NASA

Diaries from an astronaut ✍️⁣ ⁣ NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick reflects on his last few days on the International Space Station (@ISS) before his return, as the undocking for #Crew8 was rescheduled for no earlier than Oct. 13, due to potential impacts from Hurricane #Milton.⁣ ⁣ “Peering out a Dragon Endeavor window that frames red and green aurora streaming by Dragon Freedom docked to the front of the International Space Station. When Crew-9 arrived, I moved out of my crew quarters on the ISS to make room for @AstroHague.⁣ ⁣ I now sleep in Dragon Endeavor while we wait to undock. We take most of our images from the cupola, but sleeping here has been amazing. This is the view out the window this evening. ...⁣ ⁣ I miss my family and friends, but we would have missed today’s insane aurora if we had undocked today. I watched the aurora with Don Pettit today from the cupola and on a later pass I watched it from Endeavor with @AstroHague.”⁣ ⁣ Image description: A window from the Dragon Endeavour, docked on the ISS, peers over Earth. A marbling of clouds is seen from below a vivid green aurora; shades of magenta hover above it in a distance. In contrast, the left half of the window is lit in blue.⁣ ⁣ Credit: NASA/Matthew Dominick⁣ ⁣ #NASA #Space #ISS #InternationalSpaceStation #Aurora #Earth #Astronaut

Eye see you… 👁 Back in 1996, @NASAHubble revealed the hourglass shape of this young planetary nebula located about 8,000 light-years away. In previous images taken from the ground, the nebula looked like a pair of large outer rings with a smaller central one, but the finer details could not be seen. Planetary nebulae are created by the death of Sun-like stars: the star collapses to form a dense and hot white dwarf star. At the same time, the dying star throws off its outer layers of material, forming an elaborate cloud of gas and dust known as a planetary nebula. This isn’t an uncommon phenomenon, and yet, this “eye” star is a little unique: it should be at the center of the nebula, but it’s off center. Hubble also revealed other new and unexpected features in the nebula. For example, there is a pair of intersecting elliptical rings in the central region, which appear to be the rims of a smaller hourglass. There are also the intricate patterns of the etchings on the hourglass walls. There are a few possible explanations for the arc-like etchings – for instance, they could be the remnants of shells ejected from the star when it was younger. This picture was composed of three separate images taken by Hubble’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 in the light of ionized nitrogen (represented by red), hydrogen (green), and doubly ionized oxygen (blue). Image description: This nebula has an interesting appearance: what looks like a turquoise blue eye stares right at you from the center of a red-orange hourglass-like shape made from two interlocking circles – like a Venn diagram turned on its side. The circles each have arcs within them. The darkness of space forms the backdrop of this image. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA #NASA #Nebula #Eerie #Circles #Astronomy

You’re gonna hear me roar Have no fear: what might look like a nightmarish beast throwing its head back in an angry red sea is just a pillar of gas and dust. The Cone Nebula is 2,500 light-years away in the constellation Monoceros. This image, captured by @NASAHubble, shows the upper 2.5 light-years of the nebula; the entire nebula is 7 light-years long. Monstrous pillars of cold gas like the Cone are common in large regions of star birth. Astronomers believe the pillars are incubators for developing stars. Over millions of years, radiation from hot, young stars (located beyond the top of the image) has slowly eroded the nebula. This process causes the hydrogen gas to glow, which produces the red halo of light seen around the pillar. A similar process occurs on a much smaller scale to gas surrounding a single star, forming the bow-shaped arc seen near the upper left side of the Cone. Eventually, only the densest regions of the Cone will be left. Inside these regions, stars and planets may form. Image description: Against a dramatic red backdrop, a dark pillar of gas and dust stretches upward, its top illuminated by the reflected light of nearby stars. Some stars are sprinkled across the top of the image. There are also a few stars dotting the bottom of the pillar. Credit: NASA, H. Ford (JHU), G. Illingworth (USCS/LO), M. Clampin (STScI), G. Hartig (STScI), the ACS Science Team, and ESA #NASA #Nebula #Stars #Universe #Astronomy

Swipe to see a cosmic candy cane at the center of our galaxy that’s a thousand trillion miles long!⁣ ⁣ Scientists using a @NASAGoddard-built instrument with a radio telescope in Spain spied this structure near our galaxy’s central supermassive black hole. While it’s not edible, it’s chock-full of treats like the materials for making stars.⁣ ⁣ The full image shows our galaxy’s center in infrared (blue), radio ( red ), and microwave (“minty” green). This image color codes different ways light is produced. The blue and cyan regions show us cool dust where star formation has just begun. Yellow features show more established star “factories.” Red reveals places where electrically charged gas interacts with magnetic fields.⁣ ⁣ Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center⁣ ⁣ Image description: Three panels form this panoramic view of the center of our Milky Way galaxy from the GISMO instrument, which shows a collection of giant molecular clouds, raw material for making tens of millions of stars. Wisps of blue and cyan spanning the width of the image reveal cold dust where star formation is just getting started. A few yellow-glowing spots show the locations of active star factories. At the center of the image, in the second panel, is a gigantic hooked structure that resembles a candy cane glowing in shades of red and yellow. To its right is a bright red dot showing the location of Sagittarius A, the bright source at the galaxy’s center that hosts its supermassive black hole.⁣ ⁣ #CandyCane #MilkyWay #Dust #Stars #HappyHolidays

