IC 4592: The Blue Horsehead Reflection NebulaDo you see the horse’s head? What you are seeing is not the famous Horsehead nebula toward Orion, but rather a fainter nebula that only takes on a familiar form with deeper imaging. The main part of the here-imaged molecular cloud complex is reflection nebula IC 4592. Reflection nebulas are made up…Read More

The Path of Artemis IIWhy doesn’t Artemis II land on the Moon? The main reason is that Artemis II is primarily a test mission designed to make a future Artemis missions — which will land humans on the Moon — better prepared. Similarly, NASA’s Apollo 8 and Apollo 10 went right near the Moon as tests before Apollo 11 — which landed. As the…Read More

The Path of Artemis IIWhy doesn’t Artemis II land on the Moon? The main reason is that Artemis II is primarily a test mission designed to make a future Artemis missions — which will land humans on the Moon — better prepared. Similarly, NASA’s Apollo 8 and Apollo 10 went right near the Moon as tests before Apollo 11 — which landed. As the…Read More

NGC 3310: A Starburst Spiral GalaxyThe party is still going on in spiral galaxy NGC 3310. Roughly 100 million years ago, NGC 3310 likely collided with a smaller galaxy causing the large spiral galaxy to light up with a tremendous burst of star formation. The changing gravity during the collision created density waves that compressed existing…Read More

Hello WorldFrom pole to pole our fair planet is captured in this snapshot from space, an evocative image from a window of the Orion spacecraft Integrity. From the spacecraft’s perspective the Sun is moving behind Earth’s bright limb along the lower right. Africa and the Iberian peninsula are in view on the pale blue planet’s surface, while aurorae…Read More