Space Universe🌌

Explore the Monkey Head Nebula! This spectacular Hubble visualization shows a star-forming region 6,400 light-years away. Hubble imaged the Monkey Head Nebula, formally known as NGC 2174, for its 24th anniversary in 2014. Visualization credit: G. Bacon, L. Frattare, Z. Levay, and F. Summers (STScI); Acknowledgment: A. Fujii, the Digitized Sky Survey 2, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) Music credit: “Becoming Whole,” Zachary Scott Lemmon [BMI], Killer Tracks [BMI], Universal Production Music

Hello, 2022! In this case, the nebula called NGC 2022. This #HubbleClassic view shows a planetary nebula, which is a confusing name because it has nothing to do with planets! It’s really just a dying star casting off its outer layers of material. When astronomers looked at the sky through early telescopes, they found many indistinct, cloudy forms. They called such objects “nebulae,” Latin for clouds. Some of the fuzzy objects resembled planets, and these earned the name “planetary nebulae.” Image credits: Howard Bond (STScI) and NASA/ESA

You and I collide 💫 Mounded, luminous clouds of gas and dust glow in this NASA Hubble image of a Herbig-Haro object known as HH 45. Herbig-Haro objects are a rarely seen type of nebula that occurs when hot gas ejected by a newborn star collides with the gas and dust around it at hundreds of miles per second, creating bright shock waves. HH 45 is located in the nebula NGC 1977, which itself is part of a complex of three nebulae called The Running Man. These three nebulae are reflection nebulae, which means that reflect light from nearby stars instead of emitting light on their own, like a streetlight illuminating fog. Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Bally (University of Colorado at Boulder); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

🌍 When Earth looks like another world If it weren't for the blue sea on the horizon, this might look like a photo of Mars or a faraway planet from science fiction. Instead, it's actually an image of the Libyan Desert, one of the most arid parts of the Sahara Desert in northern Africa. Taken by an External High-Definition Camera (EHDC) on the International Space Station in February 2021, this photograph shows the windswept dunes and darker sandstone plateaus of Libya's Fezzan region, with the Mediterranean shining in the far distance. The EHDC is one of many cameras and scientific instruments on the ISS that are continually monitoring the Earth from space—not just to take incredible pictures like this one, but to observe our environment and help us protect our home planet. Credit: NASA

Space Universe🌌 pinned a photo

Space Universe🌌 pinned a video

This orbital sunrise was taken from the cupola windows of the International Space Station last January. No matter where on Earth you are, we hope that your 2022 is truly out-of-this-world. Credit: NASA

Here be dragons 🐉 As we get ready for the new year, we're continuing to make space travel more reliable and less expensive—with the help of our commercial partners. In 2021, our first SpaceX crew rotation flight to the International Space Station (Crew-1) safely splashed down on Earth after 168 days in orbit, and two more Commercial Crew missions lifted off to open new frontiers on our orbiting laboratory. Next up: Crew-4, currently scheduled to launch in April 2022. In this image, the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft Endeavour is seen departing the ISS on November 8, 2021, with four astronauts from NASA, JAXAJP, and the EuropeanSpaceAgency preparing to return home after their successful six-month Crew-2 mission. Credit: NASA

New Year, new Moon! 🌚 Kicking off 2022, stargazing is at its best on the nights around the new Moon on Jan. 2. Later that night, catch the peak of the Quadrantid meteor shower. Look for meteors after midnight local time, after the constellation they appear to originate from, Boötes, rises above the horizon. ☄️ This tends to be one of the better meteor showers of the year and often produces bright meteors called fireballs! A few days later, look for the Moon with Jupiter on Jan. 5 in the west, and with Mars and Venus on Jan. 29 in the east. Venus is now appearing in the morning after being "the Evening Star" in 2021, and Mars is returning to the skies after its solar conjunction last fall, where it passed behind the Sun as seen from Earth. Listen in for more skywatching tips from NASA! Credit: NASA Producer: Preston Dyches

Are there rainbows on Mars? 🌈🤔 Sadly, no. But there are a whole lot of other conditions on Mars that we have right here on Earth! Planetary scientist Mark Lemmon explains why the Red Planet is a rainbowless world. Credit: NASA/Producers: Jessica Wilde & Scott Bednar Editor: Matthew Schara

Goodnight Moon 🌙 A waxing crescent Moon is pictured from the International Space Station during an orbital sunset as it flew 268 miles (431 km) above the Pacific Ocean east of New Zealand. Above the surface of the Earth, a brilliant sequence of colors roughly denotes several layers of the atmosphere. Deep oranges and yellows appear in the troposphere, which contains over 80 percent of the mass of the atmosphere and almost all of the water vapor, clouds, and precipitation. The pink to white region above the clouds appears to be the lower stratosphere; this atmospheric layer generally has few or no clouds. Above the stratosphere, blue layers likely mark the transition between the middle and upper atmosphere as it gradually fades into the blackness of outer space. Credit: NASA

Staying close to those deer to us 🦌❄️ This winter scene captures the Sápmi region, which stretches across parts of Finland, Sweden, Norway and Russia. This region is the ancient home of the Sami, Europe’s only recognized indigenous people. About 80,000 to 100,000 Sami are spread across the four countries and have lived a nomadic life of hunting, gathering, and reindeer herding. In fact, this is one of the few places on Earth where deer have been domesticated. 🦌An estimated 500,000 reindeer live in Scandinavia, with most of them tended and herded by the Sami.🦌 The image above is part of a global composite assembled from data acquired in 2016 by the @NOAA and @NASAEarth Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership. This nightime view was made possible by the “day-night band” of the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite, which is sensitive enough to measure nighttime light emissions and reflections to distinguish the intensity of lights and observe how they change. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory image