Starburst Galaxy NGC 4449 In The M94 Galaxy Group 13 Million Light-years Away (Hubble Image)

Michael Benson

1. Mimas Above Saturn’s Rings and Shadows, Cassini, November, 7, 2004

2. Mimas Transits Saturn’s Ring Shadows, Cassini, January 18, 2005

In this amazing Hubble Space Telescope image, a blue bubble-like nebula surrounds a Wolf–Rayet star WR 31a, located about 30,000 light-years away in the constellation of Carina (The Keel).  Wolf–Rayet stars are the most massive and brightest stars known, and their lifecycle is only a few hundred thousand years — a blink of an eye in cosmic terms.

Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt

is there a smell comparable to space ? i assume we dont know because we would die if we tried to smell it but thats so cool

yeah if humans tried to smell space just like that, we’d die, no doubt about it 

but the smell of space lingers on spacewalk suits, and docking hatches when astronauts open them!

apparently, space itself smells like burning hot metal, or a hot barbeque grill with a slight hint of spent gasoline. The moon, apparently, smells like a gun after its been shot!

The coolest thing about it all is that the smell is actually what are left of dying stars- it’s literally the smell of stardust, and the particles smell like that because they’re so rich in hydrocarbons- something so very essential to life, and speculated by a lot of astronomers and astrobiologists and such to be the very thing life on earth started from!

another neat fact is that no two solar systems smell the same- ours smells like that because our solar system in particular is extremely rich in carbon, and other solar systems and places in the universe will have extremely different smells depending on what elements are most abundant in their system! 

HCG 87: A Small Group of Galaxies : Sometimes galaxies form groups. For example, our own Milky Way Galaxy is part of the Local Group of Galaxies. Small, compact groups, like Hickson Compact Group 87 shown above, are interesting partly because they slowly self-destruct. Indeed, the galaxies of HCG 87 are gravitationally stretching each other during their 100-million year orbits around a common center. The pulling creates colliding gas that causes bright bursts of star formation and feeds matter into their active galaxy centers. HCG 87 is composed of a large edge-on spiral galaxy visible near the image center, an elliptical galaxy visible to its right, and a spiral galaxy visible near the top. The small spiral near the center might be far in the distance. Several stars from our Galaxy are also visible in the foreground. Studying groups like HCG 87 allows insight into how all galaxies form and evolve. via NASA

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Awesome long-exposure shot of a Rocket Launch

via reddit

The planet Saturn, brought to you by the Hubble Space Telescope.

This Distant World May Be The First Ringed Planet Discovered Outside Our Solar System

Planet J1407b is 430 light years from Earth and 10-40 times the size of Jupiter. It’s too soon to tell if these truly are rings, but if they are…

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The Infrared Visible Andromeda: This remarkable synthetic color composite image was assembled from archives of visible light and infrared astronomy image data. The field of view spans the Andromeda Galaxy are also included in the frame. via NASA

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This photograph of Neptune was reconstructed from two images taken by Voyager 2’s narrow-angle camera, through the green and clear filters. At the north (top) is the Great Dark Spot, accompanied by bright, white clouds that undergo rapid changes in appearance.

Credit: NASA

NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler Telescope has spotted the first roughly Earth-sized world orbiting in the “Goldilocks zone” of another star – offering perhaps the best bet so far for life elsewhere in the universe.

A year on Kepler 452b, which is about 1,400 light years from us in the constellation Cygnus, is 385 days, meaning its orbit is just a bit farther away from its star than the Earth is from the sun. That places it squarely within what planetary scientists call the habitable zone, or “Goldilocks” zone — not too cold and not too hot.

“In my mind, this is the closest planet indeed to Earth,” Jon Jenkins, Kepler data analysis lead at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif, said at a media briefing. “The star is a little bit older and a little bit bigger and brighter, so it’s good that it’s a bit farther from its star.”

Kepler Telescope Introduces Earth To A Very Distant Cousin

Image: Artist’s concept compares Earth (left) to the new planet, called Kepler-452b, which is about 60 percent larger in diameter. Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle