I just saw the moon
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2024's final Supermoon rises tonight alongside meteor showers - The Weather Network
Keep your eyes peeled for the Full Beaver Moon and the possibility of seeing flashes of light from the Taurid and Leonid meteor showers this weekend.
bulllee
Agent Provocateur
florduh
Well-Known Member
Pluto is not a planet, but it hides something unusual: NASA finds water “and then some”
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has revealed interesting details about the largest moon of Pluto, Charon, with new chemicals on its surface.
www.ecoticias.com
We’re finding water everywhere in this goddamn solar system. Even Pluto. This tells me aliens definitely exist.
For the record, when the Aliens come, I’m gonna be a collaborator
Hail Xenu!!
bulllee
Agent Provocateur
December's Cold Moon is the last full moon of 2024. Here's when it peaks and how it got its name.
December's full moon, known as the Cold Moon, is the last full moon of 2024. Here's when it peaks and why it's called the Cold Moon.
www.cbsnews.com
NASA's solar probe flies closer to the sun than any human-made object ever
The Parker Solar Probe made a fiery dive close to the solar surface on Christmas Eve morning — a key milestone in its mission to study the sun’s outer atmosphere.
www.nbcnews.com
CrazyDiamond
HAL is a StarChild
Another, my God, it's full of stars, lol
After the Crab Nebula, this giant star cluster is the second entry in 18th century astronomer Charles Messier's famous list of things that are not comets. M2 is one of the largest globular star clusters now known to roam the halo of our Milky Way galaxy. Though Messier originally described it as a nebula without stars, this stunning Hubble image resolves stars across the cluster's central 40 light-years. Its population of stars numbers close to 150,000, concentrated within a total diameter of around 175 light-years. About 55,000 light-years distant toward the constellation Aquarius, this ancient denizen of the Milky Way, also known as NGC 7089, is 13 billion years old. An extended stellar debris stream, a signature of past gravitational tidal disruption, was recently found to be associated with Messier 2.
What's the closest active galaxy to planet Earth? That would be Centaurus A, cataloged as NGC 5128, which is only 12 million light-years distant. Forged in a collision of two otherwise normal galaxies, Centaurus A shows several distinctive features including a dark dust lane across its center, outer shells of stars and gas, and jets of particles shooting out from a supermassive black hole at its center. The featured image captures all of these in a composite series of visible light images totaling over 310 hours captured over the past 10 years with a home-built telescope operating in Auckland, New Zealand. The brightness of Cen A's center from low-energy radio waves to high-energy gamma rays underlies its designation as an active galaxy.
Looking like an emerging space cocoon, the Crescent Nebula, visible in the center of the featured image, was created by the brightest star in its center. A leading progenitor hypothesis has the Crescent Nebula beginning to form about 250,000 years ago. At that time, the massive central star had evolved to become a Wolf-Rayet star (WR 136), shedding its outer envelope in a strong stellar wind, ejecting the equivalent of our Sun's mass every 10,000 years. This wind impacted surrounding gas left over from a previous phase, compacting it into a series of complex shells, and lighting it up. The Crescent Nebula, also known as NGC 6888, lies about 4,700 light-years away in the constellation of Cygnus. Star WR 136 will probably undergo a supernova explosion sometime in the next million years.
One of the most identifiable nebulas in the sky, the Horsehead Nebula in Orion, is part of a large, dark, molecular cloud. Also known as Barnard 33, the unusual shape was first discovered on a photographic plate in the late 1800s. The red glow originates from hydrogen gas predominantly behind the nebula, ionized by the nearby bright star Sigma Orionis. The darkness of the Horsehead is caused mostly by thick dust, although the lower part of the Horsehead's neck casts a shadow to the left. Streams of gas leaving the nebula are funneled by a strong magnetic field. Bright spots in the Horsehead Nebula's base are young stars just in the process of forming. Light takes about 1,500 years to reach us from the Horsehead Nebula.
