IC 4628: The Prawn Nebula ©

NGC 6744

via APOD/NASA; Credit: NASA, ESA, and the LEGUS team 

Bioluminescence and Milky Way

The Rosetta Nebula and NGC 2244

At the heart of the Rosetta nebula is an open cluster of stars, which is NGC 2244. The entire structure sits at the end of a giant molecular cloud, and you can easily spot the tell tale columns and protostars at the head showing active star formation on-going.

The bottom image is from Chandra, which gives the purple/pink colours for X-Ray sources, used particularly in spotting black hole accretion disks, pulsars and supernova remnants, we can see it's a lively place !

The entire structure is in the constellation of Monoceros at around 5,200 light years from Earth.

2023 February 25

Crescent Moon Occultation Image Credit & Copyright: Fefo Bouvier

Explanation: On February 22, a young Moon shared the western sky at sunset with bright planets Venus and Jupiter along the ecliptic plane. The beautiful celestial conjunction was visible around planet Earth. But from some locations Jupiter hid for a while, occulted by the crescent lunar disk. The Solar System’s ruling gas giant was captured here just before it disappeared behind the the Moon’s dark edge, seen over the Río de la Plata at Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay. In the serene river and skyscape Venus is not so shy, shining brightly closer to the horizon through the fading twilight. Next week Venus and Jupiter will appear even closer in your evening sky.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap230225.html

Sagittarius dwarf irregular galaxy (sagDIG) © Hubble

For ten years the stargazer dreamed of taking a picture like this. The dreamer knew that the White Desert National Park in Egypt's Western Desert is a picturesque place hosting numerous chalk formations sculpted into surreal structures by a sandy wind. The dreamer knew that the sky above could be impressively dark on a clear moonless night, showing highlights such as the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy in impressive color and detail. So the dreamer invited an even more experienced astrophotographer to spend three weeks together in the desert and plan the composite images that needed to be taken and processed to create the dream image. Over three days in mid-March, the base images were taken, all with the same camera and from the same location. The impressive result is featured here, with the dreamer -- proudly wearing a traditional Bedouin galabyia -- pictured in the foreground.

With giant storms, powerful winds, auroras, and extreme temperature and pressure conditions, Jupiter has a lot going on. Now, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured new images of the planet. Webb’s Jupiter observations will give scientists even more clues to Jupiter’s inner life.  

Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Judy Schmidt. Read more

NASA's Juno spacecraft captured this look of high altitude haze forming above cyclones. At the time the image was taken, Juno was about 5,095 miles above Jupiter’s cloud tops 🛰

L1527 IRS - Protostar

Stars form when bodies of dust and gas create enough mass to create a gravitational effect that's able to then pull in more gas, the process continues and the mass increases until the pressure at the centre is sufficient for fusion to begin.

There's many examples of protostars, in fact back in 2012,  NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope focused in on L1527 IRS, believed at the time to be the youngest forming star ever found.

Recently, the JWST re-visited this protostar, and the title image was the result.

The forming star cannot be visually spotted, but is thought to be around 20-40% the mass of our own Sun already.

If you look closely, you can see there's a dark patch in the centre, this is actually the accretion disk around the newly formed star, what is left over after the formation, may go on to form the planets, in fact, they may be actually starting to be created already, as recent evidence does point to planets being born around the same time as the star does in many cases.

The protostar is only 450 light years from Earth in the Constellation of Taurus, and is thought to be around 100,000 years old, a blink of an eye in the life of a star, particularly of this mass.

Over 800 terrestrial exoplanets visualized and arranged according to their equilibrium temperature and size.

chart by u/mVargic