Planets: Let them cook!⁣ ⁣ A @NASAHubble study from 2003 suggested that the gigantic disks that gave rise to planets in the early universe were longer-lived than they should be, given the conditions of their environment. Old stars don’t have enough of the heavier elements that are necessary ingredients to form the planets. But how are they still able to cook at the ripe old age of 20 to 30 million years?⁣ ⁣ To answer this question, researchers used @NASAWebb to study stars in a nearby galaxy that, much like the early universe, lacks large amounts of heavy elements. The circles in the second image show the positions of the 10 stars surveyed. The researchers found that not only do some stars there have planet-forming disks, but that those disks are longer-lived than those seen around young stars in our Milky Way galaxy—confirming Hubble’s original findings.⁣ ⁣ Image descriptions: ⁣ 1. The center of the image contains arcs of orange and pink that form a boat-like shape. One end of these arcs points to the top right of the image, while the other end point toward the bottom left. Another plume of orange and pink expands from the center to the top left of the image. To the right of this plume is a large cluster of white stars. There are various other white stars and a few galaxies of different sizes spread throughout the image.⁣ ⁣ 2. The second image is the same as the first, but annotated with 10 small, yellow circles overlaid at various points to indicate the positions of the stars surveyed in this study.⁣ ⁣ Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Olivia C. Jones (UK ATC), ⁣ Guido De Marchi (ESTEC), Margaret Meixner (USRA)⁣ ⁣ #NASA #Space #Webb #SpaceTelescope #Telescope #Planets #Formation #Stars

If you tilt your head to the side and squint… 🤔⁣ ⁣ Thankfully, you don’t need to do either to see this sideways discovery. NASA researchers found that the black hole within the galaxy NGC 5084 is “tipped over!” The dark vertical line at the center of this image is a disk of dust that orbits the galaxy’s core. The disk’s presence implies that there’s a supermassive black hole there that also has a vertical orientation.⁣ ⁣ Astronomers at @NASAAmes used new techniques to study legacy data from @nasachandraxray and found four long plumes of plasma – hot, charged gas – emanating from NGC 5084. Hot gas plumes are not often spotted in galaxies, and typically only one or two are present. The surprising second set of plumes was a strong clue this galaxy housed a supermassive black hole, but there could have been other explanations.⁣ ⁣ What they saw in the Chandra data seemed so strange that they immediately looked to confirm it, digging into the data archives of other telescopes and requesting new observations from two powerful ground-based observatories. They found this @NASAHubble image with the vertical dusty disk, which also suggested the presence of a black hole there, and that the black hole had a vertical orientation compared to the galaxy.⁣ ⁣ We don’t yet know why this galaxy’s black hole has such an unusual orientation, but some possible explanations are a collision with another galaxy or the formation of a chimney of superheated gas breaking out of the top and bottom of the galactic plane.⁣ ⁣ Image description: The image is a hazy blue cloud, with a bright core at the center. There is a dark line with a slight curve near the center; this is a dusty disk orbiting the galaxy’s core.⁣ ⁣ Credit: NASA/STScI, M. A. Malkan, B. Boizelle, A.S. Borlaff. HST WFPC2, WFC3/IR/UVIS.⁣ ⁣ #NASA #Galaxy #BlackHole #Universe #Discovery #Chandra #Hubble

'Tis the season... to gaze into the universe ✨⁣ ⁣ This star cluster resembles a cosmic wreath, with shining stars sparkling among festive clouds. We can see it here thanks to our @NASAWebb and @NASAChandraXRay telescopes, which are constantly looking out at distant galaxies from their place in space. Webb is at a stable position between the Sun and Earth, about 1 million miles away from us, while Chandra is orbiting Earth at an altitude of approximately 86,500 miles.⁣ ⁣ Neither telescope looks at the universe in visible light frequencies, so these infrared and X-ray observations have been shifted into colors we can see for this particular image. This star cluster, officially known as NGC 602, is in the Small Magellanic Cloud just beyond our Milky Way.⁣ ⁣ Image description: This is a composite image of star cluster NGC 602, in vibrant and festive colors. The shape of the star cluster strongly resembles a holiday wreath. The cluster includes a giant dust cloud ring, shown in greens, yellows, blues, and orange; the image is also aglow with specks and dots of colorful, festive light, representing stars within the cluster.⁣ ⁣ Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC; Infrared: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, P. Zeilder, E.Sabbi, A. Nota, M. Zamani; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare and K. Arcand⁣ ⁣ #NASA #Space #Universe #Astrophotography #Webb #JWST #Wreath #Holidays #Christmas

