Sh2-136, Ghosts Of The Cosmos

Galactic center of Milky Way © cosmic_background

Hubble Classic: Stars, Galaxies and Nebulae

Going for a walk. Apollo 17 astronaut Ronald Evans leaves to the spacecraft to retrieve film cassettes from the Service Module, Dec 1972. Mr. Evans was Command Module Pilot & orbited the moon a record 75 times during the mission. He holds the record for most time spent in lunar orbit at just shy of 148 hours. He is the last human to orbit the moon solo. A historic figure in space pioneering.

Protostar

Astronaut tweets

Saturn. American Tract Society Almanac. 1860.

Internet Archive

NGC 2244, Within the Rose

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?

Andromeda, If It Was Brighter

One of the largest structures in the night sky is visible with the naked eye, but if you live in a city, it's literally hiding just out of sight. Even in a dark area, it's not the easiest to immediately see, but the above image has brightened it up for us, to show us what the galaxy would look like, if only the sky was dark enough and the galaxy was a bit brighter.

The moon comparison is the best one, that is something we can all see in the night sky (unless you live in the UK, where you see mostly clouds).

Now imagine that galaxy stretching several moon-spans across the sky. That I hope gives you a minor taste of what it's like when using a small telescope or even binoculars, you first come across it.

If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, then it's well worth the search.

Near sunset, look for 3 objects which should be easy to locate, Venus and Jupiter (I'll come to this in a moment) low in the sky, the W of Cassiopeia and the Seven Sisters (Pleiades), and from that, you should find the location. Bare in mind it's several times the size of the moon, so you don't have to be too accurate, but if you can find the stars of Andromeda, that will help refine your search.

And finally that brings me on to the real star of the sky currently, Jupiter and Venus, the two brightest planets, very close together.

In fact, if you do have a really good pair of binoculars, or small telescope, this is a great time to view them. Venus often appears as a crescent like a phase of the moon, and Jupiter has it's 4 Galilean moons to spot.

Happy Spotting !

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