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Explanation: From our vantage point in the Milky Way Galaxy, we see NGC 6946 face-on. The big, beautiful spiral galaxy is located just 20 million light-years away, behind a veil of foreground dust and stars in the high and far-off constellation Cepheus. In this sharp telescopic portrait, from the core outward the galaxy's colors change from the yellowish light of old stars in the center to young blue star clusters and reddish star forming regions along the loose, fragmented spiral arms. NGC 6946 is also bright in infrared light and rich in gas and dust, exhibiting a high star birth...

Explanation: These cosmic clouds have blossomed 1,300 light-years away in the fertile starfields of the constellation Cepheus. Called the Iris Nebula, NGC 7023 is not the only nebula to evoke the imagery of flowers. Still, this deep telescopic image shows off the Iris Nebula's range of colors and symmetries embedded in surrounding fields of interstellar dust. Within the Iris itself, dusty nebular material surrounds a hot, young star. The dominant color of the brighter reflection nebula is blue, characteristic of dust grains reflecting starlight. Central filaments of the reflection nebula glow with a faint reddish photoluminescence as some dust grains...

A huge asteroid may have hit the Earth 12,800 years ago causing global climate change and extinction, according to new evidence found in South Africa. Scientists analysed ancient soil at a site called Wonderkrater and found high levels of platinum - which they say supports the The Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis that a disintegrating meteor hit Earth and caused a mini ice age. The resulting ice age is believed by many scientists to have wiped out dozens of mammals species including the Mammoth and giant wildebeest and decimated the human population. Scientists believe 'platinum spikes' found in ancient soil samples...

The planet is as cold as ice and orbits far from its star. The observations from JWST of this cold giant planet. Image Credit: T. Müller (MPIA/HdA), E. Matthews (MPIA) ========================================================================== JWST has imaged a new planet directly and it is quite a fascinating object. It orbits one of the three stars in the Epsilon Indi system and it weighs six times the mass of Jupiter. This super-Jupiter is 20 to 40 times further from its star than Earth is from the Sun – so it is very cold. It also doesn't help that the star, Eps Ind A, is...

Explanation: Our Moon doesn't really have craters this big. Earth's Moon, Luna, also doesn't naturally show this spikey texture, and its colors are more subtle. But this digital creation is based on reality. The featured image is a digital composite of a good Moon image and surface height data taken from NASA's Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) mission -- and then exaggerated for educational understanding. The digital enhancements, for example, accentuate lunar highlands and show more clearly craters that illustrate the tremendous bombardment our Moon has been through during its 4.6-billion-year history. The dark areas, called maria, have fewer craters...

Explanation: What powers the Crab Nebula? A city-sized magnetized neutron star spinning around 30 times a second. Known as the Crab Pulsar, it is the bright spot in the center of the gaseous swirl at the nebula's core. About 10 light-years across, the spectacular picture of the Crab Nebula (M1) frames a swirling central disk and complex filaments of surrounding and expanding glowing gas. The picture combines visible light from the Hubble Space Telescope in red and blue with X-ray light from the Chandra X-ray Observatory shown in white, and diffuse X-ray emission detected by Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE)...

Explanation: Sometimes the dark dust of interstellar space has an angular elegance. Such is the case toward the far-south constellation of Chamaeleon. Normally too faint to see, dark dust is best known for blocking visible light from stars and galaxies behind it. In this 36.6-hour exposure, however, the dust is seen mostly in light of its own, with its strong red and near-infrared colors creating a brown hue. Contrastingly blue, the bright star Beta Chamaeleontis is visible on the upper right, with the dust that surrounds it preferentially reflecting blue light from its primarily blue-white color. All of the pictured...

A patented experimental propellantless propulsion drive is finally ready to go to space, according to its inventor, a veteran NASA scientist with decades of expertise in electrostatics. [Multiple Videos at Site] Dr. Charles Buhler, the technology’s creator, says the propulsion system may represent a working version of Quantized Inertia, a theory first proposed by University of Plymouth professor Mike McCulloch. The proposition has been subjected to criticism from mainstream scientists in the past because it seemingly violates Newton’s third law of motion. The controversial technology, which The Debrief covered in April, is privately owned by Exodus Propulsion Technologies and is...

Explanation: This rock structure is not only surreal -- it's real. Perhaps the reason it's not more famous is that it is smaller than one might guess: the capstone rock overhangs only a few meters. Even so, the King of Wings outcrop, located in New Mexico, USA, is a fascinating example of an unusual type of rock structure called a hoodoo. Hoodoos may form when a layer of hard rock overlays a layer of eroding softer rock. Figuring out the details of incorporating this hoodoo into a night-sky photoshoot took over a year. Besides waiting for a suitably picturesque night...

Explanation: Have you seen a panorama from another world lately? Assembled from high-resolution scans of the original film frames, this one sweeps across the magnificent desolation of the Apollo 11 landing site on the Moon's Sea of Tranquility. The images were taken 55 years ago by Neil Armstrong looking out his window on the Eagle Lunar Module shortly after the July 20, 1969 landing. The frame at the far left (AS11-37-5449) is the first picture taken by a person on another world. Thruster nozzles can be seen in the foreground on the left (toward the south), while at the right...

