#your friendly neighborhood space nerd

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Mount Everest from Space

Crew aboard space shuttle Columbia captured this image of Mount Everest on Nov. 30, 1996, during the STS-80 mission. STS-80, the final shuttle flight of 1996, was highlighted by the successful deployment, operation, and retrieval of two free-flying research spacecraft.

Earth observations taken from Space Shuttle Columbia during STS-80 mission

STS080-759-075 (19 Nov.-7 Dec. 1996) --- This 70mm handheld camera's panoramic view was photographed by the STS-80 crewmembers to capture the aesthetic side of space travel. The scene was in the South Pacific Ocean southwest of Hawaii and west of Christmas Island. The angle of the space shuttle Columbia and the sunglint feature gives the picture an almost three-dimensional effect.

Image credit: NASA

[kryptona]

got out my telescope for the eclipse. need gloves if I wanna take more pictures since it’s like 8*F and this one is a little blurry since my hands were so cold trying hold both the telescope and my phone steady thanks to the wind.

[androgynousbirdtale]

The great storm, aka the Rose of Saturn

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2025 Planetary Parade

Of course they didn't appear like this in the sky, more like an arch. But the person that posted this did a great job cleaning things up.

Here's the link in case you really love it 🩵

[androgynousbirdtale]

Comet Suddenly Appears After 180,000 Years

A comet that hasn’t been in the inner solar system for around 180,000 years and is not likely to be seen again for 600,000 years, is suddenly visible after sunset—but only if you know where to look.

C/2024 G3 (ATLAS)—also known as comet G3—is potentially the brightest comet of 2025.

NASA astronaut Don Pettit on the International Space Station sent back a wonderful image of the comet (above) as it appeared out the window of a SpaceX Dragon capsule attached to the orbiting space observatory. “It is totally amazing to see a comet from orbit,” he wrote on Instagram. “Atlas C2024-G3 is paying us a visit.” Russian cosmonaut Ivan Vagner imaged the comet a few days prior.

There have been spectacular images from the ground, too, notably from astrophotographer Petr Horálek in Slovakia. “The comet was visible even to the naked eyes,” he wrote on Instagram.

What Is Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS)?

An exceptionally long period comet due to its highly elongated orbit, C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) likely comes from the Oort Cloud, a sphere of comets around the solar system. It reached perihelion — its closest point to the sun — on Jan. 13, 2025. Remarkably, it survived despite coming within just 8.3 million miles (13.5 million kilometers).

That's less than a third of Mercury’s average distance from the sun, though it still couldn't rival NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, which, on Dec. 24, 2024, survived getting just 3.86 million miles (6.1 million kilometers) from the sun’s surface.

However, it’s not expected back for hundreds of thousands of years, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, whose calculations show that gravitational interactions will increase its time away from the sun to approximately 600,000 years.

Forbes.com

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Jupiter in Ultraviolet light

NASA, ESA, and M. Wong (University of California – Berkeley); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America) Nov 2023.

[androgynousbirdtale]

The Moon is where it's at!

Full moon guide: When's the next full moon?

Here are all of the full moon dates and times for 2025, according to timeanddate.com, including the most commonly used names in North America:

Monday, Jan. 13: Wolf Moon (22:26 UTC/5:26 p.m. EST)

Wednesday, Feb. 12: Snow Moon (13:52 UTC/8:52 a.m. EST)

Friday, March 14: Worm Moon (6:54 UTC/2:54 a.m. EDT) — also a total lunar eclipse

Saturday, April 12: Pink Moon (0:22 UTC/8:22 p.m. EDT)

Monday, May 12: Flower Moon (16:56 UTC/12:56 p.m. EDT)

Wednesday, June 11: Strawberry Moon (7:45 UTC/3:45 a.m. EDT)

Thursday, July 10: Buck Moon (20:39 UTC/4:39 p.m. EDT)

Saturday, Aug. 9 Sturgeon Moon (7:58 UTC/3:58 a.m. EDT)

Sunday, Sept. 7: Corn Moon (18:12 UTC/2:12 p.m. EDT) — also a total lunar eclipse

