Zoozve, My Beloved

A Trailblazing Duo:

January 17, 2024 marks the 20th anniversary of Spirit and Opportunity's landing on Mars. The two of Mars Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, landed on opposite sides of Mars and began exploring the planet. Since their landing, the rovers have sent more than 100,000 high-resolution, full-color images of the planet’s surface. Designed to last just 90 days, they exceeded expectations and changed the way we explore the Red Planet l more at NASA JPL

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

Protostar

Galactic Center by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center

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

Corona Australis

Nebula is mostly hydrogen gas, and a small amount of metals (elements above helium) which tend to be covered as "Dust", but it's the dust that best reflect the light of the stars, and as the largest and most energetic of them are blue, you get these areas of blue haze. Hydrogen more often glows red when bombarded by UV light, the two colours together quite magical.

The area has a number of NGC objects 6726,6727,6729 but born of the same huge molecular cloud.

Our Milky Way has many such areas full of star birth, and as blue giants are not long lived, supernova and star death too.

Comet Nishimura l Michael Jäger