Michael Benson

Tilt-shift photo of the space shuttle Endeavour by NASA

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/flyout/multimedia/endeavour/11-05-16-2.html

stars, mercury, and solar corona, photographed by stereo a, january 2009.

27 frames, photographed over 36 hours, 2nd-3rd january. the sun is out of frame right.

image credit: nasa/stereo. animation: ageofdestruction.

The orbit of Jupiter protects the Earth from asteroids.

If you were on the moon during a lunar eclipse and you looked back at the Earth, you would see it surrounded by the red ring of the sun behind it. You’d be looking at every sunset and every sunrise on Earth at the same time.

The Egg Nebula

The Egg Nebula  is approximately 3,000 Light years away from Earth.Resembling a rippling pool illuminated by underwater lights, the Egg Nebula offers astronomers a special look at the normally invisible dust shells swaddling an aging star. These dust layers, extending over one-tenth of a light-year from the star, have an onionskin structure that forms concentric rings around the star.

Image credit: NASA

NASA probe spies giant hurricane on Saturn

Jupiter in Near-Infrared & Jupiter and Ganymede in Near-UV and Blue

Image credit: Judy Schmidt   @ twitter | instagram

For the first time, NASA’s Curiosity rover has captured a color image of a sunset on Mars.  (NASA via Smithsonian Magazine)

A Rainbow Geminid Meteor via NASA https://ift.tt/2UX5vRY

A cosmic blossom

IC 5148 is a beautiful planetary nebula located some 3000 light-years away in the constellation of Grus (The Crane). The nebula has a diameter of a couple of light-years, and it is still growing at over 50 kilometres per second — one of the fastest expanding planetary nebulae known. The term “planetary nebula” arose in the 19th century, when the first observations of such objects — through the small telescopes available at the time — looked somewhat like giant planets. Although the name stuck, it represents the expanding shell of gas ejected from old red giant stars late in their lives.

And now this one resembles a lovely blossom with layered petals.

Credit: European Southern Observatory