Promoting science and technology education through spaceflight and weather balloons.

A Helix Nebula Deep Field

By |2025-07-29T13:44:28-04:00July 29th, 2025|Categories: NASA News, Uncategorized|Tags: , , , , , |

Photo of the Day Is the Helix Nebula looking at you? No, not in any biological sense, but it does look quite like an eye. The Helix Nebula is so named because it also appears that you are looking down the axis of a helix. In actuality, it is now understood to have a [...]

Cat’s Paw Nebula from Webb Space Telescope

By |2025-07-21T13:44:26-04:00July 21st, 2025|Categories: NASA News, Uncategorized|Tags: , , , , , |

Photo of the Day Nebulas are perhaps as famous for being identified with familiar shapes as perhaps cats are for getting into trouble. Still, no known cat could have created the vast Cat's Paw Nebula visible toward the constellation of the Scorpion (Scorpius). At 5,700 light years distant, Cat's Paw is an emission nebula [...]

The Rosette Nebula from DECam

By |2025-07-16T13:44:28-04:00July 16th, 2025|Categories: NASA News, Uncategorized|Tags: , , , , , |

Photo of the Day Would the Rosette Nebula by any other name look as sweet? The bland New General Catalog designation of NGC 2237 doesn't appear to diminish the appearance of this flowery emission nebula, as captured by the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the Blanco 4-meter telescope at the NSF's Cerro Tololo Inter-American [...]

Planetary Nebula Mz3: The Ant Nebula

By |2025-07-13T13:44:31-04:00July 13th, 2025|Categories: NASA News, Uncategorized|Tags: , , , , , |

Photo of the Day Why isn't this ant a big sphere? Planetary nebula Mz3 is being cast off by a star similar to our Sun that is, surely, round. Why then would the gas that is streaming away create an ant-shaped nebula that is distinctly not round? Clues might include the high 1000-kilometer per [...]

Veil Nebula: Wisps of an Ancient Supernova

By |2025-06-02T09:09:07-04:00June 2nd, 2025|Categories: NASA News, Uncategorized|Tags: , , , , , |

Photo of the Day Wisps like this are all that remain visible of a Milky Way star. About 7,000 years ago that star exploded in a supernova, leaving the Veil Nebula. At the time, the expanding cloud was likely as bright as a crescent Moon, remaining visible for weeks to people living at the [...]

NGC 1360: The Robin’s Egg Nebula

By |2025-05-14T09:09:05-04:00May 14th, 2025|Categories: NASA News, Uncategorized|Tags: , , , , , |

Photo of the Day This pretty nebula lies some 1,500 light-years away, its shape and color in this telescopic view reminiscent of a robin's egg. The cosmic cloud spans about 3 light-years, nestled securely within the boundaries of the southern constellation of the Furnace (Fornax). Recognized as a planetary nebula, egg-shaped NGC 1360 doesn't [...]

The Orion Nebula in Visible and Infrared

By |2025-04-20T09:09:08-04:00April 20th, 2025|Categories: NASA News, Uncategorized|Tags: , , , , , |

Photo of the Day The Great Nebula in Orion is a colorful place. Visible to the unaided eye, it appears as a small fuzzy patch in the constellation of Orion. Long exposure, multi-wavelength images like this, however, show the Orion Nebula to be a busy neighborhood of young stars, hot gas, and dark dust. [...]

Planetary Nebula NGC 1514 from Webb

By |2025-04-15T09:09:06-04:00April 15th, 2025|Categories: NASA News, Uncategorized|Tags: , , , , , |

Photo of the Day What happens when a star runs out of nuclear fuel? For stars like our Sun, the center condenses into a white dwarf while the outer atmosphere is expelled into space to appear as a planetary nebula. The expelled outer atmosphere of planetary nebula NGC 1514 appears to be a jumble [...]

Near to the Heart Nebula

By |2024-12-17T08:09:16-05:00December 17th, 2024|Categories: NASA News, Uncategorized|Tags: , , , , , |

Photo of the Day What excites the Heart Nebula? First, the large emission nebula on the upper left, catalogued as IC 1805, looks somewhat like a human heart. The nebula glows brightly in red light emitted by its most prominent element, hydrogen, but this long-exposure image was also blended with light emitted by sulfur [...]

M42: The Great Nebula in Orion

By |2024-11-04T08:09:14-05:00November 4th, 2024|Categories: NASA News, Uncategorized|Tags: , , , , , |

Photo of the Day The Great Nebula in Orion, an immense, nearby starbirth region, is probably the most famous of all astronomical nebulas. Here, glowing gas surrounds hot young stars at the edge of an immense interstellar molecular cloud only 1500 light-years away. In the featured deep image in assigned colors highlighted by emission [...]

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