Monday, Oct. 6: Harvest Moon (3:50 UTC/11:50 p.m. EDT) — also a supermoon

Wednesday, Nov. 5: Beaver Moon (13:21 UTC/8:21 a.m. EST) — also a supermoon

Thursday, Dec. 4: Cold Moon (23:15 UTC/6:15 p.m. EST) — also a supermoon

Lunar eclipses 2025

The two lunar eclipses in 2025 will be hugely impressive events. The first, on March 13 to 14, will be a total lunar eclipse, during which the full Worm Moon will drift through Earth’s inner umbral shadow and turn a reddish-orange color for 65 minutes from 2:26 to 3:31 a.m. EDT, according to Timeanddate.com. It will be best seen from North and South America.

The second, on Sept. 7 to 8, will be another total lunar eclipse, during which the Harvest Moon will enter Earth’s inner umbral shadow and turn a reddish-orange color for 82 minutes from 1:30 to 2:52 a.m. EDT, according to Timeanddate.com. It will be best seen from Asia and Australia.

Livescience.com

[androgynousbirdtale]

Parade of Planets - coming up on June 3rd. At least 6 planets are expected to be in view!

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NASA’s Chandra Notices the Galactic Center is Venting

These images show evidence for an exhaust vent attached to a chimney releasing hot gas from a region around the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, as reported in our latest press release. In the main image of this graphic, X-rays from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue) have been combined with radio data from the MeerKAT telescope (red).

Previously, astronomers had identified a “chimney” of hot gas near the Galactic Center using X-ray data from Chandra and ESA’s XMM-Newton. Radio emission detected by MeerKAT shows the effect of magnetic fields enclosing the gas in the chimney.

The evidence for the exhaust vent is highlighted in the inset, which includes only Chandra data. Several X-ray ridges showing brighter X-rays appear in white, roughly perpendicular to the plane of the Galaxy. Researchers think these are the walls of a tunnel, shaped like a cylinder, which helps funnel hot gas as it moves upwards along the chimney and away from the Galactic Center.

A labeled version of the image gives the locations of the exhaust vent, the chimney, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy (called Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A* for short) and the plane of the galaxy.

This newly discovered vent is located near the top of the chimney about 700 light-years from the center of the Galaxy. To emphasize the chimney and exhaust vent features the image has been rotated by 180 degrees from the conventional orientation used by astronomers, so that the chimney is pointed upwards.

The authors of the new study think that the exhaust vent formed when hot gas rising through the chimney struck cooler gas lying in its path. The brightness of the exhaust vent walls in X-rays is caused by shock waves — similar to sonic booms from supersonic planes — generated by this collision. The left side of the exhaust vent is likely particularly bright in X-rays because the gas flowing upwards is striking the tunnel wall at a more direct angle and with more force than other regions.

The researchers determined that the hot gas is most likely coming from a sequence of events involving material falling towards Sgr A*. They think eruptions from the black hole then drove the gas upwards along the chimneys, and out through the exhaust vent.

It is unclear how often material is falling onto Sgr A*. Previous studies have indicated that dramatic X-ray flares take place every few hundred years at or near the location of the central black hole, so those could play important roles in driving the hot gas upwards through the exhaust vent. Astronomers also estimate that the Galactic black hole rips apart and swallows a star every 20,000 years or so. Such events would lead to powerful, explosive releases of energy, much of which would be destined to rise through the chimney vent.

The paper describing these results is published in The Astrophysical Journal and a preprint is available online. The authors of the paper are Scott Mackey (University of Chicago), Mark Morris (University of California, Los Angeles), Gabriele Ponti (Italian National Institute of Astrophysics in Merate ), Konstantina Anastasopoulou (Italian National Institute of Astrophysics in Palermo), and Samaresh Mondal (Italian National Institute of Astrophysics in Merate).

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.

Read more from the Chandra Observatory

For more Chandra images, multimedia, and related materials, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/mission/chandra-x-ray-observatory/

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Part 2: An Alternate View of Flying into a Supermassive Black Hole Simulation

(Best viewed on YouTube, link posted at the bottom).

