“Look again at that dot.

That’s here.

That’s home.

That’s us.†— Carl Sagan, "Pale Blue Dot," 1994â£â£ â£â£Our Voyager 1 spacecraft took this iconic image of Earth 35 years ago.

Voyager 1 was so far away — 3.7 billion miles (6 billion km) — from the Sun that, from its vantage point, Earth was just a point of light about a pixel in size.

Truly a “Pale Blue Dot.â€â£â£â£â£Mission managers commanded the spacecraft to look back toward home for a final time.

It snapped a series of 60 images that were used to create the first “family portrait†of our solar system.â£â£â£â£Carl Sagan was a prominent planetary scientist who was a consultant and adviser to NASA beginning in the 1950s.

He also was a member of the Voyager Imaging Team.

He had the original idea in 1981 to use the cameras on one of the two Voyager spacecraft to image Earth.

He realized that because the spacecraft were so far away the images might not show much.

This was precisely why Sagan and other members of the Voyager team felt the images were needed — they wanted humanity to see Earth’s vulnerability and that our home world is just a tiny, fragile speck in the cosmic ocean.â£â£â£â£After snapping the Pale Blue Dot and other “family photos,†Voyager 1 powered off its cameras forever to save its energy for the long journey ahead.

In August 2012, Voyager 1 entered interstellar space.

It’s now the most distant human-made object ever.â£â£â£â£Image description: Earth is a single, bright blue pixel in the vastness of space.

Rays of sunlight scattered within the camera optics stretch across the scene, one of which happens to have intersected dramatically with Earth.

The original image was taken on Feb.

14, 1990.

What you see here is an updated version from 2020 using modern image-processing software and techniques.â£â£â£â£Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltechâ£â£â£â£#NASA #Earth #PaleBlueDot #Astrophotography #Voyager #Space #Perspective

Goodbye, Earth.

Hello, Moon ⣠â£After a successful maneuver on Feb.

8, @FireflyAerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 has departed Earth’s orbit and begun its four-day journey to the Moon’s orbit.

Blue Ghost will spend about 16 days in lunar orbit before descending to the surface of the Moon on Mar.

2.⣠â£Blue Ghost successfully launched from @NASAKennedy on Jan.

15.

Since launching more than four weeks ago, the lunar lander has performed dozens of health tests generating 15 gigabytes of data.

All 10 NASA science and technology payloads onboard are healthy.⣠â£Blue Ghost is a part of our lunar delivery initiative to send NASA science and technology to the Moon ahead of crewed Artemis missions.⣠â£Image description: Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander recently captured this image of Earth.

An image of Earth is also reflected off the solar panel on the lander.

The Moon can be seen on the horizon above Earth.

Firefly’s X-band antenna and NASA’s Lunar Environment Heliospheric X-ray Imager (LEXI) payload are visible on the top deck of the lander.

The background is filled with the darkness of space.⣠â£Credit: @FireflyAerospace⣠â£#BGM1 #BlueGhost #Firefly #NASA #Artemis #LunarLander #Moon #Earth #Space #STEM

Delivery from the universe!

A bouquet blooming with thousands of stars is captured in this image of the star-forming region 30 Doradus.

This composite image combines X-ray data from our @NASAChandraXray observatory (in blue and green) with optical data from @NASAHubble (in yellow) and radio data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (in red).

Since 1999, our Chandra X-ray Observatory has been studying the universe from low Earth orbit.

Chandra, the world's most powerful X-ray telescope, has given astronomers new insights into black holes, distant galaxies, and stellar explosions.

Image description: A composite image of a star-forming region of space known as 30 Doradus, which is shaped like a bouquet or a maple leaf.

X-ray wind and gas takes the shape of a massive purple and pink bouquet with an extended central flower.

The hazy, mottled shape occupies much of the image, positioned just to the left of center.

Inside the purple and pink gas and wind cloud are red and orange veins and pockets of bright white light.

