Magazine Posts

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

This might look like a double-bladed lightsaber, but these two cosmic jets actually beam outward from a newborn star in a galaxy near you. Constructed from Hubble Space Telescope image data, the stunning scene spans about half a light-year across Herbig-Haro 24 (HH 24), some 1,300 light-years or 400 parsecs away in the stellar nurseries of the Orion B molecular cloud complex. Hidden from direct view, HH 24's central protostar is surrounded by cold dust and gas flattened into a rotating accretion disk. As material from the disk falls toward the young stellar object, it heats up. Opposing jets are blasted out along the system's rotation axis. Cutting through the region's interstellar matter, the narrow, energetic jets produce a series of glowing shock fronts along their path.

Bicycle parked in front of a graffitied building façade with doors, in a street near Kloveniersburgwal, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Basile Morin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Behold one of the most photogenic regions of the night sky, captured impressively. Featured, the band of our Milky Way Galaxy runs diagonally along the bottom-left corner, while the colorful Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex is visible just right of center and the large red circular Zeta Ophiuchi Nebula appears near the top. In general, red emanates from nebulas glowing in the light of excited hydrogen gas, while blue marks interstellar dust preferentially reflecting the light of bright young stars. Thick dust usually appears dark brown. Many iconic objects of the night sky appear, including (can you find them?) the bright star Antares, the globular star cluster M4, and the Blue Horsehead nebula. This wide field composite, taken over 17 hours, was captured from South Africa last June. Explore Your Universe: Random APOD Generator

Photo by Ireneusz Nowak

The window in a cafe in San Gimignano opens on Valdelsa, in Tuscany (Italy).

Rhododendrites, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What’s happening in the center of spiral galaxy NGC 2566? First, the eight rays that appear to be coming out of the center in the featured infrared image are not real — they are diffraction spikes caused by the mechanical structure of the Webb space telescope itself. The center of NGC 2566 is bright but not considered unusual, which means that it likely contains a supermassive black hole, although currently not very active. At only 76 million light years away, the light we see from NGC 2566 today left when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. The picturesque galaxy is close enough so that Earthly telescopes, including Webb and Hubble, can resolve the turbulent clouds of gas and dust where stars can form and so allows study of stellar evolution. NGC 2566, similar in size to our Milky Way Galaxy, is notable for its bright central bar and its prominent outer spiral arms.

Runners in tunnel. São Martinho do Porto, Portugal.

Alvesgaspar, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Jupiter is stranger than we knew. NASA's Juno spacecraft has now completed over 70 swoops past Jupiter as it moves around its highly elliptical orbit. Pictured from 2017, Jupiter is seen from below where, surprisingly, the horizontal bands that cover most of the planet disappear into swirls and complex patterns. A line of white oval clouds is visible nearer to the equator. Impressive results from Juno show that Jupiter's weather phenomena can extend deep below its cloud tops, that Jupiter's center has a core that is unexpectedly large and soft, and that Jupiter's magnetic field varies greatly with location. Although Juno is scheduled to keep orbiting Jupiter further into 2025, at some time the robotic spacecraft will be maneuvered to plunge into the giant planet. Jigsaw Jumble: Astronomy Puzzle of the Day

Photo by NASA, Juno, SwRI, MSSS; Processing & License: Gerald Eichstädt & Seán Doran

The Taras horizon landscape reserve at dawn in Cherkasy Oblast, Ukraine.

Original: Oleksandr Malyon Derivative work: Radomianin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.