I really like space

Header ID: an image of the horse head nebula. It's black and vibrant red with oranges near the top right, with bright blue stars speckled throughout. PFP ID: an ultraviolet image of Venus taken by the Japanese probe Akatsuki, showing the cloud formations beneath the atmosphere. The clouds are a white-off white near the top and bottom with a large streak of golden brown in the middle. There's also a swoop of darker brown/black to the left side that fades into the brown.

[huntress1013]

NASA released the clearest pictures yet of our neighbours in the solar system

Oh and of course us

Honourable mention

[world-beauty]

Carina Nebula Close Up

Credits: NASA, ESA, Hubble, ESO, Robert Gendler, RobertoColombari

[spacewonder19]

N44 Superbubble ©

[theofficialastronomy101]

This is one of the strongest solar storms in ages. View from ISS is incredible.

[thesilly-goose]

@captain0fcrows

[spacewonder19]

IC 410 The Tadpoles ©

[blasteffect]

Saturn's north pole !

The hexagon is nearly 30,000 km (20,000 miles) wide. This is large enough that two Earths could fit inside the storm with room to spare.

It is a standing atmospheric wave created by a powerful jet stream that wraps around the pole. Winds along its edges can exceed 300 km/h (about 220 mph).

At the very center of the hexagon lies a deep, dark polar vortex that extends hundreds of kilometers down into Saturn's atmosphere.

Spacecraft/Mission: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI (Space Science Institute).

[spacewonder19]

Fighting Dragons of Ara NGC 6188 ©

[memewhore]

[hyperchaotix]

I saw someone reblog this dismissing it as AI despite the fact they're 1 click away from a search engine. "Rosetta Nebula" is all you'd have to type. Perhaps the biggest travesty with ai images is going to be robbing people of their wonder for what's actually possible in the universe and continuing to shrink their bubble of understanding based on whether they believe it at a glance.

The image has been colorized differently above but the Rosetta Nebula is real and actually looks like that.

[chaumas-deactivated20240115]

it looks less like a human skull than it does Homo heidelbergensis:

[andmaybegayer]

Look, it formed a long time ago, it had to work with the reference it had

[thesilly-goose]

@captain0fcrows

[headspace-hotel]

fucks me up that by total coincidence the sun and moon's size difference is exactly matched to their difference in distance from us, thus making our beautiful total solar eclipses where you can see the silver threads of the sun's corona possible because the moon just covers the sun completely

The stars (literally) aligned just right for this experience to be possible. It's likely that aliens don't have this

[uncivilliberties]

The moon is also absolutely gargantuan by moon standards. It isn't the largest moon in the solar system, but it is BY FAR the largest in comparison with its planet. Ganymede is the largest satellite of Jupiter and the largest moon in the solar system. Its diameter is only about 3.8% of Jupiter's. Titan's radius is 4.4% of Saturn's. Callisto and Io are the next largest in the neighborhood, with 3.4% and 2.6% the diameter of Jupiter respectively.

Our moon is number 5. It is smaller in direct comparison to the above moons. The diameter of the moon is 3475 km. That is a full 27% of the diameter of the Earth. More than a quarter. That's ridiculous. It's unheard of. The universe is large enough that the word unique probably doesn't mean a lot, but this might be about as close as you get.

This has had a huge impact on our planet. Other things aliens might not have are significant tides. One of Mars's dumpy little potatoes wouldn't be able to move oceans the way our moon does.

Our moon has also stabilized our axis to a massive degree. Without her up there our axis would wobble all over the place and our climate would be far more chaotic. Aliens might not be quite so lucky.

I guess what I am really trying to say is that the moon is extremely cool. I like the moon.

[willowdove]

Just want to add that the reason we have such a large moon is because a whole planet crashed into proto-Earth. Theia (the planet) and Earth got so superheated by this collision that their component cores fused and the impact jettisoned a lot of material into space. That massive amount of jettisoned material became our moon. So Earth and the moon have very similar composition. This does not seem to be a common method of lunar formation.

[gandalfsbignaturals]

what if the answer to the fermi paradox is that life cant exist without a moon like luna

[habbadax]

I got a serious beef with the Fermi paradox. There is no Fermi paradox. There stopped being a Fermi paradox once the first radio telescopes went up, and we began to get a true sense of the sheer scale of the universe.

Space is big, empty, and loud. Sunspots can cause enough interference to affect global communications. We’re not even loud enough to talk over our own sun. On our own planet. We can barely communicate with Voyager, and we know exactly where it is and what its signal sounds like.

The Fermi paradox is like doubting the existence of Belfast, because you stood on a windy New York beach shouting towards it and didn’t get an answer.

[headspace-hotel]

[kactusnz]

i didn't realise we were drowned out by our own sun :(

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

She is screaming so loud

[thesilly-goose]

@captain0fcrows giving You these posts to signify that You are my friend #MyFriend in the same way cat brings dead mouse and stuff

[world-beauty]

NGC 6357: Cathedral to Massive Stars

Credits: NASA, ESA, IAA, ESA/Hubble

[world-beauty]

The Tadpoles of IC 410

Credits: Steven Coates

[the-wolf-and-moon]

 B33, Horsehead Nebula

[world-beauty]

M45: The Pleiades Star Cluster

Credits: Phillip L. Jones, VisualUniverse.org

[wonders-of-the-cosmos]

Lunar North Credit: Ilan Shapira

[thesilly-goose]

@captain0fcrows

[the-wolf-and-moon]

Mars, Phobos, and Deimos

[the-wolf-and-moon]

Vega, Jewel of the Lyre

[thesilly-goose]

@captain0fcrows

[the-wolf-and-moon]

NGC 1333, Nursery of Stars