From Day Into Night on the International Space Station #116 A couple times a year, the International Space Station orbit happens to align over the day/night shadow line on Earth. via NASA http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/from-day-into-night-on-the-international-space-station
Milky Way, Launch, and Landing #119 The Milky Way doesn’t look quite this colorful and bright to the eye, but a rocket launch does. So a separate deep exposure with a sensitive digital camera was used in this composite skyscape to bring out our galaxy’s central crowded starfields and cosmic dust clouds. In the scene from Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, a nine minute long exposure begun about 20 minutes after the Miky Way image recorded a rocket launch and landing. The Falcon 9 rocket, named for the Millennium Falcon of Star Wars fame, appropriately launched a Dragon resupply ship to the International Space Station in the early morning hours of May the 4th. The plume and flare at the peak of the launch arc mark the rocket’s first stage boost back burn. Two shorter diagonal streaks are the rocket engines bringing the Falcon 9 stage back to an offshore landing on autonomous drone ship Of course I Still Love You. via NASA https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap190511.html
Hubble Spots Stunning Spiral Galaxy #116 NGC 2903 is located about 30 million light-years away in the constellation of Leo (the Lion), and was studied as part of a Hubble survey of the central regions of roughly 145 nearby disk galaxies. via NASA http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2019/hubble-spots-stunning-spiral-galaxy
Meteor Misses Galaxy #119 The galaxy was never in danger. For one thing, the Triangulum galaxy (M33), pictured, is much bigger than the tiny grain of rock at the head of the meteor. For another, the galaxy is much farther away – in this instance 3 million light years as opposed to only about 0.0003 light seconds. Even so, the meteor’s path took it angularly below the galaxy. Also the wind high in Earth’s atmosphere blew the meteor’s glowing evaporative molecule train away from the galaxy, in angular projection. Still, the astrophotographer was quite lucky to capture both a meteor and a galaxy in a single exposure – which was subsequently added to two other images of M33 to bring up the spiral galaxy’s colors. At the end, the meteor was gone in a second, but the galaxy will last billions of years. via NASA https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap190430.html
The Galaxy, the Jet and the Black Hole #119 Bright elliptical galaxy Messier 87 (M87) is home to the supermassive black hole captured by planet Earth’s Event Horizon Telescope in the first ever image of a black hole. Giant of the Virgo galaxy cluster about 55 million light-years away, M87 is the large galaxy rendered in blue hues in this infrared image from the Spitzer Space telescope. Though M87 appears mostly featureless and cloud-like, the Spitzer image does record details of relativistic jets blasting from the galaxy’s central region. Shown in the inset at top right, the jets themselves span thousands of light-years. The brighter jet seen on the right is approaching and close to our line of sight. Opposite, the shock created by the otherwise unseen receding jet lights up a fainter arc of material. Inset at bottom right, the historic black hole image is shown in context, at the center of giant galaxy and relativistic jets. Completely unresolved in the Spitzer image, the supermassive black hole surrounded by infalling material is the source of the enormous energy driving the relativistic jets from the center of active galaxy M87. via NASA https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap190427.html