The hazy purple and pink bouquet is surrounded by glowing dots of green, white, orange, and red.

A second mottled purple cloud, which resembles a ring of smoke, floats in the lower-right corner.

Credit: X-ray (Chandra): NASA/CXC/Penn State Univ./L.

Townsley et al.; Infrared (Spitzer): NASA/JPL-CalTech/SST; Optical (Hubble): NASA/STScI/HST; Radio (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array): ESO/NAOJ/NRAO/ALMA; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J.

Schmidt, N.

Wolk, K.

Arcand #NASA #Space #Bouquet #Telescope #Flowers #ValentinesDay #Valentine

Look up, let your hair down – howl if you like – for it’ll be a full moon!⣠â£After cozying up to Venus, Jupiter, and Mars earlier this month, the Moon reaches peak illumination on Feb.

12.â£â£â£Looking at the Moon with only your eyes, you’ll see mostly areas of white and gray.

The gray patches are solidified volcanic lava flows.

When the Moon was young, its interior was still molten, and magma would erupt onto its surface.

The lighter-colored areas are called the highlands, and show the earliest crust on the Moon, dominated by a type of rock called anorthosite.â£â£â£â£What you see on the Moon with just your eyes will vary depending on your eyesight.

Give yourself plenty of time for your eyes to adjust and look carefully.

Looking with binoculars or a telescope will reveal more details, like mountain ridges and crater chains.â£â£ â£For better viewing of craters and mountains, try phases other than the full moon.

The shadows on the surface will be more pronounced, and help distinguish features you might otherwise miss.â£â£â£Image description: In this picture from May 25, 2021, the nearly full moon rises over National Harbor in Fort Washington, Maryland.

The Moon is just under the tip of the triangle shape formed by a structure.

Some buildings and water can be seen in the background, while a few people are in the dimly lit foreground.â£â£â£â£Credit: NASA/Bill Ingallsâ£â£â£â£#NASA #Moon #FullMoon #Stargazing #Astronomy

The Bend & Snap ⣠â£We don’t know the rate of return on scoring a dinner invitation with this information, but what you see here is the light from a distant galaxy bending around a closer one.

The @EuropeanSpaceAgency’s Euclid telescope snapped this observation of a rare phenomenon called an Einstein ring.â£The gravity of this elliptical galaxy, which is around 590 million light-years from Earth, acts as a lens.

It magnifies a much more distant bright galaxy, some 4.42 billion light-years away, into a ring of light.

â£Developed by ESA with contributions from @NASA, Euclid is surveying the cosmos to help us understand the dark side of the universe.

We can’t wait to see what it reveals next!â£Image descriptions:⣠â£1.

The large, hazy oval of elliptical galaxy NGC 6505 illuminates the center of this image from the European Space Agency’s Euclid mission.

At the heart of the galaxy is a small bright spot surrounded by a thin white circle, which is a magnified view of a much more distant galaxy.

The view is also filled with countless colorful stars and galaxies of various sizes and shapes amidst the blackness of space.

Thin spikes of light extend from the brightest stars due to the observatory’s optics.⣠â£2.

A thin ring of a perfect circular shape and a piercingly bright white disc in its middle are the protagonists of this image.

They â£stand out against a uniformly colored background of a hazy dark grey.

The ring appears as if it was a faint brush stroke, where at four evenly spaced spots more pressure was applied on the brush.

These stand out in the ring as four brighter and thicker spots.

The white disc within the ring gives the impression of a gaping hole in the image, through its stark contrast to the dark background.⣠â£Credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C.

Cuillandre, T.

Li; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO⣠â£#EinsteinRing #ESAEuclid #GravitationalLensing #Galaxy #Gravity #Space

All the stars are closer Orbiting Earth 16 times a day, the International Space Station is about 250 miles (400 km) closer to the stars than the rest of us back on Earth.

