NGC 2736: The Pencil Nebula

Crescent Nebula

Hubble peers billions of light years away, uncovering thousands of colorful galaxies clustered together in the constellation of Leo (The Lion). Galaxy clusters are so massive that their immense gravity warps and amplifies the light from more distant objects. This phenomenon, known as gravitational lensing, can help astronomers reveal the earliest galaxies in our universe.

Solar surges are cool jets of plasma ejected in the solar atmosphere from chromospheric into coronal heights. This particular surge has been captured in a loopy structure and streamed sunwards along the magnetic field lines.

Surges are associated with active regions and they are most likely triggered by magnetic reconnection and magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) wave activity. According to their morphological features, surge prominences can be classified into three types: jet-like, diffuse, and closed loop (above). Jet-like and diffuse surges are associated with coronal mass ejections (CMEs), but the closed-loop surges are not because the initial acceleration of the eruption is slowed down and finally stopped by the overlying coronal loops.

Credit: SDO/ LMSAL

M8 // Lagoon Nebula (left of center) & M20 // The Trifid (bottom)

Uranus’ icy moon Miranda wowed scientists during the Voyager encounter with its dramatically fractured landscapes.

via reddit

Saturn in three bands of infrared light.

Carina Nebula clouds. So stunning.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day 2016 August 31 

Annular Solar Eclipse over New Mexico 

What is this person doing? In 2012 an annular eclipse of the Sun was visible over a narrow path that crossed the northern Pacific Ocean and several western US states. In an annular solar eclipse, the Moon is too far from the Earth to block out the entire Sun, leaving the Sun peeking out over the Moon’s disk in a ring of fire. To capture this unusual solar event, an industrious photographer drove from Arizona to New Mexico to find just the right vista. After setting up and just as the eclipsed Sun was setting over a ridge about 0.5 kilometers away, a person unknowingly walked right into the shot. Although grateful for the unexpected human element, the photographer never learned the identity of the silhouetted interloper. It appears likely, though, that the person is holding a circular device that would enable them to get their own view of the eclipse. The shot was taken at sunset on 2012 May 20 at 7:36 pm local time from a park near Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. Tomorrow another annular solar eclipse will become visible, this time along a path crossing Africa and Madagascar.

Hubbles Variable Nebula

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Bubble Nebula by Hubble Heritage Via Flickr: For the 26th birthday of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers are highlighting a Hubble image of an enormous bubble being blown into space by a super-hot, massive star. The Hubble image of the Bubble Nebula, or NGC 7635, was chosen to mark the 26th anniversary of the launch of Hubble into Earth orbit by the STS-31 space shuttle crew on April 24, 1990. The Bubble Nebula is 7 light-years across — about one-and-a-half times the distance from our sun to its nearest stellar neighbor, Alpha Centauri. The Bubble Nebula was discovered in 1787 by William Herschel, a prominent British astronomer. It is being formed by a prototypical Wolf-Rayet star, an extremely bright, massive, and short-lived star that has lost most of its outer hydrogen and is now fusing helium into heavier elements. The star is about 4 million years old, and in 10 million to 20 million years, it will likely detonate as a supernova. 

Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) heritage.stsci.edu/2016/13/ hubbledev.stsci.edu/newscenter/archive/releases/2016/13/