Jellyfish Nebula

Approaching the Agena target vehicle, earth horizon in background, Gemini VIII.

Science Services’ Science Program series booklet Moon. Nelson Doubleday - 1967.

Such a beautiful universe! So much more waiting to be found

International Space Station (ISS) passing across the field of view of the Moon, as seen from a telescope.

Like images of broken light, Webb captured these carbon-rich dust shells around a binary star system. Drifting swiftly outwards, they are seeding their surroundings with carbon - one way elements spread across the universe.

go.nasa.gov/4ahBqmX

this was originally meant to be a physics blog but i find myself posting more about biology related stuff - excuse my inner plant nerd but i like physics too, so:

*cough cough* SPAGHETTIFICATION! a phenomenon where you can become stretched like spaghetti if you enter a black hole.

it’s also known as the tidal effect, and is generally used to describe the vertical stretching or compression of an object into a noodle-like shape in an extremely strong and non homogenous gravitational field.

by non homogenous i just mean that the gravitational field is not the same everywhere, but consists of irregularities. (it is non-uniform)

anyways, a very common example of this is when we’re talking black holes- if i threw you into a black hole, or you happened to fall into one, the gravitational field on one end of your body would be stronger than the other.

this gravitational gradient would mean as you fell, getting closer and closer to the event horizon, your body would become extremely stretched until it would become very very compressed. like spaghetti. but don’t worry, by that time you’d already be dead.

this only happens because of the sheer strength of a black hole’s gravitational field. it’s not really because of its size - but its density. there are lots of objects close or even larger than some black holes, the mass of a black hole is so concentrated in a small area that it absolutely maximises its gravitational pull, which is why not even light can escape it.

this is just one of the relativistic effects of gravity differences, and there are so many cooler ones! for example, pancake detonation.

so stay away from black holes, or you could become stretched like spaghetti or flattened like a pancake.

V838 Monocerotis

V838 Monocerotis, often referred to as V838 Mon, is a red variable star located in the constellation Monoceros.

It gained significant attention in early 2002 when it underwent a dramatic outburst, increasing in brightness by several magnitudes. This event was unusual because it was not a typical nova or supernova; instead, it was classified as a "light echo" phenomenon.

Credits: NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI)

Female Astronauts in History:

Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to go to space in 1963.

She orbited the Earth 48 times, spent almost three days in space, is the only woman to have been on a solo space mission and is the last surviving Vostok programme cosmonaut.

first ᵏⁱᵗᵗʸ in outer space ♡