Veröffentlicht am

Crew-4 Members Pose for Pre-Return Photo

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-4 members Jessica Watkins, Bob Hines, Kjell Lindgren, and Samantha Cristoforetti link arms for a portrait on Oct. 14, 2022, just before boarding the Dragon Freedom crew ship, undocking from the International Space Station, and returning to Earth, completing a 170-day space research mission. via NASA https://ift.tt/Hl4dKha
Veröffentlicht am

Pillars of Creation

A now famous picture from the Hubble Space Telescope featured these star forming columns of cold gas and dust light-years long inside M16, the Eagle Nebula, dubbed the Pillars of Creation. This James Webb Space Telescope NIRCam image expands Hubble’s exploration of that region in greater detail and depth inside the iconic stellar nursery. Particularly stunning in Webb’s near infrared view is the telltale reddish emission from knots of material undergoing gravitational collapse to form stars within the natal clouds. The Eagle Nebula is some 6,500 light-years distant. The larger bright emission nebula is itself an easy target for binoculars or small telescopes. M16 lies along the plane of our Milky Way galaxy in a nebula rich part of the sky, toward the split constellation Serpens Cauda (the tail of the snake). via NASA https://ift.tt/K7rcgMG
Veröffentlicht am

NASA to Discuss Science on Next Northrop Grumman Space Station Mission

NASA will host a media teleconference at 11 a.m. EDT on Tuesday, Oct. 25, to discuss the next science investigations, technology demonstrations, crew supplies, and hardware bound for the International Space Station aboard Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft on the company’s 18th commercial resupply mission for NASA.

from NASA https://ift.tt/DuGvW5k
via IFTTT

Veröffentlicht am

Aerial Leaf Peeping in Adirondack Park

Our Operational Land Imager-2 on Landsat 9 acquired this vibrant image of deciduous trees and conifers in the Adirondack Mountains in northeast New York on Oct. 8, 2022. via NASA https://ift.tt/fIr7RBA
Veröffentlicht am

A Galaxy Beyond Stars, Gas, Dust

Do we dare believe our eyes? When we look at images of space, we often wonder whether they are „real“, and just as often the best answer varies. In this case, the scene appears much as our eyes would see it, because it was obtained using RGB (Red, Green, Blue) filters like the cone cells in our eyes, except collecting light for 19 hours, not a fraction of a second. The featured image was captured over six nights, using a 24-inch diameter telescope in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, in California, USA. The bright spiral galaxy at the center (NGC 7497) looks like it is being grasped by an eerie tendril of a space ghost, and therein lies the trick. The galaxy is actually 59 million light years away, while the nebulosity is MBM 54, less than one thousand light years away, making it one of the nearest cool clouds of gas and dust — galactic cirrus — within our own Milky Way Galaxy. Both are in the constellation of Pegasus, which can be seen high overhead from northern latitudes in the autumn. via NASA https://ift.tt/sxTRocp
Veröffentlicht am

Milky Way Auroral Flower

Could the stem of our Milky Way bloom into an auroral flower? No, not really, even though it may appear that way in today’s featured all-sky image. On the left, the central plane of our home galaxy extends from the horizon past the middle of the sky. On the right, an auroral oval also extends from the sky’s center — but is dominated by bright green-glowing oxygen. The two are not physically connected, because the aurora is relatively nearby, with the higher red parts occurring in Earth’s atmosphere only about 1000 kilometers high. In contrast, an average distance to the stars and nebulas we see in the Milky Way more like 1000 light-years away – 10 trillion times further. The featured image composite was taken in early October across a small lake in Abisko, northern Sweden. As our Sun’s magnetic field evolves into the active part of its 11-year cycle, auroras near both of Earth’s poles are sure to become more frequent. via NASA https://ift.tt/T3pnQXe
Veröffentlicht am

CORRECTION: Apollo Astronaut James McDivitt Dies at Age 93

Former NASA astronaut James A. McDivitt, who commanded the Gemini IV mission and flew around the Moon as the commander of Apollo 9, died Oct. 13. McDivitt passed away peacefully in his sleep surrounded by his family and friends in Tucson, Arizona. He was 93 years old.

from NASA https://ift.tt/yDgT48v
via IFTTT