Sidusglacies - ⚡️

This is an artist’s concept of the fastest rotating star found to date. The massive, bright young star, called VFTS 102 rotates at about two million kilometres per hour. Centrifugal force from this dizzying spin rate has flattened the star into an oblate shape, and spun off a disk of hot plasma, seen edge on in this view from a hypothetical planet. The star may have “spun up” by accreting material from a binary companion star. The rapidly evolving companion later exploded as a supernova. The whirling star lies 160 000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.

Credit: NASA/ESA and G. Bacon (STScI)

On February 5, 1979, Voyager 1 made its closest approach to Jupiter since early 1974 and 1975 when Pioneers 10 and 11 made their voyages to Jupiter and beyond.

Credit: NASA

1973 NASA art by Rick Guidice visualizes the idea of a Pioneer probe using Jupiter’s gravity to slingshot itself toward the outer planets and beyond.

Lenticular Clouds

Fiordo Última Esperanza, Magallanes & La Antartica Chilena.

do you still hear the stars?

What drives auroras on Saturn? To help find out, scientists have sorted through hundreds of infrared images of Saturn taken by the Cassini spacecraft for other purposes, trying to find enough aurora images to correlate changes and make movies. Once made, some movies clearly show that Saturnian auroras can change not only with the angle of the Sun, but also as the planet rotates. Furthermore, some auroral changes appear related to waves in Saturn's magnetosphere likely caused by Saturn's moons. Pictured here, a false-colored image taken in 2007 shows Saturn in three bands of infrared light. The rings reflect relatively blue sunlight, while the planet itself glows in comparatively low energy red. A band of southern aurora in visible in green. In has recently been found that auroras heat Saturn's upper atmosphere. Understanding Saturn's auroras is a path toward a better understanding of Earth's auroras.

Image Credit: NASA, Cassini, VIMS Team, U. Arizona, U. Leicester, JPL, ASI

“Moon Corona, Halo, and Arcs over Manitoba” by Brent Mckean