Tour an alternative visualization that tracks a camera as it approaches, falls toward, briefly orbits, and escapes a supermassive black hole. This immersive 360-degree version allows viewers to look around during the flight. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/J. Schnittman and B. Powell

As the camera approaches the black hole, reaching speeds ever closer to that of light itself, the glow from the accretion disk and background stars becomes amplified in much the same way as the sound of an oncoming racecar rises in pitch. Their light appears brighter and whiter when looking into the direction of travel.

The movies begin with the camera located nearly 400 million miles (640 million kilometers) away, with the black hole quickly filling the view. Along the way, the black hole’s disk, photon rings, and the night sky become increasingly distorted — and even form multiple images as their light traverses the increasingly warped space-time.

In real time, the camera takes about 3 hours to fall to the event horizon, executing almost two complete 30-minute orbits along the way. But to anyone observing from afar, it would never quite get there. As space-time becomes ever more distorted closer to the horizon, the image of the camera would slow and then seem to freeze just shy of it. This is why astronomers originally referred to black holes as “frozen stars.”

At the event horizon, even space-time itself flows inward at the speed of light, the cosmic speed limit. Once inside it, both the camera and the space-time in which it's moving rush toward the black hole's center — a one-dimensional point called a singularity, where the laws of physics as we know them cease to operate.

“Once the camera crosses the horizon, its destruction by spaghettification is just 12.8 seconds away,” Schnittman said. From there, it’s only 79,500 miles (128,000 kilometers) to the singularity. This final leg of the voyage is over in the blink of an eye.

In the alternative scenario, the camera orbits close to the event horizon, but it never crosses over and escapes to safety. If an astronaut flew a spacecraft on this 6-hour round trip while her colleagues on a mothership remained far from the black hole, she’d return 36 minutes younger than her colleagues. That’s because time passes more slowly near a strong gravitational source and when moving near the speed of light.

“This situation can be even more extreme,” Schnittman noted. “If the black hole were rapidly rotating, like the one shown in the 2014 movie ‘Interstellar,’ she would return many years younger than her shipmates.”

[androgynousbirdtale]

Part 1: New NASA Black Hole Visualization Takes Viewers Beyond the Brink

Ever wonder what happens when you fall into a black hole? Now, thanks to a new, immersive visualization produced on a NASA supercomputer, viewers can plunge into the event horizon, a black hole’s point of no return.

In this visualization of a flight toward a supermassive black hole, labels highlight many of the fascinating features produced by the effects of general relativity along the way. Produced on a NASA supercomputer, the simulation tracks a camera as it approaches, briefly orbits, and then crosses the event horizon — the point of no return — of a monster black hole much like the one at the center of our galaxy. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/J. Schnittman and B. Powell

“People often ask about this, and simulating these difficult-to-imagine processes helps me connect the mathematics of relativity to actual consequences in the real universe,” said Jeremy Schnittman, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who created the visualizations. “So I simulated two different scenarios, one where a camera — a stand-in for a daring astronaut — just misses the event horizon and slingshots back out, and one where it crosses the boundary, sealing its fate.”

The visualizations are available in multiple forms. Explainer videos act as sightseeing guides, illuminating the bizarre effects of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Versions rendered as 360-degree videos let viewers look all around during the trip, while others play as flat all-sky maps.

To create the visualizations, Schnittman teamed up with fellow Goddard scientist Brian Powell and used the Discover supercomputer at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation. The project generated about 10 terabytes of data — equivalent to roughly half of the estimated text content in the Library of Congress — and took about 5 days running on just 0.3% of Discover’s 129,000 processors. The same feat would take more than a decade on a typical laptop.

The destination is a supermassive black hole with 4.3 million times the mass of our Sun, equivalent to the monster located at the center of our Milky Way galaxy.

“If you have the choice, you want to fall into a supermassive black hole,” Schnittman explained. “Stellar-mass black holes, which contain up to about 30 solar masses, possess much smaller event horizons and stronger tidal forces, which can rip apart approaching objects before they get to the horizon.”

