Official Space is Awesome Thread

[Argonne69]

On 6/20/2022 at 6:26 AM, Argonne69 said:

The barred spiral galaxy NGC 7496 lies ~24 million light-years away in the constellation Grus.

 

 

Image: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Lee, PHANGS-HST Team, J. Schmidt
 

 

The same galaxy taken by the Webb telescope.

 

 

Image: NASA/ESA/CSA/J. Schmidt, CC BY 2.0
 

[Argonne69]

The Cartwheel Galaxy (ESO 350-40 or PGC 2248) in near infrared is located ~500 million light-years away in the constellation Sculptor. The shape is a result of a collision between a large spiral galaxy and a smaller galaxy.

 

 

Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
 

[Soloman1]

“A Picture of Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun, located 4.2 light years away from us. It was taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. This level of detail... A new world is unveiled everyday," said Étienne Klein, a celebrated physicist and director at France's Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission.

 

Then admitted it was a joke and actually a slice of chorizo.

[Argonne69]

This was originally posted in 2015, but the links appears to be no longer working. The largest image assembled of the Andromeda galaxy (M31), our next door neighbor. Taken by Hubble, this 61,000-light-year-long stretch of the galaxy’s disk contains over over 100 million stars. The galaxy is only 2.5 million light-years away. Click on the image to expand it (6000 x 1918).

 

 

Image: NASA, ESA, J. Dalcanton, B.F. Williams, L.C. Johnson, the PHAT team, and R. Gendler

 

Edited August 6, 2022 by Argonne69

[Jeff58]

Have you seen this? HL Tao. Radio, not optical.

 

[Argonne69]

JWST captures two galaxies colliding. The two galaxies (IC 1623 or VV 114) are ~275 million light years away in the the constellation Cetus.

 

 

Image: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/R. Colombari

 

[Argonne69]

The Hubble Space Telescope isn't quite dead yet. It captured this image of an area on the outskirts of the Orion Nebula where jets of charged particles from a newborn star, IX Ori, slam into clouds of gas and dust at hundreds of kilometers per second. The energy from that collision lights up the cloud along the shock front.

 

 

Image: ESA/Hubble
 

[Argonne69]

The spiral galaxy pair NGC 4567 (top left) and NGC 4568, also known as the Butterfly galaxies taken by the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii. The pair are located ~52 million light-years away.  At present, the centers of these galaxies are ~20,000 light-years apart (about the distance from Earth to the center of the Milky Way), and each galaxy still retains its original, pinwheel shape. The galaxies will eventually combine to form a single elliptical galaxy in ~500 million years. 

 

 

Image: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/F

 

[Argonne69]

Neil Armstrong took this photo of Tranquility Base from his window in the Eagle within seconds of landing on the Moon. It’s one of several images taken in haste to ensure that at least some close-up views of the Moon were captured in the event of a No Stay decision.

 

 

Image: NASA
 

[Argonne69]

The Butterfly Nebula (W40) as seen by NASA's now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope. W40 is located ~1,400 light-years away, approximately the same distance as the Orion Nebula.

 

 

Image: NASA, JPL-Caltech

 

[Argonne69]

A pair of interacting galaxies in the constellation of Eridanus. They are so close to one another that gravitational forces have distorted one of the spiral arms of the larger galaxy, NGC 1532.

 

 

Image: Unknown

 

Edited August 18, 2022 by Argonne69

[Argonne69]

The galaxy NGC 7727 was born from the merger of two galaxies that started ~1 billion years ago. At the heart of the galaxy, two supermassive black holes are spiraling closer to each other, and will merge within 250 million years.

 

 

Image: ESO
 

[Argonne69]

The Hubble Space Telescope captures a star-studded cluster in the constellation Sagittarius. Globular cluster NGC 6540 shines brightly with tens of thousands to millions of stars tightly bound together by gravity. 

 

 

Image: ESA/Hubble, NASA, R. Cohen
 

[Argonne69]

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope's new images of Jupiter in near-infrared. Auroras can be seen at both poles, and its faint ring system is barely visible.

 

 

 

Images: NASA, ESA, CSA, Jupiter ERS Team, R. Hueso (UPV/EHU) and J. Schmidt.
 

[Argonne69]

An original NASA illustration of the Gemini capsule. Project Gemini ran from 1962 to 1966, and was used to test rendezvous and docking procedures that would be needed for the Apollo missions.

 

 

Image: NASA

 

Edited August 26, 2022 by Argonne69

[Argonne69]

NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) left the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on August 16, and traveled to launchpad 39B. Should all go according as planned, SLS, with an uncrewed Orion capsule atop, will launch on Monday, August 29, during a two-hour window that starts at 8:33 a.m. ET. The mission is called Artemis 1.

The rocket will send the uncrewed Orion capsule on a 42-day journey to the Moon and back. The inaugural launch will see the Orion capsule travel a total distance of 1.3 million miles. Orion will enter into a lunar orbit for a few weeks before returning home. Splashdown in the Pacific Ocean is expected on October 10.

