Ad-astra-affecte-spe - Reach For The Stars With Hope

The monsters that live on the Sun are not like us. They are larger than the Earth and made of gas hotter than in any teapot. They have no eyes, but at times, many tentacles. They float. Usually, they slowly change shape and just fade back onto the Sun over about a month. Sometimes, though, they suddenly explode and unleash energetic particles into the Solar System that can attack the Earth.  Pictured is a huge solar prominence imaged almost two weeks ago in the light of hydrogen. Captured by a small telescope in Gilbert, Arizona, USA, the monsteresque plume of gas was held aloft by the ever-present but ever-changing magnetic field near the surface of the Sun. Our active Sun continues to show an unusually high number of prominences, filaments, sunspots, and large active regions as solar maximum approaches in 2025.

Saturn has a mysterious hexagon at its north pole that has refused to give up its secrets, probably because neither Voyager 1 nor Cassini was able to plunge that deep and survive. Harvard scientists Rakesh Yadav and Jeremy Bloxham might have finally started to figure out what causes this peculiar feature. They believe that vortexes occur at the planet’s north pole because of atmospheric flows deep within the gas giant, and that these vortexes pinch an intense horizontal jet near the equator—which is what warps the storm into a hexagon. It still looks unnatural though.....!!!

Gamma Cas & Ghost Nebula © Antoine Grelin

New Horizons – Scientist of the Day 

The New Horizons spacecraft, bound for Pluto, blasted off its launch pad aboard an Atlas V rocket on Jan. 19, 2006. 

read more...

The four giant planets of our Solar System, as seen by NASA's James Webb Telescope.

Into the Cosmic Heart, IC 1850 © Aleix Roig

Sh2-136, Ghosts of the Cosmos

Cosmic Delights and Distant Discoveries Unfold in ‘Astronomy Photographer of the Year 15’

Love, Pluto (ft. Charon) l NASA New Horizons