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NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

This cosmic skyscape features glowing gas and dark dust clouds alongside the young stars of NGC 3572. A beautiful emission nebula and star cluster, it sails far southern skies within the nautical constellation Carina. Stars from NGC 3572 are toward top center in the telescopic frame that would measure about 100 light-years across at the cluster's estimated distance of 9,000 light-years. The visible interstellar gas and dust, shown in colors of the Hubble palette, is part of the star cluster's natal molecular cloud, itself cataloged as Gum 37. Dense streamers of material within the nebula, eroded by stellar winds and radiation, clearly trail away from the energetic young stars. They are likely sites of ongoing star formation with shapes reminiscent of the Tadpoles of IC 410 -- better known to northern skygazers. In the coming tens to hundreds of millions of years, gas and stars in the cluster will be dispersed though, by gravitational tides and by violent supernova explosions that end the short lives of the massive cluster stars.

Photo by Francis Bozon & Cecil Navick (AstroA. R. O.)

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is a neutrino detector located at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica. It was developed by the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Cmichel67, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Joseph de Maistre (1753 – 1821) French Philosopher, moralist writer, lawyer, diplomat, and magistrate. One of the forefathers of conservatism, Maistre advocated social hierarchy French monarchy in the period immediately following the French Revolution. He wrote On the Pope (1819) and Letters on the Spanish Inquisition.Despite his close personal and intellectual ties with France, Maistre was throughout his life a subject of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which he served as a member of the Savoy Senate, ambassador to the Russian Empire and minister of state to the court in Turin. More

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What is creating the strange texture of IC 418? Dubbed the Spirograph Nebula for its resemblance to drawings from a cyclical drawing tool, planetary nebula IC 418 shows patterns that are not well understood. Perhaps they are related to chaotic winds from the variable central star, which changes brightness unpredictably in just a few hours. By contrast, evidence indicates that only a few million years ago, IC 418 was probably a well-understood star similar to our Sun. Only a few thousand years ago, IC 418 was probably a common red giant star. Since running out of nuclear fuel, though, the outer envelope has begun expanding outward leaving a hot remnant core destined to become a white-dwarf star, visible in the image center. The light from the central core excites surrounding atoms in the nebula causing them to glow. IC 418 lies about 2000 light-years away and spans 0.3 light-years across. This false-color image taken from the Hubble Space Telescope reveals the unusual details.

Young boy feeding hay to a cow in a rice paddy field in Si Phan Don, Laos.

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

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

This stunning portrait of NGC 5335 was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. Some 170,000 light-years across and over 200 million light-years away toward the constellation Virgo, the magnificent spiral galaxy is seen face-on in Hubble's view. Within the galactic disk, loose streamers of star forming regions lie along the galaxy's flocculent spiral arms. But the most striking feature of NGC 5335 is its prominent central bar. Seen in about 30 percent of galaxies, including our Milky Way, bar structures are understood to channel material inward toward the galactic center, fueling star formation. Of course, distant background galaxies are easy to spot, scattered around the sharp Hubble image. Launched in 1990, Hubble is now celebrating its 35th year exploring the cosmos from orbit around planet Earth.

Fog around Pico do Itaguaré (Itaguaré Peak) as seen from Pico dos Marins (Marins Peak) in the Mantiqueira Mountains, Minas Gerais–São Paulo border, Brazil.

Acauã Heuruel Cabral, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Main belt asteroid 52246 Donaldjohanson is about 8 kilometers long and 3.5 kilometers across. On April 20, this sharp close-up of the asteroid was captured at a distance of about 1100 kilometers by the Lucy spacecraft's long range camera during its second asteroid encounter. Named after American paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson, discoverer of the Lucy hominid fossil, the elongated asteroid was likely formed about 150 million years ago from a gentle collision of two smaller bodies creating its characteristic contact binary shape. Launched in October of 2021, the Lucy spacecraft will continue its travels through the main asteroid belt in 2025, but is on its way to explore Jupiter's swarm of Trojan asteroids. Lucy is expected to encounter its first Trojan asteroid target, 3548 Eurybates, in August 2027.