Pic of the Week: Virgo Galaxy Cluster

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): The Virgo galaxy cluster as captured by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. (NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory)

This week’s image comes from the Planetary Society’s recent competition to find the best space exploration images. It shows the Virgo galaxy cluster, which was the winning entry. The image was released on June 23, 2025 by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory located in Chile.

The Virgo galaxy cluster is comprised of anywhere between 1,300 and 2,000 galaxies. What you can see in this image is an impressive array of galaxies, some of them intertwined. How many different worlds within this cluster may be peering back at us? Of course, the Virgo galaxy cluster is 65 million light-years away, so the image of the Milky Way appearing on their telescopes right now was from the time when dinosaurs still walked on the Earth.

Pic of the Week: New Crew Added to ISS on Thanksgiving Day

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): The Expedition 74 crew members launched towards the space station earlier today aboard a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. (NASA/Bill Ingots)

This week’s image shows a Soyuz rocket sending a crew to the International Space Station (ISS) on Thanksgiving Day. One NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts are thankful today that they are safe and sound on the ISS. NASA astronaut Chris Williams joined Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev aboard a Soyuz rocket launched from Russia earlier today.

The three crew members of Expedition 74 join the Expedition 73 crew members already on the station, increasing the crew count to 10 members for the next few weeks. Expedition 74 is scheduled to begin on Monday, December 8th, once three members depart the ISS.

These crews change like clockwork, regardless of holidays, government shutdowns, or even hot wars back on the surface. This dedication to duty is something we can all be thankful for.

Pic of the Week: Wolf-Rayet Apep

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Image (Credit): Dust spirals surrounding Wolf-Rayet Apep, as captured by the JWST. (NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Y. Han (Caltech), R. White (Macquarie University), A. Pagan (STScI))

This week’s embryonic image comes from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). It shows what NASA calls “four serpentine spirals of dust” around a pair of Wolf-Rayet stars. Such stars are rare, with NASA estimating that only a thousand can be found in our galaxy consisting of hundreds of billions of stars. And binary Wolf-Rayet stars are even rarer.

NASA notes that the JWST, or Webb, provided a much better image of the spiraling dust:

Observations taken prior to Webb only detected one shell, and while the existence of outer shells was hypothesized, searches using ground-based telescopes were unable to uncover any. These shells were emitted over the last 700 years by two aging Wolf-Rayet stars in a system known as Apep, a nod to the Egyptian god of chaos...Webb also confirmed that there are three stars gravitationally bound to one another in this system. The dust ejected by the two Wolf-Rayet stars is “slashed” by a third star, a massive supergiant, which carves holes into each expanding cloud of dust from its wider orbit. (All three stars are shown as a single bright point of light in Webb’s image.)

Pic of the Week: The New Glenn Rocket Booster Returns

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): The New Glenn booster after it landed on a platform in the Atlantic Ocean. (Blue Origin)

Today’s image comes from Blue Origin, which successfully completed it second launch of it New Glenn rockets, sending two NASA Martian probes into orbit. The image shows the reusable rocket booster right after it landed on a platform in the Atlantic Ocean.

Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy stated:

Congratulations to Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, UC Berkeley, and all of our partners on the successful launch of ESCAPADE…This heliophysics mission will help reveal how Mars became a desert planet, and how solar eruptions affect the Martian surface. Every launch of New Glenn provides data that will be essential when we launch MK-1 through Artemis. All of this information will be critical to protect future NASA explorers and invaluable as we evaluate how to deliver on President Trump’s vision of planting the Stars and Stripes on Mars.

SpaceX now has another competitor for military and space missions, which is good for everyone (including SpaceX since it will keep them focused).

Pic of the Week: Pismis 24

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Image (Credit): The Pismis 24 star cluster as captured by the JWST. (NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI, A. Pagan (STScI))

This week’s amazingly vibrant image was captured by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). It shows a young star cluster, called Pismis 24, which is approximately 5,500 light-years away.

Here is the rest of the story from the European Space Agency (ESA):

What appears to be a craggy, starlit mountaintop kissed by wispy clouds is actually a cosmic dust-scape being eaten away by the blistering winds and radiation of nearby, massive, infant stars. Home to a vibrant stellar nursery and one of the closest sites of massive star birth, Pismis 24 provides rare insight into large and massive stars. This region is one of the best places to explore the properties of hot young stars and how they evolve.