View allAll Photos Tagged astroscience
Here lies an up close image of the central region of the Andromeda Galaxy. The haze or glow that surrounds the large object in the image is actually part of the spiral galaxy, the bright core being a large star cluster. Visible within the constellation of Andromeda, the Andromeda Galaxy is our closest major galaxy at “only” 2.5 million light-years. Containing one trillion starts, over twice as many as the Milky Way, the galaxy stretches across 220,000 light-years. On a moonless night, even in areas with some light pollution, the Andromeda Galaxy is visible to the naked eye. One of the most interesting features of the Andromeda Galaxy, however, is that it is actually approaching our Milky Way Galaxy at 68 miles per second (110 km/s) and is expected to collide with the Milky Way in 4 billion years. Well, collide in the sense that the two galaxies will merge, the probability that any of the stars involved would actually collide individually is incredibly negligible. The initial images were taken by Dr. James Webb at the FIU AstroScience Center and color combined by Bobby Martinez.
C/2025 K1: A Whisper of Ice Crossing the Desert Dawn
In the quiet breath of the Arizona dawn, Comet C/2025 K1 drifted across the awakening sky—an ancient traveler sculpted from primordial ice, older than mountains, older than seas, older than the dreams of our species. Through the optics of your Celestron Nexstar 9.25 and the shimmering precision of the Hyperstar, its faint glow became a lesson in cosmic persistence: that every comet is a messenger from the Solar System’s cold nursery, carrying dust older than the Sun itself.
This morning, at Desert Bloom Observatory, your instruments worked as one—guiders, filters, sensors, and mount—each capturing not just light, but story. And the story is this: comets remind us that even the smallest wanderers reshape worlds, seed oceans, and whisper clues about how life first awakened on Earth. In your image, science becomes poetry, and the sky becomes a teacher—urging us to look up, to learn, and to remember that we, too, are made of wandering stardust.
As a 30-year-old scientist in 1969, Stephen Haggerty was among the first to ever study a moon rock.
by Margi Rentis
Have you ever wondered where does the term ‘Goldilocks’ comes from? The Goldilocks principle has been derived from the English fairy tale of the 19th century. There is a story named – ‘The Three Bears’, where a young girl called ‘Goldilocks’ tastes three different bowls of porridge and she prefers the porridge that is neither too hot nor too cold but has just the right temperature. This concept of ‘just the right amount’ finds its various applications and one such promising perception is found in ‘Astronomy’.
‘Goldilocks zone’ also known as ‘Habitable zone’ in astronomy defines the area around a star that is neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water to exist on the surface of surrounding planets. This definition has relied based on finding liquid water, this is because water is very much essential for a life to exist. Million years ago, even on earth, the first creature such as amoeba was found in water. This gives us the importance of life’s existence due to water. Hence, the same principle is followed even in exploring life on other planets.
Could we imagine what could happen to all of us if Earth was present in place of Mercury? We all could burn within seconds. This is because the distance between Sun and Mercury is so close that the surface temperature experienced by Mercury during the day is 430 degrees Celsius. On the contrary, what could happen if our Earth was located where Pluto dwells. Just for a second, we think wow! it is so cool. But practically thinking, Pluto is the farthest and coldest celestial body in our solar system. The average temperature during the day on Pluto is minus 223 degrees Celsius. Here, we all would be dead due to freezing within no time. Now let us come back to our Earth which is aptly placed in the Solar System where we don’t feel either like on Mercury or like on Pluto but just at the right condition where we all are happy and comfortable with warm sunny days and cozy cold nights. Let us take a moment to look around us and feel thankful to the Universe for placing us at the right position in a – Habitable zone, where we can live and survive.
Nevertheless, we humans are always curious and want to explore Earth-like planets elsewhere, beyond the Solar system. Therefore, the quest of searching for twin siblings for Earth has begun by our scientists. Scientists have discovered many Earth- like planets which have given us hope. But the challenge is they are billions and millions of kilometer away from us. To reach them, we need to travel at the speed of light! Yes, you heard it right- the speed of 300,000 km/s is how fast the light travels. For example, to reach an Earth-like planet called Kepler -16b it takes us around 245 years if we travel with the speed of light. Unfortunately, we cannot make this with our current engine technologies. Therefore, the young minds have to think out of the box and chase such Earth-like planets which could be done only in our dream today.
