Are you ready to climb a mountain with us? 🏔️ 🧗‍♀️ Mount Makalu is the fifth highest mountain in the world at 8485 m high. It is situated on the border between Nepal and China. There is another famous mountain in this image, the one and only Mount Everest! Because of the mountains knife edge ridges and its remote position which leaves it exposed to the elements it is viewed by many as one of the worlds most difficult mountains to climb. 🎥 @europeanspaceagency 📸 European Space Imaging (EUSI) #ESAReels #EarthFromSpace #Geography #MountMakalu #Himalayas

Go explore the Neukum Crater of Mars 🔴 The 102-km-wide complex impact crater has a diverse geologic history, as indicated by various features on the crater rim and floor. Particularly striking are the dark dune fields, likely made up of volcanic material blown in and shaped by strong winds. The crater’s shallow interior has been infilled by sediments over its history. It is also marked with two irregular depressions that may be a sign of a weaker material that has since eroded away, leaving behind some islands of more resistant material. Over time the crater rim has undergone varying degrees of collapse, with landslides and slumped material visible in the crater walls. Many smaller craters have also overprinted the rim and pockmarked the interior since Neukum Crater was formed, highlighting its long history. Neukum Crater is situated in Noachis Terra, one of the oldest known regions on Mars, dating back to at least 3.9 billion years. 📹 @europeanspaceagency/ @germanaerospacecenter/ @fu_berlin; @creativecommons CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO 🎶 Coldnoise, CC BY-SA 4.0 and Adrian Neesemann 📸 @NASA/MGS/MOLA Science Team #Mars #RedPlanet #MarsExpress #CreativeCommons

Most Europeans live under light-polluted skies 🌃 Our Astronauts are helping to understand the sharp increase in light pollution across Europe by taking pictures from space👩‍🚀🧑‍🚀 When ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti gazed at Earth from orbit during her recent Minerva mission, cities glowed brighter than the stars. Since 2003, Samantha and other European astronauts have taken over a million pictures of Earth at night with digital cameras to demonstrate the true extent of light pollution. A team of European researchers processed the pictures and compared them over time, showing a clear increase of lighting pollution in urban areas, and a shift towards whiter and bluer emissions. This is due to the widespread introduction of light-emitting diode lamps, or LED technology. Credits: NASA/ESA– A. Kuipers, S. Cristoforetti/A. Sánchez de Miguel #LightPollution2022 #spaceforearth

Big hello from New York City! My name is Chirag Upreti and it’s my honor to collaborate with @europeanspaceagency to share some of my images. Also, a huge thank you to the team #yourESA, it has been a privilege to be part of your journey! Through my pictures I hope to accentuate aesthetics in night-sky photography using a mirrorless camera and lenses, encourage everyone to look up after dark and make people aware that light pollution is slowing washing away the nigh-sky and eroding a connection we held for millennia. You can find more of my work at https://chiragupreti.com, and please swipe ⬅️ for image carousel. 1: Dark Horse Nebula, dust lanes and nebulosity around our Milky Way core. Stacked 7 exposures. Camera: @Sonyalpha A7 III astromodified, Sony 24-70mm lens.   2: Orion Molecular Cloud Complex with rich nebulosity imaged from the pleasantly dark skies @deathvalleynps , CA Image: Stacked 174 single exposures. Astromodified @Sonyalpha A7 III   3: The Southern Sky in B&W.  Villa Unión, Argentina Image: 3 shot vertical panorama, each a single exposure.   4: Total Solar Eclipse of 2019 from Bella Vista, Argentina. A thrilling totality followed by this diamond ring in the sky just 11 deg over the horizon. Stacked 104 frames, 1 minute apart.   5: The (almost) total eclipsed moon being watched by a monstrous silhouette of an Oak tree! 6: International Space Station (@ISS) streaks over Comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE in the evening twilight in this single exposure of 30 sec. Catskills, NY   7: A comet (C/2020 F3 NEOWISE) over the NYC skyline!   8: Path of a 28% illuminated crescent moon as it set behind @statueellisnps with the star Acrab (Beta Scorpii) trailing the moon. Stacked exposure of 567 continuous frames, 1 second apart.   9: @Empirestatebldg illuminated in red in partnership with NASA’s @nasajpl to celebrate the Mars Perseverance Rover landing in February 2021.   10: Keep Looking Up! A self portrait under the Big Dipper constellation in @deathvalleynps

