1st Released Image by NASA’s Webb Space Telescope

via NASA

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has produced the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date. Known as Webb’s First Deep Field, this image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 is overflowing with detail.

Thousands of galaxies – including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared – have appeared in Webb’s view for the first time. This slice of the vast universe covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground.

This deep field, taken by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), is a composite made from images at different wavelengths, totaling 12.5 hours – achieving depths at infrared wavelengths beyond the Hubble Space Telescope’s deepest fields, which took weeks.

The image shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago. The combined mass of this galaxy cluster acts as a gravitational lens, magnifying much more distant galaxies behind it. Webb’s NIRCam has brought those distant galaxies into sharp focus – they have tiny, faint structures that have never been seen before, including star clusters and diffuse features. Researchers will soon begin to learn more about the galaxies’ masses, ages, histories, and compositions, as Webb seeks the earliest galaxies in the universe.

This image is among the telescope’s first-full color images. The full suite will be released Tuesday, July 12, beginning at 10:30 a.m. EDT, during a live NASA TV broadcast. Learn more about how to watch.

Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

Webb separation from Ariane 5

video upload by European Space Agency, ESA

This real-time video shows the separation of the James Webb Space Telescope from the Ariane 5 launch vehicle and the subsequent solar array deployment.

Webb’s launch on an ESA-provided Ariane 5 rocket was performed by @arianespace on behalf of ESA from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, at 12:20:07 GMT (13:20:07 CET) on 25 December 2021.

Webb separation from the Ariane 5 occurred at 12:47:14 GMT (13:47:14 CET) with solar array deployment starting 69 seconds later.

Thanks to Ariane 5’s highly precise launch trajectory Webb’s solar array was able to deploy soon after separation from the Ariane 5, capturing sunlight to power the observatory.

This video shows the view from Ariane 5’s upper stage, taken by a camera manufactured by Irish company Réaltra Space Systems Engineering.

Webb is the next great space science observatory following Hubble, designed to answer outstanding questions about the Universe and to make breakthrough discoveries in all fields of astronomy. Webb will see farther into our origins: from the formation of stars and planets, to the birth of the first galaxies in the early Universe. Webb is an international partnership between @NASA, ESA and the @Canadian Space Agency.

Learn more about this historic launch: https://bit.ly/WebbLiftoff

Copyright: ESA/Arianespace ; Music: "Lonely Waltz" by Charlotte Hatherley, used with permission ; Camera: Réaltra Space Systems Engineering

NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover Finds A Changing Landscape

video upload by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

"NASA’s Curiosity rover explores Mount Sharp, a 5-mile-tall (8-kilometer-tall) mountain within the basin of Gale Crater on Mars.

Curiosity’s Deputy Project Scientist, Abigail Fraeman of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, gives viewers a descriptive tour of Curiosity's location. The panorama was captured by the rover’s Mast Camera, or Mastcam, on July 3, 2021, the 3,167th Martian day, or sol, of its mission.

Curiosity landed nine years ago on August 5, 2012, with a mission to study whether different Martian environments could have supported microbial life in the ancient past, when long-lived lakes and groundwater existed within Gale Crater.

For more about Curiosity, visit https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/home/ and https://nasa.gov/msl/

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS"

Video of Perseverance Landing on Mars

video by NASA NASA

"NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance mission captured thrilling footage of its rover landing in Mars' Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021. The real footage in this video was captured by several cameras that are part of the rover's entry, descent, and landing suite. The views include a camera looking down from the spacecraft's descent stage (a kind of rocket-powered jet pack that helps fly the rover to its landing site), a camera on the rover looking up at the descent stage, a camera on the top of the aeroshell (a capsule protecting the rover) looking up at that parachute, and a camera on the bottom of the rover looking down at the Martian surface.

