Adhesive Color Plates For Science Services’ Science Program Series Booklet Man In Space. Nelson Doubleday

Messier 96

Messier 96 (M96) is a spiral galaxy located in the constellation Leo.

It is part of the Leo I Group of galaxies and is approximately 35 million light-years away from Earth.

M96 has a diameter of about 100,000 light-years.

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA and the LEGUS Team; Acknowledgment: R. Gendler

Trapezium: Teardrops in My Skies

Credits: CITA, U. Colorado, WFPC2, HST, NASA

NGC 1999

NGC 1999 is a reflection nebula located in the constellation Orion.

It is notable for its striking appearance, which includes a dark patch that resembles a hole in the surrounding gas and dust.

This dark region is often referred to as the "hole" in NGC 1999, and it is thought to be a result of the absorption of light by the dust in the nebula.

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, ESO, K. Noll

Geminid Meteors over Chile

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

M42: A Mosaic of Orion’s Great Nebula

Credits: Rice U., NASA

first ᵏⁱᵗᵗʸ in outer space ♡

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.

the number of spacecraft failures recently has been absolutely insane and it all comes down to tech bros barging into the industry going "it's not that hard wtf is nasa so bad" and then completely skipping out on any testing

The Medusa Nebula