For the other Astronuts out there

In the Core of the Carina Nebula​

Image Credit & Copyright: Carlos Taylor​

Explanation: What's happening in the core of the Carina Nebula? Stars are forming, dying, and leaving an impressive tapestry of dark dusty filaments. The entire Carina Nebula, cataloged as NGC 3372, spans over 300 light years and lies about 8,500 light-years away in the constellation of Carina. The nebula is composed predominantly of hydrogen gas, which emits the pervasive red and orange glows seen mostly in the center of this highly detailed featured image. The blue glow around the edges is created primarily by a trace amount of glowing oxygen. Young and massive stars located in the nebula's center expel dust when they explode in supernovas. Eta Carinae, the most energetic star in the nebula's center, was one of the brightest stars in the sky in the 1830s, but then faded dramatically.
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Your Sky Surprise: What picture did APOD feature on your birthday? (post 1995)
Tomorrow's picture: hubble / webb​

 

Io is the most volcanically active world in the solar system. Io was discovered on Jan. 8, 1610, by Galileo Galilei, along with Jupiter's three other largest moons: Europa, Ganymede. and Callisto.

So, what would the student's t-shirts say if they went to college on Io?

 

No, "IOU".

 

That has better symmetry than a Jackson Pollack painting.

 

A: Jackass Pollack is the biggest conman of the last century.

B: I don't care where or how life started, I'm just waiting for intelligence life to appear.

 

I thing those guys from the Prometheus movie did it.

 

NGC 1566: A Spiral Galaxy from Webb and Hubble​

Image Credit & Copyright: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, J. Lee (STScI), T. Williams (Oxford), R. Chandar (UToledo), D. Calzetti (UMass), PHANGS Team​

Explanation: What's different about this galaxy? Very little, which makes the Spanish Dancer galaxy, NGC 1566, one of the most typical and photogenic spirals on the sky. There is something different about this galaxy image, though, because it is a diagonal combination of two images: one by the Hubble Space Telescope on the upper left, and the other by the James Webb Space Telescope on the lower right. The Hubble image was taken in ultraviolet light and highlights the locations of bright blue stars and dark dust along the galaxy's impressive spiral arms. In contrast, the Webb image was taken in infrared light and highlights where the same dust emits more light than it absorbed. In the rollover image, the other two sides of these images are revealed. Blinking between the two images shows which stars are particularly hot because they glow brighter in ultraviolet light, and the difference between seemingly empty space and infrared-glowing dust.
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Image Crunching Opportunity: Take NASA's Astrophoto Challenge
Tomorrow's picture: heart tails​

 

The Heart Shaped Antennae Galaxies​

Image Credit & Copyright: Kent E. Biggs​

Explanation: Are these two galaxies really attracted to each other? Yes, gravitationally, and the result appears as an enormous iconic heart -- at least for now. Pictured is the pair of galaxies cataloged as NGC 4038 and NGC 4039,known as the Antennae Galaxies. Because they are only 60 million light years away, close by intergalactic standards, the pair is one of the best studied interacting galaxies on the night sky. Their strong attraction began about a billion years ago when they passed unusually close to each other. As the two galaxies interact, their stars rarely collide, but new stars are formed when their interstellar gases crash together. Some new stars have already formed, for example, in the long antennae seen extending out from the sides of the dancing duo. By the time the galaxy merger is complete, likely over a billion years from now, billions of new stars may have formed.
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Open Science: Browse 3,300+ codes in the Astrophysics Source Code Library
Tomorrow's picture: open space​

 

Can't disagree with ya there. Other than we got some that would/do give him a run for the money.

 

Globular Star Cluster 47 Tuc​

Image Credit & Copyright: Marco Lorenzi, Angus Lau, Tommy Tse​

Explanation: Globular star cluster 47 Tucanae is a jewel of the southern sky. Also known as NGC 104, it roams the halo of our Milky Way Galaxy along with some 200 other globular star clusters. The second brightest globular cluster (after Omega Centauri) as seen from planet Earth, 47 Tuc lies about 13,000 light-years away. It can be spotted with the naked-eye close on the sky to the Small Magellanic Cloud in the constellation of the Toucan. The dense cluster is made up of hundreds of thousands of stars in a volume only about 120 light-years across. Red giant stars on the outskirts of the cluster are easy to pick out as yellowish stars in this sharp telescopic portrait. Tightly packed globular cluster 47 Tuc is also home to a star with the closest known orbit around a black hole.

Tomorrow's picture: when roses aren't red​

 

I'd bet your left nut there's intelligent life in there somewhere.

 

Astronaut: We found life out there!

Reporter: Did they already find life on other planets?

Astronaut: Yeah, but that was just slime mold. This is CLUB MOSS!!!!

 

When Roses Aren't Red​

Image Credit & Copyright: Tommy Lease (Denver Astronomical Society)​

Explanation: Not all roses are red of course, but they can still be very pretty. Likewise, the beautiful Rosette Nebula and other star forming regions are often shown in astronomical images with a predominately red hue, in part because the dominant emission in the nebula is from hydrogen atoms. Hydrogen's strongest optical emission line, known as H-alpha, is in the red region of the spectrum. But the beauty of an emission nebula need not be appreciated in red light alone. Other atoms in the nebula are also excited by energetic starlight and produce narrow emission lines as well. In this close-up view of the Rosette Nebula, narrowband images are mapped into broadband colors to show emission from Sulfur atoms in red, Hydrogen in green, and Oxygen in blue. In fact, the scheme of mapping these narrow atomic emission lines (SHO) into the broader colors (RGB) is adopted in many Hubble images of emission nebulae. This image spans about 50 light-years across the center of the Rosette Nebula. The nebula lies some 3,000 light-years away in the constellation Monoceros.
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Tomorrow's picture: ingenuity​

 

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