So today's theme is nebulae. First of all, they're pretty, and that's enough excuse for anything. But nebulae are also interesting for other reasons. A nebula in general is a cloud of dust and gas in space. Nebulae are really the birthplace of stars and planets — start with a nebula, stir firmly with, for example, a density wave of stars in a galactic arm, and it collapses under gravity and static electricity into a protoplanetary disk, and if all goes right, the mass at the center becomes a star, and the remaining mass collapses into planets.
But let's start with today's soundtrack.
The Eagle Nebula M16 is called the Eagle Nebula.
M16 Eagle Nebula in Serpens constellation by 📷 Kile Hudak. pic.twitter.com/58LCckHpTY
— Julio Maiz (@maiz_julio) March 21, 2025
Lagoon Nebula
An "object".
Strottner-Drechsler Object 20 (often abbreviated as StDr 20) is a fascinating celestial object discovered in January 2020 by amateur astronomers Marcel Drechsler from Germany and Xavier Strottner from France. This duo has gained recognition for identifying numerous deep-sky objects, and StDr 20 stands out as a particularly intriguing find. Located in the constellation Hydra, it is believed to be the remnant of a cataclysmic nova—a stellar explosion—potentially linked to an event observed by Chinese and Korean astronomers in August 1064.
AstroBin's Image of the Day: "A Widefield View on Strottner-Drechsler Object 20" by Aygen - https://t.co/CnJedQTU2u#astrophotography pic.twitter.com/jjBsu1QJXD
— AstroBin.com (@AstroBin_com) March 21, 2025
Also for our VIPs: Sky Candy Ad Astra
Something that just amazes me is that when I was in an Astronomy class in the 70's, there really weren't any confirmed extra-solar planets. Now there's a mess of them, thousands. And while a lot of them are some kind of giant planets — including the really weird ones, "hot Jupiters" orbiting in the lap of their primary — we also have trouble seeing smaller planets. In any case, it's now believed that there are as many or more planets as there are stars.
— Willie Aaron Lewis (@Parsec44) March 21, 2025
A planetary nebula is what happens at the end of a star's life, when the star runs out of fusion fuel, collapses, and explodes. The Butterfly Nebula — much more poetic than its alternate name the Bug Nebula (splat!) — is a pretty dramatic example. The explosion shot gas out that formed the distinctive two lobes. Now, you might ask, why isn't it just spherical? The answer is there's a dense ring of dusty material around the central star that channeled the explosion.
So this is really an example of two kinds of nebulae — the bright gases are an emission nebula, excited into glowing by the star, and the ring is a dark nebula.
NGC6302 Butterfly Nebula by Hubble telescope #NASA pic.twitter.com/fknNc933LJ
— Alienigena11 (@Madriles6211) March 21, 2025
Once again, Julio Maiz gets some of the best pictures.
Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex by Tjm8874 ((astroBin) pic.twitter.com/NW9UdcXgbJ
— Julio Maiz (@maiz_julio) March 21, 2025
The NASA description is some PR person being cute, but it's quite a picture.
It’s spring and it's time to start cleaning! Just be glad you don’t have to clean the dust in space. Around 100 tons of cosmic dust rain down on Earth every day. There’s even more floating through our solar system, our galaxy and beyond. https://t.co/9WPTsmjQoS #FirstDayofSpring pic.twitter.com/kgPf7z8OxW
— NASA Universe (@NASAUniverse) March 20, 2025
I really should save this one for Halloween. We've had other pictures of the Rosette Nebula in the past that didn't look so sepulcheral.
It’s spring and it's time to start cleaning! Just be glad you don’t have to clean the dust in space. Around 100 tons of cosmic dust rain down on Earth every day. There’s even more floating through our solar system, our galaxy and beyond. https://t.co/9WPTsmjQoS #FirstDayofSpring pic.twitter.com/kgPf7z8OxW
— NASA Universe (@NASAUniverse) March 20, 2025
Another view of the Veil Nebula. That ratty old Hubble can still take some great pictures.
'Hubble Captures New View of Colorful Veil' From the #NASA_App : https://t.co/WfAeDJjbjd pic.twitter.com/ngGRfOAiFS
— Willie Aaron Lewis (@Parsec44) March 21, 2025
Here's a bit of science news for today. A computer science professor at Kansas State, Lior Shamir, has discovered something odd — the universe is apparently handed. Or something. At least, this study shows that about two-thirds of the galaxies observed are rotating in the same direction. Now, this has several possible explanations: first of all, it could just be chance in the particular selection of galaxies taken in this picture. A more interesting hypothesis is that when the universe was first formed at the Big Bang, it was already rotating. This idea backs the notion that the universe is inside a black hole, something that's been suggested in the past. And then there's the slightly less interesting possibility that it's just the effect of our model of the Milky Way galaxy not having the rotation right, but that's no fun. In any case, you can find the actual paper here.
Let's finish off with a little space news. The two astronauts who either were or weren't stranded — I say they were — came back to Earth. This is a video of what re-entry looks like from the inside.
The capsule with the astronauts enters the Earth's atmosphere.
— Black Hole (@konstructivizm) March 21, 2025
To return from the space station, they are placed in a fireproof capsule and it is sent towards the Earth. The initial speed of the capsule, taking into account the work of the braking engines, is an incredible… pic.twitter.com/tbtVqSTr5t
So, I've been promising a big announcement for a couple of weeks. Well, it's not ready yet. In the meantime, come back next Friday for more astronomy and space pictures. And, as always, it's the comments that are my real reward for doing this, so comment away, and share it with your friends and family. And your enemies. And random people on the street, what the hell.
