Ever-Shifting Hues

23. Friendly cosmic background radiation. Also a sheep. DID system No MAPs or discourse blogs. > My awesome and cool site <

[quiltofstars]

The Great Hercules Cluster, M13 // David Giles

[of-stars-and-dust]

Astronomy Picture of the Day

2006 July 11

Crescent Rhea Occults Crescent Saturn

Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA

Explanation: Soft hues, partially lit orbs, a thin trace of the ring, and slight shadows highlight this understated view of the majestic surroundings of the giant planet Saturn. Looking nearly back toward the Sun, the robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn captured crescent phases of Saturn and its moon Rhea in color a few months ago. As striking as the above image is, it is but a single frame from a recently released 60-frame silent movie where Rhea can be seen gliding in front of its parent world. Since Cassini was nearly in the plane of Saturn's rings, the normally impressive rings are visible here only as a thin line across the image center. Cassini has now passed the official half-way mark of its mission around Saturn, but is well situated to complete another two years investigating this complex and surprising system.

Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (USRA)

NASA Official: Jay Norris.

A service of: EUD at NASA / GSFC

& Michigan Tech. U.

[plumslices]

JAR (Joel Arthur Rosenthal) sheep head hair clip

Pearl, sapphire, aluminum, silver, gold

[spacewonder19]

A Celestial Bauble: Supernova Remnant 0509-67.5 © ©

[sergal]

everyone shut da fuck up this is the only thing that matters

[sergal]

Oh My God Damn

[angelicdewdrop]

[photos-of-space]

Moon, Jupiter and its Gallilean moons.

[cosmonautroger]

Uranus is beutiful

[quiltofstars]

The Eye of Sauron (NGC 4151, lower right) and NGC 4145 (upper left) // Christof Reinhart & AMOS_Observatory

[world-beauty]

A Jupiter Vista from Juno

Credits: NASA, JPL-Caltech, SwRI, MSSS, License, Kevin M. Gill

[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).

[wonders-of-the-cosmos]

A protoplanetary disk is a rotating circumstellar disk of dense gas and dust surrounding a young newly formed star, a T Tauri star, or Herbig Ae/Be star. The protoplanetary disk may also be considered an accretion disk for the star itself, because gases or other material may be falling from the inner edge of the disk onto the surface of the star. This process should not be confused with the accretion process thought to build up the planets themselves. Externally illuminated photo-evaporating protoplanetary disks are called proplyds.

The nebular hypothesis of solar system formation describes how protoplanetary disks are thought to evolve into planetary systems. Electrostatic and gravitational interactions may cause the dust and ice grains in the disk to accrete into planetesimals. This process competes against the stellar wind, which drives the gas out of the system, and gravity (accretion), which pulls material into the central T Tauri star.

source

Image credit: NASA/JPL, ESO

[apod]

2026 June 4

A Planetary Nebula with Cosmic Buckyballs Image Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/J. Cami (Western University); Image Processing: K. Beecroft Text: Jan Cami (Western University) & Cecilia Chirenti (NASA GSFC, UMCP, CRESST II)

Explanation: What is happening inside this unusual nebula? Planetary nebula Tc 1, captured here in exquisite detail by the James Webb Space Telescope, is the celestial site where buckyballs were first identified in 2010. Buckminsterfullerene — as buckyballs are officially called — is a molecule with 60 carbon atoms (C60) arranged in the shape of a soccer ball. The molecule is named for architect Buckminster Fuller because of its resemblance to the geodesic dome he helped popularize. Webb’s new data reveal where the C60 molecules live in this nebula, and the geometry is striking: they populate a thin spherical shell around the central star, visible here as the bright edge of the nebula’s glowing orange central region. Look closely near the nebula’s heart and a more perplexing feature emerges: a delicate structure shaped uncannily like an upside-down question mark, fitting punctuation for the many questions this nebula still poses.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260604.html

[a-dream-seeking-light]

Cassini flyby over the Great Red Spot of Jupiter catches Europa and Io in transit.   Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/CICLOPS/Kevin M. Gill

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

[spacewonder19]

Crescent Jupiter and Io ©

[itscolossal]

NASA Just Dropped More Than 12,000 Photos from the Artemis II Mission