Astronomy Picture Of The Day

The James Webb Telescope has some new pictures of Jupiter! 

Aurora on Saturn captured by the Hubble Telescope

Visiting Kennedy Space Center yesterday was very emotional for me. It brought back the memories of how much I had longed to be an astronaut, and how hard I worked toward that goal until illness crushed my dreams. I also may have sobbed through the Challenger and Columbia Memorial Exhibit. If you get a chance to visit the center, I highly recommend it. It’s massive and awesome.

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

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.)

The Milky Way Map

Map of the Milky Way Galaxy with the constellations that cross the galactic plane in each direction and the known most prominent components annotated including main arms, spurs, bar, nucleus/bulge, and notable nebulae.