August 1, 2016 - An Interstellar Soap Bubble

An Interstellar Soap Bubble   Resembling an enormous soap bubble (or perhaps a tiny deep-sea organism) this blue and red ring is actually the remains of a massive star that exploded in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy that orbits our Milky Way 200,000 light-years away. Known as SNR E0519-69.0, this supernova remnant contains expanding rings of gas so hot that they emit light in X-ray wavelengths, seen here in blue as captured by the Chandra X-ray telescope. Red represents the visible-light glow of ionized hydrogen, observed by the Hubble Space Telescope (as were the surrounding stars). The material that massive stars blast out into space at the end of their lives is eventually used to form new stars and new planets, the timeless cosmic repurposing of raw elements.

Image credit: X-ray: NASA / CXC / SAO; UV: NASA / JPL-Caltech; Optical: NASA / STScI; IR: NASA / JPL-Caltech

Weekly Calendar

August 1-7, 2016

Holidays - Sky Events - Space History

 

Monday 1

1818: Maria Mitchell born
1967: Lunar Orbiter V launched
1968: Saturn V production ends
1973: First X-24B lifting body glide test

Tuesday 2

New Moon 4:45 PM ET

1971: Apollo 15 lunar module Falcon leaves Moon in first televised lunar liftoff
1991: STS-43 Atlantis launched

Wednesday 3

2004: MESSENGER spacecraft launched to Mercury
2005: First in-flight space shuttle repair

Thursday 4

Venus 3° north of Moon
Mercury 0.6° north of Moon

1967: NASA announces sixth astronaut class
1984: First Ariane 3 launched
2007: Phoenix Mars Lander launched

Friday 5

Venus 1.1° north of Regulus

1930: Neil Armstrong born
1966: Final M2-F1 lifting body glide test
1969: Mariner 7 flies by Mars
2011: Juno spacecraft launched to Jupiter

Saturday 6

Jupiter 0.2° north of Moon

1961: Vostok 2 launched, first full-day human space mission, Gherman Titov first person to sleep in space
2012: Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity lands on Mars

Sunday 7

1959: Explorer 6 launched
1969: Zond 7 launched
1980: Viking 1 orbiter ceases operation
1997: STS-85 Discovery launched