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Astronaut Mark Kelly once smuggled a full gorilla suit on board the International Space Station.

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The Pillars of Creation are towering, finger-like structures of gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula, M16, located 6,500 light-years from Earth.

The pillars are a "stellar nursery" where new stars are born within the dense clouds. The Hubble Space Telescope captured the iconic image in 1995, and again in 2014 for a wider, sharper view.

This photo was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

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Mimas is one of Saturn's innermost moons, famous for its heavily cratered surface, particularly the massive Herschel Crater, which gives it a resemblance to the Star Wars Death Star.

Discovered by William Herschel in 1789, it's a small, icy body composed mostly of water ice with a low density, and it orbits Saturn in just under 23 hours.

Despite its seemingly inert, frozen appearance, recent analysis of its orbital wobble suggests Mimas harbors a young, subsurface ocean, making it a surprising candidate for potential habitability.

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NASA's Curiosity rover has captured rare, "mother-of-pearl", iridescent clouds on Mars, as announced in early 2025.

These high-altitude (60-80 km) twilight clouds, composed of frozen carbon dioxide (dry ice), display vivid red-green hues due to sunlight scattering.

They allow researchers to understand how carbon dioxide freezes into ice at altitudes where it wasn't expected.

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This is a plume erupting from Enceladus, a small icy moon orbiting Saturn. These geysers launch water vapor and ice hundreds of kilometers into space, sourced from a subsurface ocean hidden beneath its frozen shell.

When the Cassini spacecraft passed through these plumes, it detected organic molecules, salts, and signs of chemical energy—key ingredients associated with life.

Enceladus is one of the rare ocean worlds that actively ejects material into space, offering direct access to its interior. Despite being only about 500 kilometers across, it may host one of the most compelling environments for life beyond Earth.

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NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) captured stunning, detailed infrared images of Uranus, highlighting its faint rings, seasonal north polar cap, and atmospheric storms.

Using NIRCam, Webb resolved 11 of the 13 known rings—including the faint, inner Zeta ring—and captured 14 of its 27 known moons, revealing a dynamic ice giant.

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At the center of this Hubble Space Telescope image lies the galaxy cluster SDSS J1038+4849, located more than 4.5 billion light-years from Earth. The arrangement of galaxies and gravitational lensing arcs gives the cluster a striking resemblance to a smiling face.

Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble

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The three stars in Orion's Belt are Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka. These massive, hot blue supergiant stars appear in a nearly straight line at the center of the Orion constellation.

Orion's belt is also known as the Three Kings or Three Sisters and act as a celestial navigation guide.

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The first flower grown in space was a Zinnia (Zinnia hybrida), which bloomed on the International Space Station (ISS) in January 2016 as part of NASA's Veggie experiment.

Cultivated by astronaut Scott Kelly, these flowers were chosen to test how plants grow in microgravity, providing insights for future long-duration missions to Mars.

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The “Exposed Cranium” Nebula, formally designated PMR 1, lies about 5,000 light-years away in the constellation Vela. It represents a massive star in the final stages of its evolution. As the star exhausts its nuclear fuel, it begins to expel its outer layers into space, forming vast, billowing clouds of gas and dust.

Recent observations in both near- and mid-infrared wavelengths reveal a striking dark channel slicing through the center of the nebula. This feature resembles the longitudinal fissure that divides the human brain into two hemispheres. Astronomers suggest that powerful jets from the dying star may be carving this channel, forcing material outward from the inner regions. While the nebula’s outer shell is composed primarily of simple hydrogen, the inner clouds contain more chemically complex material, reflecting the star’s advanced evolutionary stage. #space #astronomy

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NASA has delayed the crewed Artemis 2 moon mission to at least April 2026 due to a helium flow issue in the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket’s upper stage.

The rocket is being rolled back to the Vehicle Assembly Building for repairs, pushing back the previous March 6 target date.

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Seen from a distance of 1.5 billion kilometers, Earth appears as a faint pale blue speck beneath the sweeping rings of Saturn in this image taken by the Cassini spacecraft. From this vantage point in the outer Solar System, our planet is reduced to a tiny point of light suspended in the vastness of space.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI

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Shown here are the galaxies NGC 4038 and NGC 4039, together known as the Antennae Galaxies. Located about 60 million light-years from Earth—a relatively short distance in cosmic terms—this pair is among the most closely studied examples of interacting galaxies visible in the night sky.

Roughly a billion years ago, their powerful gravitational pull drew them into an unusually close encounter. While individual stars within the galaxies seldom collide, vast clouds of interstellar gas do crash into one another, triggering intense bursts of new star formation.

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Located roughly 400 light-years away, PDS 70 is a youthful stellar system—only about 5.4 million years old—centered on a K-type star. Astronomers have directly observed at least two developing gas giants, PDS 70b and PDS 70c, embedded within a dense circumstellar disk of dust and gas. Because these planets are still accreting material, the system offers a rare snapshot of planetary growth in progress.

Often described as an emerging analogue to a newborn solar system, PDS 70 provides valuable insight into how giant planets form and interact with their natal disks. Observations show the surrounding material actively feeding the planets, helping researchers study the early stages of planetary assembly and system evolution.

Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/Benisty et al.

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Captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, this image highlights the Egg Nebula’s striking contrasts of illumination and shadow, created by material recently expelled from its central star. Situated about 1,000 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus, the nebula surrounds a star hidden behind a thick veil of dust—evoking the appearance of a bright core embedded within a darker shell. Hubble’s resolution reveals fine structural details that offer insight into how evolving stars shed matter and shape their surrounding environments.

Credit: NASA, ESA, Bruce Balick (University of Washington)

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Earth had some close calls...

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This time-lapse sequence, captured with the NACO instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile, tracks the motion of stars over nearly two decades as they orbit the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way.

Credit: ESO/MPE

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Astronomers have discovered the exoplanet TOI-1452 b, about 100 light-years away, that appears to be a strong candidate for a global “water world.” Roughly 70% larger than Earth and orbiting a red dwarf within a binary star system, the planet shows physical characteristics that differ markedly from rocky terrestrial planets. Observations from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), supported by ground-based follow-ups, indicate a density and atmospheric profile consistent with an extensive, planet-wide ocean rather than exposed continents.

If confirmed, this scenario implies a world where water could extend hundreds of kilometers beneath the surface, reshaping assumptions about planetary diversity and habitability. Such environments are of particular interest because liquid water is central to astrobiology, offering parallels to conditions thought to exist on early Earth. Findings like these expand the scope of the search for life, highlighting that potentially habitable environments may arise in forms far different from familiar terrestrial analogues.

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NASA is tracking a small asteroid named 2023 DW, roughly 164 feet in diameter, which has a very low (approx. 1-in-770) chance of impacting Earth on February 14, 2046.

It is currently considered a "1" on the Torino scale, indicating an extremely unlikely event with no immediate cause for public concern.

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NASA captured the exact moment that a star was born. #space

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