There's a dark secret in this image ⚫️ Located at roughly 3.2 billion light years from Earth, the continued existence of the galaxy cluster Abell 611 poses a mystery to astronomers. Specifically, there does not appear to be enough mass contained within its web of rapidly rotating constituent galaxies to prevent the cluster from flying apart. This is a well established issue in astronomy with very massive structures, such as galaxies and galaxy clusters — they just do not seem to contain enough combined mass to remain whole. The prevalent theory is that the Universe contains vast amounts of a substance known as dark matter. Whilst the name might sound ominous, ‘dark’ simply refers to the fact that this unknown quantity does not seem to interact with light as other matter does — neither emitting nor reflecting nor absorbing any part of the electromagnetic spectrum. This dark quality makes dark matter incredibly difficult to characterise, although various possibilities have been postulated. If dark matter remains stubbornly undefinable, fortunately it is readily quantifiable. In fact, galaxy clusters such as Abell 611 are ideal laboratories for the quantification of dark matter, owing to the abundant evidence of gravitational lensing visible within the cluster. An example of lensing is perhaps most clearly visible in the centre of the image, to the left of the cluster’s glowing core, where a curve of light can be seen. This curve is light from a more distant source that has been bent and distorted (or ‘lensed’) by Abell 611’s vast mass. The extent to which light has been bent by the cluster can be used to measure its true mass. This can then be compared with an estimate of its mass derived from all the visible components of the cluster. The difference between the calculated mass and the observed mass is staggering. In fact, zooming out, astronomers currently estimate that roughly 85% of the matter in the Universe is dark matter. 📸 @europeanspaceagency / @hubbleesa & @NASA, P. Kelly, M. Postman, J. Richard, S. Allen; @creativecommons CC BY 4.0 📸 @hubbleesa, Digitized Sky Survey 2, CC BY 4.0 Acknowledgement: D. De Martin #Hubble #DarkMatter #Abell611

Space can be a spooky place 👁‍🗨 🎃 To cellebrate Halloween we go to the Hourglass Nebula where an eerie eye peers out. This is a planetary nebula arising from a sun-like star that has undergone 'death tremors' at the end of its life. The star had difficulty in getting enough fuel to keep up its nuclear furnace, and has now shed off some of its surface material in two directions. And our glowing halloween pumpkin with to two bright eyes flickering from within, is in fact planet Jupiter, seen by our Infrared Space Observatory, which operated 1995-1998. Which one is your favourite? 📸 @hubbleesa - Raghvendra Sahai and John Trauger (@nasajpl), the WFPC2 science team, and @nasa 📸 @europeanspaceagency / ISO, ISOCAM and Th. Encrenaz et al. #Halloween #Spooky #SpacePumpkin #Jupiter #HourGlassNebula #CreepyHalloween

Hubble Time! 🌌 This peculiar portrait from @hubbleesa showcases NGC 1999, a reflection nebula in the constellation Orion. NGC 1999 is around 1350 light-years from Earth and lies near to the Orion Nebula, the closest region of massive star formation to Earth. NGC 1999 itself is a relic of recent star formation — it is composed of detritus left over from the formation of a newborn star. Just like fog curling around a street lamp, reflection nebulae like NGC 1999 only shine because of the light from an embedded source. In the case of NGC 1999, this source is the aforementioned newborn star V380 Orionis which is visible at the centre of this image. The most notable aspect of NGC 1999’s appearance, however, is the conspicuous hole in its centre, which resembles an inky-black keyhole of cosmic proportions. The origin of this unexplained rift in the heart of NGC 1999 remains unknown. 📸 @europeanspaceagency / @hubbleesa & @NASA, K. Noll; @creativecommons CC BY 4.0 #Hubble #Nebula #Orion

Goedemorgen Amsterdam! 👋 Divided among some 90 islands, Amsterdam has more than 100 km of canals. While we can see the North Sea on the left, the water on the right is part of IJmeer lake. This image is part of our new series featuring ESA's Member and Cooperating States. Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO #EarthObservation #EarthFromSpace #Esa #Amsterdam #TheNetherlands #Nederland #EuropeanSpaceAgency #Satellite #Copernicus #Sentinel2 #EarthScience #Earth #SatelliteImages #SatelliteImagery

