Official Space is Awesome Thread

[Argonne69]

Dark dunes surrounding Mars' northern polar cap taken from by the Mars Odyssey orbiter's thermal emission imaging system instrument.

 

 

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
 

[Argonne69]

A composite image of Uranus shows X-rays that astronomers have detected being emitted (the X-rays emissions are depicted in pinkish purple).

 

 

Image: X-ray: NASA/CXO/University College London/W. Dunn et al; Optical: W.M. Keck Observatory
 

[Argonne69]

NGC 1947 is located in the Dorado (Dolphinfish) constellation ~40 million light-years away.

 

 

Image: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Rosario; Acknowledgment: L. Shatz
 

[Argonne69]

The asteroid Gault, with streaks of dust stretching out half a million miles behind it.

 

 

Image: NASA, ESA, K. Meech and J. Kleyna (University of Hawaii), and O. Hainaut (European Southern Observatory)

 

[Argonne69]

Outbursts from the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, imaged by the Rosetta spacecraft between July and September 2015.

 

 

Image: OSIRIS: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA; NavCam: ESA/Rosetta/NavCam – CC BY-SA IGO 3.0
 

[Argonne69]

A supernova remnant, known as 1E 0102.2-7219, from a supernova explosion that occurred 1,700 years ago. The star that exploded in the event was from the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy to our own Milky Way Galaxy located about 200,000 light-years away.

 

Image: NASA, ESA, and J. Banovetz and D. Milisavljevic (Purdue University); CC BY 4.0
 

[Argonne69]

Seán Doran took 78,846 frames of data compiled by the Solar Dynamics Observatory over the course of a month and made this 4k time lapse of the Sun. Mesmerizing. 

 

 

Credit: NASA, Sean Doran 

 

Edited November 24, 2021 by Argonne69

[Argonne69]

NASA's Curiosity rover captures the sweeping views from high on Mars' Mount Sharp. Mount Sharp rises 18,000 feet (5.5 kilometers) from the floor of Gale Crater, a 96-mile-wide (154-kilometer) valley. At 7,500 feet (2.3 kilometers) tall, the crater rim is visible on the horizon at distances between 18 and 25 miles (30-40 km), according to NASA.

 

 

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech
 

 

 

[Argonne69]

The J1672 protostar resides in IC 2631, a reflection nebula located ~500 light-years away in the constellation of Chamaeleon. These protostars are part of the Chamaeleon Complex, a large region of gas and dust clouds that harbors numerous newborn and still-forming stars. Stars are born from clouds of gas and dust that collapse under their own gravitational attraction. As the cloud collapses, a dense, hot core forms and begins gathering dust and gas, creating an object called a protostar.

 

 

Image: NASA / ESA / Hubble / T. Megeath, University of Toledo / K. Stapelfeldt, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory / Gladys Kober, NASA / Catholic University of America.
 

[Argonne69]

The nebula NGC 689 in the constellation Dolphin. Astronomers estimate that the outer shell of the halo surrounding the nebula is ~28,000 years old, while the inner shell is only 4,800 years old. These different layers suggest the star at the center of this nebula died in several violent outbursts before collapsing into the dim white dwarf it is today.

 

 

Image: NASA, ESA, A. Hajian (University of Waterloo), H. Bond (Pennsylvania State University), and B. Balick (University of Washington); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
 

[Argonne69]

The Flame Nebula, a part of the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex in the constellation Orion, is ~1,400 light years away.

 

 

Image: NASA, ESA, and N. Da Rio (University of Virginia); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
 

[Argonne69]

A spectacular aurora as seen from the International Space Station last month.

 

 

Image: ESA/Thomas Pesquet
 

[Argonne69]

A dying carbon star, called CW Leonis, that's been changing its appearance over the past 15 years.  The star is the nearest carbon star to Earth, ~400 lightyears away. It is a Red Giant, a star that has run out of hydrogen in its core and is now collapsing on itself. Because the star was originally very massive, the pressure in its core is now so high that it fuses helium into carbon. 

 

 

Image: ESA/Hubble, NASA, and Toshiya Ueta (University of Denver), Hyosun Kim (KASI)
 

[Argonne69]

The planet Earth seen on the Autumnal Equinox on Wednesday (Sept. 22) from 22,000 miles away by a European weather forecasting satellite. The image, taken at 18:00 UTC, shows the planet split in equal halves along its north-south axis. While the eastern half, including most of Africa and Europe, is already submerged in the dark, the Atlantic Ocean and Americas are sunlight. 

On the equinox, which happens twice a year, the Earth's axis, tilted by 23.5 degrees with respect to the plane in which the planet orbits, appears perpendicular with respect to the sun. As a result of that, the Southern and Northern hemispheres receive the exact same amount of sunlight. The day is a perfect 12-hours long all over the globe on these two days.

 

 

Image: EUMETSAT

 

[Argonne69]

Very large stars end their lives with a literal bang in the form of a supernova, producing quite the fireworks display. The remains of the core collapse into a neutron star, or a black hole, depending on the mass of the star.

 

However, some stars have just the right mass that there is no explosion when they collapse. These failed supernova are generally referred to as unnova. 'Not as visually interesting as a supernova, but still pretty cool to think about. One minute the star is blazing away in the sky, and then the next it simply goes out like someone flipped a light switch off.

 

 

Image: Unknown source

 

[PixlPutterman]

2 hours ago, Argonne69 said:

Very large stars end their lives with a literal bang in the form of a supernova, producing quite the fireworks display. The remains of the core collapse into a neutron star, or a black hole, depending on the mass of the star.