From the @ISS, our @NASAAstronauts get a unique perspective on landmarks and cities around the globe—including New Orleans, the site of this year's #SuperBowl.

Astronaut @astro_pettit captured this image of New Orleans on Oct.

26, 2024; Pettit has taken countless pictures from low Earth orbit as part of his "Science of Opportunity" since lifting off to the station last September.

Visit nasa.gov/iss to learn more about what we're discovering aboard the orbiting laboratory!

Image description: An image of New Orleans as seen from the International Space Station at night.

The city's lights stand out in bright white, with key streets and blocks standing out.

The Mississippi River can be seen snaking through the city center, with Lake Pontchartrain marking an end to the city's lights on their northern border.Credit: NASA/Don Pettit #NASA #Space #Earth #SpaceStation #NewOrleans #SBLIX #KendrickLamar

Looking to the fuschia â£â£Our @NASAChandraXray observatory captured this colorful scene of two spiral galaxies merging.

This galaxy pair is located about 250 million light-years away and can be found in the constellation of Serpens.

â£â£The collision of the two spiral galaxies happened about 700 million years ago, sparking an enormous burst of star formation.

About 200 huge star clusters reside in a packed, dusty region about 5,000 light-years across—about 5% of the Milky Way’s diameter.

The amount of gas in this tiny region is equal to all of the gas in the entire Milky Way.

â£â£Image description: This composite image features an ultra-luminous infrared galaxy, surrounded by a soft, rose-pink cloud of X-ray gas.

Here, a single, bright, golden white dot sits at the center of the image.

The rose-pink cloud surrounding the dot appears soft and airy, like cotton candy.

Upon close inspection, feint orange veins can be discerned, marbling the X-ray gas cloud seen with Chandra.

Surrounding the gas cloud are other distant galaxies and stars, set against the blackness of space.

Most are orange or white, and range from tiny specks to small glowing ovals.â£â£Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI; Infrared: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L.

Frattare, J.

Major â£â£#NASA #Space #Astronomy #Chandra #Telescope #Stars

We got twins!

Twins!

ï¸ï¸These looping funnel clouds are half a light-year in length—but don't worry, they're not touching down near Earth anytime soon.

They're swirling 5,000 light-years away in the Lagoon Nebula, which can be found in the constellation Sagittarius.Our @NASAHubble telescope spotted these twisters nearly 30 years ago, based on observations collected from July to September of 1995.

Like tornadoes back on Earth, the sharp differences in temperature between the hot surface of the nebula's clouds and their cold interior (combined with the pressure of sunlight) may twist these tornadoes into the shapes you see here.Image description: A nebula, lit in soft shades of blue, green and yellow, is intersected by a pair of much darker funnel clouds, which reach from the top-left to the bottom-right of the image.

A red, slightly pixellated star shines through the cloud in the bottom right.Credit: NASA and A.

Caulet (ST-ECF, ESA)#NASA #Space #Universe #Nebula #Nature #Tornado #Stormchaser

The ultimate selfie 🤳â£â£NASA astronaut Suni Williams took this selfie on Jan.

30, 2025, as the @ISS orbited 263 miles (423 km) above the Pacific Ocean.

This irresistible photo op happened during Williams' ninth spacewalk; she and fellow astronaut Butch Wilmore removed hardware from the outside of the station and collected samples of surface material from sites near life support system vents — the Destiny laboratory and the Quest airlock — for analysis.

â£Studying these samples will tell us whether the space station releases microorganisms, how many, and how far they may travel.

In addition, we could learn whether these microorganisms survive and reproduce in the harsh space environment and how they may perform in places like the Moon and Mars.â£â£Williams made history during last week's spacewalk: she surpassed former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson’s record for total spacewalking time by a female astronaut.

Williams now has 62 hours, 6 minutes of total spacewalk time, fourth on NASA’s all-time list.â£â£Image description: Astronaut Suni Williams’ arms and hands, and the camera she’s holding, are reflected in the shiny visor of her spacesuit’s helmet.