Craters and cracks on Mars 🔴 This complex region of craters and fractures in the Terra Sirenum region highlights the varied history of Mars. The imprint of martian wind is detectable within the crater – in the lower, eastern part of the crater, rough features known as yardangs are visible signatures of wind erosion. The contrasting dark-toned sand within the crater may have been transported into the flat base by wind. Nestled within the large crater is a smaller crater measuring about 20 km wide. The smaller crater and its neighbour can be seen in staggering detail in the perspective view. The structure and outline of the crater, and its smaller neighbour in the background of the perspective image, suggest that water or ice may have covered this surface when the impact occurred. Signatures of past glaciers are visible in the smooth surface of the two neighbouring craters in the perspective image. The glaciers are thought to be made from a mixture of debris and ice, which flow downhill. The sedimented debris leaves clues about the direction and movement of the ice through the small sweeping channels in the base of the craters. Water also leaves its mark in other parts of the scene. The winding valley on the far left of the main colour image measures up to 1.8 km in width. It is thought to have been a pathway for water which melted in the basin to the east. The right (north) side of the image showcases a complex region of twisting valleys, known as dendritic valleys, whose origins are believed to be due to rain or snow early in martian history. The surface of the Red Planet is marked by the dynamic movements of the martian crust. Parallel to the large valley at lower left in the main colour image, and about 10 km away, lies a fracture which cuts through the basin. When the crust is pulled apart by tectonic stress, parts of the surface drop downward creating the faults. These 'graben' can also be found in a region called Icaria Fossae, marked on the context map. 📸 @europeanspaceagency/ @germanaerospacecenter/ @fu_berlin; @creativecommons CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO 📸 @NASA/MGS/MOLA Science Team #Mars #RedPlanet #MarsExpress #CreativeCommons

Favourite wavelenght to look at these merging galaxies❓🤩 1️⃣ Mid and Near-infrared – @esawebb 2️⃣ Near-infrared – Webb 3️⃣ Mid-infrared – Webb 4️⃣ Optical – @hubbleesa IC 1623 is an entwined pair of interacting galaxies which lies around 270 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Cetus. The two galaxies in IC 1623 are plunging headlong into one another in a process known as a galaxy merger, and their collision is expected to result in a frenzied spate of star formation known as a starburst. Bright sources in Webb images are surrounded by 8 prominent bright points — six equally spaced larger spikes with two smaller ones superimposed. Webb’s snowflake-like diffraction spikes are created by the interaction of starlight with the physical structure of the telescope. In total, there are actually 12 separate diffraction spikes surrounding each bright source. Six of these spikes are created by starlight interacting with the 18 gold-plated segments making up Webb’s primary mirror, and the other six are created by the interaction between starlight and the three struts supporting Webb’s smaller secondary mirror. The telescope was designed so that some of these diffraction spikes overlap, minimising the disturbance to Webb’s observations. 📸 @nasa, @europeanspaceagency, @canadianspaceagency, L. Armus & A. Evans Acknowledgement: R. Colombari #WebbSeesFarther #Universe #JamesWebbSpaceTelescope #Webb #IC1623

It is with pleasure that we announce our amazing collaboration this week! We are hosting an Instagram Live on Tuesday 25th at 19h (CEST) with Melanie, scientist at The European Space Agency. An amazing opportunity to understand a little more how we blend science and art from our great space. 💚 Also really exciting to see 6 of my Aurora Photographs exhibited during the whole week here in Zagreb during the 2022 Space Weather Week. Hope to see you all during the IG live! . . . . #big_shotz #moonlight #earthfocus #auroraassociation #wonderful_places #discoverearth #earthofficial #earthshots #discoverglobe #igshotz  #moodygrams #naturephotography #naturelovers  #moods_in_frame  #shotzdelight #outside_project #arctic #longexposure  #theglobewanderer #electric_shotz #longexpoelite #nordlys #nightphotography #night_excl  #igworldclub_sky #aurora #northernlights #auroraborealis #longexpoelite #youresa

Hubble Time! 🌌 The lives of newborn stars are tempestuous, as this image of the Herbig–Haro objects HH 1 and HH 2 from @hubbleesa depicts. Both objects are in the constellation Orion and lie around 1250 light-years from Earth. HH 1 is the luminous cloud above the bright star in the upper right of this image, and HH 2 is the cloud in the bottom left. While both Herbig–Haro objects are visible, the young star system responsible for their creation is lurking out of sight, swaddled in the thick clouds of dust at the centre of this image. However, an outflow of gas from one of these stars can be seen streaming out from the central dark cloud as a bright jet. Meanwhile, the bright star between that jet and the HH 1 cloud was once thought to be the source of these jets, but it is now known to be an unrelated double star that formed nearby. Herbig–Haro objects are glowing clumps found around some newborn stars, and are created when jets of gas thrown outwards from these young stars collide with surrounding gas and dust at incredibly high speeds. In 2002 Hubble observations revealed that parts of HH 1 are moving at more than 400 kilometres per second! This scene from a turbulent stellar nursery was captured with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 using 11 different filters at infrared, visible, and ultraviolet wavelengths. Each of these filters is sensitive to just a small slice of the electromagnetic spectrum, and they allow astronomers to pinpoint interesting processes that emit light at specific wavelengths. 📸 @europeanspaceagency / @hubbleesa & @NASA, B. Reipurth, B. Nisini; @creativecommons CC BY 4.0 #Hubble #StarNursery #Orion