Celebrate Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month
Honor STEM leaders within the Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities with this compilation of online stories and resources from SWE. Source
The Surface of Venus from Venera 14
Photo of the Day If you could stand on Venus -- what would you see? Pictured is the view from Venera 14, a robotic Soviet lander which parachuted and air-braked down through the thick Venusian atmosphere in March of 1982. The desolate landscape it saw included flat rocks, vast empty terrain, and a featureless [...]
Yogi and Friends in 3D
Photo of the Day This picture from July 1997 shows a ramp from the Pathfinder lander, the Sojourner robot rover, deflated landing airbags, a couch, Barnacle Bill and Yogi Rock appear together in this 3D stereo view of the surface of Mars. Barnacle Bill is the rock just left of the house cat-sized, solar-paneled [...]
SWENext Celebrates 10 Years of Inspiring the Next Generation
A decade of highlights from SWE’s efforts nurturing future STEM stars. Source
IXPE Explores a Black Hole Jet
Photo of the Day How do black holes create X-rays? Answering this long-standing question was significantly advanced recently with data taken by NASA’s IXPE satellite. X-rays cannot exit a black hole, but they can be created in the energetic environment nearby, in particular by a jet of particles moving outward. By observing X-ray light [...]
M1: The Incredible Expanding Crab
Photo of the Day Cataloged as M1, the Crab Nebula is the first on Charles Messier's famous list of things which are not comets. In fact, the Crab Nebula is now known to be a supernova remnant, an expanding cloud of debris from the death explosion of a massive star. The violent birth of [...]
Galaxy Wars: M81 versus M82
Photo of the Day In the upper left corner, surrounded by blue arms and dotted with red nebulas, is spiral galaxy M81. In the lower right corner, marked by a light central line and surrounded by red glowing gas, is irregular galaxy M82. This stunning vista shows these two mammoth galaxies locked in gravitational [...]
The Doubly Warped World of Binary Black Holes
Photo of the Day If one black hole looks strange, what about two? Light rays from accretion disks around a pair of orbiting supermassive black holes make their way through the warped space-time produced by extreme gravity in this detailed computer visualization. The simulated accretion disks have been given different false color schemes, red [...]
Military and Veterans Affinity Group Member Spotlight
As part of their spotlight month, the Military and Veterans Affinity Group (MAVAG) introduces one of their co-leads, Lisa Malmanger. Source
Spin up of a Supermassive Black Hole
Photo of the Day How fast can a black hole spin? If any object made of regular matter spins too fast -- it breaks apart. But a black hole might not be able to break apart -- and its maximum spin rate is really unknown. Theorists usually model rapidly rotating black holes with the [...]