Does the Sun return to the same spot on the sky every day at the same time? No. A more visual answer to that question is an analemma, a composite image taken from the same spot at the same time over the course of a year. The featured analemma was composed from images taken every few days at 4 pm near the village of Callanish in the Outer Hebrides in Scotland, UK. In the foreground are the Callanish Stones, a stone circle built around 2700 BC during humanity’s Bronze Age. It is not known if the placement of the Callanish Read more »

In the northern constellation of Coma Berenices lies the impressive Coma Cluster — a structure of over a thousand galaxies bound together by gravity. via NASA https://ift.tt/2xHRxZn

On the August 18 night flight from San Francisco to Zurich, a window seat offered this tantalizing view when curtains of light draped a colorful glow across the sky over Hudson Bay. Constructed by digitally stacking six short exposures made with a hand held camera, the scene records the shimmering aurora borealis or northern lights just as the approaching high altitude sunrise illuminated the northeastern horizon. It also caught the flash of a Perseid meteor streaking beneath the handle stars of the Big Dipper of the north. A few days past the meteor shower’s peak, its trail still points across Read more »

Medical students from The University of Texas Health Sciences Center (UTHealth) in Houston will speak with an astronaut aboard the International Space Station next week. from NASA https://ift.tt/2zmy5Du via IFTTT

Irregular galaxy NGC 55 is thought to be similar to the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). But while the LMC is about 180,000 light-years away and is a well known satellite of our own Milky Way Galaxy, NGC 55 is more like 6 million light-years distant and is a member of the Sculptor Galaxy Group. Classified as an irregular galaxy, in deep exposures the LMC itself resembles a barred disk galaxy. Spanning about 50,000 light-years, NGC 55 is seen nearly edge-on though, presenting a flattened, narrow profile in contrast with our face-on view of the LMC. Just as large star forming Read more »

Delayed due to inclement weather, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) now is targeting 1:52 p.m. EDT Saturday, Sept. 22 (2:52 a.m. Sept. 23 in Japan), for the launch of its unpiloted H-II Transfer Vehicle-7 (HTV-7) cargo spacecraft. from NASA https://ift.tt/2Dj5HG7 via IFTTT

The International Space Station deployed this small satellite for the NanoRacks-Remove Debris investigation, designed to demonstrate an approach to reduce the risks presented by orbital debris or „space junk.“ via NASA https://ift.tt/2PStm1w

Experts from NASA will preview two upcoming spacewalks outside the International Space Station to continue upgrades to the orbiting laboratory’s power system in a briefing at 2 p.m. EDT Thursday, Sept. 27, at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. from NASA https://ift.tt/2ODh5Og via IFTTT

Just over a month into its mission, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has returned first-light data from each of its four instrument suites. These early observations show that each of the instruments is working well. via NASA https://ift.tt/2PPG410

Inside the Cocoon Nebula is a newly developing cluster of stars. The cosmic Cocoon on the upper right also punctuates a long trail of obscuring interstellar dust clouds to its left. Cataloged as IC 5146, the beautiful nebula is nearly 15 light-years wide, located some 3,300 light years away toward the northern constellation of the Swan (Cygnus). Like other star forming regions, it stands out in red, glowing, hydrogen gas excited by young, hot stars and blue, dust-reflected starlight at the edge of a nearly invisible molecular cloud. In fact, the bright star near the center of this nebula is Read more »