You can also see part of the International Space Station and the darkness of space, as well as the Pacific Ocean on our left.

Looking around Williams’ helmet, we can see other parts of her spacesuit, and a little bit of space on the right.â£â£Credit: NASA/Suni Williamsâ£â£#NASA #Astronaut #Selfie #Spacewalk #Space #SpaceStation

A dartboard in the rec room of our universe ⣠â£A massive galaxy nicknamed Bullseye ripples with nine star-filled rings as a blue dwarf galaxy plunges through the center like a dart.

The smaller galaxy, visible just to the left of center in this image, shot through the middle of Bullseye about 50 million years ago, leaving rings like ripples in a pond.

Galaxies collide or barely miss one another quite frequently (cosmically speaking) but it’s rare for one galaxy to dive through the center of another.⣠â£High-resolution imagery from @NASAHubble, which captured this image, confirmed eight of Bullseye’s rings, with data from the W.

M.

Keck Observatory in Hawaii finding a ninth.

Astronomers will now be able to better study how the galaxy—and its rings—may continue to evolve over billions of years.⣠â£Image description: A large galaxy is at center, and a significantly smaller galaxy is to its left.

It has several rings.

Its circular core is bright white at the very center, but light yellow overall.

Going outward, there are gaps between the rings.

At 9 o’clock is a small dwarf galaxy.

It is about the same size as the yellow core of the Bullseye.

The dwarf galaxy is blue, with many dots.

It looks like the edge of the Bullseye might touch the dwarf galaxy.

Both galaxies are set on the black background of space, which is dotted with a range of galaxies in different shapes, colors, and sizes, along with one foreground star at left.⣠â£Credit: NASA, ESA, Imad Pasha (Yale), Pieter van Dokkum (Yale)â£#NASA #Space #Astronomy #Stars #Telescope #BullsEye #Darts #Hubble

Take a moment to look up this month ⣠â£All month long, Venus – named after the Roman goddess of love – shines the brightest it’ll be this year.

Check it out after sunset!⣠â£The Moon will have meetups with the Pleiades, Jupiter, and Mars.

Then, on Feb.

12, there’ll be a full moon.⣠â£Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech⣠â£#NASA #Space #WhatsUp #Sky #Skywatching #Planets #SolarSystem #Astronomy

Stars hatched by a swan Our WISE telescope captured this image, released in June 2011, of a huge complex of star-forming clouds and stellar clusters in the constellation Cygnus.

Star clusters are groups of stars that share an origin, forming at roughly the same time and location, and are tied together by gravity for up to millions or even billions of years.Different types of stars have different life spans, so clusters will change over time as stars evolve.

Some clusters might contain big, hot, O-type stars.

Others might hold smaller, cooler stars that age and change over billions of years.

Star clusters can contain anywhere from as few as a dozen stars to upwards of millions, and those stars can be spread out over a few light-years to hundreds of light-years.WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) was an infrared-wavelength astronomical space telescope.

It was placed into hibernation in February 2011, having completed its primary astrophysics mission.

Then, in 2013, the spacecraft was assigned a new mission as NEOWISE (Near-Earth Object Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer), to help find near-Earth asteroids and comets.

Its mission ended on July 31, 2024.Image description: This image is dominated by curving green clouds, except at top left and middle, where there are also red clouds.

A few bright yellow stars shine through the most defined clouds.

There are also tiny multicolored – though mostly blue – dots of light throughout the whole area.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA#NASA #Swan #Telescope #Constellation #Astrophotography

A supernova glowing in the dark ⣠â£When supernova remnant SN 1006 first appeared in the sky in 1006 C.E., it was far brighter than Venus and visible during the daytime for weeks.

From that moment on, it occupied the hearts of astronomers all over the world; it has been studied from the ground and from space many times.⣠â£In this image, visible, radio, and X-ray data combine to give us that blue (and red) view of the remnant’s full shell – the debris field that was created when a white dwarf star exploded and sent material hurtling into space.⣠â£Scientists believe SN 1006 is a Type Ia supernova.

