The constellation of Ursa Major (The Great Bear) is home to Messier 101, the Pinwheel Galaxy. Messier 101 is one of the biggest and brightest spiral galaxies in the night sky. Like the Milky Way, Messier 101 is not alone, with smaller dwarf galaxies in its neighborhood. NGC 5477, one of these dwarf galaxies in the Messier 101 group, is the subject of this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Without obvious structure, but with visible signs of ongoing star birth, NGC 5477 looks much like an typical dwarf irregular galaxy. The bright nebulae that extend across much of the galaxy are clouds of glowing hydrogen gas in which new stars are forming. These glow pinkish red in real life, although the selection of green and infrared filters through which this image was taken makes them appear almost white. The observations were taken as part of a project to measure accurate distances to a range of galaxies within about 30 million light-years from Earth, by studying the brightness of red giant stars. Credit: NASA
yeah that’s the only part of the song I know. apart from the Richard Rodgers tune & unlike what folklores say, there actually is a blue moon! today marks an event that happens once every 2.7 years (oddly specific, huh?)
nasagoddard:When someone says “Once in a Blue Moon,” you know what they mean: Rare, seldom, even absurd. This year it means August 31st. For the second time this month, the Moon is about to become full. There was one full Moon on August 1st/2nd, and now a second is coming on August 31st. According to modern folklore, whenever there are two full Moons in a calendar month, the second one is “blue.”
tonight’s moon rises 7:25 p.m. eastern time, moments before sunset in the western sky at 7:39 p.m.
Time-Lapse Video of the Day: The International Space Station never disappoints when it comes to creating material for awe-inspiring videos. Vimeo user Knate Myers has compiled a stunning mix of night time shots, captured from the cosmos.
This image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope shows the new silver medalist in the central region of our Milky Way. Dubbed the Peony nebula star, this blazing ball of gas shines with the equivalent light of 3.2 million suns.