For more such blogs and to learn Space science by me visit www.givemefive.ai
About Givemefive:
Givemefive.ai is an award-winning private live online teacher-led Programming, Artificial Intelligence, Astroscience, Space Science , Universe Science teaching platform for kids and teens (7-18 years) across 15 countries. You can visit givemefive.ai/student_projects to see some of our awesome student projects.
Ashwini B.R
Co-Founder Givemefive.ai,
MS in Aerospace Engineering, FHWN, Austria,
Messier 81, also known as Bode’s Galaxy, is a spiral galaxy within Ursa Major that was discovered by both Johann Elert Bode in 1774 and Pierre Mechain in 1779. It wasn’t until 1781 that Charles Messier added the object to his famous catalogue, which has over 100 astronomical objects to date. The 6.8 apparent magnitude galaxy, which is just outside the limit of the human eye (but visible with binoculars and small telescopes), contains an active galactic nucleus with a supermassive black hole of 70 million solar masses, and also harbors regions of star formation along the arms. M81 is located 12 million light years away and has over 250 billion stars within its 90 light year diameter. This image is the product of four images, with red, green, and blue filters exposed for 180 seconds, and a luminance filter exposed for 60 seconds. They were taken by Dr. Webb with FIU’s Stocker AstroScience Center telescope on April 2, 2015, and were color combined by Gabriel Salazar.
The Orion Nebula, also known as Messier 42, is a diffuse nebula located in the Orion constellation. The nebula of 4 magnitude, which is 1600 years away, is visible to the naked eye on a very dark night with excellent conditions. M42, a center for star creation, contains a visible open star cluster. The younger and brighter stars are only 30,000 years old, which is very early in the life of a star. The nebula’s four brightest stars, all known as “The Trapezium,” lie at the center of the cosmic cloud. This picture is the final result of three images of the red, blue, and green filters, all exposed for one second, as well as an image in the luminance filter exposed for a quarter of a second. All images were taken using the 24” Stocker AstroScience Center telescope by Stephen Revesz, Daniel Puentes, and Jennifer Medina. The images were further reduced and color combined by Gabriel Salazar.
An 8-year-old little girl living in Italy, Fiorella Terenzi woke up in the wee hours of the morning to witness the historic moon landing on TV.
by Margi Rentis
Walter Van Hamme was 17 and living in his native Belgium when Neil Armstrong took his first step on the moon.
by Margi Rentis
Visit the AstroScience Center at FIU where you can have an “up-close encounter with the stars.” Another great thing to do at the West End. #WestEndLiving #InnovateMiami
By: Andres Limones Cruz
Mars Six College, University of Mars. Read more about academic life on Mars in: "Sub Martis: Dome Lowell", "Sub Martis: Dome Beagle" and "Sub Martis: Starship" or see: www.submartis.com for more!
The gas planet Uranus, discovered by William Herschel in 1781, is the seventh planet from the sun (about 1.787 billion miles away) and the third largest planet in the solar system (radius of 15,759 miles). It was visited by Voyager 2 in 1986, and has not been visited since then. Uranus has 13 rings, though they are very faint. One Uranian orbital period around the sun, or year, is the equivalent of 84 Earth years. Uranus has 27 known satellites, two of which are Titania and Oberon. Titania, the largest of Uranus’ moons, was also discovered by William Herschel, in 1787. Oberon, the second largest of Uranus’ moons, was discovered on the same day. Both moons were not observed for nearly 50 years after their discovery by Herschel. They can be observed by modern amateur telescopes. This image was taken by Stephen Revesz on December 30, 2015, using the 24” telescope atop FIU’s Stocker AstroScience Center. The image uses the luminance filter, exposed for 3 seconds, and was reduced by Gabriel Salazar.