This occurs because the gravitational pull on the end of an object nearer the black hole is much stronger than that on the other end. Infalling objects stretch out like noodles, a process astrophysicists call spaghettification.

The simulated black hole’s event horizon spans about 16 million miles (25 million kilometers), or about 17% of the distance from Earth to the Sun. A flat, swirling cloud of hot, glowing gas called an accretion disk surrounds it and serves as a visual reference during the fall. So do glowing structures called photon rings, which form closer to the black hole from light that has orbited it one or more times. A backdrop of the starry sky as seen from Earth completes the scene.

[androgynousbirdtale]

NASA reveals 'glass-smooth lake of cooling lava' on surface of Jupiter's moon Io

The volcanic surface of Jupiter's huge moon Io got a stunning close-up thanks to NASA's Juno mission.

A new animation reveals an enormous lava lake on the surface of Jupiter's moon Io. The close-up view comes from NASA's Juno spacecraft, which swept within 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) of the volcanic surface of Io in December 2023 and January 2024. These flybys provided the closest look ever at Jupiter's innermost large moon. Io hosts hundreds of active volcanoes. According to NASA, their eruptions are sometimes so powerful that they can be seen with telescopes on Earth. 

The new images show Loki Patera, a 127-mile-long (200 km) lava lake on Io's surface. Scientists have been observing this lava lake for decades. It sits over the magma reservoirs under Io's surface. The cooling lava at the center of the lake is ringed by possibly molten magma around the edges, Scott Bolton, principal investigator  for the Juno mission, said during a news conference Wednesday (April 16) at the European Geophysical Union General Assembly in Vienna.

"The specular reflection our instruments recorded of the lake suggests parts of Io's surface are as smooth as glass, reminiscent of volcanically created obsidian glass on Earth," Bolton said.

Rugged islands of rock crowd the lava lake's interior. "There is amazing detail showing these crazy islands embedded in the middle of a potentially magma lake rimmed with hot lava," Bolton said.

Juno's instruments have determined that Io's surface is smoother than the surfaces of Jupiter's three other Galilean moons (Europa, Ganymede and Callisto). Io is slightly larger than Earth's moon, and the surfaces that aren't molten are largely covered with yellow sulfur and sulfur dioxide.

Juno continues to fly over Jupiter, collecting data about its dramatic polar cyclones, each of which is the width of the continental U.S. The mission is also measuring levels of oxygen and hydrogen in Jupiter's atmosphere. The spacecraft will complete its 61st flyby of Jupiter on May 12.

[androgynousbirdtale]

Mini partial eclipse on Mars from its moon Phobos

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Mini partial eclipse on Mars from its moon Deimos

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Mars

Space.com

NASA releases otherworldly footage of solar eclipse on Mars

The Mars moon Phobos, whose name means "Fear" in ancient Greek, was caught on camera by the NASA Perseverance rover on Feb. 8. The potato-shaped moon was visible in front of the sun from Percy's current perch in Jezero Crater.

Engineers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) uploaded 68 images of the solar eclipse to their Perseverance raw images repository. The footage was filmed using the rovers left Mastcam-Z camera, one of two scouting imagers high on the neck-like mast of Perseverance often used to get sweeping landscape views of the Red Planet.

Phobos, first discovered by American astronomer Asaph Hall in 1877, is an asteroid-sized moon orbiting a few thousand miles (or kilometers) above the Martian surface and continuing to fall towards the planet. It should eventually break up due to the forces of the Red Planet's gravity.

Phobos and the other Mars moon, Deimos, have enigmatic formation histories: Scientists are not sure if they came from the asteroid belt, from collisions, from leftover debris from the early solar system or from some other scenario.

[androgynousbirdtale]

Astronomers accidentally discover 'dark' primordial galaxy with no visible stars

By Robert Lea published 1 day ago

"Stars could be there. We just can't see them."

Astronomers have accidentally discovered a dark galaxy filled with primordial gas untouched that appears to have no visible stars. The researchers behind the discovery say this galaxy, designated J0613+52, could be "the faintest galaxy found to date." Interestingly, scientists using the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) discovered the "dark" galaxy through a complete error.

