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NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured striking new images of the Serpens Nebula that reveal a rare alignment of stellar jets, offering new insights into the formation of stars. Protostellar outflows occur when high-speed jets of hot gas produced by young stars collide with surrounding dust and gases. In the new Webb images, several outflows spotted in the northern area of the Serpens Nebula appear to all be aligned and oriented in the same direction. Located around 1,300 light-years from Earth, the Serpens Nebula is a dense cluster of young stars, some of which are only about 100,000 years...

Join Elon Musk for a tour inside SpaceX's Starbase and the brand new Starfactory. This video was shot the day before Flight 4, on June 5th, 2024.00:00 - Intro00:28 - Interview Starts10:12 - Starships in Highbay21:24 - Manufacturing talk23:50 - Reusability27:00 - Ice / Thruster talk31:30 - Megabay41:15 - Raptors49:07 - Inside Starfactory1:03:03 - OutroFirst Look Inside SpaceX's Starfactory w/ Elon Musk | 1:04:17 | Everyday Astronaut | 1.59M subscribers | 621,461 views | June 22, 2024

Explanation: What creates Saturn's colors? The featured picture of Saturn only slightly exaggerates what a human would see if hovering close to the giant ringed world. The image was taken in 2005 by the robot Cassini spacecraft that orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017. Here Saturn's majestic rings appear directly only as a curved line, appearing brown, in part from its infrared glow. The rings best show their complex structure in the dark shadows they create across the upper part of the planet. The northern hemisphere of Saturn can appear partly blue for the same reason that Earth's skies can...

Starliner had been scheduled to come home on June 26, but it will now stay aloft until at least July 2...Starliner's current mission, known as Crew Flight Test (CFT), sent NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the ISS. CFT launched on June 5 and arrived at the orbiting lab a day later.But, as Stich noted, that arrival was not perfectly smooth. During its chasedown of the ISS, Starliner experienced problems with five of its 28 reaction control system (RCS) thrusters. Four of them were eventually brought back online.In addition, CFT team members have noticed five small helium leaks...

Explanation: Stars are forming in Lynds Dark Nebula (LDN) 1251. About 1,000 light-years away and drifting above the plane of our Milky Way galaxy, LDN 1251 is also less appetizingly known as "The Rotten Fish Nebula." The dusty molecular cloud is part of a complex of dark nebulae mapped toward the Cepheus flare region. Across the spectrum, astronomical explorations of the obscuring interstellar clouds reveal energetic shocks and outflows associated with newborn stars, including the telltale reddish glow from scattered Herbig-Haro objects hiding in the image. Distant background galaxies also lurk in the scene, almost buried behind the dusty expanse....

The authorities determined the environmental impact of the monolith’s presence by considering the potential effects on the surrounding ecosystem. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD) stated that the monolith was removed due to public safety and environmental concerns.

Explanation: Returning to science operations on June 14, the Hubble Space Telescope used its new pointing mode to capture this sharp image of spiral galaxy NGC 1546. A member of the Dorado galaxy group, the island universe lies a mere 50 million light-years away. The galactic disk of NGC 1546 is tilted to our line-of-sight, with the yellowish light of the old stars and bluish regions of newly formed stars shining through the galaxy's dust lanes. More distant background galaxies are scattered throughout this Hubble view. Launched in 1990, Hubble has been exploring the cosmos for more than three decades,...

The massive swirling storm system was originally thought to have been discovered by astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini in 1665, but a new study found it was not the most recent spot.That means the Great Red Spot is roughly 190 years old since it was last documented in 1831.Researchers from Spain also discovered that the storm system is shrinking each year, dropping from 24,200 miles wide when it was observed in 1879 to just 8,700 miles wide today - suggesting it could also disappear one day.Researchers looked at early observations dating back to Cassini’s discovery, including his drawing of the celestial...

Explanation: Last April's Full Moon shines through high clouds near the horizon, casting shadows in this garden-at-night skyscape. Along with canine sentinel Sandy watching the garden gate, the wide-angle snapshot also captured the bright Moon's 22 degree ice halo. But June's bright Full Moon will cast shadows too. This month, the Moon's exact full phase occurs at 01:08 UTC June 22. That's a mere 28 hours or so after today's June solstice (at 20:51 UTC June 20), the moment when the Sun reaches its maximum northern declination. Known to some as a Strawberry Moon, June's Full Moon is at its...

Two astronauts will be stuck on the International Space Station for at least another week as experts at NASA and Boeing struggle to fix their spacecraft. Astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore arrived on the ISS on June 6 after a successful Boeing Starliner launch. Expected to only stay a week, the two will not be arriving on Earth before June 26, NASA and Boeing officials said in a Tuesday press conference. The Boeing Starliner is facing several mechanical problems. En route to the station, the crew reported problems with five thrusters and four helium leaks. A fifth helium leak...

A star is dead? Keep your eyes on the skies, stargazers: NASA has predicted that the much-anticipated “once-in-a-life-time” star explosion — or nova — will be visible to the naked eye sometime this summer, per a recent press release. “It’s incredibly exciting to have this front-row seat,” said Dr. Rebekah Hounsell, an assistant research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Dubbed T Coronae Borealis or the “Blaze Star,” the celestial event is located 3,000 light years away and is comprised of a white dwarf, an “Earth-sized” remnant of a dead star. The starburst’s mass, meanwhile, is...

