the milky way rising

time-lapse fish-eye-lens video of the night sky over Texas.


source: io9

Space Shuttle Atlantis passes in front of the sun

photos by Thierry Legault


source: io9

Arp 194, over 100,000 light-years from top to bottom

This "fountain" contains complexes of super star clusters, each one of which may contain dozens of individual young star clusters. The blue color is produced by the hot, massive stars which dominate the light in each cluster. Overall, the "fountain" contains many millions of stars. This picture was issued to celebrate the 19th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope aboard the space shuttle Discovery in 1990. During the past 19 years Hubble has made more than 880,000 observations and snapped over 570,000 images of 29,000 celestial objects.


source: io9

Saturn's rings

We're only a few months away from Saturn's equinox, the day when the Sun will pass through the plane of Saturn's rings. So to an observer standing on Saturn's rings, the Sun is beginning to set, and casting long shadows... I believe that what we're actually seeing is clumpiness of particles at the outer edge of the densest B ring, where particles bunch together partially by self-gravity (which would make them more like moons) but also by the periodic gravitational shoves they get from [Saturn's moon] Mimas.

source: io9

galaxy cluster MACS J0717.5+3745

The amount of detail in this image of galaxy cluster MACS J0717.5+3745 is astounding — the unprecedented collision of four separate galaxies, it's one of the most complex galaxy clusters ever seen.

io9

Cosmodrome Soyuz rocket

PSR B1509-58 and RCW 89

"NASA's Chandra Observatory colored the X-rays emanating from a nebula around the pulsar PSR B1509-58 blue, to reveal a ghostly hand, reaching for a cosmic light (coming from neighboring gas cloud RCW 89.)"

io9

The Cartwheel Galaxy

Andromeda Galaxy

new photo, by Tyler Allred

i'm floating in the most peculiar way, and the stars look very different today

astronaut Steve Swanson outside the international space station.

discovery, the last space shuttle