The large stellar association cataloged as NGC 206 is nestled within the dusty arms of the neighboring Andromeda galaxy along with the galaxy's pinkish star-forming regions. Also known as M31, the spiral galaxy is a mere 2.5 million light-years away. NGC 206 is found at the center of this sharp and detailed close-up of the southwestern extent of Andromeda's disk. The bright, blue stars of NGC 206 indicate its youth. In fact, its youngest massive stars are less than 10 million years old. Much larger than the open or galactic clusters of young stars in the disk of our Milky Way galaxy, NGC 206 spans about 4,000 light-years. That's comparable in size to the giant stellar nurseries NGC 604 in nearby spiral M33 and the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
This galaxy is unusual for how many stars it seems that you can see. Stars are so abundantly evident in this deep exposure of the spiral galaxy NGC 300 because so many of these stars are bright blue and grouped into resolvable bright star clusters. Additionally, NGC 300 is so clear because it is one of the closest spiral galaxies to Earth, as light takes only about 6 million years to get here. Of course, galaxies are composed of many more faint stars than bright, and even more of a galaxy's mass is attributed to unseen dark matter. NGC 300 spans nearly the same amount of sky as the full moon and is visible with a small telescope toward the southern constellation of the Sculptor. The featured image was captured in October from Rio Hurtado, Chile and is a composite of over 20 hours of exposure.
Perhaps the most famous star cluster on the sky, the bright stars of the Pleiades can be seen with the unaided eye even from the depths of a light-polluted city. With a long exposure from a dark location, though, the dust cloud surrounding the Pleiades star cluster becomes very evident. The featured 23-hour exposure, taken from Fagagna, Italy covers a sky area several times the size of the full moon. Also known as the Seven Sisters and M45, the Pleiades lies about 400 light years away toward the constellation of the Bull (Taurus). A common legend with a modern twist is that one of the brighter stars faded since the cluster was named, leaving only six of the sister stars visible to the unaided eye. The actual number of Pleiades stars visible, however, may be more or less than seven, depending on the darkness of the surrounding sky and the clarity of the observer's eyesight.
What excites the Heart Nebula? First, the large emission nebula on the upper left, catalogued as IC 1805, looks somewhat like a human heart. The nebula glows brightly in red light emitted by its most prominent element, hydrogen, but this long-exposure image was also blended with light emitted by sulfur (yellow) and oxygen (blue). In the center of the Heart Nebula are young stars from the open star cluster Melotte 15 that are eroding away several picturesque dust pillars with their atom-exciting energetic light and winds. The Heart Nebula is located about 7,500 light years away toward the constellation of Cassiopeia. This wide field image shows much more, though, including the Fishhead Nebula just below the Heart, a supernova remnant on the lower left, and three planetary nebulas on the image right. Taken over 57 nights, this image is so deep, though, that it clearly shows fainter long and complex filaments.
After the Crab Nebula, this giant star cluster is the second entry in 18th century astronomer Charles Messier's famous list of things that are not comets. M2 is one of the largest globular star clusters now known to roam the halo of our Milky Way galaxy. Though Messier originally described it as a nebula without stars, this stunning Hubble image resolves stars across the cluster's central 40 light-years. Its population of stars numbers close to 150,000, concentrated within a total diameter of around 175 light-years. About 55,000 light-years distant toward the constellation Aquarius, this ancient denizen of the Milky Way, also known as NGC 7089, is 13 billion years old. An extended stellar debris stream, a signature of past gravitational tidal disruption, was recently found to be associated with Messier 2.
What's the closest active galaxy to planet Earth? That would be Centaurus A, cataloged as NGC 5128, which is only 12 million light-years distant. Forged in a collision of two otherwise normal galaxies, Centaurus A shows several distinctive features including a dark dust lane across its center, outer shells of stars and gas, and jets of particles shooting out from a supermassive black hole at its center. The featured image captures all of these in a composite series of visible light images totaling over 310 hours captured over the past 10 years with a home-built telescope operating in Auckland, New Zealand. The brightness of Cen A's center from low-energy radio waves to high-energy gamma rays underlies its designation as an active galaxy.
Looking like an emerging space cocoon, the Crescent Nebula, visible in the center of the featured image, was created by the brightest star in its center. A leading progenitor hypothesis has the Crescent Nebula beginning to form about 250,000 years ago. At that time, the massive central star had evolved to become a Wolf-Rayet star (WR 136), shedding its outer envelope in a strong stellar wind, ejecting the equivalent of our Sun's mass every 10,000 years. This wind impacted surrounding gas left over from a previous phase, compacting it into a series of complex shells, and lighting it up. The Crescent Nebula, also known as NGC 6888, lies about 4,700 light-years away in the constellation of Cygnus. Star WR 136 will probably undergo a supernova explosion sometime in the next million years.
One of the most identifiable nebulas in the sky, the Horsehead Nebula in Orion, is part of a large, dark, molecular cloud. Also known as Barnard 33, the unusual shape was first discovered on a photographic plate in the late 1800s. The red glow originates from hydrogen gas predominantly behind the nebula, ionized by the nearby bright star Sigma Orionis. The darkness of the Horsehead is caused mostly by thick dust, although the lower part of the Horsehead's neck casts a shadow to the left. Streams of gas leaving the nebula are funneled by a strong magnetic field. Bright spots in the Horsehead Nebula's base are young stars just in the process of forming. Light takes about 1,500 years to reach us from the Horsehead Nebula.
The large stellar association cataloged as NGC 206 is nestled within the dusty arms of the neighboring Andromeda galaxy along with the galaxy's pinkish star-forming regions. Also known as M31, the spiral galaxy is a mere 2.5 million light-years away. NGC 206 is found at the center of this sharp and detailed close-up of the southwestern extent of Andromeda's disk. The bright, blue stars of NGC 206 indicate its youth. In fact, its youngest massive stars are less than 10 million years old. Much larger than the open or galactic clusters of young stars in the disk of our Milky Way galaxy, NGC 206 spans about 4,000 light-years. That's comparable in size to the giant stellar nurseries NGC 604 in nearby spiral M33 and the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
This galaxy is unusual for how many stars it seems that you can see. Stars are so abundantly evident in this deep exposure of the spiral galaxy NGC 300 because so many of these stars are bright blue and grouped into resolvable bright star clusters. Additionally, NGC 300 is so clear because it is one of the closest spiral galaxies to Earth, as light takes only about 6 million years to get here. Of course, galaxies are composed of many more faint stars than bright, and even more of a galaxy's mass is attributed to unseen dark matter. NGC 300 spans nearly the same amount of sky as the full moon and is visible with a small telescope toward the southern constellation of the Sculptor. The featured image was captured in October from Rio Hurtado, Chile and is a composite of over 20 hours of exposure.
Perhaps the most famous star cluster on the sky, the bright stars of the Pleiades can be seen with the unaided eye even from the depths of a light-polluted city. With a long exposure from a dark location, though, the dust cloud surrounding the Pleiades star cluster becomes very evident. The featured 23-hour exposure, taken from Fagagna, Italy covers a sky area several times the size of the full moon. Also known as the Seven Sisters and M45, the Pleiades lies about 400 light years away toward the constellation of the Bull (Taurus). A common legend with a modern twist is that one of the brighter stars faded since the cluster was named, leaving only six of the sister stars visible to the unaided eye. The actual number of Pleiades stars visible, however, may be more or less than seven, depending on the darkness of the surrounding sky and the clarity of the observer's eyesight.
What excites the Heart Nebula? First, the large emission nebula on the upper left, catalogued as IC 1805, looks somewhat like a human heart. The nebula glows brightly in red light emitted by its most prominent element, hydrogen, but this long-exposure image was also blended with light emitted by sulfur (yellow) and oxygen (blue). In the center of the Heart Nebula are young stars from the open star cluster Melotte 15 that are eroding away several picturesque dust pillars with their atom-exciting energetic light and winds. The Heart Nebula is located about 7,500 light years away toward the constellation of Cassiopeia. This wide field image shows much more, though, including the Fishhead Nebula just below the Heart, a supernova remnant on the lower left, and three planetary nebulas on the image right. Taken over 57 nights, this image is so deep, though, that it clearly shows fainter long and complex filaments.
