These artist’s concepts depict NASA’s Orion spacecraft and SpaceX’s Starship human landing system test article during rendezvous and docking operations as part of NASA’s upcoming Artemis III demonstration mission in low Earth orbit. NASA is working with two American companies to develop the human landing systems that will safely transport astronauts from lunar orbit to [...]
Photo of the Day This sparkling, colorful gemstone is a spiral galaxy, NGC 300. It is one of the closest spiral galaxies to Earth, only about 6 million light-years away. But does it really look like this? Here is a more standard portrait of it. This unusual image combines the light from the stars [...]
Photo of the Day Is there an angry Sith using force lightning in the Tatacoa Desert? This is not science fiction, but a red sprite with multiple streamers! Ordinary lightning occurs when thundercloud particles collide, lose their electrons, and build up negative charge at the cloud bottom. The cloud’s negative charge repels negative charge [...]
Photo of the Day What's happening to galaxy NGC 474? The multiple layers of emission appear strangely complex given the relatively featureless appearance of the elliptical galaxy in less deep images. The cause of the shells is a topic of research, but they are possibly tidal tails related to debris left over from absorbing [...]
Photo of the Day This Cosmic Bat wishes you a happy Summerween! This mid-year celebration of Halloween transcends hemispheres, even though summer in the Northern hemisphere is winter in the South. Contrary to its eery aura, the Cosmic Bat Nebula (LDN 43), not to be confused with the Bat Nebula (NGC 6995), is a [...]
Photo of the Day What are these two bands in the sky? The more commonly seen band is on the left and is the central band of our Milky Way galaxy. Our Sun orbits in the disk of this spiral galaxy so that from inside, it appears as a band of comparable brightness all [...]
As an international student and woman in STEM, Jennifer Rodrigues tapped into her leadership skills through SWE and now mentors the next generation of engineers.Read more at All Together
Photo of the Day Why are parts of this asteroid's surface so smooth? The answer seems likely to do with the dynamics of an asteroid that is a loose pile of rubble rather than a solid rock. The unusual asteroid Itokawa was visited by the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa in 2005 which imaged and documented [...]
SWE leaders met with lawmakers and STEM policy partners to champion workforce reentry, education, and opportunities for women in engineering.Read more at All Together
Software engineer Shravya Boini reflects on why she started leaving a trail for the next engineer, how she found her voice, and why she hopes more women will write. Read more at All Together
