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The Lobster Nebula: NGC 6357 (infrared view) | ESO VISTA Telescope
This image from the European Southern Observatory’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) telescope captures a celestial landscape of vast, glowing clouds of gas and tendrils of dust surrounding hot young stars. This infrared view revealed the stellar nursery known as NGC 6357 in a new light. It was taken as part of the VISTA Variables in the Vía Láctea (VVV) survey. It scanned the Milky Way in a bid to map our galaxy’s structure and explain how it formed.
The Elephant Trunk Nebula IC1396: Wide-field & close-up views
IC 1396, also known as the Elephant Trunk Nebula, is another region of recent star formation. Many stars in this area are less than a couple hundred thousand years old—very young in the grand scheme of astronomy, where stars live to be billions of years old! The hot young stars are in the process of ionizing and expelling the molecular hydrogen gas. At the same time, new stars are still being born in this nebula.
These images were taken as part of Advanced Observing Program (AOP) program at Kitt Peak Visitor Center during 2014.
View of Russian Cargo Spacecraft Rocket Launch | International Space Station
NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick: "Set my alarm and woke up in the middle my normal sleep period to capture this Прогресс cargo spacecraft launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. It felt pretty awesome to see another spaceship launching knowing it was coming to join us. Crew-9 is next!"
An unpiloted Russian Progress 89 cargo craft launched to the International Space Station on a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2024. After a two-day in-orbit journey to the station, the spacecraft delivered about three tons of food, fuel, and supplies to the International Space Station.
The Roscosmos spacecraft arrived at the aft port of the orbiting laboratory’s Zvezda Service module at 1:53 a.m. EDT, Saturday, Aug. 17. It will remain docked for approximately six months before departing for a re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere to dispose of trash loaded by the crew.
Image details: 340mm (50 to 500 lens), f7.1, ISO 500, 1/6400s
Roscosmos (Russia): Nikolai Chub, Alexander Grebenkin (Russia)
NASA: Tracy Dyson, Matthew Dominick, Mike Barrett, Jeanette Epps
NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore
An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada. The ISS has been the most politically complex space exploration program ever undertaken.
Learn more about the important research being operated on Station:
Aurora Borealis on a Hill near Stonehenge, England
Photographer Chris Kotsiopoulos: "This photo of the auroral display of May 10, 2024, was captured near Stonehenge, England. Almost the entire sky was filled with red and green colored rays and curtains. I stayed up all night admiring and photographing these arresting lights."
"I arrived in Stonehenge early, before sunset. As I set up my equipment to shoot star trails, I overheard people saying that a severe solar storm heading towards us could cause the elusive Northern lights to appear. I had no clue about it! Only by coincidence, I was there. I had never seen the Northern Lights. Experiencing nature’s most spectacular light show was always a dream of mine. I was excited thinking that even a faint and distant capture of the impressive Aurora Borealis would be perfect!"
"While chatting with a Stonehenge security guard, and shooting test shots towards the Northern horizon, we noticed a green tint in the sky at around 22.15. In the next 45 minutes almost the entire sky filled with colours. You could see these huge rays of light and colour painting the sky red and green. I stayed up all night capturing the Lights. I left Stonehenge and visited Wilton Windmill to add a few more photos to my collection."
Stonehenge is a prehistoric megalithic structure on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, two miles (3 km) west of Amesbury.
NASA's Europa Clipper Spacecraft: Solar Array Testing | Kennedy Space Center
Technicians tested deploying a set of massive solar arrays measuring about 46.5 feet (14.2 meters) long and about 13.5 feet (4.1 meters) high for NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft inside the agency’s Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2024. Once launched to study Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa, the solar arrays will fully extend to power the spacecraft to perform flybys to gather science and data to determine if the moon can support habitable conditions.
Europa Clipper—the agency’s largest spacecraft ever developed for a planetary mission—will span a total length of more than 100 feet and weigh 7,145 pounds without the inclusion of propellants. Europa Clipper is expected to launch to planet Jupiter in October 2024 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The spacecraft needs to survive a 1.6 billion-mile, six-year journey to Jupiter—and sophisticated enough to perform a detailed science investigation of Europa once it arrives at the Jupiter system in 2030.
Missions such as Europa Clipper contribute to the field of astrobiology, the interdisciplinary research on the variables and conditions of distant worlds that could harbor life as we know it. While Europa Clipper is not a life-detection mission, it will conduct detailed reconnaissance of Europa and investigate whether the icy moon, with its subsurface ocean, has the capability to support life.
Understanding Europa’s habitability will help scientists better understand how life developed on Earth and the potential for finding life beyond our planet.
Managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California, JPL leads the development of the Europa Clipper mission in partnership with APL for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. APL designed the main spacecraft body in collaboration with JPL and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, executes program management of the Europa Clipper mission.