 

However, some stars have just the right mass that there is no explosion when they collapse. These failed supernova are generally referred to as unnova. 'Not as visually interesting as a supernova, but still pretty cool to think about. One minute the star is blazing away in the sky, and then the next it simply goes out like someone flipped a light switch off.

 

 

Image: Unknown source

 

 

And with how far away those starts are........it could have happened millions if not billions of years ago.......and we just now are seeing it

[Argonne69]

1 hour ago, PixlPutterman said:

 

And with how far away those starts are........it could have happened millions if not billions of years ago.......and we just now are seeing it

 

Every star that we see in the night sky is in our Milky Way galaxy. The Milky Way is ~100,000 light-years wide. We're ~25,000 light years from the galaxy center, so the farthest star on the other side of the galaxy is roughly 75,000 light years away. We can't see these stars because there's a large amount of dust at the center of the galaxy that blocks our view. If we could see these stars, and one of them went supernova, it would take 75,000 years for the light to reach us.

 

Now, mixed in with the stars are faint blobs of light that until the 1920's were thought to be balls of gas and dust, aka nebula, that resided in our galaxy. Up to that point astronomers thought that everything in the visible universe was contained within a single galaxy, the Milky Way. Edwin Hubble blew that idea out of the water when he discovered that those blobs of light were actually galaxies themselves, and that they were millions or billions of light years away. In a near instant we went from a universe with a few billion stars and nebula to a universe with hundreds of trillions of galaxies like our own. Simply amazing. On top of that Hubble also discovered that those galaxies were all moving away from us. The further away they were the faster they were receding. If everything was moving away from us it meant that the universe was expanding. Rewind the expansion 13+ billion years and it supported the "wild" idea of a Big Bang, the birth of the universe. Albert Einstein didn't believe in the Big Bang, but instead believed that the universe was static. However, Hubble's discovery convinced Einstein that he was wrong. He called it his biggest mistake.

 

Now, many of the supernova that we see are in fact located in distant galaxies. A single star exploding puts out more light than the billions of other stars in its galaxy combined. Hard to grasp. So, you are indeed correct that a supernova that we see could have happened millions, or billions of years ago in a distant galaxy. The nearest large galaxy is Andromeda, which is 2.5 million light years away. The farthest galaxy we've seen to date is ~13 billion light years old, having been born just 400 million years after the big bang. 

 

[Argonne69]

Italy at night as seen from the International Space Station.

 

 

Image: Meghan McArthur
 

[Argonne69]

A neutron star lies at the center of supernova remnant RCW 103.

 

Image: X-ray: NASA/CXC/University of Amsterdam/N.Rea et al; Optical: DSS
 

[Argonne69]

Astronomers at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics tracked several stars that orbit the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A*. One of the stars, S29, made its closest approach to the black hole in May 2021. The star reach a speed of 5,431 mph. Knowing the orbits of the stars allowed them to calculate the mass of the black hole at 4.3 million times the mass of the Sun. They also fine-tuned the distance to Sagittarius A* (27,000 light-years away).

 

 

Image: ESO / GRAVITY Collaboration
 

[Argonne69]

A newly released image from Hubble of the spiral galaxy UGC 11537. The galaxy is 230 million light-years away in the constellation Aquila. The two bright stars in the center and lower left, along with a handful of other bright spots, are actually photobombers in our own Milky Way.

 

 

Image: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Seth.

 

Edited December 19, 2021 by Argonne69

[Argonne69]

The Juno orbiter captured this image showing two of Jupiter’s large rotating storms, captured on November 29, 2021. 

 

 

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS Image processing: Kevin M. Gill CC BY

 

[Argonne69]

Astronaut Thomas Marshburn captured this image of the International Space Station during a space walk in early December.

 

 

Image: NASA/Thomas Marshburn
 

[Argonne69]

I got a chance to visit the Kennedy Space Center last week. 'Great stuff.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Full photo set: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/oubpggrq0cxotyj/AADisHjGRCz-9reMcbw-8WQIa?dl=0

 

[Argonne69]

The James Webb Space Telescope was (finally) launched yesterday. Yea! It will take a month for the telescope to reach its final destination, a point 1 million miles from Earth, or roughly four times the distance to the Moon (L2). Along the way it will delicately unfold its primary mirror and solar shield, which allows it to operate at a temperature of -380 degrees F. If all goes well it will be fully operational in 6 months.

 

 

Image: NASA

 

 

 

Image: NASA

 

 

Image: NASA/GSFC

 

 

Image: NASA

 

Edited December 26, 2021 by Argonne69

[Argonne69]

Hubble's latest image of Jupiter. 'Wish my telescope was this good. Lol.

 

Image: NASA, ESA, A. Simon, M. H. Wong, J. DePasquale

[Argonne69]

Hubble's latest image of Saturn.

 

 

Image: NASA, ESA, A. Simon, M. H. Wong, A. Pagan

 

[Argonne69]

The ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) snapped this trio of Martian craters.

 

 

Image: ESA/Roscosmos/CaSSIS, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

 

Edited January 1, 2022 by Argonne69

[Argonne69]

Hubble's final photo of 2021, NGC 3568, a barred spiral galaxy roughly 57 million light-years from the Milky Way in the constellation Centaurus. In 2014 the light from a supernova explosion in NGC 3568 reached Earth. The four bright stars in the foreground are photobombers in our own Milky Way galaxy.

 

 

Image: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Sun

 

[Argonne69]

The supernova remnant N 63 A in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy, aka the Pac-Man nebula.

 

 

Image: NASA/ESA/HEIC, Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)