Pic of the Week: Tropical Cyclones Imelda and Humberto

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Tropical Storm Imelda (left) and Hurricane Humberto off the eastern coast of the United States on September 28, 2025. The image also shows the outlines of the areas covered by clouds in North America and Caribbean. (NASA Earth Observatory image by Lauren Dauphin, using VIIRS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE, GIBS/Worldview, and the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership)

This week’s image comes from NASA’s Earth Observatory. It caught two tropical cyclones stirring up the Atlantic Ocean in late September. Both Tropical Storm Imelda and Hurricane Humberto caused plenty of problems off of the east coast of the United States without ever making landfall.

Here is more on the two storms from NASA:

Imelda had already brought tropical storm conditions to portions of the central and northwestern Bahamas. Prior to becoming a named storm, the system also lashed Puerto Rico and eastern Cuba with heavy rain. In the coming days, Imelda could intensify and cause flash and urban flooding along the coast of the Carolinas, according to the National Hurricane Center.

Although Humberto lurked farther from land, its effects still reached coastlines due to its massive size. Dangerous surf conditions affected beaches in the northern Caribbean, the Bahamas, and Bermuda, as well as much of the U.S. East Coast. Mid-Atlantic and even some Northeast states could see large swells and rip currents stemming from the storm, forecasters warned.

Pic of the Week: Sagittarius B2

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Sagittarius B2 as captured by the JWST. (NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Adam Ginsburg (University of Florida), Nazar Budaiev (University of Florida), Taehwa Yoo (University of Florida); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI))

This week’s busy image from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) shows the Sagittarius B2 molecular cloud, which is about 26,000 light-years away.

Here is more from NASA about the image:

Stars, gas and cosmic dust in the Sagittarius B2 molecular cloud glow in near-infrared light, captured by Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera). In this light, astronomers see more of the region’s diverse, colorful stars, but less of its gas and dust structure. Webb’s instruments each provide astronomers with important information that help build a more complete picture of what is happening in this intriguing portion of the center of our galaxy.

Pic of the Week: The Indescribable NGC 2775

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): NGC 2775, which is 67 million light-years away, as captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. (ESA/Hubble & NASA, F. Belfiore, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team)

This week’s image is from the NASA/European Space Agency (ESA) Hubble Space Telescope. It shows the odd galaxy NGC 2275 that is hard to describe. Is it an elliptical galaxy, a spiral galaxy, or something else?

The ESA weighs in on the issue below:

NGC 2775 sports a smooth, featureless centre that is devoid of gas, resembling an elliptical galaxy. It also has a dusty ring with patchy star clusters, like a spiral galaxy. Which is it, then: spiral or elliptical — or neither?

Because we can only view NGC 2775 from one angle, it’s difficult to say for sure. Some researchers have classified NGC 2775 as a spiral galaxy because of its feathery ring of stars and dust, while others have classified it as a lenticular galaxy. Lenticular galaxies have features common to both spiral and elliptical galaxies.

It’s not yet known exactly how lenticular galaxies come to be, and they might form in a variety of ways. Lenticular galaxies might be spiral galaxies that have merged with other galaxies, or that have mostly run out of star-forming gas and lost their prominent spiral arms. They also might have started out more similar to elliptical galaxies, then collected gas into a disk around them.

Some evidence suggests that NGC 2775 has merged with other galaxies in the past. Invisible in this Hubble image, NGC 2775 has a tail of hydrogen gas that stretches almost 100 000 light-years around the galaxy. This faint tail could be the remnant of one or more galaxies that wandered too close to NGC 2775 before being stretched apart and absorbed. If NGC 2775 merged with other galaxies in the past, it could explain the galaxy’s strange appearance today.

Pic of the Week: Stellar Eruption Sharpless 2-284

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Image (Credit): JWST image of stellar eruption Sh2-284. (NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/NOAJ/Y. Cheng/J. DePasquale)

This week’s image from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) shows a stellar eruption called Sharpless 2-284 (or Sh2-284), which is located about 15,000 light-years away. The image provides a beautiful and delicate combination of colors.

As noted in Universe Today, Reseacher Yu Cheng stated:

We didn’t really know there was a massive star with this kind of super-jet out there before the observation. Such a spectacular outflow of molecular hydrogen from a massive star is rare in other regions of our galaxy. Massive stars, like the one found inside this cluster, have very important influences on the evolution of galaxies. Our discovery is shedding light on the formation mechanism of massive stars in low-metallicity environments, so we can use this massive star as a laboratory to study what was going on in earlier cosmic history.

Pic of the Week: The Martian Turtle

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Image (Credit): Turtle-like Martian rock formation in Jezero Crater photographed by the Preservation rover. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

While the Preservation rover on Mars has been busy looking for signs of life in Jezero Crater, it still had time to take a few fun photos as well, including the turtle image above (see the outline of the turtle below if you cannot find it). The rover captured the picture on August 31.

Image (Credit): Outline of turtle-like Martian rock formation in Jezero Crater photographed by the Preservation rover. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)