Nebula RCW 106: Star Formation Region | ESO APEX & VLT
This image shows a red, cloudy region spanning across a cluttered backdrop of thousands of blue stars. Notice areas, including in the upper left and center of the image, that are highlighted with orange and yellow filaments.
The glowing red clouds seen in this picture shows dense gas regions where new stars are being born in the RCW 106 region. However, only 1% of this gas will actually go on to create stars, and astronomers do not know why this percentage is so low.
Star formation takes place when regions of these huge clouds of cold gas are able to clump together. Once they reach a critical density, they will collapse into newborn stars. An outstanding question is whether even denser regions can produce greater numbers of stars. Could this help to explain the 1% mystery?
New results from the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX), accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics, suggest this is not the case—denser regions are not more efficient at forming stars. This is perhaps explained by the way these denser clouds fragment into filamentary structures and cores where stars will form, but many questions remain unanswered. This picture highlights areas of interest. It imposes a red map of dense gas, imaged with the ArTéMiS camera at APEX, over an optical image taken with the VLT Survey Telescope.
While APEX continues to investigate this stellar mystery, we can expect to see many more stunning images like this.
Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)/M. Mattern et al.
Nebula RCW 106: Where to Find Newborn Stars | ESO VLT & APEX
This image shows a red, cloudy region spanning across a cluttered backdrop of thousands of blue stars. Notice areas, including in the upper left and center of the image, that are highlighted with orange and yellow filaments.
The glowing red clouds seen in this picture shows dense gas regions where new stars are being born in the RCW 106 region. However, only 1% of this gas will actually go on to create stars, and astronomers do not know why this percentage is so low.
Star formation takes place when regions of these huge clouds of cold gas are able to clump together. Once they reach a critical density, they will collapse into newborn stars. An outstanding question is whether even denser regions can produce greater numbers of stars. Could this help to explain the 1% mystery?
New results from the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX), accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics, suggest this is not the case—denser regions are not more efficient at forming stars. This is perhaps explained by the way these denser clouds fragment into filamentary structures and cores where stars will form, but many questions remain unanswered. This picture highlights areas of interest.
Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)/M. Mattern et al.
NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) next milestone is right around the corner as the cone-shaped launch vehicle stage adapter for NASA’s Artemis II mission prepares to make its way from the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
Standing 27.5 feet tall, the adapter plays a critical role by partially enclosing the rocket’s interim cryogenic propulsion stage, connecting it to the core stage below and the Orion stage adapter above.
Technicians with NASA and Teledyne Brown Engineering, LVSA lead contractor, work diligently to prepare the hardware before loading it onto NASA’s Pegasus barge for its delivery to the Space Coast. Stacking of the rocket will soon begin at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, marking a pivotal step towards the agency sending a crew of four astronauts around the Moon during Artemis II.
Mystery Solved: SpaceX Rocket Outgassing & Aurora over Denali National Park
Photographer Zach Goldberg: "We had no idea what [the] spiral [on] the horizon was while shooting aurora at Sheldon Mountain House in Denali National Park. This was April 2023, I think . . . "
For more than a year, Zach Goldberg had been wondering what he saw. The aurora photographer was camping in Denali National Park in April 2023 when, out of nowhere, a giant blue spiral pinwheeled across the night sky. "We had no idea what it was," says Goldberg. "Fortunately, we already had our cameras out for the auroras." This is what he saw . . .
Mystery solved: It was a "SpaceX spiral." On April 15, 2023, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg in California. It carried 51 small satellites to Earth-orbit, a mission known as Transporter-7. When the rocket's discarded upper stage passed over Alaska, it vented its unused fuel.
Spirals are a common side-effect of Transporter rideshare missions. Within these rockets, numerous satellites from various clients have different destinations. SpaceX must rotate the second stage for deployment. The de-orbit burn and fuel dump naturally spirals.
Denali National Park and Preserve, formerly known as Mount McKinley National Park, is a national park and preserve located in Interior Alaska, United States, centered on Denali, the highest mountain in North America.
Denali National Park and Preserve (U.S. National Park Service)
NASA Aerial Videographer: A Front Row Seat to Thrilling Flights
Thanks to NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center’s lead aerial videographer, Lori Losey, people can examples of what Lori has captured on NASA’s behalf over her 36-year career.
Join Lori in the back seat of an F-18 (and a few other aircraft) for an epic ride through the flights, the training, and the incredible experiences she’s seen in her efforts to capture NASA’s work in aeronautics. Finally, join NASA in our appreciation of all our videographers across the agency who put themselves in unbelievable places and positions to get the best shots to share with the world.
