Pictures from Space.

[LazyHippo]

1. Friday, January 10, 2020: Thick clouds of brown smoke from Australia's bushfires spread across the Tasman Sea in this photo captured by an astronaut at the International Space Station. The photo was taken on Jan. 4, when the station was orbiting 269 miles (433 kilometers) above the Tasman Sea. — Hanneke Weitering

 

 

2. Thursday, January 9, 2020: The Swan Nebula, one of the biggest and brightest star forming regions in the Milky Way galaxy, only recently formed into the bird-shaped cloud we see today, new images have revealed. This composite image of the Swan Nebula combines data from NASA's flying telescope SOFIA (the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy), NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Telescope. In this image, astronomers discovered nine new protostars, or areas where dust and gas are collapsing to form new stars, and they were able to determine the ages of different features within the nebula. 

"The central region is the oldest, most evolved and likely formed first," NASA officials said in a statement. "Next, the northern area formed, while the southern region is the youngest. Even though the northern area is older than the southern region, the radiation and stellar winds from previous generations of stars has disturbed the material there, preventing it from collapsing to form the next generation." — Hanneke Weitering

 

 

 

 

Wednesday, January 8, 2020: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket soars into space with 60 of the company's Starlink internet satellites in this long-exposure photo of the launch on Monday (Jan. 6). The rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 9:19 p.m. EST (0219 GMT Tuesday) before returning to Earth for a drone-ship landing, marking the fourth time that this particular booster has flown. — Hanneke Weitering

 

 

[Old Owl]