Promoting science and technology education through spaceflight and weather balloons.

Supernova Remnants Big and Small

By |2025-01-08T08:09:14-05:00January 8th, 2025|Categories: NASA News, Uncategorized|Tags: , , , , , |

Photo of the Day What happens after a star explodes? A huge fireball of hot gas shoots out in all directions. When this gas slams into the existing interstellar medium, it heats up so much it glows. Two different supernova remnants (SNRs) are visible in the featured image, taken at the Oukaïmeden Observatory in [...]

A New Year’s Aurora and SAR Arc

By |2025-01-07T08:09:06-05:00January 7th, 2025|Categories: NASA News, Uncategorized|Tags: , , , , , |

Photo of the Day It was a new year, and the sky was doubly red. The new year meant that the Earth had returned to its usual place in its orbit on January 1, a place a few days before its closest approach to the Sun. The first of the two red skyglows, on [...]

Colliding Spiral Galaxies from Webb and Hubble

By |2025-01-06T08:09:13-05:00January 6th, 2025|Categories: NASA News, Uncategorized|Tags: , , , , , |

Photo of the Day Billions of years from now, only one of these two galaxies will remain. Until then, spiral galaxies NGC 2207 and IC 2163 will slowly pull each other apart, creating tides of matter, sheets of shocked gas, lanes of dark dust, bursts of star formation, and streams of cast-away stars. The [...]

Rocket Launch as Seen from the International Space Station

By |2025-01-05T08:09:07-05:00January 5th, 2025|Categories: NASA News, Uncategorized|Tags: , , , , , |

Photo of the Day Have you ever seen a rocket launch -- from space? A close inspection of the featured time-lapse video will reveal a rocket rising to Earth orbit as seen from the International Space Station (ISS). The Russian Soyuz-FG rocket was launched in November 2018 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, carrying [...]

Alpha Centauri: The Closest Star System

By |2025-01-01T08:09:12-05:00January 1st, 2025|Categories: NASA News, Uncategorized|Tags: , , , , , |

Photo of the Day The closest star system to the Sun is the Alpha Centauri system. Of the three stars in the system, the dimmest -- called Proxima Centauri -- is actually the nearest star. The bright stars Alpha Centauri A and B form a close binary as they are separated by only 23 [...]

The Twisted Disk of NGC 4753

By |2024-12-31T08:09:08-05:00December 31st, 2024|Categories: NASA News, Uncategorized|Tags: , , , , |

Photo of the Day What do you think this is? Here’s a clue: it's bigger than a bread box. Much bigger. The answer is that pictured NGC 4753 is a twisted disk galaxy, where unusual dark dust filaments provide clues about its history. No one is sure what happened, but a leading model holds [...]

Methane Bubbles Frozen in Lake Baikal

By |2024-12-29T08:09:45-05:00December 29th, 2024|Categories: NASA News, Uncategorized|Tags: , , , , , |

Photo of the Day What are these bubbles frozen into Lake Baikal? Methane. Lake Baikal, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Russia, is the world's largest (by volume), oldest, and deepest lake, containing over 20% of the world's fresh water. The lake is also a vast storehouse of methane, a greenhouse gas that, if [...]

Fox Fur, Cone, and Christmas Tree

By |2024-12-24T08:09:06-05:00December 24th, 2024|Categories: NASA News, Uncategorized|Tags: , , , , |

Photo of the Day What do the following things have in common: a cone, the fur of a fox, and a Christmas tree? Answer: they all occur in the constellation of the Unicorn (Monoceros). Considered as a star forming region and cataloged as NGC 2264, the complex jumble of cosmic gas and dust is [...]

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 [...]

A Kilometer High Cliff on Comet Churyumov – Gerasimenko

By |2024-12-16T08:09:08-05:00December 16th, 2024|Categories: NASA News, Uncategorized|Tags: , , , , , |

Photo of the Day This kilometer high cliff occurs on the surface of a comet. It was discovered on the dark nucleus of Comet Churyumov - Gerasimenko (CG) by Rosetta, a robotic spacecraft launched by ESA, which orbited the comet from 2014 to 2016. The ragged cliff, as featured here, was imaged by Rosetta [...]

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