The NASA Neil A. Armstrong Flight Research Center (AFRC) is an aeronautical research center. Its primary campus is located inside Edwards Air Force Base in California and is considered NASA's premier site for aeronautical research.
Learn more about the Armstrong Flight Research Center (AFRC) in California:
North America & Pelican Nebulae + Star Deneb in Cygnus
The North America Nebula (NGC 7000 or Caldwell 20) is an emission nebula in Cygnus, close to the blue supergiant star Deneb. Its shape resembles North America. The Pelican Nebula (IC 5070 and IC 5067) is an H II region (interstellar atomic hydrogen that is ionized) associated with the North America Nebula.
Why Europe's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer Probe is Returning to Earth | ESA
The European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) returns to Earth on August 19–20, 2024, to complete the world's first Lunar-Earth gravity assist. Flight controllers will guide the spacecraft past the Moon and then Earth itself, ‘braking’ the spacecraft. This maneuver may seem counterintuitive but it will allow JUICE to take a shortcut via Venus on its way to Jupiter.
JUICE has already traveled more than a billion km to the giant planet. However, it still has a long way to go although Jupiter is on average ‘just’ 800 million km away from Earth. Join us as we explain JUICE's eight-year journey to Jupiter.
Resting near the center of the northerly constellation Cepheus, high in the northern sky, is the barred spiral galaxy UGC 11861. It is located 69 million light-years away from Earth. This may seem a vast distance, but it is just right for Hubble to grab this majestic shot of the galaxy’s spiral arms and the short but brightly glowing bar in its center. Among the cloudy gases and the dark wisps of dust, this galaxy is actively forming new stars, visible in the glowing blue patches in its outer arms.
This activity has resulted in three supernova explosions being spotted in and nearby UGC 11861, in 1995, 1997 and 2011. The earlier two were both Type II supernovae, a kind that results from the collapse of a massive star at the end of its life. This Hubble image was made from data collected to study Type II supernovae and their environments.
Image Description: A spiral galaxy with two broad spiral arms wrapping around a large central region. It has a glowing white bar in the very center. Thin strands of dark dust lie over much of the galaxy. The arms have small and large patches of glowing blue light, emitted by new stars. The galaxy is on a dark background. In the foreground, bright stars with four points are dotted around.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Kilpatrick, N. Bartmann (ESA/Hubble)
Spiral Galaxy UGC 11861 in Cepheus | Hubble Space Telescope
Resting near the center of the northerly constellation Cepheus, high in the northern sky, is the barred spiral galaxy UGC 11861. It is located 69 million light-years away from Earth. This may seem a vast distance, but it is just right for Hubble to grab this majestic shot of the galaxy’s spiral arms and the short but brightly glowing bar in its center. Among the cloudy gases and the dark wisps of dust, this galaxy is actively forming new stars, visible in the glowing blue patches in its outer arms.
This activity has resulted in three supernova explosions being spotted in and nearby UGC 11861, in 1995, 1997 and 2011. The earlier two were both Type II supernovae, a kind that results from the collapse of a massive star at the end of its life. This Hubble image was made from data collected to study Type II supernovae and their environments.
Image Description: A spiral galaxy with two broad spiral arms wrapping around a large central region. It has a glowing white bar in the very center. Thin strands of dark dust lie over much of the galaxy. The arms have small and large patches of glowing blue light, emitted by new stars. The galaxy is on a dark background. In the foreground, bright stars with four points are dotted around.
Exploring Volcanoes with NASA’s GEODES Team | Goddard Space Flight Center
Close your eyes. Listen. Imagine lava seeping from the Earth, flowing and melting rock in its path. This is what inspired Ben Cosgrove’s new instrumental, “Volcano.” As an Artist-in-Residence, Cosgrove accompanied NASA’s Geophysical Exploration of the Dynamics and Evolution of the Solar System (GEODES) team to Lava Beds National Monument, where he participated in planetary science research to develop methods and tools to explore the surface of the Moon.
GEODES is a team within the NASA Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute. They investigate the Moon, near-Earth asteroids, and the moons of Mars with geophysics methods to enable the exploration of their surfaces. They test geophysics methods, including seismic and ground penetrating radar surveying, on Earth to study and refine how these methods can best be used on the lunar surface. In addition, based on field research and remote sensing data, they develop numerical and statistical models to characterize the surfaces of our defined planetary targets.
In this video, you will see members of the GEODES team operating instruments including ground-penetrating radar, seismometers, magnetometers, drones, and gravitometers in lunar-like landscapes in Hawaii, California, and Arizona. When combined, these instruments provide an overall picture of the surface structure and what is below. So sit back and let us transport you—from lava beds on the surface of the Earth and the Moon, to the volcanic depths of the solar system, and beyond.
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