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Explanation: New stars are born from the remnants of dead stars. The gaseous remnant of the gravitational collapse and subsequent death of a very massive star in our Milky Way created the G296.5+10.0 supernova remnant, of which the featured Mermaid Nebula is part. Also known as the Betta Fish Nebula, the Mermaid Nebula makes up part of an unusual subclass of supernova remnants that are two-sided and nearly circular. Originally discovered in X-rays, the filamentary nebula is a frequently studied source also in radio and gamma-ray light. The blue color visible here originates from doubly ionized oxygen (OIII), while the...

The blatant anti-white discrimination at NASA has led to bloated budgets, caustic work conditions, and many of our best engineers leaving the field. The spotlight tends to shine on NASA only when a tragedy occurs or when there are issues such as the recent ones with Boeing’s Starliner. The removal of that spotlight coupled with incompetent congressional leadership has left NASA without a strong sense of purpose. This alone would be enough to damage the space program, but there’s another rather large issue: for decades, NASA has engaged in open discrimination against white male engineers. This discrimination has led to...

Explanation: Cosmic clouds form fantastic shapes in the central regions of emission nebula IC 1805. The clouds are sculpted by stellar winds and radiation from massive hot stars in the nebula's newborn star cluster, Melotte 15. About 1.5 million years young, the cluster stars are scattered in this colorful skyscape, along with dark dust clouds in silhouette against glowing atomic gas. A composite of narrowband and broadband telescopic images, the view spans about 15 light-years and includes emission from ionized hydrogen, sulfur, and oxygen atoms mapped to green, red, and blue hues in the popular Hubble Palette. Wider field images...

Explanation: Why does this large crater on Mercury have two rings and a smooth floor? No one is sure. The unusual feature called Vivaldi Crater spans 215 kilometers and was imaged again in great detail by ESA's and JAXA's robotic BepiColombo spacecraft on a flyby earlier this month. A large circular feature on a rocky planet or moon is usually caused by either an impact by a small asteroid or a comet fragment, or a volcanic eruption. In the case of Vivaldi, it is possible that both occurred -- a heavy strike that caused a smooth internal lava flow. Double-ringed...

Explanation: Have you ever seen the Man in the Moon? This common question plays on the ability of humans to see pareidolia -- imagining familiar icons where they don't actually exist. The textured surface of Earth's full Moon is home to numerous identifications of iconic objects, not only in modern western culture but in world folklore throughout history. Examples, typically dependent on the Moon's perceived orientation, include the Woman in the Moon and the Rabbit in the Moon. One facial outline commonly identified as the Man in the Moon starts by imagining the two dark circular areas -- lunar maria...

Explanation: Only natural colors of the Moon in planet Earth's sky appear in this creative visual presentation. Arranged as pixels in a framed image, the lunar disks were photographed at different times. Their varying hues are ultimately due to reflected sunlight affected by changing atmospheric conditions and the alignment geometry of Moon, Earth, and Sun. Here, the darkest lunar disks are the colors of earthshine. A description of earthshine, in terms of sunlight reflected by Earth's oceans illuminating the Moon's dark surface, was written over 500 years ago by Leonardo da Vinci. But stand farther back from your screen or...

Araneiform features on the surface of Mars, as imaged by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2009. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona) ====================================================================== Mars has spiders unlike anything else in the Solar System. Between the ocher dunes, across the scars of impacts, long-legged shadows appear to scuttle across the dust. They aren't actual, living spiders. These tendrilled shapes that appear in satellite images of the red planet are made, like almost everything on Mars, from dust. They're known as araneiforms, small systems of dark troughs that appear only in the southern polar region of Mars in the planet's spring. Exactly how the araneiforms...

Explanation: This snapshot from the International Space Station was taken on August 11 while orbiting about 430 kilometers above the Indian Ocean, Southern Hemisphere, planet Earth. The spectacular view looks south and east, down toward the planet's horizon and through red and green curtains of aurora australis. The auroral glow is caused by emission from excited oxygen atoms in the extremely rarefied upper atmosphere still present at the level of the orbiting outpost. Green emission from atomic oxygen dominates this scene at altitudes of 100 to 250 kilometers, while red emission from atomic oxygen can extend as high as 500...

back in 2010 when Obama effectively killed NASA. Obama canceled NASA’s mission to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research and instead redirected NASA to “engage with Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering.” Fast forward to today. NASA is a failed joke. Well done Democrats!. Elon Musk has taken up the mantle and done us proud. Musk is a great American hero. ... Jared Isaacman has become the first private citizen to spacewalk ... While NASA is busy with pronouns, this is what the private sector...

Explanation: This spectacular mosaic of images from the James Webb Space Telescope peers into the heart of young star cluster NGC 1333. A mere 1,000 light-years distant toward the heroic constellation Perseus, the nearby star cluster lies at the edge of the large Perseus molecular cloud. Part of Webb's deep exploration of the region to identify low mass brown dwarf stars and free floating planets, the space telescope's combined field of view spans nearly 2 light-years across the dusty cluster's turbulent stellar nursery. In fact, NGC 1333 is known to harbor stars less than a million years old, though most...

