Space Universe🌌

This image is from a series of NASA Hubble observations investigating weird and wonderful galaxies found by the Galaxy Zoo citizen science project. This was the largest galaxy census ever carried out. It relied on crowdsourcing time from more than 100,000 volunteers to classify 900,000 unexamined galaxies in only 175 days! The project achieved what would have been years of work for a professional astronomer, and has led to a steady stream of similar astronomical citizen science projects. This image shows what appears to be three galaxies merging and all of the chaotic star formation and tidal distortions caused by the merger. The location of this mass of dust and bright swirls of stars lies 681 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Cancer.

Wow, talk about magnetic. 😍 This image of a total solar eclipse depicts a bright red glow surrounding the Moon's silhouette: the solar chromosphere. NASA scientists are researching how magnetic fields on the Sun’s surface evolve through the chromosphere to cause such brilliant eruptions in its outer atmosphere. “The Sun is both beautiful and mysterious, with constant activity triggered by its magnetic fields,” said Ryohko Ishikawa, solar physicist at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan in Tokyo.

An image taken by NASA Hubble shows the Lagoon Nebula. At its heart, a young star shines 200,000 times brighter than our Sun! At the center of the photo, there are blasts of powerful ultraviolet radiation and hurricane-like stellar winds, carving out a fantasy landscape of ridges, cavities, and mountains of gas and dust. This mayhem is all happening at the heart of the Lagoon Nebula, a vast stellar nursery located 4,000 light-years away and visible in binoculars simply as a smudge of light with a bright core. This photo gives us a window seat to the universe’s extraordinary tapestry of stellar birth and destruction. ✨

ce conditions on Lake Erie can vary significantly from day to day. In late January 2022, the lake froze over entirely, with ice cover growing well beyond the seasonal average to reach 94 percent. By Feb. 3, the ice cover dropped to about 62 percent before rising again to 90 percent by Feb. 5. The extent and thickness of the ice on the Great Lakes are mainly influenced by air temperature and wind.

This image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter depicts alluvial fans, fan-shaped deposits emerging from regions of steep topography. On Earth, alluvial fans usually come about through interactions with flowing water. The alluvial fans on Mars are likely ancient records of flowing water. This image shows part of one of those fans, which has been eroded.

While this might be on a scale larger than the Winter Olympics, we love to see the magic that comes from two galaxies working together. Galaxies can merge, collide, or brush past one another — each of which has a significant impact on their shapes and structures. The subject of this image is named Arp 282, an interacting galaxy pair that is composed of the Seyfert galaxy NGC 169 (bottom) and the galaxy IC 1559 (top). Tidal forces occur when an object’s gravity causes another object to distort or stretch. The direction of the tidal forces will be away from the lower-mass object and towards the higher-mass object. When two galaxies interact, gas, dust, and even entire solar systems will be drawn away from one galaxy towards the other by these tidal forces. This process can actually be seen in action in this image — delicate streams of matter have formed, visibly linking the two galaxies.

This image acquired by Landsat 8 shows colorful swirls of suspended sediments & phytoplankton along the shores of the Manitoba Great Lakes! The lakebeds are covered in fine-grained silt, clay, and calcium-carbonate sediments, which give some lakes their chalky blue hues. Norman Kuring, a retired researcher from NASA’s Ocean Biology group, applied color-filtering techniques to the image to draw out these fine details in the water. The features would not be as apparent to the unaided human eye.

When dinosaurs roamed Earth 214 million years ago, an asteroid 3 miles wide struck what is now Canada. In southeastern Québec lies Manicouagan Crater, one of the world’s largest and oldest impact craters. Today, the remnants of the crater are made visible by water and, sometimes, ice. This image was acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite on January 20, 2022.

Giada Arney is a planetary scientist and helps lead NASA’s upcoming DAVINCIMission. DAVINCI stands for “Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble Gases, Chemistry, and Imaging” and the mission will provide clues to Venus’ past, hidden in surface rocks and atmospheric gases. During two flybys, the DAVINCI spacecraft will study the cloud tops in ultraviolet light and measure heat emanating from the surface of the planet’s night side in search of geological clues of the planet's mysterious past. Eventually, a probe will make an hour-long descent to the planet’s surface, taking thousands of atmospheric measurements and images as it goes to help scientists better understand the past and present of this enigmatic world. Giada is very excited about uncovering Venus’ hidden past. Leave your questions about Venus and DAVINCI in the comments and Giada will answer them!

🦎 + ☁️ = ? This image taken by NASA Hubble shows a segment of the 65-light-year wide star-forming region called the Chamaeleon Cloud Complex. The segment in this Hubble composite image, called Chamaeleon Cloud I, reveals dusty-dark clouds where stars are forming, dazzling reflection nebulae glowing by the light of bright-blue young stars, and radiant knots called Herbig-Haro objects. Herbig-Haro objects are bright clumps and arcs of interstellar gas, energized by jets expelled from infant stars (also called protostars) in the process of forming. The white-orange cloud at the bottom of the image shows one of these protostars. White jets of hot gas ejected from the protostar’s poles create a Herbig-Haro object.

This diminutive galaxy lies in the southern constellation Pictor, and is approximately 17 million light-years from Earth! Dwarf irregular galaxies tend to contain few elements other than hydrogen or helium and are considered to be similar to the earliest galaxies that populated the universe. Despite its eccentricities, NGC 1705 and others like it provide valuable insights into the evolution of galaxies!

Computer, enhance! Here is a comparison of the same target, as seen by the Spitzer Space Telescope and then in the Webb Telescope’s calibration images. Spitzer, NASA’s first Great Observatory to provide high-resolution images of the infrared universe, paved the way for Webb. With its significantly larger primary mirror and improved detectors, Webb will be able to see the infrared sky with improved clarity, enabling even more discoveries. Webb’s image, taken by its MIRI instrument, shows unprecedented detail. It features light from “polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs),” or molecules of carbon and hydrogen that help us better understand the gas that exists between stars.