Inneston, South Australia, Australia | Blntpencil

The Venus girdle (Cestum veneris) is a comb jelly in the family Cestidae. The colorless species are transparent when suspended in water, except for their iridescent rows of comb plates. In other words, they majestic as fuck. Love to sea it 🌊

2023 February 22

Our Increasingly Active Sun Image Credit & Copyright: Mehmet Ergün

Explanation: Our Sun is becoming a busy place. Only two years ago, the Sun was emerging from a solar minimum so quiet that months would go by without even a single sunspot. In contrast, already this year and well ahead of schedule, our Sun is unusually active, already nearing solar activity levels seen a decade ago during the last solar maximum. Our increasingly active Sun was captured two weeks ago sporting numerous interesting features. The image was recorded in a single color of light called Hydrogen Alpha, color-inverted, and false colored. Spicules carpet much of the Sun’s face. The brightening towards the Sun’s edges is caused by increased absorption of relatively cool solar gas and called limb darkening. Just outside the Sun’s disk, several scintillating prominences protrude, while prominences on the Sun’s face are known as filaments and show as light streaks. Magnetically tangled active regions are both dark and light and contain cool sunspots. As our Sun’s magnetic field winds toward solar maximum over the next few years, whether the Sun’s high activity will continue to increase is unknown.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap230222.html

Astronomical photographs, Harvard College Observatory, Cambridge, 1890-1920

Saturn observed by space probe Voyager 1 on November 16, 1980

Credit: NASA

Don't talk to me right now I'm thinking of the new Jupiter photos and Vincent Van Gogh:

Hey. Why isn’t the moon landing a national holiday in the US. Isn’t that fucked up? Does anyone else think that’s absurd?

Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still.

l photo: Sara Hunt l quote: Carl Sagan

Cosmic Delights and Distant Discoveries Unfold in ‘Astronomy Photographer of the Year 15’

Shadows of Saturn