Uluru Blackh●le Rise, Me, Pixel Art, 2022

Uluru blackh●le rise, me, pixel art, 2022

A Dusty Fingerprint in Space

An image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows a bright dot at the center of star-filled black space. The bright dot is actually two stars meeting, as their orbits bring them together every 8 years. The stellar pair are surrounded by 17 rings of gas and dust that appear orangish gray. The rings have a slight rectangular shape and are very clear and defined starting at about 1 o’clock on a clockface. The rings start to break up a bit to our view traveling clockwise around the image. As you arrive at the 12:40 position, only parts of about six rings can be seen as they disappear from view.

A new image from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope reveals a remarkable cosmic sight: at least 17 concentric dust rings emanating from a pair of stars. Just 5,300 light-years from Earth, the star duo are collectively known as Wolf-Rayet 140. Each ring was created when the two stars came close together and their stellar winds (streams of gas they blow into space) collided so forcefully that some of the gas was compressed into dust. The stars' orbits bring them together about once every eight years, and forms a half-shell of dust that looks like a ring from our perspective. Like a cosmic fingerprint, the 17 rings reveal more than a century of stellar interactions—and the "fingerprint" belonging to Wolf-Rayet 140 may be equally unique. Other Wolf-Rayet stars produce dust, but no other pair are known to produce rings quite like Wolf-Rayet 140.

Learn more about Wolf-Rayet 140.

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of-finite-jurisdiction

2 years ago

RS Puppis, one of the brightest Cepheid variable stars © Hubble

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2 years ago

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2 years ago

Space Station Silhouette on the Moon : What’s that unusual spot on the Moon? It’s the International Space Station. Using precise timing, the Earth-orbiting space platform was photographed in front of a partially lit gibbous Moon last month. The featured composite, taken from Payson, Arizona, USA last month, was intricately composed by combining, in part, many 1/2000-second images from a video of the ISS crossing the Moon. A close inspection of this unusually crisp ISS silhouette will reveal the outlines of numerous solar panels and trusses. The bright crater Tycho is visible on the upper left, as well as comparatively rough, light colored terrain known as highlands, and relatively smooth, dark colored areas known as maria. On-line tools can tell you when the International Space Station will be visible from your area. via NASA

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1 year ago

oh okay. heart steps right out of my chest and falls down the stairs

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2 years ago

SNOOPY IS BACK FROM THE MOON

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1 year ago

With NASA announcing their streaming service NASA+ and also announcing it’s going to be free and also ad free, I’d just like to appreciate the lengths they go to make scientific knowledge and exploration as available as they possibly can.

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2 years ago

Venus, Callisto (Jupiter’s Moon), Neptune

Venus, Callisto (Jupiter’s moon), Neptune

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2 years ago

This peculiar portrait showcases NGC 1999, a reflection nebula in the constellation Orion. NGC 1999 is around 1,350 light-years from Earth and lies near the Orion Nebula, the closest region of massive star formation to Earth. NGC 1999 itself is a relic of recent star formation – it is composed of debris left over from the formation of a newborn star.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, ESO, K. Noll

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