Explanation: A natural border between Slovakia and Poland is the Tatra Mountains. A prominent destination for astrophotographers, the Tatras are the highest mountain range in the Carpathians. In the featured image taken in May, one can see the center of our Milky Way galaxy with two of its famous stellar nurseries, the Lagoon and Omega Nebula, just over the top of the Tatras. Stellar nurseries are full of ionized hydrogen, a fundamental component for the formation of Earth-abundant water. As a fundamental ingredient in all known forms of life, water is a crucial element in the Universe. Such water can...

Explanation: The dark Horsehead Nebula and the glowing Orion Nebula are contrasting cosmic vistas. Adrift 1,500 light-years away in one of the night sky's most recognizable constellations, they appear in opposite corners of the above stunning mosaic. The familiar Horsehead nebula appears as a dark cloud, a small silhouette notched against the long glow of hydrogen -- here shown in gold -- at the lower left. Alnitak is the easternmost star in Orion's belt and is seen as the bright star to the left of the Horsehead. Just below Alnitak is the Flame Nebula, with clouds of bright emission and...

Explanation: If you could fly over Mars, what might you see? The featured image shows exactly this in the form of a Mars Express vista captured over a particularly interesting region on Mars in July. The picture's most famous feature is Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the Solar System, visible on the upper right. Another large Martian volcano is visible on the right horizon: Pavonis Mons. Several circular impact craters can be seen on the surface of the aptly named red planet. Impressively, this image was timed to capture the dark and doomed Martian moon Phobos, visible just left...

Explanation: The most distant object easily visible to the unaided eye is M31, the great Andromeda Galaxy. Even at some two and a half million light-years distant, this immense spiral galaxy -- spanning over 200,000 light years -- is visible, although as a faint, nebulous cloud in the constellation Andromeda. A bright yellow nucleus, dark winding dust lanes, and expansive spiral arms dotted with blue star clusters and red nebulae, are recorded in this stunning telescopic image which combines data from orbiting Hubble with ground-based images from Subaru and Mayall. In only about 5 billion years, the Andromeda galaxy may...

Explanation: Mars has two tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos, named for the figures in Greek mythology Fear and Panic. Detailed surface views of smaller moon Deimos are shown in both these panels. The images were taken in 2009, by the HiRISE camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft, NASA's long-lived interplanetary internet satellite. The outermost of the two Martian moons, Deimos is one of the smallest known moons in the Solar System, measuring only about 15 kilometers across. Both Martian moons were discovered in 1877 by Asaph Hall, an American astronomer working at the US Naval Observatory in Washington...

If you think Boeing's doing a lousy job with Starliner, just wait until you hear the latest about SLS!Boeing is doing a worse job with SLS than it is with Starliner!!The latest from NASA OIG! | 17:18The Angry Astronaut | 145K subscribers | 37,566 views | August 10, 2024

Starliner has finally come home, more than three months after it launched on a planned 10-day mission.. Starliner's long space odyssey is over. The Boeing capsule, named Calypso, returned to Earth early this morning (Sept. 7), touching down in the New Mexico desert at 12:01 a.m. EDT (0401 GMT; 11:01 p.m. local time on Sept. 6). "Great landing of Calyspo!" NASA astronaut Suni Williams said on the agency's webcast. "I don't think that could have gone better." The landing was long-delayed, coming more than three months into an orbital mission originally expected to last about 10 days. And, while Starliner...

Explanation: Ringed ice giant Neptune lies near the center of this sharp near-infrared image from the James Webb Space Telescope. The dim and distant world is the farthest planet from the Sun, about 30 times farther away than planet Earth. But in the stunning Webb view, the planet's dark and ghostly appearance is due to atmospheric methane that absorbs infrared light. High altitude clouds that reach above most of Neptune's absorbing methane easily stand out in the image though. Coated with frozen nitrogen, Neptune's largest moon Triton is brighter than Neptune in reflected sunlight, seen at the upper left sporting...

Sept. 5 (UPI) -- The beleaguered Boeing Starliner spacecraft that took two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station will attempt to make its uncrewed return to Earth on Friday evening, the company has announced. NASA on Thursday issued a timeline and a set of criteria for the Starliner's departure from the ISS and return to Earth. The space capsule has faced a host of issues since well before its launch, and continued to experience problems even after arriving at the ISS, which ultimately culminated in Boeing making a deal with competitor SpaceX to bring the astronauts back home in...

It looks more and more like China might beat NASA back to the moon. If all goes according to the re-re-revised plan, Boeing's troubled Starliner space capsule will undock from the International Space Station on Friday afternoon and make an automated return to Earth, unmanned. Meanwhile, debate continues at NASA over how to proceed with the Artemis program to get us back to the moon — almost two full years after the Artemis I flight test returned safely to Earth but with the Orion capsule's heat shield showing unexpected wear and tear. "This will be an even higher-profile decision for...