Wide-Field Spiral

2023 December 16

Crescent Enceladus Image Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA

Explanation: Peering from the shadows, the Saturn-facing hemisphere of tantalizing inner moon Enceladus poses in this Cassini spacecraft image. North is up in the dramatic scene captured during November 2016 as Cassini’s camera was pointed in a nearly sunward direction about 130,000 kilometers from the moon’s bright crescent. In fact, the distant world reflects over 90 percent of the sunlight it receives, giving its surface about the same reflectivity as fresh snow. A mere 500 kilometers in diameter, Enceladus is a surprisingly active moon. Data and images collected during Cassini’s flybys have revealed water vapor and ice grains spewing from south polar geysers and evidence of an ocean of liquid water hidden beneath the moon’s icy crust.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap231216.html

Ring of Fire October 2023 l Bray Falls

Sagittarius dwarf irregular galaxy (sagDIG) © Hubble

Star clusters shine in the universe l Hubble

A universe in motion seen from the International Space Station during a night pass over Earth.

(@ wonderofscience on Twitter)

Timelapse created from images courtesy of the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, NASA Johnson Space Center(ISS061-E-110520-111341 eol.jsc.nasa.gov).

IC 4628: The Prawn Nebula ©

Rainer Maria Rilke, from Where Silence Reigns: Selected Prose; "An Experience,"

Galaxies can merge, collide, or brush past one another — each of which has a significant impact on their shapes and structures. As common as these interactions are thought to be in the Universe, it is rare to capture an image of two galaxies interacting in such a visibly dynamic way. This image, from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, feels incredibly three-dimensional for a piece of deep-space imagery.

The subject of this image is named Arp 282, an interacting galaxy pair that is composed of the Seyfert galaxy NGC 169 (bottom) and the galaxy IC 1559 (top).

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Dalcanton, Dark Energy Survey, J. Schmidt

NGC 5189

NGC 5189 is a planetary nebula in the constellation Musca. It was discovered by James Dunlop on 1 July 1826, who catalogued it as Δ252. For many years, well into the 1960s, it was thought to be a bright emission nebula. It was Karl Gordon Henize in 1967 who first described NGC 5189 as quasi-planetary based on its spectral emissions