小小行星的极光

小小行星的极光

ByNASA中文

2023年11月25日 Little Planet Aurora Image Credit & Copyright: Victor Lima Explanation: Immersed in an eerie greenish light, this rugged little planet appears to be home to stunning water falls and an impossibly tall mountain. It’s planet Earth of course. On the night of November 9 the nadir-centered 360 degree mosaic was captured by digital camera from the Kirkjufell mountain area of western Iceland. Curtains of shimmering Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights provide the pale greenish illumination. The intense auroral display was caused by solar activity that rocked Earth’s magnetosphere in early November and produced strong geomagnetic storms. Kirkjufell mountain itself stands at the top of the stereographic projection’s circular horizon. Northern hemisphere skygazers will recognize the familiar stars of the Big Dipper just above Kirkjufell’s…

冲点附近的立体木星

冲点附近的立体木星

ByNASA中文

2023年11月24日 Stereo Jupiter near Opposition Image Credit & Copyright: Marco Lorenzi Explanation: Jupiter looks sharp in these two rooftop telescope images. Both were captured on November 17 from Singapore, planet Earth, about two weeks after Jupiter’s 2023 opposition. Climbing high in midnight skies the giant planet was a mere 33.4 light-minutes from Singapore. That’s about 4 astronomical units away. Jupiter’s planet girdling dark belts and light zones are visible in remarkable detail, along with the giant world’s whitish oval vortices. Its signature Great Red Spot is still prominent in the south. Jupiter rotates rapidly on its axis once every 10 hours. So, based on video frames taken only 15 minutes apart, these images form a stereo pair. Look at the center of the pair and…

远眺金牛分子云

远眺金牛分子云

ByNASA中文

2023年11月23日 Along the Taurus Molecular Cloud Image Credit & Copyright: Yuexiao Shen, Joe Hua Explanation: The cosmic brush of star formation composed this interstellar canvas of emission, dust, and dark nebulae. A 5 degree wide telescopic mosaic, it frames a region found north of bright star Aldebaran on the sky, at an inner wall of the local bubble along the Taurus molecular cloud. At lower left, emission cataloged as Sh2-239 shows signs of embedded young stellar objects. The region’s Herbig-Haro objects, nebulosities associated with newly born stars, are marked by tell-tale reddish jets of shocked hydrogen gas. Above and right T Tauri, the prototype of the class of T Tauri variable stars, is next to a yellowish nebula historically known as Hind’s Variable Nebula (NGC…

空间站感恩节

空间站感恩节

ByNASA中文

NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins (left) and Rick Mastracchio, show off their Thanksgiving meal in the Unity node of the International Space Station on Nov. 28, 2013. The meal included smoked turkey, green beans, and stuffing. This year, holiday treats including turkey, pumpkin spice cappuccino, and cranberry sauce were sent to the orbital laboratory through NASA’s SpaceX CRS-29 launch. Watch astronauts currently on the space station share a Thanksgiving message. Image Credit: NASA/Mike Hopkins 2013年11月28日，NASA宇航员迈克尔·霍普金斯（左）和里克·马斯特拉奇奥在国际空间站的团结节点展示他们的感恩节大餐。这顿饭包括烟熏火鸡、青豆和馅料。今年，包括火鸡、南瓜香料卡布奇诺和蔓越莓酱在内的节日美食通过NASA的SpaceX CRS-29发射被送往轨道实验室。 观看目前在空间站的宇航员分享感恩节信息。 图片来源: NASA/Mike Hopkins

IC 342: 尘豹座的隐藏星系

IC 342: 尘豹座的隐藏星系

ByNASA中文

2023年11月22日 IC 342: Hidden Galaxy in Camelopardalis Image Credit & Copyright: Steve Cannistra Explanation: Similar in size to large, bright spiral galaxies in our neighborhood, IC 342 is a mere 10 million light-years distant in the long-necked, northern constellation Camelopardalis. A sprawling island universe, IC 342 would otherwise be a prominent galaxy in our night sky, but it is hidden from clear view and only glimpsed through the veil of stars, gas and dust clouds along the plane of our own Milky Way galaxy. Even though IC 342’s light is dimmed and reddened by intervening cosmic clouds, this sharp telescopic image traces the galaxy’s own obscuring dust, young star clusters, and glowing star forming regions along spiral arms that wind far from the galaxy’s core….

宇航员妮可·曼恩为太空行走做准备

宇航员妮可·曼恩为太空行走做准备

ByNASA中文

NASA astronaut and Expedition 68 flight engineer Nicole Mann is pictured during a fit check of her spacesuit on Jan. 12, 2023, ahead of a planned spacewalk to upgrade the International Space Station’s power generation system. Selected as an astronaut candidate in June 2013, Mann is the first Native American woman from NASA in space. In 2018, she was chosen as one of the nine astronauts to crew the first flight tests and missions of the Boeing CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX Crew Dragon. In her first spaceflight, she launched to the International Space Station as commander of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft on Oct. 5, 2022. While aboard the orbital laboratory, Mann executed two spacewalks totaling 14 hours and two…

弗莱明三角星云

弗莱明三角星云

ByNASA中文

2023年11月21日 Fleming’s Triangular Wisp Image Credit & Copyright: Cristiano Gualco Explanation: These chaotic and tangled filaments of shocked, glowing gas are spread across planet Earth’s sky toward the constellation of Cygnus as part of the Veil Nebula. The Veil Nebula itself is a large supernova remnant, an expanding cloud born of the death explosion of a massive star. Light from the original supernova explosion likely reached Earth over 5,000 years ago. The glowing filaments are really more like long ripples in a sheet seen almost edge on, remarkably well separated into the glow of ionized hydrogen atoms shown in red and oxygen in blue hues. Also known as the Cygnus Loop and cataloged as NGC 6979, the Veil Nebula now spans about 6 times the…

从新的角度看人马座C

从新的角度看人马座C

ByNASA中文

The NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s reveals a portion of the Milky Way’s dense core in a new light. An estimated 500,000 stars shine in this image of the Sagittarius C (Sgr C) region, along with some as-yet unidentified features. A large region of ionized hydrogen, shown in cyan, contains intriguing needle-like structures that lack any uniform orientation. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, and S. Crowe (University of Virginia) A star-forming region, named Sagittarius C (Sgr C), is seen in exceptional detail in this image from Nov. 20, 2023, thanks to the Near-Infrared Camera instrument on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. An estimated 500,000 stars shine in this image of the Sgr C region, along with some never-before-seen features astronomers have…

马头星云

马头星云

ByNASA中文

2023年11月20日 The Horsehead Nebula Image Credit & Copyright: Mark Hanson & Martin Pugh, SSRO, PROMPT, CTIO, NSF Explanation: Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation, a magnificent interstellar dust cloud by chance has assumed this recognizable shape. Fittingly named the Horsehead Nebula, it is some 1,500 light-years distant, embedded in the vast Orion cloud complex. About five light-years “tall,” the dark cloud is cataloged as Barnard 33 and is visible only because its obscuring dust is silhouetted against the glowing red emission nebula IC 434. Stars are forming within the dark cloud. Contrasting blue reflection nebula NGC 2023, surrounding a hot, young star, is at the lower left of the full image. The featured gorgeous color image combines both narrowband and broadband images recorded using several…