Using the Subaru Telescope and Gemini North telescope, an international team of astronomers including Kavli IPMU (WPI) has found the earliest pair of quasars, monsters shining with intense radiation powered by actively feeding super massive black holes. Figure 1: Twin super massive black holes, HSC J121503.42−014858.7 (C1) and HSC J121503.55−014859.3 (C2), discovered by the Subaru Telescope in the Universe 12.9 billion light-years away. Credit: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF NOIRLab), D. de Martin (NSF NOIRLab) & M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab) https://www.ipmu.jp/en/20240618-TwinQuasars Using the Subaru Telescope and Gemini North telescope, both located on Maunakea in Hawai`i, an international team of...

Explanation: Do dragons fight on the altar of the sky? Although it might appear that way, these dragons are illusions made of thin gas and dust. The emission nebula NGC 6188, home to the glowing clouds, is found about 4,000 light years away near the edge of a large molecular cloud, unseen at visible wavelengths, in the southern constellation Ara (the Altar). Massive, young stars of the embedded Ara OB1 association were formed in that region only a few million years ago, sculpting the dark shapes and powering the nebular glow with stellar winds and intense ultraviolet radiation. The recent...

The Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) has announced the successful launch of their pioneering nanosatellite experiment program, designed to demonstrate a new type of energy harvesting in space. Weighing in at 1.2 kilograms (2.5 lbs) and expected to be built completely in-house, the custom-made CubeSat will evaluate the effectiveness of an advanced form of energy harvesting method that relies on thermal variances experienced by the satellite during orbit. “The scientific goals of the CubeSat project revolve around demonstrating the technology of an energy harvesting system,” said Olivier Bouton, the LIST team’s project manager, in a press release announcing...

Explanation: Yes, but can your thunderstorm do this? Pictured here are gigantic jets shooting up from a thunderstorm last week toward the Himalayan Mountains in China and Bhutan. The composite image captured four long jets that occurred only minutes apart. Gigantic jets, documented only in this century, are a type of lightning discharge that occurs between some thunderstorms and the Earth's ionosphere high above them. They are an unusual type of lightning that is much different from regular cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning. The bottoms of gigantic jets appear similar to a cloud-to-above strike called blue jets, while the tops appear...

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)’s rover discovered a mysterious boulder on Mars, CBS News reported Monday. NASA’s Perseverance rover made a discovery in the Jezero crater on Mars, encountering a mysterious, light-toned boulder that differs from any previously observed Martian rocks. This finding occurred during the rover’s journey through the Neretva Vallis, a dried-up river delta, as it navigated towards a region in the crater’s rim to study sediment deposits, according to CBS News. The boulder, dubbed Atoko Point, caught the team’s attention with its unique speckled, light-toned appearance amid darker rocks. It was said to be “in a...

The Internet was briefly sent into a panic yesterday, after a NASA audio feed from the International SpacStation (ISS) was accidentally "misrouted" to a public feed. The ISS broadcasts its view live, including footage from cameras inside and outside the station. At time of writing, you can even watch astronauts conducting a live space walk. While very cool, mishaps with the feed can happen, as evidenced on Wednesday when the public heard audio that sounded particularly concerning. In the audio, which was assumed to be ground control communicating with the ISS, you can hear a doctor advising on a medical...

Explanation: Squids on Earth aren't this big. This mysterious squid-like cosmic cloud spans nearly three full moons on planet Earth's sky. Discovered in 2011 by French astro-imager Nicolas Outters, the Squid Nebula's bipolar shape is distinguished here by the telltale blue emission from doubly ionized oxygen atoms. Though apparently surrounded by the reddish hydrogen emission region Sh2-129, the true distance and nature of the Squid Nebula have been difficult to determine. Still, one investigation suggests Ou4 really does lie within Sh2-129 some 2,300 light-years away. Consistent with that scenario, the cosmic squid would represent a spectacular outflow of material driven...

Credit: NASA/Dana Berry Here in our own Solar System, a single star anchors the system, where inner, rocky planets, an intermediate-distance asteroid belt, and then more distant gas giant planets eventually give way to the Kuiper belt and Oort cloud. This configuration is not universal among stellar and planetary systems, which means our Solar System possesses many properties that are not necessarily common among exoplanetary systems KEY TAKEAWAYS Earth doesn’t have the most water in the Solar System, the farthest planet from the Sun isn’t the coldest, and the only planet made mostly of metal isn’t the densest. Forget...

(Credit: KyotoU/Gakuji Tobiyama) In May 2023, researchers at Kyoto University and the Japanese-based wood manufacturing company Sumitomo Forestry unveiled the world’s first wooden satellite, breaking new ground in space technology. Called the LignoSat, this small cube (around 10 centimeters, or 3 inches) contains solar panels and circuit boards built into its wooden sides. These panels contain special fittings that don’t require adhesive but allow the sides to interlock into place using traditional Japanese wood-carving techniques. The project began slowly in 2020. Since its unveiling, the satellite has been transferred from its research facility to JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), where...