The audio embedded in the video comes from the mission control call-outs during entry, descent, and landing."

via:

Your front-row seat to my Mars landing is here. Watch how we did it.#CountdownToMars pic.twitter.com/Avv13dSVmQ

— NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover (@NASAPersevere) February 22, 2021

Perseverance sees Jezero Crater rim in 360° Mars panorama

video by VideoFromSpace

"The Perseverance rover's Mastcam-Z captured 142 images that were stitched together to create a 360° Mars panorama. Jezero Crater's rim can be seen in the imagery. -- Wow! See the Perseverance rover dangling above Mars in this amazing landing photo: https://www.space.com/perseverance-ro...​

Credit: Space.com | footage courtesy: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS | produced & edited by Steve Spaleta (http://www.twitter.com/stevespaleta​)

Music: "Transcendence" by Saul Guanipa (ASCAP) via Videohelper.com"

Phoenix Aurora Over Iceland

via NASA

"Explanation: All of the other aurora watchers had gone home. By 3:30 am in Iceland, on a quiet September night, much of that night's auroras had died down. Suddenly, unexpectedly, a new burst of particles streamed down from space, lighting up the Earth's atmosphere once again. This time, surprisingly, pareidoliacally, the night lit up with an amazing shape reminiscent of a giant phoenix. With camera equipment at the ready, two quick sky images were taken, followed immediately by a third of the land. The mountain in the background is Helgafell, while the small foreground river is called Kaldá, both located about 30 kilometers north of Iceland's capital Reykjavík. Seasoned skywatchers will note that just above the mountain, toward the left, is the constellation of Orion, while the Pleiades star cluster is also visible just above the frame center. The 2016 aurora, which lasted only a minute and was soon gone forever -- would possibly be dismissed as an fanciful fable -- were it not captured in the featured, digitally-composed, image mosaic."

The Hercules Cluster of Galaxies

via NASA

"Explanation: These are galaxies of the Hercules Cluster, an archipelago of island universes a mere 500 million light-years away. Also known as Abell 2151, this cluster is loaded with gas and dust rich, star-forming spiral galaxies but has relatively few elliptical galaxies, which lack gas and dust and the associated newborn stars. The colors in this deep composite image clearly show the star forming galaxies with a blue tint and galaxies with older stellar populations with a yellowish cast. The sharp picture spans about 1/2 degree across the cluster center, corresponding to over 4 million light-years at the cluster's estimated distance. Diffraction spikes around brighter foreground stars in our own Milky Way galaxy are produced by the imaging telescope's mirror support vanes. In the cosmic vista many galaxies seem to be colliding or merging while others seem distorted - clear evidence that cluster galaxies commonly interact. In fact, the Hercules Cluster itself may be seen as the result of ongoing mergers of smaller galaxy clusters and is thought to be similar to young galaxy clusters in the much more distant, early Universe."

A "Flight" Over Jupiter

NASAJuno
"This video uses images from NASA’s Juno mission to recreate what it might have looked like to ride along with the Juno spacecraft as it performed its 27th close flyby of Jupiter on June 2, 2020.

During the closest approach of this pass, the Juno spacecraft came within approximately 2,100 miles (3,400 kilometers) of Jupiter’s cloud tops. At that point, Jupiter’s powerful gravity accelerated the spacecraft to tremendous speed – about 130,000 mph (209,000 kilometers per hour) relative to the planet.

Citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill created the video using data from the spacecraft’s JunoCam instrument. The sequence combines 41 JunoCam still images digitally projected onto a sphere, with a virtual “camera” providing views of Jupiter from different angles as the spacecraft speeds by.

The original JunoCam images were taken on June 2, 2020, between 2:47 a.m. PDT (5:47 a.m. EDT) and 4:25 a.m. PDT (7:25 a.m. EDT).

JunoCam's raw images are available for the public to peruse and process into image products at https://missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/.... More information about NASA citizen science can be found at https://science.nasa.gov/citizenscience and https://www.nasa.gov/solve/opportunit....

