Promoting science and technology education through spaceflight and weather balloons.

HH 30: A Star System with Planets Now Forming

By |2025-02-19T08:09:07-05:00February 19th, 2025|Categories: NASA News, Uncategorized|Tags: , , , , , |

Photo of the Day How do stars and planets form? New clues have been found in the protoplanetary system Herbig-Haro 30 by the James Webb Space Telescope in concert with Hubble and the Earth-bound ALMA. The observations show, among other things, that large dust grains are more concentrated into a central disk where they [...]

Thor’s Helmet versus the Seagull

By |2025-02-18T08:09:09-05:00February 18th, 2025|Categories: NASA News, Uncategorized|Tags: , , , , , |

Photo of the Day Seen as a seagull and a duck, these nebulae are not the only cosmic clouds to evoke images of flight. But both are winging their way across this broad celestial landscape, spanning almost 7 degrees across planet Earth's night sky toward the constellation of the Big Dog (Canis Major). The [...]

SpaceX Rocket Launch Plume over California

By |2025-02-17T08:09:08-05:00February 17th, 2025|Categories: NASA News, Uncategorized|Tags: , , , , , |

Photo of the Day What's happened to the sky? Last Monday, the photogenic launch plume from a SpaceX rocket launch created quite a spectacle over parts of southern California and Arizona. Looking at times like a giant space fish, the impressive rocket launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base near Lompoc, California, was so bright [...]

A Cosmic Rose: NGC 2237 in Monoceros

By |2025-02-14T08:09:08-05:00February 14th, 2025|Categories: NASA News, Uncategorized|Tags: , , , , , |

Photo of the Day The Rosette Nebula, NGC 2237, is not the only cosmic cloud of gas and dust to evoke the imagery of flowers, but it is probably the most famous. At the edge of a large molecular cloud in Monoceros some 5,000 light years away, the petals of this cosmic rose are [...]

Asteroid Bennu Holds the Building Blocks of Life

By |2025-02-12T08:09:06-05:00February 12th, 2025|Categories: NASA News, Uncategorized|Tags: , , , , , |

Photo of the Day What can a space rock tell us about life on Earth? NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft made a careful approach to the near-Earth asteroid 101955 Bennu in October of 2020 to collect surface samples. In September 2023, the robotic spaceship returned these samples to Earth. A recent analysis has shown, surprisingly, that [...]

The Spider and the Fly

By |2025-02-11T08:09:15-05:00February 11th, 2025|Categories: NASA News, Uncategorized|Tags: , , , , |

Photo of the Day Will the spider ever catch the fly? Not if both are large emission nebulas toward the constellation of the Charioteer (Auriga). The spider-shaped gas cloud in the image center is actually an emission nebula labelled IC 417, while the smaller fly-shaped cloud on the left is dubbed NGC 1931 and [...]

Milky Way over the Australian Pinnacles

By |2025-02-09T08:09:08-05:00February 9th, 2025|Categories: NASA News, Uncategorized|Tags: , , , , , |

Photo of the Day What strange world is this? Earth. In the foreground of the featured image are the Pinnacles, unusual rock spires in Nambung National Park in Western Australia. Made of ancient sea shells (limestone), how these human-sized picturesque spires formed remains unknown. In the background, just past the end of the central [...]

Comet G3 ATLAS Setting over a Chilean Hill

By |2025-02-05T08:09:10-05:00February 5th, 2025|Categories: NASA News, Uncategorized|Tags: , , , , , |

Photo of the Day Where is Comet ATLAS going? In the featured time-lapse video, the comet is not itself moving very much, but the Earth's rotation makes it appear to be setting over a hill. The Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) sequence was captured with an ordinary camera on January 22 from the Araucanía Region [...]

Anticrepuscular Rays: A Rainbow Fan over Spain

By |2025-02-04T08:09:06-05:00February 4th, 2025|Categories: NASA News, Uncategorized|Tags: , , , , , |

Photo of the Day Yes, but can your rainbow do this? Late in the day, the Sun set as usual toward the west. However, on this day, the more interesting display was 180 degrees around -- toward the east. There, not only was a rainbow visible, but an impressive display of anticrepuscular rays from [...]

Wolf-Rayet Star 124: Stellar Wind Machine

By |2025-02-03T08:09:11-05:00February 3rd, 2025|Categories: NASA News, Uncategorized|Tags: , , , , , |

Photo of the Day Some stars explode in slow motion. Rare, massive Wolf-Rayet stars are so tumultuous and hot that they are slowly disintegrating right before our telescopes. Glowing gas globs each typically over 30 times more massive than the Earth are being expelled by violent stellar winds. Wolf-Rayet star WR 124, visible near [...]

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