Boo! Did We Get You? 🎃

IC 4628: The Prawn Nebula ©

2023 December 16

Crescent Enceladus Image Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA

Explanation: Peering from the shadows, the Saturn-facing hemisphere of tantalizing inner moon Enceladus poses in this Cassini spacecraft image. North is up in the dramatic scene captured during November 2016 as Cassini’s camera was pointed in a nearly sunward direction about 130,000 kilometers from the moon’s bright crescent. In fact, the distant world reflects over 90 percent of the sunlight it receives, giving its surface about the same reflectivity as fresh snow. A mere 500 kilometers in diameter, Enceladus is a surprisingly active moon. Data and images collected during Cassini’s flybys have revealed water vapor and ice grains spewing from south polar geysers and evidence of an ocean of liquid water hidden beneath the moon’s icy crust.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap231216.html

Mars painting by Herb Herrick for an article about terraforming in World Book Science Annual 1975. Consultant: Carl Sagan. The first painting (top) is followed by two clear plastic overlays of the skies and rain and finally plant life.

The Milky Way in the direction of Vulpecula and Cygnus // AC1000

The Rosetta Nebula and NGC 2244

At the heart of the Rosetta nebula is an open cluster of stars, which is NGC 2244. The entire structure sits at the end of a giant molecular cloud, and you can easily spot the tell tale columns and protostars at the head showing active star formation on-going.

The bottom image is from Chandra, which gives the purple/pink colours for X-Ray sources, used particularly in spotting black hole accretion disks, pulsars and supernova remnants, we can see it's a lively place !

The entire structure is in the constellation of Monoceros at around 5,200 light years from Earth.

Sagittarius dwarf irregular galaxy (sagDIG) © Hubble

M31 Adromeda Galaxy (Visible Light) by NASA Goddard Photo and Video

The night side of Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Sunlight scatters through Titan's atmosphere, forming purple and gray rings l NASA Cassini

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.....!!!

NGC 7635, Bubble Nebula