☼ ✧✰Space Out, Shine Down✧✰ ☼

Battle Scar of Mars

NGC 6744, Dragon Eye

Trending now in Algeria: Image of the Carina Nebula from James Webb space telescope matching the eastern coast of Algeria

photography by astrovas

Carina Nebula

Enhanced color is less than 1 km across; black and white is less than 5 km. ID: ESP_063458_1650 date: 9 February 2020 altitude: 260 km NASA/JPL/UArizona

Mercurys Sodium Tail : What is that fuzzy streak extending from Mercury? Long exposures of our Solar System’s innermost planet may reveal something unexpected: a tail. Mercury’s thin atmosphere contains small amounts of sodium that glow when excited by light from the Sun. Sunlight also liberates these molecules from Mercury’s surface and pushes them away. The yellow glow from sodium, in particular, is relatively bright. Pictured, Mercury and its sodium tail are visible in a deep image taken in late May from Italy through a filter that primarily transmits yellow light emitted by sodium. First predicted in the 1980s, Mercury’s tail was first discovered in 2001. Many tail details were revealed in multiple observations by NASA’s robotic MESSENGER spacecraft that orbited Mercury between 2011 and 2015. Tails are usually associated with comets. The tails of Comet NEOWISE are currently visible with the unaided eye in the morning sky. via NASA

NGC 6543, Cat’s Eye

The ARP catalog is the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, first published in 1966 by Halton Arp (hence the name). Recognising that not all galaxies were of the same shape, he created a list of oddly shaped galaxies, and some of the most amazing astronomical images available, thanks to Hubble.

Cygnus Loop, Star Tails

Design graphics Geya Shvecova (Jump into the void) Archive_020920

The ‘Jewel Bug’ Nebula

Aurorae shimmering over the steaming Earth Geysers and hot springs occur when water gets superheated by underlying magma chambers filled with molten rock. A convection cell of sinking rainwater and rising superheated H2O establishes itself, dissolving and redepositing minerals as it cycles up and down through the energy gradient. Like the glowing plasma above which is fuelled by charged particles fired off from the sun interacting with our magnetic field and the particles at the tenuous edge of the atmosphere, the energy source is removed from the visible effect, but both reveal the essential interpenetration of all things and energies that make up the beautiful universe (or multiverse) that we live in. Loz Image credit: Stéphane Vetter https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap131031.html

Rho Ophiuchi Cloud

The Helix Nebula