Photo of the Day This galaxy is unusual for how many stars it seems that you can see. Stars are so abundantly evident in this deep exposure of the spiral galaxy NGC 300 because so many of these stars are bright blue and grouped into resolvable bright star clusters. Additionally, NGC 300 is so [...]
Photo of the Day What color is the universe? More precisely, if the entire sky were smeared out, what color would the final mix be? This whimsical question came up when trying to determine what stars are commonplace in nearby galaxies. The answer, depicted here, is a conditionally perceived shade of beige. In computer [...]
Photo of the Day Winter and summer appear to come on a single night to this stunning little planet. It's planet Earth of course. The digitally mapped, nadir centered panorama covers 360x180 degrees and is composed of frames recorded during January and July from the Col du Galibier in the French Alps. Stars and [...]
NASA astronaut and Expedition 72 Flight Engineer Nick Hague services samples of the Arthrospira C micro-algae for incubation and analysis. The Expedition 72 crew is back to work following a day off yesterday to observe the Thanksgiving holiday. Space botany experiment prep and cargo operations topped Friday’s schedule aboard the International Space Station as three [...]
4 min read December’s Night Sky Notes: Spot the King of Planets by Kat Troche of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific Jupiter is our solar system’s undisputed king of the planets! Jupiter is bright and easy to spot from our vantage point on Earth, helped by its massive size and banded, reflective cloud [...]
Photo of the Day The large stellar association cataloged as NGC 206 is nestled within the dusty arms of the neighboring Andromeda galaxy along with the galaxy's pinkish star-forming regions. Also known as M31, the spiral galaxy is a mere 2.5 million light-years away. NGC 206 is found at the center of this sharp [...]
4 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Aaron Yazzie’s dream of being part of humanity’s exploration of space took him on a journey from his childhood home on the Navajo Nation to working at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California. His journey reflects not only his personal ambition, but [...]
The Thanksgiving holiday typically brings families and friends together in a celebration of common gratitude for all the good things that have happened during the previous year. People celebrate the holiday in various ways, with parades, football marathons, and attending services, but food remains the over-arching theme. For astronauts embarked on long-duration space missions, separation [...]
NASA astronauts (clockwise from bottom left) Nick Hague, Suni Williams, Butch Wilmore, and Don Pettit wish a Happy Thanksgiving in this video from the International Space Station. Credit: NASA/YouTube Advanced technology research into DNA-like nanomaterials, bacterial genetic analysis, and 3D printing kept the Expedition 72 crew busy the day before Thanksgiving. The International Space Station [...]
NASA On Nov. 30, 2002, NASA astronauts John Herrington (pictured) and Michael Lopez-Alegria performed the third and final spacewalk of the STS-113 mission. The goal of the mission was to install and activate the Port 1 Integrated Truss Assembly (P1). The first major component installed on the left side of the Station, the P1 truss [...]
