Initially these newly-formed stars are shrouded in the dusty clouds that gave them birth, and cannot be seen in visible light. But after a while they blow away the denser material and their powerful radiation pours out to ionise the surrounding gas, causing it to glow brightly. These elements are all present in this image — the mixture of glowing gas and dark dust has been sculpted into complex patterns on the sky by the stellar radiation, like smoke around a fire.

This wider-area image around the elliptical galaxy NGC 5018 offers a different perspective on the cosmic vastness. If seen with the unaided eye it will look almost empty. Here the extremely sensitive detectors of the VST have captured a myriad of stars, galaxies, and even a few errant asteroids crossing this area of the sky during the long exposures need to obtain the image.

This deep image of the area of sky around the elliptical galaxy NGC 5018 offers a spectacular view of its tenuous streams of stars and gas. These delicate features are hallmarks of galactic interactions, and provide vital clues to the structure and dynamics of early-type galaxies.