Look up and celebrate both the wonders of the moon and humanity's achievements in space exploration.When you look up this weekend you will see not only a striking full moon but also a piece of history. In a rare celestial coincidence, July's full moon will share the spotlight with the 55th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, providing a unique opportunity to reflect on humanity's achievements in space exploration and our enduring fascination with our closest neighbor. The July full moon officially occurs on July 21 at 6:17 a.m. EDT (1017 GMT), but the moon will still appear full...

Astronomers at Penn State University have identified an exoplanet with the most eccentric orbit ever observed among transiting planets...Named TIC 241249530, this newly discovered exoplanet exhibits a highly elongated orbit resembling a cucumber rather than a circle. Published in the journal Nature, the study provides significant insights into the formation and evolution of Hot Jupiters, a class of massive gas giants that orbit very close to their host stars...First detected using NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) in January 2020, the exoplanet's host star exhibited a dip in its brightness, indicating the presence of a Jupiter-sized planet passing in front...

Explanation: For some, these subtle bands of light and shadow stretched across the sky as the Sun set on July 11. Known as anticrepuscular rays, the bands are formed as a large cloud bank near the western horizon cast long shadows through the atmosphere at sunset. Due to the camera's perspective, the bands of light and shadow seem to converge toward the eastern (opposite) horizon at a point seen just above a 14th century hilltop castle in Brno, Czech Republic. In the foreground, denizens of planet Earth are enjoying the region's annual Planet Festival in the park below the Brno...

The galaxy PJ0116-24, located 10 billion light-years away from Earth, appears to exhibit characteristics that contradict the standard view that galaxy mergers are required to produce such intense luminosity.The groundbreaking findings, which are detailed in a newly published paper in Nature Astronomy, seem to point to the occurrence of rapid star formation in HyLIRGs, revealing that it can occur through internal processes. The discovery presents new challenges to existing notions held by astronomers about how such formations occur...In the past, it was believed that the intense luminosity produced by HyLIRGs was exclusively the result of mergers between galaxies, which result...

JWST deep field vs hubble This region of space, viewed first iconically by Hubble and later by JWST, shows an animation that switches between the two. Both images still have fundamental limitations, as they were acquired from within our inner Solar System, where the presence of zodiacal light influences the noise floor of our instruments, and cannot easily be removed.Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Christina Williams (NSF’s NOIRLab), Sandro Tacchella (Cambridge), Michael Maseda (UW-Madison); Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI); Animation: E. Siegel ======================================================================================= KEY TAKEAWAYS: * The darkest night skies, both from Earth as well as from interplanetary space, aren’t completely...

Explanation: Unlike most entries in Charles Messier's famous catalog of deep sky objects, M24 is not a bright galaxy, star cluster, or nebula. It's a gap in nearby, obscuring interstellar dust clouds that allows a view of the distant stars in the Sagittarius spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy. Direct your gaze through this gap with binoculars or small telescope and you are looking through a window over 300 light-years wide at stars some 10,000 light-years or more from Earth. Sometimes called the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud, M24's luminous stars are left of center in this gorgeous starscape. Covering...

NASA has canceled its plan to land a robotic rover on the Moon to search for ice and other potential resources, after spending $450 million. The plan involved landing what is dubbed the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, near the lunar South Pole, which scientists suspect may harbor ice. It was planned for the mobile robot to spend 100 days scouting the area for ice deposits and producing a first-ever resource map, which NASA said was critical for its future Artemis missions to establish a long-term human presence on the Moon’s surface. The decision to axe the VIPER...

While the “Epoch of Reionization” sounds like the title of a sci-fi novel destined for a Hugo award, this very real era of the universe featured the first light from the very first stars. Before this epoch, the universe was nothing more than a dark void filled with a fog of primordial hydrogen gas—and then, suddenly, there was light. For decades, scientists have searched for a source of radiation powerful enough to have cleared away this fog and introduced light into the universe. Now, an international team of scientists have analyzed the first faintest galaxies ...

Explanation: When Vulcan, the Roman god of fire, swings his blacksmith's hammer, the sky is lit on fire. A recent eruption of Chile's Villarrica volcano shows the delicate interplay between this fire -- actually glowing steam and ash from melted rock -- and the light from distant stars in our Milky Way galaxy and the Magellanic Clouds galaxies. In the featured timelapse video, the Earth rotates under the stars as Villarrica erupts. With about 1350 volcanoes, our planet Earth rivals Jupiter's moon Io as the most geologically active place in the Solar System. While both have magnificent beauty, the reasons...

Researchers from Harvard University recently explored the possibility of aliens walking among us on Earth. Although the study is independent and not directly linked to the university, it looks into the renewed fascination with UFOs. The government refers to these as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena or UAPs. The United States is keeping an eye on over 650 possible UFOs, according to a Pentagon official last year. Harvard researchers Tim Lomas and Brendan Case, along with Michael Masters from Montana Technological University, have a new idea about UFOs. They suggest there might be a hidden, earth-based reason for these mysterious sightings, calling...