The astronomer, Carl Sagan, famously said that there were more stars in our Universe than grains of sand on the Earth’s beaches. That idea is hard to fathom until you see images like this of Messier 110.
Messier 110 is one of the many satellite galaxies encircling the Andromeda Galaxy, the nearest major galaxy to our own, and is classified as a dwarf elliptical galaxy, meaning that it has a smooth and almost featureless structure. Elliptical galaxies lack arms and notable pockets of star formation — both characteristic features of spiral galaxies. Dwarf ellipticals are quite common in groups and clusters of galaxies, and are often satellites of larger galaxies.
(📷 Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, L.Ferrarese et al.)
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Did you know…all those beautiful whirling clouds and storms you see on Jupiter are only about 50 km thick. They’re made of ammonia crystals broken up into two different cloud decks. The darker material is thought to be compounds brought up from deeper inside Jupiter, and then change color when they reacted with sunlight. But below those clouds, it’s just hydrogen and helium, all the way down.
(Image credit: NASA Juno | Eichstädt / Doran)
“When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.” – JOHN MUIR
(📸 credit: Daniel Fleischhacker | @daniel_fleischhacker | daniel-photography.eu)
I’m long overdue sharing the incredible work of Seán Doran. He is a visual artist that has recently been taking NASA images and transforming them into visceral, real-color landscape videos. This is a view of the Meridiani Planum Crater on Mars. Perhaps one of the most underrated channels on YouTube.
(Video © Seán Doran / Data by HiRISE/ NASA / JPL / University of Arizona / Seán Doran | Music © Julianna Barwick - “Garland”)
It’s the only home we’ve ever known.
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Thank you for your endless curiosity Dr. Hawking.
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“The contemplation of celestial things will make a man both speak and think more sublimely and magnificently when he descends to human affairs.” - Marcus Tullius Cicero
This is an incredible view of the recent Geminid meteor shower over Mongolia. (Image Credit & Copyright: Yin Hao)
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What a lucky shot! While astrophotographer Fritz Helmut Hemmerich was capturing an image of the Andromeda galaxy, a sand-sized rock from deep space crossed right in front of the camera creating this incredible green streak. Or it was just aliens. 👽