Spectacular fireball seen from Pensacola to Missouri as satellite re-enters atmosphere
A number of viewers took to social media about a streak of light moving through the sky last night.
NYC_Frank
"A man with no vices is a man with no virtues"
As described in one of the replies ro this post, this georgeous southern hemisphere nebula looks like the rendition below of a general in Genghis Khan's army, who became a master of the horse and bow that made the Mongolian army so formidable.
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CANtalk
Well-Known Member
CrazyDiamond
HAL is a StarChild
The closest star system to the Sun is the Alpha Centauri system. Of the three stars in the system, the dimmest -- called Proxima Centauri -- is actually the nearest star. The bright stars Alpha Centauri A and B form a close binary as they are separated by only 23 times the Earth- Sun distance - slightly greater than the distance between Uranus and the Sun. The Alphasystem is not visible in much of the northern hemisphere. Alpha Centauri A, also known as Rigil Kentaurus, is the brightest star in the constellation of Centaurus and is the fourth brightest star in the night sky. Sirius is the brightest even though it is more than twice as far away. By an exciting coincidence, Alpha Centauri A is the same type of star as our Sun, and Proxima Centauri is now known to have a potentially habitable exoplanet.
What do the following things have in common: a cone, the fur of a fox, and a Christmas tree? Answer: they all occur in the constellation of the Unicorn (Monoceros). Considered as a star forming region and cataloged as NGC 2264, the complex jumble of cosmic gas and dust is about 2,700 light-years distant and mixes reddish emission nebulae excited by energetic light from newborn stars with dark interstellar dust clouds. The featured image spans an angle larger than a full moon, covering over 50 light-years at the distance of NGC 2264. Its cast of cosmic characters includes the Fox Fur Nebula, whose convoluted pelt lies just to the left of the image center, bright variable star S Mon visible just to the right of the Fox Fur, and the Cone Nebula near the image top. With the Cone Nebula at the peak, the shape of the general glow of the region give it the nickname of the Christmas Tree Cluster, where stars are tree ornaments.
Viewed face-on, grand spiral galaxy NGC 5643 has a festive appearance in this colorful cosmic portrait. Some 55 million light-years distant, the galaxy extends for over 100,000 light-years, seen within the boundaries of the southern constellation Lupus. Its inner 40,000 light-years are shown in sharp detail in this composite of Hubble Space Telescope image data. The galaxy's magnificent spiral arms wind from a yellowish central region dominated by light from old stars, while the spiral arms themselves are traced by dust lanes, young blue stars and reddish star forming regions. The bright compact core of NGC 5643 is also known as a strong emitter of radio waves and X-rays. In fact, NGC 5643 is one of the closest examples of the Seyfert class of active galaxies, where vast amounts of dust and gas are thought to be falling into a central massive black hole.
What do you think this is? Here’s a clue: it's bigger than a bread box. Much bigger. The answer is that pictured NGC 4753 is a twisted disk galaxy, where unusual dark dust filaments provide clues about its history. No one is sure what happened, but a leading model holds that a relatively normal disk galaxy gravitationally ripped apart a dusty satellite galaxy while its precession distorted the plane of the accreted debris as it rotated. The cosmic collision is hypothesized to have started about a billion years ago. NGC 4753 is seen from the side, and possibly would look like a normal spiral galaxy from the top. The bright orange halo is composed of many older stars that might trace dark matter. The featured Hubble image was recently reprocessed to highlight ultraviolet and red-light emissions
Fittingly nicknamed the Dark Wolf Nebula, this cosmic cloud was captured in a 283-million-pixel image by the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. Located around 5300 light-years from Earth, the cold clouds of cosmic dust create the illusion of a wolf-like silhouette against a colorful backdrop of glowing gas clouds.
