Astronomyandgalaxies - GalaxyBrain

Cosmic Keyhole" (NGC 1999) Scientists first believed that the conspicuous hole in the center of this nebula was a Bok globule - a dense, cold cloud of gas and dust that blocks out background light. But later observations suggest that the dark patch is actually an empty void in space

Geminid Meteors over Chile

Credits: Yuri Beletsky, Carnegie, Las Campanas Observatory, TWAN

Backyard views

Tuesday February 4th 2025 6:39pm & 6:44pm

Planetary Nebula NGC 2440

Planetary nebula NGC 2440 is a relic of a star once like our Sun that has cast off its outer layers of gas, forming a colorful cocoon around the star's remaining core.

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.

Another incredible nebula shot! 1800 Megapixel

C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) 2024-10-23, clearest photo ever taken of a comet!

The Medusa Nebula

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