More information about Juno is at https://www.nasa.gov/juno and https://missionjuno.swri.edu.

Image credit:
Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS
Image processing by Kevin M. Gill © CC BY
Music by Vangelis"

Comet Rising: NeoWise seen from the ISS

Space Videos

"This video starts over Saudia Arabia - we follow the journey of the space station across Iraq, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan ending in Kazakhstan where just before sunrise we see Comet Neowise rising over the horizon

Neowise is 103 Million KM from Earth"

New: Mars In 4K

ElderFox Documentaries Jul 17, 2020

"A world first. New footage from Mars rendered in stunning 4K resolution. We also talk about the cameras on board the Martian rovers and how we made the video."

Our Rotating Earth

via APOD

"Explanation: Has your world ever turned upside-down? It would happen every day if you stay fixed to the stars. Most time-lapse videos of the night sky show the stars and sky moving above a steady Earth. Here, however, the camera has been forced to rotate so that the stars remain fixed, and the Earth rotates around them. The movie, with each hour is compressed to a second, dramatically demonstrates the daily rotation of the Earth, called diurnal motion. The video begins by showing an open field in Namibia, Africa, on a clear day, last year. Shadows shift as the Earth turns, the shadow of the Earth rises into the sky, the Belt of Venus momentarily appears, and then day turns into night. The majestic band of our Milky Way Galaxy stretches across the night sky, while sunlight-reflecting, Earth-orbiting satellites zoom by. In the night sky, you can even spot the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. The video shows a sky visible from Earth's Southern Hemisphere, but a similar video could be made for every middle latitude on our blue planet."

Hubble’s 30th Anniversary Image

Published on Apr 24, 2020 NASA Goddard

"On April 24, 2020, the Hubble Space Telescope celebrates its 30th year in orbit by premiering a never-before-seen view of two beautiful nebulas named NGC 2020 and NGC 2014.

Hubble's senior project scientist, Dr. Jennifer Wiseman, takes us on a tour of this stunning new image, describes the telescope's current health, and summarizes some of Hubble's contributions to astronomy during its 30-year career.

Read more: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/...

For more information about the Hubble Space Telescope and its images, visit https://nasa.gov/hubble"

Views of Earth from BepiColombo’s flyby

Uploaded on Apr 16, 2020 European Space Agency, ESA

"A compilation of about 200 images collected by the joint European-Japanese mission BepiColombo during its first – and only – flyby of Earth on 10 April 2020, a manoeuvre needed to adjust its trajectory en route to its destination, Mercury. The spacecraft, equipped with three 'selfie' cameras, captured a series of stunning images of our home planet as it closed in, approached, and finally departed. In this video, Earth first appears as a rotating marble from behind the spacecraft structure and high-gain antenna in the sequence captured on 9 April. Later, in the images shot just before closest approach, less than 13 000 km from Earth's surface, the planet appears in greater detail, with the outline of East Africa, the Arabian peninsula and India well in sight, between the spacecraft’s instrument boom on the left and its medium-gain antenna on the right. Finally, the sequence of images taken by BepiColombo as it moved away on 10 and 11 April show a crescent Earth shining against the cosmic darkness; towards the end of the video, the Moon also makes an appearance, visible as a tiny speck of light near the end of the spacecraft solar array.Full story: BepiColombo takes last snaps of Earth en route to Mercury
Credit:Images: ESA/BepiColombo/MTM, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Music: TV3 - CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Lyrics author & melody composer: Stefano OrsiniMusic score: Angelo Coccia & Silvano Buogo"

