PostsCommentsPayoutsiotman (4)in #science • 11 days ago🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: NanoSail-D2 🪐In 2011, on January 20, NASA's NanoSail-D2 unfurled a very thin and very reflective 10 square meter sail becoming the first solar sail spacecraft in low Earth orbit. Often…iotman (4)in #science • 12 days ago🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: Auroral Corona 🪐Cycle 25 solar maximum made 2025 a great year for aurora borealis (or aurora australis) on planet Earth. And the high level of solar activity should extend into 2026. So, while…iotman (4)in #science • 13 days ago🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: HH-222: The Waterfall Nebula 🪐What created the Waterfall Nebula? The origin is still being researched. The structure, officially designated Herbig-Haro 222, appears in the region of NGC 1999 in the Great…iotman (4)in #science • 14 days ago🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: An Artificial Comet 🪐Yes, but can your comet tail do this? No, and what you are seeing is not the tail of a comet. The picture features a cleverly overlayed time-lapse sequence of a group of…iotman (4)in #science • 15 days ago🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: M1: The Crab Nebula 🪐This is the mess that is left when a star explodes. The Crab Nebula, the result of a supernova seen in 1054 AD, is filled with mysterious filaments. The filaments are not only…iotman (4)in #science • 16 days ago🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: NGC 1898: Globular Cluster in the Large Magellanic Cloud 🪐Jewels don't shine this bright -- only stars do. And almost every spot in this jewel-box of an image from the Hubble Space Telescope is a star. Now, some stars are more red than…iotman (4)in #science • 17 days ago🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: Apollo 17's Moonship 🪐Awkward and angular looking, Apollo 17's lunar module Challenger was designed for flight in the near vacuum of space. Digitally enhanced and reprocessed, this picture taken from…iotman (4)in #science • 18 days ago🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: 3I/ATLAS Flyby 🪐Attention grabbing interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS made its not-so-close flyby of our fair planet on December 19 at a distance of 1.8 astronomical units. That's about 900…iotman (4)in #science • 19 days ago🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: Unicorn, Fox Fur and Christmas Tree 🪐A star forming region cataloged as NGC 2264, this beautiful but complex arrangement of interstellar gas and dust is about 2,700 light-years distant in the faint but fanciful…iotman (4)in #science • 20 days ago🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: Mystery: Little Red Dots in the Early Universe 🪐What are these little red dots (LRDs)? Nobody knows. Discovered only last year, hundreds of LRDs have now been found by the James Webb Space Telescope in the early universe.…iotman (4)in #science • 22 days ago🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: Sunset Solstice over Stonehenge 🪐Yesterday the Sun reached its southernmost point in planet Earth's sky. Called a solstice, many cultures mark yesterday's date as a change of seasons -- from autumn to winter in…iotman (4)in #science • 24 days ago🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: A Solstice Sun Tattoo 🪐The word solstice is from the Latin for Sun and to pause or stand still. And in the days surrounding a solstice the Sun's annual north-south drift in planet Earth's sky does slow…iotman (4)in #science • 25 days ago🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: Long Shadows of the Montes Caucasus 🪐When the Moon is at its first quarter phase, the Sun rises along the Montes Caucasus as seen from the lunar surface. The lunar mountain range casts the magnificent, spire-like…iotman (4)in #science • 26 days ago🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: Jupiter and the Meteors from Gemini 🪐Jupiter, the Solar System's ruling gas giant, is the brightest celestial beacon at the center of this composite night skyscape. The scene was constructed by selecting the 40…iotman (4)in #science • 27 days ago🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: W5: The Soul Nebula 🪐Stars are forming in the Soul of the Queen of Aethopia. More specifically, a large star forming region called the Soul Nebula can be found in the direction of the constellation…iotman (4)in #science • 28 days ago🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: Andromeda and Sprites over Australia 🪐What’s happening over that tree? Two very different things. On the left is the Andromeda galaxy, an object that is older than humanity and will last billions of years into the…iotman (4)in #science • 29 days ago🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: Gemini Meteors over Snow Capped Mountains 🪐Where are all of these meteors coming from? In terms of direction on the sky, the pointed answer is the constellation of Gemini. That is why the major meteor shower in December…iotman (4)in #science • last month🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: Northern Fox Fires 🪐In a Finnish myth, when an arctic fox runs so fast that its bushy tail brushes the mountains, flaming sparks are cast into the heavens creating the northern lights. In fact the…iotman (4)in #science • last month🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: Galaxies in the River 🪐Large galaxies grow by eating small ones. Even our own galaxy engages in a sort of galactic cannibalism, absorbing small galaxies that are too close and are captured by the Milky…iotman (4)in #science • last month🌌 SpacePicture of a Day: The Horsehead Nebula 🪐Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation, this dusty interstellar molecular cloud has by chance assumed an immediately recognizable shape. Fittingly known as The Horsehead Nebula…