 

 

Image: NASA

 

[Argonne69]

Webb’s latest image is a special collaboration with the Hubble Space Telescope. Data was combined from the two telescopes to produce this image of the spiral Phantom Galaxy (Messier 74). It's located ~32 million light-years away.

 

 

 

Images: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, J. Lee, the PHANGS-JWST Team, R. Chandar, J. Schmidt

 

Edited August 30, 2022 by Argonne69

[Argonne69]

On 8/28/2022 at 6:59 AM, Argonne69 said:

NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) left the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on August 16, and traveled to launchpad 39B. Should all go according as planned, SLS, with an uncrewed Orion capsule atop, will launch on Monday, August 29, during a two-hour window that starts at 8:33 a.m. ET. The mission is called Artemis 1.

The rocket will send the uncrewed Orion capsule on a 42-day journey to the Moon and back. The inaugural launch will see the Orion capsule travel a total distance of 1.3 million miles. Orion will enter into a lunar orbit for a few weeks before returning home. Splashdown in the Pacific Ocean is expected on October 10.

 

 

Image: NASA

 

 

Bummer. The launch was scrubbed due to weather and cooling issues on one of the engines during fueling. They'll try again on Friday.

 

 

[Argonne69]

Webb captures a near perfect Einstein ring of galaxy SPT-S J041839-4751.8. The galaxy is located ~12 billion light-years away.

 

 

 

Images: JWST/MAST
 

[Argonne69]

Looks like they're going to make another attempt at launching Artemis 1 this afternoon. Fingers crossed. 

 

Edited September 3, 2022 by Argonne69

[Argonne69]

The Artemis 1 mission was scrubbed again, and the rocket will be returned to the hangar until the next launch window in October.

 

[Argonne69]

A binary pair of rare stars ~5,600 light-years away in the constellation of Cygnus, and their interactions produce periodic eruptions of dust that are expanding out in shells into the space around them. The star is known as a colliding wind binary, consisting of an Wolf-Rayet star, WR 140, and a hot, massive O-type star companion – another rare object.

 

 

Image: JWST, MIRI, Judy Schmidt

 

 

Animation: NASA, ESA, J. Olmsted, STScI

 

[Argonne69]

In this image stretching 340 light-years across, Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) displays the Tarantula Nebula star-forming region, including tens of thousands of never-before-seen young stars that were previously shrouded in dust. The nebula is located 161,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy.

 

 

Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO Production Team

Large 122.5 megapixel image: https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01GA76Q01D09HFEV174SVMQDMV.png

 

[Argonne69]

Hubble captures these "colliding" galaxies, SDSS J115331 and LEDA 2073461. The two are over 1 billion light-years away, and aren't actually that close to each other. Photobomb is more like it.

 

Image: ESA/Hubble, NASA, W. Keel
 

A zoomable version is available here: https://esahubble.org/images/potw2236a/zoomable/

 

Edited September 10, 2022 by Argonne69

[Argonne69]

The CEERS Epoch 1 color mosaic consists of 690 individual frames taken with the JWST's Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam). This image covers an area of sky about eight times as large as JWST’s First Deep Field Image released on July 12, and is the largest galaxy survey image to date. If you like looking at thousands of galaxies at once, this is a beauty.

 

 

Image: NASA, STSCi, CEERS, TACC, S. Finkelstein, M. Bagley, R. Larson, Z. Levay

 

Links to medium and large images. These are big files, and they're best viewed on a laptop or PC.

 

Medium: https://web.corral.tacc.utexas.edu/ceersdata/press-releases/CEERS-NIRCAM-rgb-medium-res-220801.png

 

Large: https://web.corral.tacc.utexas.edu/ceersdata/press-releases/HighResolution/CEERS-NIRCAM-credit-220804.tif

 

[Argonne69]

JWST captures a portion of the Orion Nebula's bar in near-infrared.

 

 

Image: Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, PDRs4All ERS Team, S. Fuenmayor

 

[Argonne69]

One of 68 pages from the Apollo 11 LM Lunar Surface Checklist, detailing the required steps just prior to Neil making his historic first steps on the lunar surface. 'Pretty cool when you consider that missing a step could result in death on the lunar surface.

 

 

Image: NASA
 

[Argonne69]

Spiral galaxy NGC 1961 is located 180 million light-years away in the constellation Camelopardalis. 'Probably one of the most beautiful images of a galaxy I've seen.

 

 

Image: NASA, ESA, J. Dalcanton, R. Foley, G. Kober 

 

Edited September 18, 2022 by Argonne69

[Argonne69]

The first photo taken by a human on the Moon. Neil snapped this shortly after taking his historic first step.

 

 

Image: NASA

 

[Argonne69]

A new image of Neptune, its rings, and seven of its 14 moons (Galatea, Naiad, Thalassa, Despina, Proteus, Larissa, and Triton), taken in infrared by the James Webb space telescope in July. Neptune is the solar system's outermost planet which has thin rings with faint dust bands around it.

 

 

 

Images: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI