Astronomers Long Thought That A Peculiar Star System Observed By The European Space Agency’s Gaia Satellite

Ring Galaxy AM 0644-741 by Hubble Heritage

M17 - The Omega Nebula by _UPGR4D3_

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Dueling Bands in the Night : What are these two bands in the sky? The more commonly seen band is the one on the right and is the central band of our Milky Way galaxy. Our Sun orbits in the disk of this spiral galaxy, so that from inside, this disk appears as a band of comparable brightness all the way around the sky. The Milky Way band can also be seen all year – if out away from city lights. The less commonly seem band, on the left, is zodiacal light – sunlight reflected from dust orbiting the Sun in our Solar System. Zodiacal light is brightest near the Sun and so is best seen just before sunrise or just after sunset. On some evenings in the north, particularly during the months of March and April, this ribbon of zodiacal light can appear quite prominent after sunset. It was determined only this century that zodiacal dust was mostly expelled by comets that have passed near Jupiter. Only on certain times of the year will the two bands be seen side by side, in parts of the sky, like this. The featured image, including the Andromeda galaxy and a meteor, was captured in late January over a frozen lake in Kanding, Sichuan, China. via NASA

Double exposure of the moon (over exposure + normal exposure) by cosmicgrey

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Galaxy M104.

clothing

Shitty, shitty potato quality iphone pictures, but caught this rocket launch tonight while I was driving home. This was a Firefly Alpha rocket launched out of Vandenberg.

What absolutely kills me is that I had my full camera rig in the car. I had driven out earlier in the evening, aiming to go set up at the Pinnacles to do some astrophotography tonight. Unfortunately, the hurricane floods trashed the trail to Pinnacles and so I had to turn back.

And I am in absolute mourning for what could have been. If I'd been able to get there, I would have had the perfect shot. A clear sky and the early stages of the Milky Way, with this rocket launch arching behind the incredible rock formations at Pinnacles.

It would have been killer. And instead I ended up with these crap phone photos shot out the window of my Jeep while driving back into town. Sigh.

What would happen if I go into a black hole? Do you think I would disappear forever or would I still exist inside the black hole?

The Storm That Missed Earth – “A typical CME [coronal mass ejection] travels at about 1 million mph [1,609,344 kilometers per hour]. This model of the [23 July 2012] event shows the CME (red) speeding in the direction of STEREO A at 6.7 million mph [10,782,604.8 kilometers per hour].” [1024 x 576] by trot-trot

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been reading a lot of conversations about space since the james webb images were released particularly wrt to light speed and the fact that we are technically "looking into the past" because the light that actually reaches us is millions or billions of years old, and so we only see these places as they were when the light left, not as they are right now. cool & fine & very interesting

but i just saw someone (shoutout sylverthewordsmyth in the tiktok comment section) reframe this as "the future can see us" and despite this being a natural and logical extrapolation from us seeing the past, it has shaken me to my core. if there's anybody to look at us from far away, millions and billions of years in the future, they would look at us and see... us. they would look and see the same planet we live on right now, with the same continents and oceans. and it will be already long gone but to them it will be as alive as it is to us right now, the same way we see still see stars that have already gone out. i have to lay down