BlogHide Resteemsiotman (59)in science • yesterday🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: Planet Lines Across Water 🪐What’s causing those lines? Objects in the sky sometimes appear reflected as lines across water — but why? If the water’s surface is smooth, then reflected objects would appear similarly -- as…iotman (59)in science • 2 days ago🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: Spin up of a Supermassive Black Hole 🪐How fast can a black hole spin? If any object made of regular matter spins too fast -- it breaks apart. But a black hole might not be able to break apart -- and its maximum spin rate is really…iotman (59)in science • 3 days ago🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: Titan: Moon over Saturn 🪐Like Earth's moon, Saturn's largest moon Titan is locked in synchronous rotation with its planet. This mosaic of images recorded by the Cassini spacecraft in May of 2012 shows its anti-Saturn side…iotman (59)in science • 4 days ago🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: Young Star Cluster NGC 346 🪐The most massive young star cluster in the Small Magellanic Cloud is NGC 346, embedded in our small satellite galaxy's largest star forming region some 210,000 light-years distant. Of course the…iotman (59)in science • 5 days ago🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: MESSENGER's Last Day on Mercury 🪐The first to orbit inner planet Mercury, the MESSENGER spacecraft came to rest on this region of Mercury's surface on April 30, 2015. Constructed from MESSENGER image and laser altimeter data, the…iotman (59)in science • 6 days ago🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: A Happy Sky over Bufa Hill in Mexico 🪐Sometimes, the sky itself seems to smile. A few days ago, visible over much of the world, an unusual superposition of our Moon with the planets Venus and Saturn created just such an iconic facial…iotman (59)in science • 7 days ago🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: Saturn's Rings Appear to Disappear 🪐Where are Saturn's ears? Galileo is credited, in 1610, as the first person to see Saturn's rings. Testing out Lipperhey's recently co-invented telescope, Galileo did not know what they were and so…iotman (59)in science • 9 days ago🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: IC 418: The Spirograph Nebula 🪐What is creating the strange texture of IC 418? Dubbed the Spirograph Nebula for its resemblance to drawings from a cyclical drawing tool, planetary nebula IC 418 shows patterns that are not well…iotman (59)in science • 11 days ago🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: Asteroid Donaldjohanson 🪐Main belt asteroid 52246 Donaldjohanson is about 8 kilometers long and 3.5 kilometers across. On April 20, this sharp close-up of the asteroid was captured at a distance of about 1100 kilometers by…iotman (59)in science • 12 days ago🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: NGC 6164: A Dragon's Egg 🪐Beautiful emission nebula NGC 6164 was created by a rare, hot, luminous O-type star, some 40 times as massive as the Sun. Seen at the center of the cosmic cloud, the star is a mere 3 to 4 million…iotman (59)in science • 13 days ago🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: An Almost Everything Sky 🪐This surprising sky has almost everything. First, slanting down from the upper left and far in the distance is the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy. More modestly, slanting down from the upper…iotman (59)in science • 14 days ago🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: Terminator Moon: A Moonscape of Shadows 🪐What's different about this Moon? It's the terminators. In the featured image, you can't directly see any terminator -- the line that divides the light of day from the dark of night. That's because…iotman (59)in science • 15 days ago🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: Galaxy Lenses Galaxy from Webb 🪐Is this one galaxy or two? Although it looks like one, the answer is two. One path to this happening is when a small galaxy collides with a larger galaxy and ends up in the center. But in the…iotman (59)in science • 16 days ago🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: The Orion Nebula in Visible and Infrared 🪐The Great Nebula in Orion is a colorful place. Visible to the unaided eye, it appears as a small fuzzy patch in the constellation of Orion. Long exposure, multi-wavelength images like this…iotman (59)in science • 17 days ago🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: Painting with Jupiter 🪐In digital brush strokes, Jupiter's signature atmospheric bands and vortices were used to form this interplanetary post-impressionist work of art. The creative image from citizen scientist Rick…iotman (59)in science • 18 days ago🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: Comet C/2025 F2 SWAN 🪐In late March, the comet now designated C/2025 F2 SWAN was found independently by citizen scientists Vladimir Bezugly, Michael Mattiazzo, and Rob Matson while examining publicly available image data…iotman (59)in science • 19 days ago🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: Virgo Cluster Galaxies 🪐Galaxies of the Virgo Cluster are scattered across this nearly 4 degree wide telescopic field of view. About 50 million light-years distant, the Virgo Cluster is the closest large galaxy cluster to…iotman (59)in science • 20 days ago🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: Halo of the Cat's Eye 🪐What created the unusual halo around the Cat's Eye Nebula? No one is sure. What is sure is that the Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) is one of the best known planetary nebulae on the sky. Although…iotman (59)in science • 21 days ago🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: Planetary Nebula NGC 1514 from Webb 🪐What happens when a star runs out of nuclear fuel? For stars like our Sun, the center condenses into a white dwarf while the outer atmosphere is expelled into space to appear as a planetary…iotman (59)in science • 22 days ago🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: The Galactic Center in Radio from MeerKAT 🪐What's happening at the center of our galaxy? It's hard to tell with optical telescopes since visible light is blocked by intervening interstellar dust. In other bands of light, though, such as…
