Comet Lovejoy And The Pleiades

The best photographs that the Hubble space telescope has ever taken.

1. Sombrero galaxy

2.  V838 Monocerotis

3. Jupiter’s great red spot

4. Carina nebula

5. Interacting galaxies

6. Pillars of creation

7. Cat’s eye nebula

8.  Planetary Nebula NGC 5189

9.  Abell 2744 Frontier Field

(Source)

The Carina Nebula - A Birthplace Of Stars

The Carina Nebula lies at an estimated distance of 6,500 to 10,000 light years away from Earth in the constellation Carina. This nebula is one of the most well studied in astrophysics and has a high rate of star formation. The star-burst in the Carina region started around three million years ago when the nebula’s first generation of newborn stars condensed and ignited in the middle of a huge cloud of cold molecular hydrogen. Radiation from these stars carved out an expanding bubble of hot gas. The island-like clumps of dark clouds scattered across the nebula are nodules of dust and gas that are resisting being eaten away by photons (particles of light) that are ionizing the surrounding gas (giving it an electrical charge).

Credit: NASA/Hubble

on the first day of class my astronomy professor asked us why the night sky was dark. if our universe is infinite, how can there be spaces between the stars? he didn’t answer the question until the last day– because our universe is relatively young, and is still growing. it is finite. not enough stars or galaxies have been formed to fill up the entire night sky.

but what that means to me is that somewhere, in an older universe, the night sky looks like a tapestry of diamonds. somewhere darkness is pale white and glittering. imagine being so surrounded. i haven’t gotten that image out of my head ever since– you could never navigate under such a sky but god it sounds lovely

Hoag’s Object Hoag’s Object is a non typical galaxy of a type known as a ring galaxy. It is a nearly perfect ring of hot blue stars which circle around the yellow nucleus of this ring galaxy. The galaxy is approximately 600 million light years away from the constellation Serpens. Image credit: NASA

is there a smell comparable to space ? i assume we dont know because we would die if we tried to smell it but thats so cool

yeah if humans tried to smell space just like that, we’d die, no doubt about it 

but the smell of space lingers on spacewalk suits, and docking hatches when astronauts open them!

apparently, space itself smells like burning hot metal, or a hot barbeque grill with a slight hint of spent gasoline. The moon, apparently, smells like a gun after its been shot!

The coolest thing about it all is that the smell is actually what are left of dying stars- it’s literally the smell of stardust, and the particles smell like that because they’re so rich in hydrocarbons- something so very essential to life, and speculated by a lot of astronomers and astrobiologists and such to be the very thing life on earth started from!

another neat fact is that no two solar systems smell the same- ours smells like that because our solar system in particular is extremely rich in carbon, and other solar systems and places in the universe will have extremely different smells depending on what elements are most abundant in their system! 

Atmospheric Jellyfish are described as jellyfish-like creature seen floating in the Earth’s atmosphere. Atmospheric Jellyfish are said to look like normal jellyfish except they are floating in the sky much like a cloud and are seen mostly around military bases. Skeptics believe that the Atmospheric Jellyfish could be misidentified clouds or weather balloons however believers hold true to the idea and remember the time that NASA sent 60,000 jellyfish into space during their From Undersea to Outer Space experiment.

The Wow! signal. 

A signal sequence that lasted for 72 seconds in 1977 but has never been seen again. The signal appeared to come from a globular cluster in the Sagittarius constellation, but to this day no definite answer for where the signal originated can be given.  

Swirls and Colors on Jupiter from Juno [3709x2772]

NASA’s Most Shocking Image

This image is a 1.5… *BILLION* pixel photograph of the Andromeda Galaxy.

To view the image in all its glory go here.

NASA is the coolest thing that’s ever happened.

The Icy Comet

This image of Comet C/2001 Q4 (NEAT) was taken at the WIYN 0.9-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Ariz

Image credit: NASA/ National Science Foundation