OSIRIS-REx View Of Earth And Moon                      

Take in the Surreal Beauty of Jupiter in These Incredible New Images NASA released the raw data earlier this week, allowing the public to process the beautiful images

Composed of gas and dust, the pictured pillar resides in a tempestuous stellar nursery called the Carina Nebula, located 7500 light-years away in the southern constellation of Carina.

Credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team

A wispy and filamentary cloud of gas and dust, the Crab nebula is the remnant of a supernova explosion that was observed by Chinese astronomers in the year 1054.

The image combines Hubble’s view of the nebula at visible wavelengths, obtained using three different filters sensitive to the emission from oxygen and sulphur ions and is shown here in blue. Herschel’s far-infrared image reveals the emission from dust in the nebula and is shown here in red.

Credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble

What are Pulsars?

Pulsars are spherical, compact objects that are about the size of a large city but contain more mass than the sun. Discovered in 1967, pulsars are fascinating members of the cosmic community.

From Earth, pulsars often look like flickering stars. On and off, on and off, they seem to blink with a regular rhythm. But the light from pulsars does not actually flicker or pulse, and these objects are not actually stars.

Pulsars radiate two steady, narrow beams of light in opposite directions. Although the light from the beam is steady, pulsars appear to flicker because they also spin. It’s the same reason a lighthouse appears to blink when seen by a sailor on the ocean: As the pulsar rotates, the beam of light may sweep across the Earth, then swing out of view, then swing back around again. To an astronomer on the ground, the light goes in and out of view, giving the impression that the pulsar is blinking on and off. The reason a pulsar’s light beam spins around like a lighthouse beam is that the pulsar’s beam of light is typically not aligned with the pulsar’s axis of rotation.

Click here to see the animation

Click here to hear the pulsars sound

The Xpand Your Horizons Family just got bigger! Check out the new pages!

Xpand Your Horizons w/ Paleontology: https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHFUouhBXdXF6kf0dbsVRghNyDzscVcKc

xyhor-paleontology: https://xyhor-paleontology.tumblr.com

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NGC 6960 (Western Veil nebula) & Horsehead Nebula and the Flame Nebula

by David Wills

Planet Jupiter, observed by the Juno probe on September 1, 2017.

Image of the planet Neptune seen by the space probe Voyager 2

Image credit: NASA/JPL

A false-color image of the mid-infrared emission from the Great Galaxy in Andromeda, as seen by Nasa’s WISE space telescope.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/WISE Team

Low genetic diversity is a problem when you’re founding a new colony, so how would we avoid that on another planet?