Ares 3 Landing Site: The Martian Revisited

Posted on 24 May 2025 | Leave a comment

Ares 3 Landing Site The Martian Revisited

Explanation: This close-up image from the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows weathered craters and windblown deposits in the southern region of Acidalia Planitia. While a striking shade of blue, to the human eye, the area would probably appear gray or slightly reddish. However, no humans have gazed upon this terrain, unless you count the astronauts in Andy Weir’s sci-fi novel The Martian. The novel chronicles the adventures of Mark Watney, an astronaut stranded at the fictional Ares 3 landing site on Mars, which corresponds to the coordinates of this cropped HiRISE frame. For scale, Watney’s 6-meter-diameter habitat at the site is about one-tenth the diameter of the large crater. The Ares 3 landing coordinates are only about 800 kilometers north of the Carl Sagan Memorial Station, the 1997 Pathfinder landing site.

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The Milky Way over Maunakea

Posted on 24 May 2025 | Leave a comment

The Milky Way Over Maunakea

Explanation: Have you ever seen the Milky Way? On a clear night in a dark location, a faint band of light becomes visible across the sky. Once your eyes have adapted to the darkness, you may be able to see the band for the first time. It may then become obvious. Then it becomes spectacular. One reason for your growing astonishment may be realizing that this fuzzy swath contains billions of stars. In the featured image, the band of the Milky Way Galaxy arcs high above the night sky. Also visible are the colorful Rho Ophiuchi clouds on the right and the red, circular Zeta Ophiuchi nebula near the top center. Taken in late February from Maunakea in Hawaii, the foreground telescope is the University of Hawaii’s 2.2-meter telescope. Fortunately, you don’t need to be near the top of a Hawaiian volcano to see the Milky Way.

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The Curly Spiral Galaxy (M63)

Posted on 24 May 2025 | Leave a comment

Curly Spiral Galaxy M63
Explanation: Messier 63, a bright spiral galaxy in the northern sky, is located about 30 million light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici. Also cataloged as NGC 5055, this majestic island universe spans nearly 100,000 light-years, making it about the size of our own Milky Way. Its bright core and majestic spiral arms earned the galaxy its popular name, the Sunflower Galaxy. This exceptionally deep exposure reveals faint loops and curling star streams extending far into the galaxy’s halo. The star streams extend nearly 180,000 light-years from the galactic center and are likely remnants of tidally disrupted satellites of M63. Other satellite galaxies of M63, including dwarf galaxies, which could contribute to M63’s star streams in the next few billion years, can be spotted in the remarkable wide-field image.

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NGC 6366 vs 47 Ophiuchi

Posted on 24 May 2025 | Leave a comment

NGC 6366 vs 47 Ophiuchi
Explanation: Most globular star clusters roam the halo of the Milky Way, but the globular cluster NGC 6366 lies close to the galactic plane. Located about 12,000 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Ophiuchus, the cluster’s starlight is dimmed and reddened by interstellar dust in the Milky Way when viewed from Earth. Consequently, the stars of NGC 6366 appear golden in this telescopic image, particularly when compared to the relatively bright, blue, nearby star 47 Ophiuchi. Compared to the approximately 100,000 stars gravitationally bound in distant NGC 6366, 47 Ophiuchi is a binary star system just 100 light-years away. However, the co-orbiting stars of 47 Ophiuchi are too close together to be distinguished individually in the image.

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Deimos Before Sunrise

Posted on 24 May 2025 | Leave a comment

Deimos Before Sunrise
Explanation: Deimos takes 30 hours and 18 minutes to orbit the Red Planet once. This is slightly longer than one Martian day, or sol, which is approximately 24 hours and 40 minutes. Therefore, Deimos drifts westward across the Martian sky. Though it is only about 15 kilometers across at its widest, the smallest of Mars’ two moons is bright. Deimos is actually the brightest celestial object in this Martian skyscape, which was captured before sunrise on March 1 (the 1,433rd sol of the Mars rover’s mission) by Perseverance. The image is composed of 16 exposures recorded by one of the rover’s navigation cameras. The individual exposures were combined into a single image to enhance the low-light view. Regulus and Algeiba, two bright stars in the constellation Leo, are also visible in the dark Martian predawn sky.

