Magazine Posts

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Centered in this colorful cosmic canvas, NGC 2626 is a beautiful, bright, blue reflection nebula in the southern Milky Way. Next to an obscuring dust cloud and surrounded by reddish hydrogen emission from large H II region RCW 27 it lies within a complex of dusty molecular clouds known as the Vela Molecular Ridge. NGC 2626 is itself a cloud of interstellar dust reflecting blue light from the young hot embedded star visible within the nebula. But astronomical explorations reveal many other young stars and associated nebulae in the star-forming region. NGC 2626 is about 3,200 light-years away. At that distance this telescopic field of view would span about 30 light-years along the Vela Molecular Ridge.

Photo by Mike Selby

Late was our youth,
right from the start,
when we were young,
in affairs of the heart.

Time has passed,
we all played a part,
life was sweet,
in the affairs of the heart.

What happens now,
when we are apart,
at the end of life,
in affairs of the heart.

Life was a gift,
memories Alacarte,
another chapter,
in affairs of the heart.

Life was our pleasure,
our history and art,
we were all players,
in affairs of the heart.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Stars trace concentric arcs around the North Celestial Pole in this three hour long night sky composite, recorded with a digital camera fixed to a tripod on January 31, near Àger, Lleida, Spain. On that date Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) was near its northernmost declination in planet Earth's sky. That put the comet about 10 degrees from Earth's North Celestial Pole making the comet's position circumpolar, always above the horizon, from all locations on planet Earth at more than 10 degrees northern latitude. In the startrail image, the extension of Earth's axis of rotation into space is at the left. North star Polaris traces the short, bright, concentric arc less than a degree from the North Celestial Pole. The trail of Comet ZTF is indicated at the right, its apparent motion mostly reflecting Earth's rotation like the stars. But heading for its closest approach to planet Earth on February 1, the comet is also moving significantly with respect to the background stars. The diffuse greenish trail of Comet ZTF is an almost concentric arc mingled with startrails as it sweeps through the long-necked constellation Camelopardalis.

Photo by David Ibarra Gomez

"The Wiki Loves Earth photography competition celebrates the world’s natural heritage, encompassing everything from small parks to massive nature reserves. It asks photographers to dive into those areas to pick out a little slice of nature, whether mundane or extraordinary, and share it with the world."
This year’s winner comes from Portugal, where photographer Neide José Paixão framed Ilhéu de Cima through a cave entrance on a nearby island." Learn more about the 20 winning photographers and their work

Be proud of who you are
and the place you're from.
Our life always starts somewhere,
then it will succumb.

We grow older, day by day,
new events will become,
our life's experience and many
will meld together and be done.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

The 1970s are sometimes ignored by astronomers, like this beautiful grouping of reflection nebulae in Orion - NGC 1977, NGC 1975, and NGC 1973 - usually overlooked in favor of the substantial glow from the nearby stellar nursery better known as the Orion Nebula. Found along Orion's sword just north of the bright Orion Nebula complex, these reflection nebulae are also associated with Orion's giant molecular cloud about 1,500 light-years away, but are dominated by the characteristic blue color of interstellar dust reflecting light from hot young stars. In this sharp color image a portion of the Orion Nebula appears along the bottom border with the cluster of reflection nebulae at picture center. NGC 1977 stretches across the field just below center, separated from NGC 1973 (above right) and NGC 1975 (above left) by dark regions laced with faint red emission from hydrogen atoms. Taken together, the dark regions suggest the region's popular moniker, the Running Man Nebula. At the estimated distance of Orion's dusty molecular cloud this running man would be about 15 light-years across.

Photo by Daniel Stern

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Seven worlds orbit the ultracool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1. A mere 40 light-years away, many of the exoplanets were discovered in 2016 using the Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST) located in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, and later confirmed with telescope including NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The TRAPPIST-1 planets are likely all rocky and similar in size to Earth, and so compose one of the largest treasure troves of terrestrial planets ever detected around a single star. Because they orbit very close to their faint, tiny star they could also have regions where surface temperatures allow for the presence of ice or even liquid water, a key ingredient for life. Their tantalizing proximity to Earth makes them prime candidates for future telescopic explorations of the atmospheres of potentially habitable planets. All seven exoplanets appear in the featured illustration, which imagines a view from the most distant known world of this system, TRAPPIST-1h, as having a rocky landscape covered in ice. Meanwhile, in the imagined background, one of the system's inner planets crosses in front of the dim, orange, nearly Jupiter-sized parent star. Astrophysicists: Browse 3,000+ codes in the Astrophysics Source Code Library

Photo by Michael Carroll

When you write
and words spring forth,
it can be the most,
beautiful thing.

Rhyming is not essential.
If it happens, it does,
no worries, as free verse,
is a beautiful thing.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Comet ZTF has a distinctive shape. The now bright comet visiting the inner Solar System has been showing not only a common dust tail, ion tail, and green gas coma, but also an uncommonly distinctive antitail. The antitail does not actually lead the comet -- it is just that the head of the comet is seen superposed on part of the fanned-out and trailing dust tail. The giant dirty snowball that is Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) has now passed its closest to the Sun and tomorrow will pass its closest to the Earth. The main panel of the featured triple image shows how Comet ZTF looked last week to the unaided eye under a dark and clear sky over Cáceres, Spain. The top inset image shows how the comet looked through binoculars, while the lower inset shows how the comet looked through a small telescope. The comet is now visible all night long from northern latitudes but will surely fade from easy observation during the next few weeks. Comet ZTF Gallery: Notable Submissions to APOD

Photo by Javier CalderaMiguel Gracia

Photo credit: Alessio Soggetti -  Unsplash

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Globular clusters once ruled the Milky Way. Back in the old days, back when our Galaxy first formed, perhaps thousands of globular clusters roamed our Galaxy. Today, there are less than 200 left. Over the eons, many globular clusters were destroyed by repeated fateful encounters with each other or the Galactic center. Surviving relics are older than any Earth fossil, older than any other structures in our Galaxy, and limit the universe itself in raw age. There are few, if any, young globular clusters left in our Milky Way Galaxy because conditions are not ripe for more to form. The featured image shows a Hubble Space Telescope view of 13-billion year old NGC 6355, a surviving globular cluster currently passing near the Milky Way's center. Globular cluster stars are concentrated toward the image center and highlighted by bright blue stars. Most other stars in the frame are dimmer, redder, and just coincidently lie near the direction to NGC 6355.

Photo shared by Heather Cox Richardson from Letters from an American