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Godspeed and blue skies, General Yeager art by Romain Hugault

Peering deep into the core of the Crab Nebula, this close-up image reveals the beating heart of one of the most historic and intensively studied remnants of a supernova, an exploding star. The inner region sends out clock-like pulses of radiation and tsunamis of charged particles embedded in magnetic fields.

The neutron star at the very center of the Crab Nebula has about the same mass as the sun but compressed into an incredibly dense sphere that is only a few miles across. Spinning 30 times a second, the neutron star shoots out detectable beams of energy that make it look like it’s pulsating.

The Hubble Space Telescope snapshot is centered on the region around the neutron star (the rightmost of the two bright stars near the center of this image) and the expanding, tattered, filamentary debris surrounding it. Hubble’s sharp view captures the intricate details of glowing gas, shown in red, that forms a swirling medley of cavities and filaments. Inside this shell is a ghostly blue glow that is radiation given off by electrons spiraling at nearly the speed of light in the powerful magnetic field around the crushed stellar core.

Read more about this image HERE. 

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The Far Side of the Moon, detail from a Space Age lunar map published by C. S. Hammond & Co., 1969.

(David Rumsey Map Collection)

Welcome planet Mercury in a 1970 illustration by David A. Hardy for Vision of Tomorrow. (AstroArt)

"T-Plus 30" by Aviation Artist Mark Waki

The Space Shuttle Discovery completes its roll to heading and begins its pitchover maneuver about 30 seconds after liftoff from Pad B of Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39.

Artists Note: It's actually T-Plus 23, but T-Plus 30 was decided on for the painting's title. Discovery is about 5,000 feet AGL, has completed 179 degrees of roll to heading and is pitched over about 20 degrees. The vehicle is gaining altitude at 500 feet per second while accelerating at 1.8g

Star Tunnel - 220319

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”

— Isaac Asimov, Newsweek, 21 January 1980

Arrival at an Exoplanet, 1983, by David A. Hardy, painted in gouache originally for the cover of Analog Science Fiction/Fact, June 1983.” 

(AstroArt)

Space & Sound.

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March 16, 1966 – Astronaut Neil Armstrong in the Gemini 8 spacecraft, making final adjustments and checks during the prelaunch countdown. (NASA)