This class of supernova is caused when a white dwarf never lets another star go: either it pulls too much mass from a companion star and explodes, or it merges with another white dwarf and explodes.

Understanding Type Ia supernovas is especially important because astronomers use observations of these explosions in distant galaxies as mileposts to mark the expansion of the universe.⣠â£Image description: This supernova remnant looks like a bubble filled with blue and red clouds of dust and gas, floating amid a million stars.

These stars are visible all around the bubble and even can be seen peeking through it.⣠â£Credit: NASA, ESA, and Z.

Levay (STScI)⣠â£#NASA #Supernova #Stars #IVE #Astronomy #Hubble #Chandra #Clouds #ì•„ì´ë¸Œ #SupernovaLove #DavidGuetta

It’s giving rainbows and unicorns, like a middle school binder 🦄 â£â£â£â£Meet NGC 602, a young star cluster in the Small Magellanic Cloud (one of our satellite galaxies), where astronomers using @NASAWebb have found candidates for the first brown dwarfs outside of our galaxy.

This star cluster has a similar environment to the kinds of star-forming regions that would have existed in the early universe—with very low amounts of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium.

It’s drastically different from our own solar neighborhood and close enough to study in detail.

â£â£ â£â£Brown dwarfs are… not quite stars, but also not quite gas giant planets either.

Typically they range from about 13 to 75 Jupiter masses.

They are sometimes free-floating and not gravitationally bound to a star, like a planet would be.

But they do share some characteristics with exoplanets, like storm patterns and atmospheric composition.

â£â£@NASAHubble showed us that NGC 602 harbors some very young low-mass stars; Webb is showing us how significant and extensive objects like brown dwarfs are in this cluster.

Scientists are excited to better be able to understand how they form, particularly in an environment similar to the harsh conditions of the early universe.â£â£ â£â£Read more at the link in @ESAWebb’s bio.

â£â£ â£â£Image description: A two image swipe-through of a star cluster is shown inside a large nebula of many-coloured gas and dust.

The material forms dark ridges and peaks of gas and dust surrounding the cluster, lit on the inner side, while layers of diffuse, translucent clouds blanket over them.

Around and within the gas, a huge number of distant galaxies can be seen, some quite large, as well as a few stars nearer to us which are very large and bright.â£â£ â£â£Image Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, P.

Zeidler, E.

Sabbi, A.

Nota, M.

Zamani (ESA/Webb)â£â£ â£â£#JWST #Webb #JamesWebbSpaceTelescope #NGC602 #browndwarf #space #NASA #ESA

Take a deep breath…X-ray images from our Chandra X-ray Observatory helped astronomers confirm that most of the oxygen in the universe is synthesized in massive stars.

So, everybody say "thank you" to supernova remnants (SNRs) like this one, which has enough oxygen for thousands of solar systems.Supernova remnants are, naturally, the remains of exploded stars.

They're extremely important for understanding our galaxy.

If it weren't for SNRs, there would be no Earth, no plants, animals, or people.

This is because all the elements heavier than iron were made in a supernova explosion, so the only reason we find these elements on Earth or in our solar system — or any other extrasolar planetary system — is because those elements were formed during a supernova.@nasachandraxray's data is represented in this image by blue and purple, while optical data from @nasahubble and the Very Large Telescope in Chile are in red and green.Image description: The darkness of space is almost covered by the array of objects in this image.

Stars of different sizes are strewn about, while a blue and red bubble of gas is at the center.

An area of pink and green covers the bottom-right corner.Credit: X-ray (NASA/CXC/ESO/F.Vogt et al); Optical (ESO/VLT/MUSE), Optical (NASA/STScI)#NASA #Supernova #Space #Universe #Astronomy #Astrophotography #Telescope #Xray