Beautiful Super Moon From Earlier In The Year!

The Star Cluster NGC 602

A image of star cluster NGC 602 from Chandra & NASAWebb is about 175 light-years across and it sparkles with the light from thousands of stars.

The star cluster NGC 602 lies on the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, which is one of the closest galaxies to the Milky Way, about 200,000 light-years from Earth. The stars in NGC 602 have fewer heavier elements compared to the Sun and most of the rest of the galaxy. Instead, the conditions within NGC 602 mimic those for stars found billions of years ago when the universe was much younger.

This new image combines data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory with a previously released image from the agency’s James Webb Space Telescope. The dark ring-like outline of the wreath seen in Webb data (represented as orange, yellow, green, and blue) is made up of dense clouds of filled dust.

Credit X-ray: NASA/CXC; Infrared: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, P. Zeilder, E.Sabbi, A. Nota, M. Zamani;

Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare and K. Arcand.

Release Date December 17, 2024.

this was originally meant to be a physics blog but i find myself posting more about biology related stuff - excuse my inner plant nerd but i like physics too, so:

*cough cough* SPAGHETTIFICATION! a phenomenon where you can become stretched like spaghetti if you enter a black hole.

it’s also known as the tidal effect, and is generally used to describe the vertical stretching or compression of an object into a noodle-like shape in an extremely strong and non homogenous gravitational field.

by non homogenous i just mean that the gravitational field is not the same everywhere, but consists of irregularities. (it is non-uniform)

anyways, a very common example of this is when we’re talking black holes- if i threw you into a black hole, or you happened to fall into one, the gravitational field on one end of your body would be stronger than the other.

this gravitational gradient would mean as you fell, getting closer and closer to the event horizon, your body would become extremely stretched until it would become very very compressed. like spaghetti. but don’t worry, by that time you’d already be dead.

this only happens because of the sheer strength of a black hole’s gravitational field. it’s not really because of its size - but its density. there are lots of objects close or even larger than some black holes, the mass of a black hole is so concentrated in a small area that it absolutely maximises its gravitational pull, which is why not even light can escape it.

this is just one of the relativistic effects of gravity differences, and there are so many cooler ones! for example, pancake detonation.

so stay away from black holes, or you could become stretched like spaghetti or flattened like a pancake.

Contact (1997)

Launch of Gemini 6 Titan II (SC6/GLV-6 12561) from Launch Complex 19. "The Gemini VI, scheduled as a two-day mission, was launched from Pad 19, carrying astronauts Walter M. Schirra Jr., Command Pilot, and Thomas P. Stafford, Pilot. Gemini VI rendezvoused with Gemini VII, already orbiting the Earth."

Date: December 15, 1965

NASA ID: KSC-65PC-0161, S65-44293, S65-59987

To be fair, a lot of goofy-sounding rocketry/aerospace terminology has a legitimate nomenclatural role beyond just being silly euphemisms.

"Unplanned rapid disassembly", for example, exists as the necessary counterpart to planned rapid disassembly: sometimes a rocket is legitimately supposed to fall apart or blow up, so you need a specific term to emphasise that it wasn't supposed to do that.

Similarly, "lithobraking" was coined by analogy with aerobraking (shedding velocity via atmospheric friction) and hydrobraking (shedding velocity by landing in water), and it does have some intentional applications; the Mars Pathfinder probe, for example, was deliberately crashed into the Martian surface while surrounded by giant airbags, and reportedly bounced at least 15 times before coming to rest.

(That said, aerospace engineers absolutely do use these terms humorously as well, because engineers are just Like That.)

Galaxy NGC 5584

The brilliant, blue glow of young stars traces the graceful spiral arms of galaxy NGC 5584. Thin, dark dust lanes appear to be flowing from the yellowish core, where older stars reside.

Syd Mead, space station concept art, c. 1970s.

Approaching the Agena target vehicle, earth horizon in background, Gemini VIII.

am i a planet

Like images of broken light, Webb captured these carbon-rich dust shells around a binary star system. Drifting swiftly outwards, they are seeding their surroundings with carbon - one way elements spread across the universe.

go.nasa.gov/4ahBqmX