Crescent Mars

Jupiter’s storms /NASA

Wild Orion.

Credit: Tony and Daphne Hallas

Time for another out of this world comic for starry cosmos month!

This week’s entry, “Gamma Ray Bursts”

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/objects/bursts1.html

http://earthsky.org/space/gamma-ray-bursts-are-the-most-powerful-explosions-in-the-universe

This page has a great selection of free wallpapers from these adorable artists!

Space is scary wallpaper is now available!

Show your love for the darkness of space by using this wallpaper for your desktop!

You can download it on the main website: 

https://www.cosmicfunnies.com/freebies/

Scroll down the wallpaper section and you should be able to see it.

Enjoy!

Candy Cane of Cosmic Proportions

Imagine how long it would take to eat a candy cane that’s a thousand trillion miles tall! 😋

Scientists peering into the center of our Milky Way galaxy found this 190-light-year tall “candy cane,” but (sadly) it is not a peppermint treat. It does contain other goodies, though. They have found huge collections of material, called giant molecular clouds, where stars are being born. And there are magnetic fields that might be evidence of a bubble from an outburst in our galactic center long ago.

The full image shows our galaxy’s center in infrared (blue), radio (red) and microwave (“minty” green) light. The picture essentially color codes different ways light is produced. The blue and cyan regions show us cool dust where star formation has just begun. Yellow features show more-established star “factories.” Red reveals places where electrically charged gas interacts with magnetic fields.

This image includes newly published observations using an instrument designed and built at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, called the Goddard-IRAM Superconducting 2-Millimeter Observer (GISMO). It was used with a 30-meter radio telescope located on Pico Veleta, Spain, operated by the Institute for Radio Astronomy in the Millimeter Range headquartered in Grenoble, France. The image shows a region about 750 light-years wide.

Find out more about this image and what we can learn from studying star factories!

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Enchanted Moon II by Nima Shayesteh

Wolf Moon by miguel aviles - Art of Visuals Collective

Moon on the horizon, Santa Barbara | California (by A. Klioutchnikov)

And unfortunately I can’t find credit for the final photo.

A star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud

Credit: NASA, ESA

Open Cluster NGC6791

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The #HubbleTelescope captured these auroras on #jupiter caused by light waves interacting with the planet’s magnetic fields.

3D Bennu : Put on your red/blue glasses and float next to asteroid 101955 Bennu. Shaped like a spinning toy top with boulders littering its rough surface, the tiny Solar System world is about one Empire State Building (less than 500 meters) across. Frames used to construct this 3D anaglyph were taken by PolyCam on the OSIRIS_REx spacecraft on December 3, 2018 from a distance of about 80 kilometers. With a sample from the asteroid’s rocky surface on board, OSIRIS_REx departed Bennu’s vicinity this May and is now enroute to planet Earth. The robotic spacecraft is scheduled to return the sample to Earth in September 2023. via NASA