Official Space is Awesome Thread

[Argonne69]

One of Webb’s latest images, a photo of a dark cloud called L1527 and the light emanating from a protostar at its core. L1527 is ~460 light-years away and is 0.3 light-years across. At its center is a protostar, a very young star that is still forming.

 

 

Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScl, J. DePasquale, A. Pagan, A.M. Koekemoer
 

[Argonne69]

Spiral galaxy M74, also known as the Phantom Galaxy, lies ~32 million light-years away in the constellation Pisces.

 

 

Image: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Chandar
 

[Argonne69]

Artemis 1 came within 80 miles of the lunar surface as it prepared to enter orbit around the Moon. A 2nd course correction is scheduled for this Friday, putting it into a retrograde orbit.

 

 

Image: NASA

 

 

Image: NASA

 

[Soloman1]

We certainly have a beautiful little planet.

[Argonne69]

Just now, Soloman1 said:

We certainly have a beautiful little planet.

 

And tiny. This photo was taken by Artemis 1 at its closest approach to the Moon.

 

 

Image: NASA

 

[Soloman1]

Thanks. I feel even more like a microscopically tiny blip in the grand  mystery of it all.

 

Oh no! M87 black hole is scaring me.

[Argonne69]

A few more close-ups of the lunar surface taken by Artemis 1 during its closest approach. Inhospitable rock.

 

 

Image: NASA

 

 

Image: NASA

 

[Argonne69]

Arp-Madore 417-391 is a galactic merger ~670 million light years away in the Eridanus constellation in the southern hemisphere. Gravity has distorted the two into a giant ring with their two cores side by side.

 

 

Image: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA, J. Dalcanton
 

 

Image: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA, J. Dalcanton
 

Edited November 27, 2022 by Argonne69

[Argonne69]

Artemis 1 captures a partial Earth eclipse as its orbit around the Moon takes it to the far side.

 

 

Image: NASA TV

 

[Argonne69]

Photographer Roi Levi captures the Orion constellation through the Northern Lights in Iceland.

 

 

Image: R. Levi

 

 

Image: R. Levi

 

Edited November 29, 2022 by Argonne69

[Argonne69]

Galaxy NGC 1097 is a barred spiral galaxy located 48 million light-years away in the constellation Fornax. 

 

 

Image: ESO/ERIS team

 

[Argonne69]

NASA released this video of the Artemis 1 launch that includes some great camera footage from the rocket.

 

 

Credit: NASA

 

[Argonne69]

A bubble of debris from a supernova, imaged with X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope. 

 

 

Image: NASA/CXC/GSFC/B.J. Williams et al., NASA/ESA/STScI
 

[Argonne69]

Orbiting 80 miles off the lunar surface, Artemis 1’s Orion capsule fired its main engine on Monday to slingshot around the moon and set a course for splashdown on December 11th in the Pacific Ocean. The spacecraft relayed home real-time views of the moon’s surface, the Sun, and a crescent Earth 250,000 miles away.

 

Image: NASA TV
 

[Argonne69]

HH 505, a Herbig-Haro object, is located ~1,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Orion. Herbig-Haro objects are young stars that blast twin superheated jets of ionized gas from their poles through surrounding bodies of dust and gas. HH objects are difficult to observe because the surrounding dust and gas absorb much of the visible light.

 

 

Image: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Bally, M.H. Özsaraç
 

[Argonne69]

ZW II 96 is a system of merging galaxies with a weird shape. It is located ~500 million light-years away in the constellation of Delphinus.

 

 

Image: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration and A. Evans
 

[Argonne69]

Globular cluster NGC 288 is ~28,700 light-years away. The cluster of stars are gravitationally bound together, and is ~10.6 billion years old.

 

 

Image: R. Gruendl, Dark Energy Survey
 

[Argonne69]

The Small Magellanic Cloud is a dwarf galaxy that’s located just 200,000 light-years away, which makes it one of the Milky Way’s nearest galaxies. The SMC contains hundreds of millions of stars, but this image shows a tiny fraction of them. It highlights a bright clump of stars that make up the open cluster NGC 376. The cluster is young, only about 28 million years old.

 

 

Image: NASA/ESA
 

[Argonne69]

Centaurus A, a galaxy 12 million light-years away. The galaxy is obscured by the bands of dust between it and he camera.

 

 

Image: CTIO/NOIRLab/DOE/NSF/AURA, M. Soraisam, T.A. Rector, M. Zamani, D. de Martin
 

[Argonne69]

The northern lights in Iceland. 

 

 

Image: A. Lopez Castro

 

[Argonne69]

The Sculptor Galaxy (NGC 253), also known as the Silver Dollar Galaxy, is one of the brightest galaxies visible in the night sky. It is located 13 million light-years away in the southern constellation Sculptor.

 

 

Image: Dark Energy Survey
 

[Argonne69]

DEM L 190, also known as LMC N49, is the brightest supernova remnant in the Large Magellanic Cloud. It lies ~160,000 light-years away in the constellation Dorado.

 

 

Image: ESA/Hubble & NASA, S. Kulkarni, Y. Chu
 

[Argonne69]

Another excellent view of the elliptical galaxy NGC 474. It is located ~100 million light-years from Earth. Measuring ~250,000 light-years across, NGC 474 is 2.5 times larger than the Milky Way.

 

 

Image: DES/DOE/Fermilab/NCSA & CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA, DES, J. Miller, T. Rector, M. Zamani and D. de Martin

 

A large, zoomable image can be found here: https://noirlab.edu/public/images/noirlab2106c/zoomable/

 

[Argonne69]

The barred spiral galaxy NGC 1465 in the Fornax cluster.

 

 

Image: Dark Energy Survey
 

[Argonne69]

A view of the Sun’s South Pole from the Solar Orbiter.

 

 

Image: ESA/NASA, Solar Orbiter, EUI Team
 

[Argonne69]

Two overlapping spiral galaxies more than a billion light-years from Earth give the illusion that they’re colliding. They’re really just overlapping visually.

 

 

Image: ESA/Hubble & NASA, W. Keel
 

[Argonne69]

A view of the Northern Lights taken from inside an ice cave at Alaska’s Castner Glacier.

 

 

Image: D. Erichsen
 

[Argonne69]

Spiral galaxy ESO 415-19 lies ~450 million light-years away. While the centre of this object resembles a regular spiral galaxy, long streams of stars stretch out from the galactic core like elongated spiral arms. These are tidal streams caused by some interaction in the galaxy’s past.

 

 

Image: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Dalcanton, Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA
 

[Argonne69]

South Korea’s first Moon mission caught a glimpse of Earth rising from behind the cratered surface of our moon. The Korean Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO), also known as Danuri, was 77 and 213 miles above the surface when snapping the two images.

 

 

Image: KARI
 

 

Image: KARI

 

[Argonne69]

Volcanic activity on Jupiter's moon Io, as seen by NASA’s Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper.

 

 

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM