Pictured — a very scenic road to the stars. The road approaches La Silla Observatory in Chile, with the ESO’s 3.6-meter telescope just up ahead. To the left are some futuristic-looking support structures for the planned BlackGEM telescopes, an array of optical telescopes that will help locate optical counterparts to gravitational waves detections by LIGO and other detectors. But there is much more. Red airglow illuminates the night sky on the right, while the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy slants across the image center. Jupiter can be seen just above the band near the image center, while Saturn is visible just above the 3.6-meter telescope dome. The two largest satellite galaxies of our Milky Way Galaxy, the LMC and SMC, are seen on the far right. The featured image panorama was built up from multiple 15-second exposures that were captured on 2019 June 30. Two days later, La Silla experienced a rare total eclipse of the Sun. via NASA https://ift.tt/PKCks3u

Where do stars form? One place, star forming regions known as « EGGs », are being uncovered at the end of this giant pillar of gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula (M16). Short for evaporating gaseous globules, EGGs are dense regions of mostly molecular hydrogen gas that fragment and gravitationally collapse to form stars. Light from the hottest and brightest of these new stars heats the end of the pillar and causes further evaporation of gas and dust — revealing yet more EGGs and more young stars. This featured picture was created from exposures spanning over 30 hours with the Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope in 2014, and digitally processed with modern software by experienced volunteers in Argentina. Newborn stars will gradually destroy their birth pillars over the next 100,000 years or so — if a supernova doesn’t destroy them first. via NASA https://ift.tt/5WDKAzu

Why would the sky glow like a giant repeating rainbow? Airglow. Now air glows all of the time, but it is usually hard to see. A disturbance however — like an approaching storm — may cause noticeable rippling in the Earth’s atmosphere. These gravity waves are oscillations in air analogous to those created when a rock is thrown in calm water. Red airglow likely originates from OH molecules about 87-kilometers high, excited by ultraviolet light from the Sun, while orange and green airglow is likely caused by sodium and oxygen atoms slightly higher up. While driving near Keluke Lake in Qinghai Provence in China a few years ago, the photographer originally noticed mainly the impressive central band of the Milky Way Galaxy. Stopping to photograph it, surprisingly, the resulting sensitive camera image showed airglow bands to be quite prominent and span the entire sky. The featured image has been digitally enhanced to make the colors more vibrant. via NASA https://ift.tt/LgRqhXu

Northern winter constellations and a long arc of the Milky Way are setting in this night skyscape looking toward the Pacific Ocean from Point Reyes on planet Earth’s California coast. Sirius, alpha star of Canis Major, is prominent below the starry arc toward the left. Orion’s yellowish Betelgeuse, Aldebaran in Taurus, and the blue tinted Pleiades star cluster also find themselves between Milky Way and northwestern horizon near the center of the scene. The nebulae visible in the series of exposures used to construct this panoramic view were captured in early March, but are just too faint to be seen with the unaided eye. On that northern night their expansive glow includes the reddish semi-circle of Barnard’s Loop in Orion and NGC 1499 above and right of the Pleiades, also known as the California Nebula. via NASA https://ift.tt/iZe5cyX

Want to see a rainbow smile? Look near the zenith (straight up) when the sun is low in the sky and you might. This example of an ice halo known as a circumzenithal arc was captured above a palm tree top from Ragusa, Sicily on February 24. The vividly colorful arcs are often called smiling rainbows because of their upside down curvature and colors. For circumzenithal arcs the zenith is at the center and red is on the outside, compared to rainbows whose arcs bend toward the horizon after a downpour. True rainbows are formed by water droplets refracting the sunlight to produce a spectrum of colors, though. Circumzenithal arcs are the product of refraction and reflection in flat hexagonal ice crystals, like the ice crystals that create sundogs, formed in high thin clouds. via NASA https://ift.tt/ubIESMO

Globular star cluster 47 Tucanae is a jewel of the southern sky. Also known as NGC 104, it roams the halo of our Milky Way Galaxy along with some 200 other globular star clusters. The second brightest globular cluster (after Omega Centauri) as seen from planet Earth, 47 Tuc lies about 13,000 light-years away. It can be spotted with the naked-eye close on the sky to the Small Magellanic Cloud in the constellation of the Toucan. The dense cluster is made up of hundreds of thousands of stars in a volume only about 120 light-years across. Red giant stars on the outskirts of the cluster are easy to pick out as yellowish stars in this sharp telescopic portrait. Tightly packed globular cluster 47 Tuc is also home to a star with the closest known orbit around a black hole. via NASA https://ift.tt/2EHfqwl

It is one of the more unusual rocks yet found on Mars. Smaller than a penny, the rock has several appendages that make it look, to some, like a flower. Although it would be a major discovery if the rock was truly a fossilized ancient Martian flower, there are less spectacular — and currently preferred — explanations for its unusual structure. One theory that has emerged is that the rock is a type of concretion created by minerals deposited by water in cracks or divisions in existing rock. These concretions can be compacted together, can be harder and denser than surrounding rock, and can remain even after the surrounding rock erodes away. The flower structure may also be caused by crystal clusters. The small rock, named Blackthorn Salt, has similarities to previously imaged Martian pebbles. The featured image was taken by the Curiosity rover on Mars in late February. Scientists will continue to study data and images taken of this — and similar — surprising Martian rocks. via NASA https://ift.tt/36ui0kv

Which moon is this? It’s Earth’s moon — but in inverted colors. Here, the pixel values corresponding to light and dark areas have been translated in reverse, or inverted, producing a false-color representation reminiscent of a black and white photographic negative. However, this is an inverted color image — where the muted colors of the moon are real but digitally exaggerated before inversion. Normally bright rays from the large crater Tycho dominate the southern (bottom) features as easily followed dark green lines emanating from the 85-kilometer diameter impact site. Normally dark lunar mare appear light and silvery. The image was acquired in Southend-on-Sea, England, UK. Historically, astronomical images recorded on photographic plates were directly examined on inverted-color negatives because it helped the eye pick out faint details. via NASA https://ift.tt/ECVDH4W

Yes, but can you see the lion? A deep exposure shows the famous dark indentation that looks like a horse’s head, visible just left and below center, and known unsurprisingly as the Horsehead Nebula. The Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33) is part of a vast complex of dark absorbing dust and bright glowing gas. To bring out details of the Horsehead’s pasture, an astrophotographer artistically combined light accumulated for over 20 hours in hydrogen (orange), oxygen (blue), and sulfur (green). The resulting spectacular picture captured from Raachine, Lebanon, details an intricate tapestry of gaseous wisps and dust-laden filaments that were created and sculpted over eons by stellar winds and ancient supernovas. The featured composition brings up another pareidolic animal icon — that of a lion’s head — in the expansive orange colored gas above the horse’s head. The Flame Nebula is visible just to the left of the Horsehead. The Horsehead Nebula lies 1,500 light years distant towards the constellation of Orion. via NASA https://ift.tt/BaZi1pk

This was a very unusual type of solar eclipse. Typically, it is the Earth’s Moon that eclipses the Sun. In 2012, though, the planet Venus took a turn. Like a solar eclipse by the Moon, the phase of Venus became a continually thinner crescent as Venus became increasingly better aligned with the Sun. Eventually the alignment became perfect and the phase of Venus dropped to zero. The dark spot of Venus crossed our parent star. The situation could technically be labeled a Venusian annular eclipse with an extraordinarily large ring of fire. Pictured here during the occultation, the Sun was imaged in three colors of ultraviolet light by the Earth-orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory, with the dark region toward the right corresponding to a coronal hole. Hours later, as Venus continued in its orbit, a slight crescent phase appeared again. The next Venusian transit across the Sun will occur in 2117. via NASA https://ift.tt/cSaU8Xk