Stardust

Galactic Center of the Milky Way

NASA’s Webb Space Telescope Peers Behind Bars by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center

NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona

NGC 7293, Helix 

by marioweigand83

Credit: Mick Hyde

Like the gaping mouth of a gigantic celestial creature, the cometary globule CG4 glows menacingly in this image from ESO’s Very Large Telescope. Although it looks huge and bright in this image it is actually a faint nebula and not easy to observe. The exact nature of CG4 remains a mystery.

A Fire Rainbow over West Virginia : What’s happening to this cloud? Ice crystals in a distant cirrus cloud are acting like little floating prisms. Known informally as a fire rainbow for its flame-like appearance, a circumhorizon arc appears parallel to the horizon. For a circumhorizontal arc to be visible, the Sun must be at least 58 degrees high in a sky where cirrus clouds present below – in this case cirrus fibrates. The numerous, flat, hexagonal ice-crystals that compose the cirrus cloud must be aligned horizontally to properly refract sunlight in a collectively similar manner. Therefore, circumhorizontal arcs are somewhat unusual to see. The featured fire rainbow was photographed earlier this month near North Fork Mountain in West Virginia, USA. via NASA

Hubble image of variable star RS Puppis by NASA Hubble

A View to a Nebula via NASA https://ift.tt/ANZenxr

NASA/JPL/UArizona

Clouds of Carina

Rainbow Airglow over the Azores : Why would the sky glow like a giant repeating rainbow? Airglow. Now air glows all of the time, but it is usually hard to see. A disturbance however – like an approaching storm – may cause noticeable rippling in the Earth’s atmosphere. These gravity waves are oscillations in air analogous to those created when a rock is thrown in calm water. The long-duration exposure nearly along the vertical walls of airglow likely made the undulating structure particularly visible. OK, but where do the colors originate? The deep red glow likely originates from OH molecules about 87-kilometers high, excited by ultraviolet light from the Sun. The orange and green airglow is likely caused by sodium and oxygen atoms slightly higher up. The featured image was captured during a climb up Mount Pico in the Azores of Portugal. Ground lights originate from the island of Faial in the Atlantic Ocean. A spectacular sky is visible through this banded airglow, with the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy running up the image center, and M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, visible near the top left. via NASA

NGC 6960, Witch’s Broom

The Aurora Named STEVE by NASA Goddard Photo and Video

Hubble Celebrates 29th Anniversary with a Colorful Look at the Southern Crab Nebula ✨ ✨ by NASA Goddard Photo and Video