"The GBT was accidentally pointed to the wrong coordinates and found this object. It's a galaxy made only out of gas — it has no visible stars," Green Bank Observatory senior scientist Karen O'Neil said in a statement. "Stars could be there. We just can't see them."

Remarkably, this galaxy full of primordial gas isn't billions of light-years away and thus seen as it was when the 13.8 billion-year-old universe was in its infancy; instead, the dark galaxy designated J0613+52 is just around 270 million light-years away.

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Galaxies

Astronomers accidentally discover 'dark' primordial galaxy with no visible stars

News

By Robert Lea published 1 day ago

"Stars could be there, we just can't see them."

Comments (1)

Hydrogen gas in the primordial galaxy J0613+52 with red indicating regions turning away from Earth and blue showing regions turning toward us

Hydrogen gas in the primordial galaxy J0613+52 with red indicating regions turning away from Earth and blue showing regions turning toward us (Image credit: STScI POSS-II with additional illustration by NSF/GBO/P.Vosteen.)

Astronomers have accidentally discovered a dark galaxy filled with primordial gas untouched that appears to have no visible stars.

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The researchers behind the discovery say this galaxy, designated J0613+52, could be "the faintest galaxy found to date." Interestingly, scientists using the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) discovered the "dark" galaxy through a complete error.

"The GBT was accidentally pointed to the wrong coordinates and found this object. It's a galaxy made only out of gas — it has no visible stars," Green Bank Observatory senior scientist Karen O'Neil said in a statement. "Stars could be there. We just can't see them."

Remarkably, this galaxy full of primordial gas isn't billions of light-years away and thus seen as it was when the 13.8 billion-year-old universe was in its infancy; instead, the dark galaxy designated J0613+52 is just around 270 million light-years away.

Low Surface Brightness galaxies

J0613+52 was discovered by astronomers as they surveyed hydrogen gas in several so-called Low Surface Brightness (LSB) galaxies using several major radio telescopes around the globe, including the Green Bank Telescope (GBT), the world's largest fully steerable radio telescope located in Green Bank, West Virginia, and the Nançay Radio Telescope at the Paris Observatory.

LSBs tend to have a tiny population of stars spread across their volume, and as a result, they emit much less light per unit of area than standard galaxies like the Milky Way or Andromeda. LSBs are often barely brighter than the background luminosity of the night sky, making them incredibly tough to spot.

For instance, the first LSB to be discovered was Malin 1, found in the 1980s, which is still one of the largest spiral galaxies ever seen at 5 times the width of the Milky Way. Despite its size, though, Malin 1 is just 1% as bright as our galaxy.

LSBs also seem to be evolving much more slowly than other galaxies, with many still experiencing early stages of star formation. Astronomers believe this is because of their low gas density, meaning that overdense clumps of gas can't coalesce to that eventually birth stars.

The aim of the survey that found J0613+52 was to determine the mass and gas content of these low-brightness or "ultra-diffuse" galaxies, the diluted nature of which causes issues for current theories of star formation and galactic evolution. Astronomers noticed a disparity in data between the GBT and the Nançay Radio Telescope that would lead to the discovery of a galaxy that is an LSB unlike any other in the LSB survey.

A unique dark galaxy

J0613+52 is an LSB like the other 350 galaxies in the survey, but it has some properties that really set it apart.

"What we do know is that it's an incredibly gas-rich galaxy. It's not demonstrating star formation like we'd expect, probably because its gas is too diffuse," O'Neil said. "At the same time, it's too far from other galaxies for them to help trigger star formation through any encounters."

She added that this means that J0613+52 appears to be both "undisturbed and underdeveloped," hinting that what O'Neil and the team may have discovered accidentally in the shape of J0613+52 is the first nearby galaxy made up of primordial gas.

This means gas made up of mostly hydrogen and helium created shortly after the Big Bang, which has not been enriched when stars exploded and seeded it with heavy elements, or "metals." This is something astronomers would normally see further away and thus much further back in cosmic history.

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