2024 August 10

Video of the Day!

NASA’s next mission to the Moon will carry LEXI (the Lunar Environment Heliospheric X-ray Imager), an instrument which will provide the first-ever global view of the magnetic field that shields Earth from solar radiation!

Did you know that there are 5 known dwarf planets in our solar system? Everyone knows Pluto, but there is also Ceres, Haumea, Makemake and Eris.

Info from: https://www.iau.org/public/themes/pluto/#n6

Wed. Oct. 30: We'll be closed tonight due to clouds. We'll try again next week!

Wed. Nov. 15 - Tonight's forecasts are inconsistent- we'll wait a few hours to decide if we'll open.

Beautiful!

2023 September 26

IC 4592: The Blue Horsehead Reflection Nebula Image Credit & Copyright: Antoine & Dalia Grelin

Explanation: Do you see the horse’s head? What you are seeing is not the famous Horsehead nebula toward Orion, but rather a fainter nebula that only takes on a familiar form with deeper imaging. The main part of the here-imaged molecular cloud complex is reflection nebula IC 4592. Reflection nebulas are made up of very fine dust that normally appears dark but can look quite blue when reflecting the visible light of energetic nearby stars. In this case, the source of much of the reflected light is a star at the eye of the horse. That star is part of Nu Scorpii, one of the brighter star systems toward the constellation of the Scorpion (Scorpius). A second reflection nebula dubbed IC 4601 is visible surrounding two stars above and to the right of the image center.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap230926.html

Pumpkin space latte, anyone? ☕

Hubble captured this festive array of stars, Terzan 12, found in the Milky Way about 15,000 light-years from Earth. The stars in this cluster are bound together by gravity in a sphere-like shape and are shrouded in gas and dust. As the starlight travels through that gas and dust to Earth, blue light scatters, leaving the redder wavelengths to come through.

Download the full-resolution image here.

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Top Study Tips from NASA

Study smarter this school year! We asked scientists, engineers, astronauts, and experts from across NASA about their favorite study tips – and they delivered. Here are a few of our favorites:

Study with friends

Find friends that are like-minded and work together to understand the material better. Trading ideas with a friend on how to tackle a problem can help you both strengthen your understanding.

Create a study environment

Find a quiet space or put on headphones so you can focus. You might not be able to get to the International Space Station yet, but a library, a study room, or a spot outside can be a good place to study. If it’s noisy around you, try using headphones to block out distractions.

Take breaks

Don’t burn yourself out! Take a break, go for a walk, get some water, and come back to it.

Looking for more study tips? Check out this video for all ten tips to start your school year off on the right foot!

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Comet Nishimura Credit: Peter Kennett

Cosmic fireworks ahead! This dramatically colorful image shows MACS J0717, one of the most complex and distorted galaxy clusters known. It was formed by the collision of four smaller galaxy clusters. A visible-light image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows hundreds of galaxies, both within the cluster and throughout the background, and myriad foreground stars. A pink overlay represents radio data from the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, which traces enormous shock waves and turbulence. The diffuse emission in blue, from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, highlights gas with temperatures of millions of degrees. Credit: NASA, ESA, CXC, NRAO/AUI/NSF, STScI, and R. van Weeren (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics); NASA, ESA, J. Lotz (STScI), and the Hubble Frontier Fields team. ALT TEXT: Hundreds of small galaxies of various shapes on the black background of space. They are concentrated near the center of the image. Dramatic pink ribbons form a curving L shape near the center. Below them, a linear pink feature with a blue blob in the middle extends from upper left to lower right. Diffuse blue light fills much of the field of view and is brightest just to the right of the pink ribbons.

Mare Cognitum ("The Sea that has Become Known") with Kuiper crater at the center // l'AstroVan

Mare Cognitum ("The Sea that has Become Known") is the landing sites of several lunar missions. Ranger 7 (1964) impacted here after its mission was finished; Surveyor 3 (1967) and Apollo 12 (1969) landed near its northern shore; and Apollo 14 (1971) landed near this mare as well.

Kuiper crater is named after the Dutch-American astronomy Gerard Kuiper (1905-1973), the father of modern planetary science