Seven Sisters versus CaliforniaOn the right, dressed in blue, is the Pleiades. Also known as the Seven Sisters and M45, the Pleiades is one of the brightest and most easily visible open clusters on the sky. The Pleiades contains over 3,000 stars, is about 400 light years away, and only 13 light years across. Surrounding the stars is a spectacular…Read More

A Quadruple Alignment over ItalyWhy does this Moon look so unusual? A key reason is its vivid red color. The color is caused by the deflection of blue light by Earth’s atmosphere — the same reason that the daytime sky appears blue. The Moon also appears unusually distorted. Its strange structuring is an optical effect arising from layers in…Read More

Blue Ghost on the MoonThere’s a new lander on the Moon. Yesterday Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost executed the first-ever successful commercial lunar landing. During its planned 60-day mission, Blue Ghost will deploy several NASA-commissioned scientific instruments, including PlanetVac which captures lunar dust after creating a small whirlwind of…Read More

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field in Light and SoundHave you heard about the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field? Either way, you’ve likely not heard about it like this — please run your cursor over the featured image and listen! The Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (HUDF) was created in 2003-2004 with the Hubble Space Telescope staring for a long time toward near-empty…Read More

Blue Ghost to the MoonWith spacecraft thrusters at top center, the rugged surface of the Moon lies below the Blue Ghost lander in this space age video frame. The view of the lunar far side was captured by the Firefly Aerospace lunar lander on February 24, following a maneuver to circularize its orbit about 100 kilometers above the lunar surface.…Read More