This week’s image shows the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule awaiting the launch of the Crew-6 mission to the International Space Station. The rocket launched at 12:34 a.m. EST today from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. You can read more about the successful launch here.
This week’s image was captured by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and shows globular cluster M92 located about 27,000 light-years away within our Milky Way galaxy.
Here is a little more on the image from NASA:
Detail of the globular cluster M92 captured by Webb’s NIRCam instrument. This field of view covers the lower left quarter of the right half of the full image. Globular clusters are dense masses of tightly packed stars that all formed around the same time. In M92, there are about 300,000 stars packed into a ball about 100 light-years across. The night sky of a planet in the middle of M92 would shine with thousands of stars that appear thousands of times brighter than those in our own sky. The image shows stars at different distances from the center, which helps astronomers understand the motion of stars in the cluster, and the physics of that motion
This week’s image is from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). It shows a spiral galaxy that appears much like our own (bottom center), though this one is a billion light-years away. Do occupants of that galaxy also see us? Good luck communicating when it will take 2 billion years to receive a response to a message you just sent out.
Here is the full story from the European Space Agency (ESA), which posted this as its Picture of the Month just last month:
A crowded field of galaxies throngs this Picture of the Month from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, along with bright stars crowned with Webb’s signature six-pointed diffraction spikes. The large spiral galaxy at the base of this image is accompanied by a profusion of smaller, more distant galaxies which range from fully-fledged spirals to mere bright smudges. Named LEDA 2046648, it is situated a little over a billion light-years from Earth, in the constellation Hercules.
One of Webb’s principle science goals is to observe distant galaxies in the early universe to understand the details of their formation, evolution, and composition. Webb’s keen infrared vision helps the telescope peer back in time, as the light from these distant galaxies is redshifted towards infrared wavelengths. Comparing these systems with galaxies in the local universe will help astronomers understand how galaxies grew to form the structure we see today. Webb will also probe the chemical composition of thousands of galaxies to shed light on how heavy elements were formed and built up as galaxies evolved.
The so-called Green Comet that is garnering much attention in the media is captured in this image from last year. The comet was first discovered early last year.
Here is the full story from NASA:
Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) was discovered by astronomers using the wide-field survey camera at the Zwicky Transient Facility this year in early March. Since then the new long-period comet has brightened substantially and is now sweeping across the northern constellation Corona Borealis in predawn skies. It’s still too dim to see without a telescope though. But this fine telescopic image from December 19 does show the comet’s brighter greenish coma, short broad dust tail, and long faint ion tail stretching across a 2.5 degree wide field-of-view. On a voyage through the inner Solar System comet 2022 E3 will be at perihelion, its closest to the Sun, in the new year on January 12 and at perigee, its closest to our fair planet, on February 1. The brightness of comets is notoriously unpredictable, but by then C/2022 E3 (ZTF) could become only just visible to the eye in dark night skies.
If you grab your binoculars, you can still see the comet over the next week by looking south. Check out the graphic below from EarthSky.org if you need a sky map to find it.
This week’s image is a recent shot from the International Space Station (ISS) showing how it deals with unneeded equipment. Fortunately, this “space junk” will quickly burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere rather than remain a threat to the ISS. Given the size of that junk, I hope nothing else bumps into it on the way down.
Here is the story from NASA:
The Canadarm2 robotic arm is pictured extending away from the International Space Station after jettisoning flight support equipment toward the Earth’s atmosphere. The flight hardware secured a pair of roll-out solar arrays inside the SpaceX Dragon cargo ship’s trunk during its ascent to orbit and rendezvous with the space station in November 2022. The jettisoned support equipment drifted safely away from the station and will eventually harmlessly burn up in the atmosphere with no chance for recontacting the space station.
Note: As this story illustrates, NASA has a habit of tossing out the trash from orbit.
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