Now this is a story all about how this photo got flipped, turned upside down...⁣ And we’d like to take a minute, just sit right there—and we’ll tell you how we’re helping people travel through air.⁣ ⁣ NASA photographer Jim Ross took this photo from our F-18 Hornet aircraft during an unrestricted climb over Rogers Dry Lake near NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. The F-18 is used for research and proficiency required of all NASA pilots.⁣ ⁣ Today, every U.S. commercial aircraft and air traffic control facility incorporates NASA-developed technology. That heritage continues as our efforts help safely and sustainably transform aviation for the 21st century. Armstrong is our primary center for high-risk, atmospheric flight research and test projects, with access to 301,000 acres of remote land, year-round flying weather, and the Bell X-1 Supersonic Corridor.⁣ ⁣ Image description: A photographer sits in a cockpit of an F-18 with the reflection of Rogers Dry Lake in the visor of his helmet. The image was captured during an unrestricted climb during a proficiency flight.⁣ ⁣ Credit: NASA/Jim Ross⁣ ⁣ #FreshPrinceOfTheAir #NASA #Aeronautics #Aviation #Photographer #Flying #AVgeek

This timelapse, taken through a window on the International Space Station (@ISS), shows the station’s Canadarm2 and Dextre, its two-armed robotic companion, carefully deploying a materials experiment. MISSE-20-Commercial, the latest research to join the Materials ISS Experiment Flight Facility, holds 12 experiments. One of them, called SEAQUE, is testing technologies that could help quantum communications tools "self-heal" against radiation damage they might encounter in the environment of space. You’ll see Canadarm2 and Dextre move this experiment out of the Kibo laboratory module's airlock and into position as Earth rotates underneath. The sunlight shifts across the window frame, acting like a giant space sundial over the course of the timelapse. Video description: The video is taken from a circular window on the International Space Station. This timelapse shows the two smaller arms on SPDM (the Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator) grappling a materials exposure payload (MISSE) and moving it away. The Earth can be seen peeking through the bottom, as the solar panels gradually move following the sunlight. ⁣⁣ Credit: Don Pettit; timelapse assembled by NASA/Chris Getteau.⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ #NASA #Space #SpaceStation #ISS #Astronauts #Arm #Robotics #Timelapse

There's no place like (our) home (galaxy) 🌌 Astronomers estimate that our universe could hold up to 2 trillion galaxies—but the Milky Way is the only one known, so far, to support life. The Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years wide, with roughly 200 billion stars packed within its twin spiral arms. Our Sun, and solar system, are about halfway from the Milky Way's center—which is why you can see the galaxy shining in the night sky if you're far from cities and bright lights. This image of the Milky Way was captured at the @nationalparkservice's Dinosaur National Monument, located in Colorado and Utah. Image description: A series of low hills are silhouetted along the bottom of the photograph with low clouds made yellow by moonlight directly above them. The sky is covered with stars, with the Milky Way cutting from top to bottom along the right side of the photograph. Credit: NPS/Jacob W. Frank #NASA #Stars #Astrophotography #MilkyWay #WizardOfOz

All that is glitters is not gold… But it may still be a galaxy. This sparkling field is Abell 2125, a galaxy cluster located 3 billion light-years away from us in the Ursa Minor constellation. Each golden yellow dot you see is an individual galaxy, captured in visible light by the Kitt Peak National Observatory. The purple dots and haze are gas clouds seen in X-ray light by @NASAChandraXray. X-rays are not part of the visible light spectrum, so they've been translated into color we can see in this image. It takes billions of years to build a massive galaxy cluster like Abell 2125, which may contain thousands of galaxies. Since it’s so far away, this cluster also gives us insight into the early stages of galaxy cluster development, as well as the effects on galaxies within it. For example, data from Chandra, @NASAHubble, and the Very Large Array show that several galaxies in Abell 2125 are being stripped of their gas as they fall through hot, high-pressure clouds. Image description: This entire image is covered with purple and gold dots. Slightly above center is the largest and brightest dot, a galaxy with four diffraction spikes. Throughout the image, but especially at upper left and bottom right, are purple clouds of gas that you can see through. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: NSF/NOIRLab/KPNO/F. Owen; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Major, K. Arcand #NASA #Chandra #Xray #Astronomy #Astrophotography #Galaxy #Gold #Telescope #Space

Rings and moons 🪐 Saturn's moon Mimas stands alone in this ethereal image captured by our Cassini spacecraft in 2004. Mimas is the smallest of Saturn's major moons, checking in at less than 123 miles (198 km) wide. Its most prominent feature is a massive impact crater, with a small bump in the middle that draws comparisons to the Death Star from Star Wars. Saturn's rings stretch across the bottom of this image, with a small gap near the top known as the Cassini division. (Both this gap and the spacecraft were named after Jean-Dominique Cassini, the first astronomer to discover several of Saturn's moons.) These rings cast shadows on the cool, blue-streaked backdrop of Saturn's northern hemisphere, fading into darkness on Saturn's night side. Image description: Two bands of color arc across this photo of space: a brownish-tan streak across the bottom of the image, and blue-white streaks arcing downward from left to right. A small moon, half in shadow, touches one of the white bands near the right side of the image. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute #NASA #Space #Universe #Saturn #SolarSystem #Cassini #RingOfTheDay