Space Universe🌌

Closing out the year with a bang 💥 The NASA Hubble space telescope captured a side-on view of a barred spiral galaxy roughly 57 million light-years from the Milky Way in the constellation Centaurus. In 2014, a sudden flare of light caused by the explosion accompanying the death of a massive star in our galaxy was discovered by amateur astronomers who are part of the Backyard Observatory Supernova Search in New Zealand. This wealth of knowledge provided by Hubble paves the way for future science as NASA Webb makes its way to Lagrange Point 2, where it will begin its orbit. Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide Field Camera 3 have made connections between young stars and the clouds of cold gas in which they form. Webb’s ability to observe at infrared wavelengths will be able to peer through the clouds of gas and dust in stellar nurseries and observe the fledgling stars within.

Massive cosmic objects, like a huge cluster of galaxies, have so much gravity they can actually warp light coming from behind them! Once NASA Webb begins science operations in about six months, it might detect the universe’s first black holes and stars with the help of gravitational lensing. This Hubble image shows the effect in action. The galaxy cluster Abell 2744 warped and magnified the images of nearly 3,000 distant background galaxies! Image credits: NASA, ESA, Jennifer Lotz (STScI), Matt Mountain (STScI), Anton M. Koekemoer (STScI), HFF Team (STScI)

Happy New Year! 🥳 In billion seconds, Hubble made more than 1.5 million observations and astronomers using Hubble data published more than 19,000 scientific papers.

The Veil Nebula lies around 2,100 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Cygnus (the Swan), making it a relatively close neighbor in astronomical terms. Only a small portion of the nebula was captured in this image.

⚫️ Our galaxy’s central black hole has a leak! This supermassive black hole (which is over 4 million times more massive than our Sun, by the way!) looks like it still has the remains of a blowtorch-like jet dating back thousands of years. Read more at the link in our bio!

These pillars of gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula are regions of starbirth, hiding newborn stars in their wispy columns, which stretch over roughly 4 to 5 light-years. That’s a small blip in the massive Eagle Nebula, with a size spanning 70 by 55 light-years. In the sonification, sounds represent both visible (Hubble) and X-ray light in the image. Moving from left to right, particular attention is paid to the structure of the pillars, which can be heard as pitches sweep from low to high and back. The vertical position of the recorded light controls the pitch. Sonification credits: NASA/CXC/SAO/K. Arcand, M. Russo & A. Santaguida

A Hubble Classic full of stars ✨ Called Trumpler 14, this cluster of stars is located 8,000 light-years away in a huge star-forming region known as the Carina Nebula. The cluster is about 500,000 years old and has one of the highest concentrations of bright, massive stars in our entire Milky Way Galaxy! Image credits: NASA, ESA, and J. Maíz Apellániz (Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia, Spain); Acknowledgment: N. Smith (University of Arizona)

We hope this view of the Coalsack Nebula is the only coal you’ll get this year. Also called Caldwell 99, this is a dark nebula – a dense cloud of interstellar dust that completely blocks out visible wavelengths of light from objects behind it. Image credits: NASA, ESA, and R. Sahai (Jet Propulsion Laboratory); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

Jupiter & Io 🌕 Io is just one of Jupiter’s many moons, but it takes center stage in this Hubble Classic image taken 25 years ago. The black dot on Jupiter’s surface is Io’s shadow! Image credits: J. Spencer (Lowell Observatory) and NASA

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.

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Подтвержденный "The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring, and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth." – Jim Lovell On Dec. 24, 1968, Apollo 8 astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders became the first humans to orbit the Moon and the first to witness the Earth rising above the Moon's barren surface. That evening they held a live broadcast from lunar orbit, in which they showed pictures of the Earth and Moon as seen from their spacecraft. The mission is known for this iconic "Earthrise" image, snapped by Anders, which would give humankind a new perspective on our home planet. Anders has said that despite all the training and preparation for an exploration of the Moon, the astronauts ended up discovering Earth. Fifty-three years later, we celebrate the moment by looking back on this image.