Space

Vikka_V wrote: »

cee134 wrote: »

The photo you see above shows a couple of interesting celestial sights. For starters, the colorful collection of lights on the right is a galaxy called NGC 7250 which NASA notes is extremely active forming stars and playing host to supernovas. The galaxy is made up of billions of stars, and is located over 45 million light years away, so we’re only seeing a tiny glimpse of what it has to offer.

The ultra-bright star to the left of the galaxy is named TYC 3203-450-1, located in a constellation called Lacerta, which means “The Lizard.” It’s not a particularly notable star and researchers haven’t spent a whole lot of time studying it thus far, but because of its distance from Earth — roughly 1/1,000,000 the distance of the galaxy in the photo — it appears to be a much more dominating force in the sky. NASA even notes that, if the two were photographed at similar distances from our planet, we probably wouldn’t even be able to spot the star.

I love this picture. When I first opened it on my cell phone I visualized a skull, albeit with slanted eye sockets.

Funny you should say that. You aren't the only one. "Harry Potter" fans think the Dark Mark appears in this picture from space.

(July 1997) --- The southern end of Baja California and part of the Gulf of Cortez are visible in this nadir view photographed with an electronic still camera aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia. Cabo San Lucas is cearly visible at land's end.

(April 22, 2017) --- The Cygnus resupply ship from Orbital ATK is remotely guided to its port on the Unity module by ground controllers using the Canadarm2 robotic arm.

This illustration shows a star behind a shattered comet.

Observations of the star KIC 8462852 by NASA's Kepler and Spitzer space telescopes suggest that its unusual light signals are likely from dusty comet fragments, which blocked the light of the star as they passed in front of it in 2011 and 2013.

The comets are thought to be traveling around the star in a very long, eccentric orbit.

Panorama with Active Linear Dune in Gale Crater, Mars




This 360-degree mosaic from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover looks out over a portion of the Bagnold Dunes, which stretch for several miles.

From early February to early April 2017, the rover examined four sites near linear dunes for comparison with what it found in late 2015 and early 2016 during its investigation of crescent-shaped dunes. The dark, rippled surface of a linear dune is visible at the center of the view and receding into the distance to the left. The bedrock of the Murray formation, made from sediments deposited in lakes billions of years ago, is in the foreground, along with some components of the rover.

The location, called "Ogunquit Beach," is on the northwestern flank of lower Mount Sharp. Northwest is at both ends of this full-circle panorama; southeast is at the center, where a higher portion of Mount Sharp dominates the horizon.

Among the questions this Martian dune campaign is addressing is how winds shape the dunes into different patterns. Others include whether Martian winds sort grains of sand in ways that affect the distribution of mineral compositions, which also would have implications for studies of Martian sandstones.

The 115 individual images that were combined into this mosaic were acquired by the Mastcam's left-eye camera on March 24 and March 25, 2017, (PST) during the 1,647th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's work on Mars.

This mosaic is white-balanced so that the colors of the colors of the rock and sand materials resemble how they would appear under daytime lighting conditions on Earth.