M42, Star Streams of Orion

thinking about all the “small” art that’s ever existed. songs that were only ever sung in one village. stories written by children that got lost in the shuffle. personal paintings that didn’t survive the test of time. how they affected the lives of just a few, but still existed, still mattered to someone.

NGC 2264 - The Cone Nebula

2,500 Light years from Earth in the constellation of Monoceros lies The Cone Nebula, a 7 light year high pillar of gas and dust and an area of star formation.

The NGC designation actually covers the greater area, not just the cone nebula, in what is called the Christmas Tree Cluster.

The upper image was taken by the VLT (Very Large Telescope) to mark ESO's 60th anniversary.

For more images, check out the Source :

Wild's Triplet

ARP 248, originally thought to be 3 interacting galaxies, but as you'll see from this Hubble image, the third galaxy is much further behind.

Two spiral galaxies gravitationally tearing arms of stars between the two, creating a bridge of stars spanning 200,000 light years.

The galaxies are around 200 million light years from us, and are expected to eventually merge in around 1 billion years from now, it's a slow motion galaxy smash up, that our own Milky way will begin to experience in the coming billions of years as our own Sun comes towards the end of it's main sequence.

2022 November 21

The Butterfly Nebula from Hubble Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble; Processing: William Ostling

Explanation: Stars can make beautiful patterns as they age – sometimes similar to flowers or insects. NGC 6302, the Butterfly Nebula, is a notable example. Though its gaseous wingspan covers over 3 light-years and its estimated surface temperature exceeds 200,000 degrees C, the aging central star of NGC 6302, the featured planetary nebula, has become exceptionally hot, shining brightly in visible and ultraviolet light but hidden from direct view by a dense torus of dust. This sharp close-up was recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope and is processed here to show off remarkable details of the complex planetary nebula, highlighting in particular light emitted by oxygen (shown as blue), hydrogen (green), and nitrogen (red). NGC 6302 lies about 3,500 light-years away in the arachnologically correct constellation of the Scorpion (Scorpius). Planetary nebulas evolve from outer atmospheres of stars like our Sun, but usually fade in about 20,000 years.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap221121.html

Fairy of The Eagle Nebula

A star-forming nebula in Carina. Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Livio and the Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI), and Judy Schmidt See more on my twitter page

STOP THAT SHIT!!

I am not a “carefree” black girl, I am a black girl with a lot of anxiety and a lot of things I care so much about… but I am not a negative black girl, a judgement black girl, can’t respect someone’s hustle black girl, shitting on someone else’s diversity black girl. If you many many bad things to say about a stranger you have never met before something is wrong. STOP JUDGING OTHER BLACK WOMEN BECAUSE THEY ARE DIFFERENT THAN YOU! STOP THAT SHIT! We are more alike than you think, we are stronger in numbers, and it is easy as fuck to not be an asshole. #carefreeblackgirls #carefreeblackgirl #blackgirls #blackgirl blacklove #blackwoman #bekind #supportblackwomen #loveblackwomen #blackgirlswithanxiety #love #spreadlove #imoverthisshit #IAintShyYouToxic

(via Our Solar System Is Even Stranger Than We Thought)

Scientific American  Lauren Weiss

How special is the solar system? The history of astronomy has mostly been a one-way journey from a worldview in which our solar system is orderly (and divine) to a view in which we are not special. Our solar system’s planets, once thought to dance in god-ordained perfect circles in a “music of the spheres,” deviate from circular orbits. Johannes Kepler, who demonstrated the non-circular orbits of the planets, tried to restore a sense of heavenliness by latching onto a new pattern for their orbits based on Plato’s mathematical solids—but that notion was discredited many years later with the discovery of Uranus. 

So when, on a sunny afternoon in California in 2017, I discovered a set of patterns that seem to rule planetary systems other than our own, I was skeptical. Were these patterns real, or were they an illusion? And if real, what did they mean about our solar system’s place in the cosmos

What are Gravitational Waves?

Gravitational waves are ‘ripples’ in the fabric of space-time caused by some of the most violent and energetic processes in the Universe. Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves in 1916 in his general theory of relativity.

Einstein’s mathematics showed that massive accelerating objects (such as neutron stars or black holes orbiting each other) would disrupt space-time in such a way that ‘waves’ of distorted space would radiate from the source (like the movement of waves away from a stone thrown into a pond). Furthermore, these ripples would travel at the speed of light through the Universe, carrying with them information about their cataclysmic origins, as well as invaluable clues to the nature of gravity itself.

The strongest gravitational waves are produced by catastrophic events such as colliding black holes, 

the collapse of stellar cores (supernovae), coalescing neutron stars or white dwarf stars, the slightly wobbly rotation of neutron stars that are not perfect spheres, and the remnants of gravitational radiation created by the birth of the Universe itself.

hough gravitational waves were predicted to exist in 1916, actual proof of their existence wouldn’t arrive until 1974, 20 years after Einstein’s death. In that year, two astronomers working at the Arecibo Radio Observatory in Puerto Rico discovered a binary pulsar–two extremely dense and heavy stars in orbit around each other. This was exactly the type of system that, according to general relativity, should radiate gravitational waves. Knowing that this discovery could be used to test Einstein’s audacious prediction, astronomers began measuring how the period of the stars’ orbits changed over time. After eight years of observations, it was determined that the stars were getting closer to each other at precisely the rate predicted by general relativity. This system has now been monitored for over 40 years and the observed changes in the orbit agree so well with general relativity, there is no doubt that it is emitting gravitational waves.

Since then, many astronomers have studied the timing of pulsar radio emissions and found similar effects, further confirming the existence of gravitational waves. But these confirmations had always come indirectly or mathematically and not through actual 'physical’ contact.

That was the case up until September 14, 2015, when LIGO, for the first time, physically sensed  distortions in spacetime itself caused by passing gravitational waves generated by two colliding black holes nearly 1.3 billion light years away! LIGO and its discovery will go down in history as one of the greatest human scientific achievements.

How are gravitational waves detected?

When a gravitational wave passes by Earth, it squeezes and stretches space. LIGO can detect this squeezing and stretching. Each LIGO observatory has two “arms” that are each more than 2 miles (4 kilometers) long. A passing gravitational wave causes the length of the arms to change slightly. The observatory uses lasers, mirrors, and extremely sensitive instruments to detect these tiny changes. Watch the animation below to see how this works!

Lucky for us here on Earth, while the origins of gravitational waves can be extremely violent, by the time the waves reach the Earth they are millions of times smaller and less disruptive. In fact, by the time gravitational waves from the first detection reached LIGO, the amount of space-time wobbling they generated was thousands of times smaller than the nucleus of an atom! Such inconceivably small measurements are what LIGO was designed to make. To find out how LIGO can achieve this task, visit LIGO’s Interferometer. 

To my dark skin sister:

Never forget that you are a constellation and I've admired your strength since the day I was born...sorry this generation of men disrespect the midnight you wear on your skin, and believe me, I know some days you wish you could unzip the colour you wear on your skin just to see if they would treat you differently...but hang in there, a REAL man appreciates beauty in any colour.