U.S. Postal Service Stamps Highlight JWST Images

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): The U.S. Postal Service stamp featuring an image of star cluster IC 348 from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. (U.S. Postal Service)

The U.S. Postal Service is honoring NASA again with a set of stamps highlighting images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) – star cluster IC 348 (above) and spiral galaxy NGC 628 (below).

Regarding star cluster IC 348, NASA notes:

The wispy curtains filling the image are interstellar material reflecting the light from the cluster’s stars – what is known as a reflection nebula. This scene is located 1,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Perseus.

Regarding spiral galaxy NGC 628, NASA explains:

Webb’s observations combine near- and mid-infrared light to reveal glowing gas and dust in stark shades of orange and red, as well as finer spiral shapes with the appearance of jagged edges. This galaxy is located 32 million light-years away in the constellation Pisces. 

I would have preferred these stamps were regular first class forever stamps so that they would grace personal letters and birthday cards traveling to every corner of this country, but this is a nice gesture however you look at it.

Image (Credit): The U.S. Postal Service stamp highlighting an image of the spiral galaxy NGC 628 from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. (U.S. Postal Service)

Astronomy Questions: Something Fun to Keep You Guessing

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: NASA/JPL

If you are looking for something to take your mind off of politics for a little while, you may want to try your skill at some astronomy quizzes. For instance, here is one of the questions:

For every evening star you can see from Earth, how many more stars in the Milky Way Galaxy remain unseen?

  • about 20 million
  • about 3,000
  • about 40

Here are three quizzes you might want to try:

Have fun!

Note: The answer to the question above is 20 million unseen stars for every star you can see in our galaxy.

NASA Staff Flee and DOGE Starts its Audit – What Could Go Wrong?

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: Image by succo from Pixabay

The Associated Press reports that “hundreds” of NASA employees have decided to leave the agency. This follows layoffs last year at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as well as recently announced layoffs at Boeing associated with the Space Launch System. This does not instill confidence in NASA’s ability to meet its upcoming mission goals.

The same report notes that NASA will now be undergoing an review by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which recently decided to dump all foreign assistance based on false stories and an incomplete understanding of the role of foreign aid in our foreign policy. What is the chance that Musk, who will be involved in the DOGE review no matter what the White House states, will find merit in contracts to SpaceX while questioning other contracts?

If this was Russia, we would roll our eyes at such sham reviews. Why are we accepting it here? Is there any interest in good science, or is NASA like the oil industry in Russia – something useful to line the pockets of the connected?

Maybe its time to leave the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) to one side and start asking whether intelligent life is something quickly disappearing here on Earth. Though it may be worth noting that even SETI funding was cut by the Republican Congress years ago.

Pic of the Week: 30 Doradus for Valentine’s Day

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Composite image of 30 Doradus. (X-ray: NASA/CXC/Penn State Univ./L. Townsley et al.; Infrared: NASA/JPL-CalTech/SST; Optical: NASA/STScI/HST; Radio: ESO/NAOJ/NRAO/ALMA; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Schmidt, N. Wolk, K. Arcand)

Yes, NASA has an image ready for Valentine’s Day. This image comes from three sources – the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array.

Here is more from NASA (and even more can be found at the linked site):

Otherwise known as the Tarantula Nebula, 30 Dor is located about 160,000 light-years away in a small neighboring galaxy to the Milky Way known as the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Because it one of the brightest and populated star-forming regions to Earth, 30 Dor is a frequent target for scientists trying to learn more about how stars are born.

With enough fuel to have powered the manufacturing of stars for at least 25 million years, 30 Dor is the most powerful stellar nursery in the local group of galaxies that includes the Milky Way, the LMC, and the Andromeda galaxy.

The massive young stars in 30 Dor send cosmically strong winds out into space. Along with the matter and energy ejected by stars that have previously exploded, these winds have carved out an eye-catching display of arcs, pillars, and bubbles.

A dense cluster in the center of 30 Dor contains the most massive stars astronomers have ever found, each only about one to two million years old. (Our Sun is over a thousand times older with an age of about 5 billion years.)

Space Stories: Monks and Space, the Largest Structure in the Universe, and a Large Cache of Exocomets

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: Image by Paul Henri Degrande from Pixabay.

Here are some recent stories of interest..

—Vatican News: “Vatican Astronomer Releases ‘A Jesuit’s Guide to the Stars’“

Br Guy Consolmagno, the director of the Vatican Observatory, has published a new book entitled A Jesuit’s Guide to the Stars. Published on the 4th February, the book charts the long history of Jesuit engagement with astronomy. As Consolmagno notes in the book’s introduction, this is a story which has its origin in the very earliest days of the Society of Jesus. The founder of the Jesuit order, St Ignatius of Loyola, says in his autobiography (which, somewhat confusingly, is written in the third person) that “the greatest consolation that he received . . . was from gazing at the sky and stars, and this he did often, and for quite a long time.”

—LiveScience: “Astronomers Discover ‘Quipu’, the Single Largest Structure in the Known Universe“

Astronomers have discovered what may be the largest-scale structure in the known universe — a group of galaxy clusters and clusters of galaxy clusters that spans roughly 1.3 billion light-years across and contains a mind-boggling 200 quadrillion solar masses. The newfound structure is dubbed Quipu after an Incan system of counting and storing numbers using knots on cords.

—Astrobiology: “A Large Number Of Exocomets Have Been Discovered“

CfA astronomers and its Submillimeter Array were critical for identifying a cache of belts where comets may reside outside our Solar System. For the first time, astronomers have imaged dozens of belts around nearby stars where comets and tiny pebbles within them are orbiting. This result reveals regions around 74 stars spanning a wide range of ages – from those recently formed to others billions of years old – showing how comets play a role in the formation of stars and planetary systems.