A close inspection of the featured time-lapse video will reveal a rocket rising to Earth orbit as seen from the International Space Station (ISS). The Russian Soyuz-FG rocket was launched in November 2018 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, carrying a Progress MS-10 (also 71P) module to bring needed supplies to the ISS. Highlights in the 90-second video (condensing about 15-minutes) include city lights and clouds visible on the Earth on the lower left, blue and gold bands of atmospheric airglow running diagonally across the center, and distant stars on the upper right that set behind the Earth. A lower stage can be seen falling back to Earth as the robotic supply ship fires its thrusters and begins to close on the ISS, a space laboratory that celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2023. Astronauts who live aboard the Earth-orbiting ISS conduct, among more practical duties, numerous science experiments that expand human knowledge and enable future commercial industry in low Earth orbit.
What do the following things have in common: a cone, the fur of a fox, and a Christmas tree? Answer: they all occur in the constellation of the Unicorn (Monoceros). Considered as a star forming region and cataloged as NGC 2264, the complex jumble of cosmic gas and dust is about 2,700 light-years distant and mixes reddish emission nebulae excited by energetic light from newborn stars with dark interstellar dust clouds. The featured image spans an angle larger than a full moon, covering over 50 light-years at the distance of NGC 2264. Its cast of cosmic characters includes the Fox Fur Nebula, whose convoluted pelt lies just to the left of the image center, bright variable star S Mon visible just to the right of the Fox Fur, and the Cone Nebula near the image top. With the Cone Nebula at the peak, the shape of the general glow of the region give it the nickname of the Christmas Tree Cluster, where stars are tree ornaments.
Viewed face-on, grand spiral galaxy NGC 5643 has a festive appearance in this colorful cosmic portrait. Some 55 million light-years distant, the galaxy extends for over 100,000 light-years, seen within the boundaries of the southern constellation Lupus. Its inner 40,000 light-years are shown in sharp detail in this composite of Hubble Space Telescope image data. The galaxy's magnificent spiral arms wind from a yellowish central region dominated by light from old stars, while the spiral arms themselves are traced by dust lanes, young blue stars and reddish star forming regions. The bright compact core of NGC 5643 is also known as a strong emitter of radio waves and X-rays. In fact, NGC 5643 is one of the closest examples of the Seyfert class of active galaxies, where vast amounts of dust and gas are thought to be falling into a central massive black hole.
What do you think this is? Here’s a clue: it's bigger than a bread box. Much bigger. The answer is that pictured NGC 4753 is a twisted disk galaxy, where unusual dark dust filaments provide clues about its history. No one is sure what happened, but a leading model holds that a relatively normal disk galaxy gravitationally ripped apart a dusty satellite galaxy while its precession distorted the plane of the accreted debris as it rotated. The cosmic collision is hypothesized to have started about a billion years ago. NGC 4753 is seen from the side, and possibly would look like a normal spiral galaxy from the top. The bright orange halo is composed of many older stars that might trace dark matter. The featured Hubble image was recently reprocessed to highlight ultraviolet and red-light emissions
Fittingly nicknamed the Dark Wolf Nebula, this cosmic cloud was captured in a 283-million-pixel image by the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. Located around 5300 light-years from Earth, the cold clouds of cosmic dust create the illusion of a wolf-like silhouette against a colorful backdrop of glowing gas clouds.
A close inspection of the featured time-lapse video will reveal a rocket rising to Earth orbit as seen from the International Space Station (ISS). The Russian Soyuz-FG rocket was launched in November 2018 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, carrying a Progress MS-10 (also 71P) module to bring needed supplies to the ISS. Highlights in the 90-second video (condensing about 15-minutes) include city lights and clouds visible on the Earth on the lower left, blue and gold bands of atmospheric airglow running diagonally across the center, and distant stars on the upper right that set behind the Earth. A lower stage can be seen falling back to Earth as the robotic supply ship fires its thrusters and begins to close on the ISS, a space laboratory that celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2023. Astronauts who live aboard the Earth-orbiting ISS conduct, among more practical duties, numerous science experiments that expand human knowledge and enable future commercial industry in low Earth orbit.
bulllee
Agent Provocateur
vapviking
Old & In the Way
Moon added to list of threatened cultural sites for first time
Potential looting and commercial trips pose risk to artefacts left by lunar landings, says World Monuments Fund
www.theguardian.com