Francesco Levy, The Constellations Of Summer

Saturn has a mysterious hexagon at its north pole that has refused to give up its secrets, probably because neither Voyager 1 nor Cassini was able to plunge that deep and survive. Harvard scientists Rakesh Yadav and Jeremy Bloxham might have finally started to figure out what causes this peculiar feature. They believe that vortexes occur at the planet’s north pole because of atmospheric flows deep within the gas giant, and that these vortexes pinch an intense horizontal jet near the equator—which is what warps the storm into a hexagon. It still looks unnatural though.....!!!

cancel your plans we’re thinking about the pale blue dot voyager pic tonight

Saturn, Cassini

A stellar exodus was caught in action!  Astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to watch the white dwarf exodus in the globular star cluster 47 Tucanae, a dense swarm of hundreds of thousands of stars in our Milky Way galaxy. Hubble took snapshots of fledgling white dwarf stars beginning their slow-paced, 40-million-year migration from the crowded center of an ancient star cluster to the less populated suburbs. By observing ultraviolet light, astronomers examined 3,000 white dwarfs, tracing two populations with diverse ages and orbits. One grouping was 6 million years old and had just begun their journey. Another was around 100 million years old and had already arrived at its new homestead far from the center, roughly 1.5 light-years, or nearly 9 trillion miles (14 trillion kilometers), away. The cluster resides 14,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Tucana. Credit: NASA, ESA, and H. Richer and J. Heyl (University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada). ALT TEXT: Thousands of stars, seen as tiny dots, are shown on a black background. The stars vary in size and color, including orange, yellow, and white.

A beginner’s star-book, an easy guide to the stars and to the astronomical uses of the opera-glass, the field-glass and the telescope, 1912

Wide-Field Spiral

Gamma Cas & Ghost Nebula © Antoine Grelin

Markarian's Chain

Mars painting by Herb Herrick for an article about terraforming in World Book Science Annual 1975. Consultant: Carl Sagan. The first painting (top) is followed by two clear plastic overlays of the skies and rain and finally plant life.

Vibrant Virgo Cluster Galaxy NGC 4654 by NASA Hubble