Comet ATLAS and the Mighty Galaxies

via NASA

"Explanation: Comet ATLAS C/2019 Y4 was discovered by the NASA funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, the last comet discovery reported in 2019. Now growing brighter in northern night skies, the comet's pretty greenish coma is at the upper left of this telescopic skyview captured from a remotely operated observatory in New Mexico on March 18. At lower right are M81 and M82, well-known as large, gravitationally interacting galaxies. Seen through faint dust clouds above the Milky Way, the galaxy pair lies about 12 million light-years distant, toward the constellation Ursa Major. In bound Comet ATLAS is about 9 light-minutes from Earth, still beyond the orbit of Mars. The comet's elongated orbit is similar to orbit of the Great Comet of 1844 though, a trajectory that will return this comet to the inner Solar System in about 6,000 years. Comet ATLAS will reach a perihelion or closest approach to the Sun on May 31 inside the orbit of Mercury and may become a naked-eye comet in the coming days."

Cosmic Face

via Hubble Space Telescope

"In celebration of Halloween, this new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures two galaxies of equal size in a collision that appears to resemble a ghostly face. This observation was made on 19 June 2019 in visible light by the telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys.

Although galaxy collisions are common — especially in the early universe — most are not head-on impacts like the collision that likely created this Arp-Madore system 704 million light-years from Earth. This violent encounter gives the system an arresting ring structure, but only for a short amount of time. The crash has pulled and stretched the galaxies’ discs of gas, dust, and stars outward, forming the ring of intense star formation that shapes the “nose” and “face” features of the system.

Ring galaxies are rare, and only a few hundred of them reside in our larger cosmic neighbourhood. The galaxies have to collide at just the right orientation so that they interact to create the ring, and before long they will have merged completely, hiding their messy past..."

NASA's SDO Captures Mercury Transit Time-lapse

Published on May 9, 2016 NASA Goddard

"Around 13 times per century, Mercury passes between Earth and the sun in a rare astronomical event known as a planetary transit. The 2016 Mercury transit occurred on May 9, between roughly 7:12 a.m. and 2:42 p.m. EDT.

The images in this video are from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO.

Video credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Genna Duberstein

Music: Encompass by Mark Petrie"

First All Female Spacewalk

NASA Astronauts Spacewalk Outside the International Space Station on Oct. 18

Published on Oct 18, 2019 NASA

"On Friday, Oct. 18 starting at about 7:50 a.m. EDT, NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir will venture outside the International Space Station for a spacewalk. The duo will exit the station’s Quest airlock in their U.S. spacesuits to replace a power controller that failed over the weekend."

The Hard Drive That Controlled the Saturn V - Smarter Every Day 223

Raikoke Volcano Eruption

via

"Astronauts aboard the International Space Station caught the spectacular eruption of the Raikoke volcano off of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula over the weekend."

First Actual Image of a Black Hole

via NASA

"Explanation: What does a black hole look like? To find out, radio telescopes from around the Earth coordinated observations of black holes with the largest known event horizons on the sky. Alone, black holes are just black, but these monster attractors are known to be surrounded by glowing gas. The first image was released yesterday and resolved the area around the black hole at the center of galaxy M87 on a scale below that expected for its event horizon. Pictured, the dark central region is not the event horizon, but rather the black hole's shadow -- the central region of emitting gas darkened by the central black hole's gravity. The size and shape of the shadow is determined by bright gas near the event horizon, by strong gravitational lensing deflections, and by the black hole's spin. In resolving this black hole's shadow, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) bolstered evidence that Einstein's gravity works even in extreme regions, and gave clear evidence that M87 has a central spinning black hole of about 6 billion solar masses. The EHT is not done -- future observations will be geared toward even higher resolution, better tracking of variability, and exploring the immediate vicinity of the black hole in the center of our Milky Way Galaxy."

Earth-Moon-Mars distances to scale, at LIGHT SPEED!

Published on Jan 15, 2019 James O'Donoghue

"This is the distance between Earth, the Moon and Mars with the correct distances but with Earth, Moon and Mars 20 times bigger (so you can see them!).
The real-time speed of light is shown.
*Animation by Dr. James O'Donoghue using NASA imagery.
*Share/use as you wish, credit is appreciated."