Magazine Posts

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

A gorgeous spiral galaxy, Messier 104 is famous for its nearly edge-on profile featuring a broad ring of obscuring dust lanes. Seen in silhouette against an extensive central bulge of stars, the swath of cosmic dust lends a broad brimmed hat-like appearance to the galaxy suggesting a more popular moniker, the Sombrero Galaxy. Also known as NGC 4594, the Sombrero galaxy can be seen across the spectrum and is host to a central supermassive black hole. About 50,000 light-years across and 28 million light-years away, M104 is one of the largest galaxies at the southern edge of the Virgo Galaxy Cluster. Still, the spiky foreground stars in this field of view lie well within our own Milky Way. This broad view of the well-known galaxy was processed to reveal M104's extended halo, as well as a faint tidal stellar stream. It was captured by the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the Blanco 4-meter telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory.

Hercules’ cudgel with Pieskowa Skała on the background. Ojców National Park, Southern Poland.

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

Mattie Stepanek (1990 - 2004) was an american poet who during his short life published seven best selling books of poetry and peace essays. Mattie Stepanek died at age 13. He became known as a peace advocate and motivational speaker. 

Mattie Stepanek Peace Foundation

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NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What do you see in this crystal ball? The featured image shows NGC 1514, known as the Crystal Ball Nebula, observed by the Gemini North telescope on Maunakea, in Hawai'i. NGC 1514 is 1,500 light-years away and was discovered by William Herschel in 1790. This planetary nebula is formed when a star becomes a red giant and ejects its outer gas layers. The ejected shell of gas is heated up by the core of the star to temperatures hotter than the surface of our Sun: that makes the gas shine, creating beautiful images like this one. The slightly asymmetrical shape of the Crystal Ball Nebula reveals a secret: the bright star in the center has a companion. As the two stars orbit each other with a period of about nine years, they shape the gas around them. In about 10,000 - 25,000 years the nebula will be dissipated by their stellar winds.

Female Jaguar in Mato Grosso, Brazil.

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

By Andrés Sanz on Unsplash

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What is a pair of headphones doing in the sky? Today’s image features the Headphone Nebula, also known as PK 164 +31.1 or Jones-Emberson 1. This planetary nebula, the remnant of a dying Sun-like star, faintly occupies an angular region of the Lynx constellation about 1/5th the diameter of the full moon. The red and blue-ish green colors trace hydrogen and oxygen atoms, respectively, that have been excited and ionized by the nebula's central white dwarf. The headphone shape, where two lobes of hydrogen puncture the inner region of oxygen, adds this object to a long list of oddly shaped nebulae. The morphology of such strange nebulae hint at the presence of a stellar or planetary companion, which can stir the material flowing out from the dying star. You can listen to Hubble and JWST sonifications of planetary nebulae through your very own headphones!

Photo by Bernard Miller Text: Keighley Rockcliffe (NASA GSFC, UMBC CSST, CRESST II)

Great Pond and Turkish Bath pavilion, Catherine Park, Pushkin town, Saint Petersburg, Russia.

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