Milky Way By Jonathon Wilcox

The Milky Way and its red nebulae hanging over the Isaac Newton Telescope at La Palma // Jakob Sahner

Saturn observed by space probe Voyager 1 on November 16, 1980

Credit: NASA

November 12, 1980: Voyager 1 made its closest approach to Saturn, flying within 124,000 kilometers (77,000 miles) of the ringed planet.

NGC 1365, Heart of the Universe

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. 

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JWST Breaks New Ground - Twice

Between the orbit of Jupiter and Saturn lies a small 151Km wide asteroid/minor planet called Chariklo. This left over from our early solar system hasn't been imaged before, and was too small for JWST to image too, however, the JWST team were waiting for an opportunity to do some science.

Because of it's size, the only way they could do this was if a star passed directly behind the asteroid from the location of JWST, so it was put on a watch list, and in October, this is exactly what happened.

This is the first time any telescope has been able to see an object it wouldn't ordinarily be able to image, simply due to a chance occultation, so marks a first and interesting method for looking at some of these far off objects.

The asteroid happens also happens to sport a small ring of debris, and as the star didn't quite make a direct occultation, it did pass through the debris rings, being picked up twice as it passed through.

But what really was impressive was the second bit of data gathered, as the occultation occurred JWST was able to record the composition, detecting water ice.

Up until now, it had been assumed that the asteroid would have a significant water ice component, but this is the first time anybody has been able to take some real data from it.

Objects like Chariklo tell us so much about the early solar system, how Earth got it's water, and what other systems and exoplanets are likely made from.

L1527 IRS - Protostar

Stars form when bodies of dust and gas create enough mass to create a gravitational effect that's able to then pull in more gas, the process continues and the mass increases until the pressure at the centre is sufficient for fusion to begin.

There's many examples of protostars, in fact back in 2012,  NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope focused in on L1527 IRS, believed at the time to be the youngest forming star ever found.

Recently, the JWST re-visited this protostar, and the title image was the result.

The forming star cannot be visually spotted, but is thought to be around 20-40% the mass of our own Sun already.

If you look closely, you can see there's a dark patch in the centre, this is actually the accretion disk around the newly formed star, what is left over after the formation, may go on to form the planets, in fact, they may be actually starting to be created already, as recent evidence does point to planets being born around the same time as the star does in many cases.

The protostar is only 450 light years from Earth in the Constellation of Taurus, and is thought to be around 100,000 years old, a blink of an eye in the life of a star, particularly of this mass.

Sh2-136, Ghosts of the Cosmos

Hey. Why isn’t the moon landing a national holiday in the US. Isn’t that fucked up? Does anyone else think that’s absurd?

A Trailblazing Duo:

January 17, 2024 marks the 20th anniversary of Spirit and Opportunity's landing on Mars. The two of Mars Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, landed on opposite sides of Mars and began exploring the planet. Since their landing, the rovers have sent more than 100,000 high-resolution, full-color images of the planet’s surface. Designed to last just 90 days, they exceeded expectations and changed the way we explore the Red Planet l more at NASA JPL