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Journey to the Center of the Galaxy

Posted on 25 November 2024 | Leave a comment


What lies at the center of our galaxy? In Jules Verne’s classic science fiction novel, A Journey to the Center of the Earth, Professor Liedenbrock and his fellow explorers encounter many strange and exciting wonders. Astronomers are already aware of some of the bizarre objects that exist at our Galactic Center, including vast cosmic dust clouds, bright star clusters, swirling gas rings, and even a supermassive black hole. Much of the Galactic Center is hidden from our view in visible light by intervening dust and gas, but it can be explored using other forms of electromagnetic radiation. The featured video is actually a digital zoom into the center of the Milky Way, beginning with visible-light images from the Digitized Sky Survey. As the movie progresses, the light shown shifts to dust-penetrating infrared, highlighting gas clouds recently discovered in 2013 that are falling toward the central black hole.

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Interplanetary Earth

Posted on 25 November 2024 | Leave a comment

Interplanetary Earth
On July 19, 2013, Earth was photographed from two other planets in the Solar System: the innermost planet, Mercury, and the ringed gas giant, Saturn. This was the first time that an interplanetary photograph of Earth was taken on the same day. The image on the left depicts Earth as a pale blue dot situated just below the rings of Saturn. This image was captured by the robotic Cassini spacecraft, which was then orbiting the outermost gas giant. On that same day, individuals across the globe captured numerous images of Saturn. On the right, the Earth-Moon system is observed against the dark background of space as captured by the sunward MESSENGER spacecraft, which was then in Mercury orbit. MESSENGER captured the image as part of a search for small natural satellites of Mercury, moons that would be expected to be quite dim. In the MESSENGER image, the brighter Earth and Moon are both overexposed and shine brightly with reflected sunlight. Both Cassini and MESSENGER have since retired from their missions of Solar System exploration, having fulfilled their intended purpose.

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The Medusa Nebula

Posted on 25 November 2024 | Leave a comment

Medusa Nebula

The nebula’s popular name, “The Medusa Nebula,” is derived from the braided and serpentine filaments of glowing gas observed in its structure. Additionally, this nebula is designated as Abell 21 and is classified as an old planetary nebula, situated at a distance of approximately 1,500 light-years within the Gemini constellation. Similarly to its mythological namesake, the nebula is associated with a dramatic transformation. The planetary nebula phase represents the final stage of evolution for low-mass stars like the Sun, marking their transformation from red giants to hot white dwarf stars and the subsequent shedding of their outer layers. Ultraviolet radiation from the hot star powers the nebular glow. The Medusa’s transforming star is the faint one near the center of the overall bright crescent shape. In this deep telescopic view, fainter filaments clearly extend below and to the left. The estimated diameter of the Medusa Nebula is over four light-years.

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Stars and Dust in the Pacman Nebula

Posted on 25 November 2024 | Leave a comment

Stars And Dust In The Pacman Nebula

Stars are capable of creating extensive and complex dust structures from the dense and opaque molecular clouds from which they originate. The tools employed by stars to create their intricate structures are high-energy light and fast stellar winds. The heat generated by the stars causes the dark molecular dust to evaporate and also disperses and causes the ambient hydrogen gas to glow. The image depicts a nascent open cluster of stars, designated IC 1590, encircling the intricate interstellar dust structures within the emission nebula NGC 281. This nebula has been informally dubbed the “Pac-Man Nebula” due to its distinctive overall shape. The dust cloud situated just above the center of the image is classified as a Bok Globule, which may gravitationally collapse and form a star or stars. The Pacman Nebula is situated approximately 10,000 light-years away, within the constellation of Cassiopeia.

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Helping Hand in Cassiopeia

Posted on 25 November 2024 | Leave a comment

Helping Hand In Cassiopeia

These dusty molecular clouds, situated in the vicinity of the Milky Way galaxy, appear to extend a cosmic helping hand. These interstellar clouds are part of a local complex of star-forming interstellar clouds, which include LDN 1358, 1357, and 1355 from the 1962 Catalog of Dark Nebulae, as compiled by American astronomer Beverly Lynds. The obscuring dark nebulae, which present a challenging target for astro-imagers, are situated at a distance of approximately 3,000 light-years from Earth. They are located towards rich star fields in the northern constellation Cassiopeia. At that distance, this deep, telescopic field of view would span approximately 80 light-years.

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