What you're seeing in this remarkable image from the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile is something that's never been observed anywhere else: A planetary nebula made up of two closely bound stars orbited by a third outer star.
That third star wasn't spotted until centuries after the discovery of the nebula itself, known as NGC 246 , or sometimes called the Skull Nebula or the Pac-Man Nebula – because of the shapes created by its stars and the gases swirling around them.
Other things to check out:
Pieces of orbiting space junk 'avoid collision' - BBC News
.css-14iz86j-BoldText{font-weight:bold;} Two items of space junk expected to pass close to one another have avoided collision, said a company which uses radar to track objects in orbit.
LeoLabs had said a defunct Russian satellite and a discarded Chinese rocket segment were likely to come within 25m of each other.
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Other experts thought Kosmos-2004 and the ChangZheng rocket stage would pass with a far greater separation.
The International Space Station: 20 Years of Communications Excellence | NASA
Assessing The Habitability Of Planets Around Old Red Dwarfs | NASA
Quite a lot has been going on:
What's next after the International Space Station? Plans afoot for more off-Earth outposts.
The International Space Station (ISS) won't be the only off-Earth outpost for much longer, if all goes according to plan.
Yesterday (Nov. 2), the huge orbiting laboratory celebrated 20 years of continuous human occupation , a big milestone in humanity's push to extend its footprint into the final frontier.
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For example, Houston-based company Axiom Space plans to use the ISS as a jumping-off point for its own station in low Earth orbit (LEO).
A Stolen Chunk of Earth's Moon Seems to Be Orbiting Mars
There's an asteroid in an eccentric orbit of Mars called (101429) 1998 VF31, which scientists at the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium (AOP) in Northern Ireland have now determined to have a strikingly similar spectrograph reading to the Moon, according to a press release . After being blasted away by some sort of ancient collision in orbit, they suspect 101429 got trapped by Mars' gravitational pull instead.
The AOP team's research , published in the journal Icarus , found that the chemical signatures of the asteroid 101429 are extremely similar to our Moon, suggesting that it was dislodged during the solar system's prehistory.
Space junk: Russia is responsible for most debris in orbit research finds | Science | News |
A shocking new infographic has identified the culprits responsible for the garbage attracted by Earth’s gravity.
With the advancements in technology, there are new potential solutions to the problem emerging constantly
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In all, the digestible data reveals an absolute minimum of 30,000 pieces of satellites, rockets and other defunct devices are orbiting around our planet.
Unwanted material can range from spent rocket stages to supposedly-inconsequential items like paint flakes.
SpaceX Starship as a trash collector in Earth orbit? | Human World | EarthSky
SpaceX Starship’s many tasks may include launching humans into space, carrying satellites into orbit and — perhaps — removing troublesome pieces of space debris.
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EarthSky lunar calendars are back in stock! Guaranteed to sell out – get one while you can. Makes a great gift!
In the video above, Shotwell’s comment about Starship’s possible part-time job as a space-age garbage truck begins at about the 8-minute mark. Shotwell was giving a nod to Starship’s planned reusability, which will allow the entire spacecraft to launch back and forth from Earth orbit to Mars repeatedly, when she said:
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