Spiral Galaxies From Webb & Hubble: NGC 1566 4303 3351

The Seagull Nebula © Gianni Lacroce

2024 February 2

NGC 1893 and the Tadpoles of IC 410 Image Credit & Copyright: Sander de Jong

Explanation: This cosmic view shows off an otherwise faint emission nebula IC 410, captured under clear Netherlands skies with telescope and narrowband filters. Above and right of center you can spot two remarkable inhabitants of the interstellar pond of gas and dust, known as the tadpoles of IC 410. Partly obscured by foreground dust, the nebula itself surrounds NGC 1893, a young galactic cluster of stars. Formed in the interstellar cloud a mere 4 million years ago, the intensely hot, bright cluster stars energize the glowing gas. Globules composed of denser cooler gas and dust, the tadpoles are around 10 light-years long and are likely sites of ongoing star formation. Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation their heads are outlined by bright ridges of ionized gas while their tails trail away from the cluster’s central young stars. IC 410 and embedded NGC 1893 lie some 10,000 light-years away, toward the nebula-rich constellation Auriga.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240202.html

Saturn, Cassini

Going for a walk. Apollo 17 astronaut Ronald Evans leaves to the spacecraft to retrieve film cassettes from the Service Module, Dec 1972. Mr. Evans was Command Module Pilot & orbited the moon a record 75 times during the mission. He holds the record for most time spent in lunar orbit at just shy of 148 hours. He is the last human to orbit the moon solo. A historic figure in space pioneering.

NGC 6744

via APOD/NASA; Credit: NASA, ESA, and the LEGUS team 

Andromeda over the Swiss Alps Image Credit: Dzmitry Kananovich

Rho Ophiuchi

Saturn and its amazing rings, observed by the Cassini probe on this day in 2004.

A universe in motion seen from the International Space Station during a night pass over Earth.

(@ wonderofscience on Twitter)

Timelapse created from images courtesy of the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, NASA Johnson Space Center(ISS061-E-110520-111341 eol.jsc.nasa.gov).