Admire the beauty but fear the beast. The beauty is the aurora overhead, here taking the form of great green spiral, seen between picturesque clouds with the bright Moon to the side and stars in the background. The beast is the wave of charged particles that creates the aurora but might, one day, impair civilization. In 1859, following notable auroras seen all across the globe, a pulse of charged particles from a coronal mass ejection (CME) associated with a solar flare impacted Earth’s magnetosphere so forcefully that they created the Carrington Event. A relatively direct path between the Sun and Read more »

As the International Space Station orbited 265 miles above the southern Indian Ocean about halfway between Madagascar and Antarctica, the crew snapped this image of the Aurora Australis. via NASA https://go.nasa.gov/2IsToZH

A postcard from planet Earth, this springtime night skyscape looks over Alandan lake in the Alborz mountains. Taken after local midnight on April 17, the central Milky Way is rising over the region’s southeast horizon. Its luminous track of stars and nebulae along the plane of our galaxy are reflected in the mirror-like lake. The brightest celestial beacon mingled with the diffuse galactic starlight is Jupiter. Slightly dimmer, Saturn is below and left just above the mountains. As spring brought leaves to the trees and the galactic center to the northern night the photographer found it also gave frogs their Read more »

This Earth Day, April 22, NASA invites you to celebrate our beautiful home planet by participating in a global social media event and local events around the country. from NASA https://go.nasa.gov/2IIZdBx via IFTTT

NASA is giving university students an opportunity to interact with agency leadership, including NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, as well as astronauts abroad the International Space Station, during a live event 2 p.m. EDT Monday, April 29, at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. from NASA https://go.nasa.gov/2PjbjCL via IFTTT

A rainbow is seen at launch Pad-0A after the Northrop Grumman Antares rocket launched, Wednesday, April 17, 2019 at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. via NASA https://go.nasa.gov/2Gj96De

This group is popular in the northern spring. Famous as the Leo Triplet, the three magnificent galaxies gather in one field of view. Crowd pleasers when imaged with even modest telescopes, they can be introduced individually as NGC 3628 (left), M66 (bottom right), and M65 (top). All three are large spiral galaxies but they tend to look dissimilar because their galactic disks are tilted at different angles to our line of sight. NGC 3628, also known as the Hamburger Galaxy, is temptingly seen edge-on, with obscuring dust lanes cutting across its puffy galactic plane. The disks of M66 and M65 Read more »

Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft is on its way to the International Space Station with about 7,600 pounds of science investigations and cargo after launching at 4:46 p.m. EDT Wednesday from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. from NASA https://go.nasa.gov/2Xo3aQ3 via IFTTT

Officials from NASA and the private space company Blue Origin have signed an agreement that grants the company use of a historic test stand as the agency focuses on returning to the Moon and on to Mars, and America’s commercial space industry continues to grow. from NASA https://go.nasa.gov/2Gs1PCb via IFTTT

Mission engineers load the final cargo into the Cygnus resupply spacecraft onboard the Northrop Grumman Antares rocket, Tuesday, April 16, 2019. via NASA https://go.nasa.gov/2V6Z15N