Rachel (she/her)

A filamentary orange veil covers a bright region of star formation. The background is dark, stippled with stars and galaxies ranging from small bright dots to starry shapes. The foreground veil spans from upper left to the bottom right and resembles a seahorse. Bright stars light up the ‘eye’ and ‘chest’ regions of the seahorse with purple light. Within the tail, three bright spots sit in a traffic-light like formation.

Our galaxy is beautiful

Last full moon of 2024

Almost a week early, Loki season 1

A brown-haired woman stand before a court in a red drass with a black waistband. She appeals to the judge "your honour, I may have committed mail fraud, but I can also do the entire Kate Bush Wuthering Heights Dance." She extends her arms forward in front of her, then does a flourishing pirouette. The judge bangs his gavel. With great intensity he shouts "I've seen enough! Not guilty!" The women looks humble in her legal victory.

The WITCH HEAD NEBULA

Kenny Omega Smirk GIF ALT: Kenny Omega Smirk GIF

Hope he's back soon too

I do astronomy for a living, and images like this *still* take my breath away. What a beautiful universe we live in. Even in the midst of trouble, grief, & anything you might be struggling with (like we all are) - try to seek out the beauty. It helps ❤️

A spiral galaxy. It is large in the centre with a lot of detail visible. The core glows brightly and is surrounded by concentric rings of dark and light dust. The spiral arms are thick and puffy with grey dust and glowing blue areas of star formation. They wrap around the galaxy to form a ring. Part of the arm is drawn out into a dark thread above the galaxy, and dust from the arm trails off to the right.

A jellyfish galaxy adrift
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

Ghost Nebula, SH2-136

Black and white photo of a fluffy long haired tabby kitten - I think it is orange but could be grey. He is sitting 3/4 profiled to the left but looking straight at the camera with a teeny little blep poking out.

Baby blep! Postcard from my collection - copyright 1900, mailed 1907.

The Alpha Legion, five proxy models assembled

Witch Head Nebula captured by Nasa

So a delivery that was "handed to me" by the delivery company, who didn't, as it turned out, make a delivery because I stayed in for said delivery and it never arrived, well today it was sheepishly pushed through the letterbox

Today in 1980, John Lennon was shot and killed by an obsessed fan in New York City.

Meteor Shower and Orion in Mongolia 🇲🇳

📸 yin hao

YouTube video by Metal Traveller Nicko McBrain last show with Iron Maiden - end of the show thanks - São Paulo 7 Dec 2024

Thank You Nicko McBrain 🙏
#IronMaiden #NickoMcBrain #metalsky @ironmaiden.bsky.social

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhN3...

Entered Whamhalla this morning thanks to an advert on YouTube

Vaccine shows promise against aggressive breast cancer | WashU Medicine Clinical trial targeted recurrence of hard-to-treat triple-negative breast cancer

Early days, but another exciting application of vaccine technology.

And a tough one for antivaxx crowd.

Vaccine shows promise against aggressive breast cancer medicine.washu.edu/news/vaccine....

The next destination is the Orion Nebula. Still located in the Milky Way galaxy, this region is a little bit farther from our home planet at about 1,500 light-years away. If you look just below the middle of the three stars that make up the “belt” in the constellation of Orion, you may be able to see this nebula through a small telescope. With Chandra and Webb, however, we get to see so much more. Chandra reveals young stars that glow brightly in X-rays, colored in red, green, and blue, while Webb shows the gas and dust in darker red that will help build the next generation of stars here.

The next destination is the Orion Nebula.

Stephan's Quintet is a visual grouping of five galaxies of which four form the first compact galaxy group ever discovered.The group, visible in the constellation Pegasus, was discovered by Édouard Stephan in 1877 at the Marseille Observatory.The group is the most studied of all the compact galaxy groups.The brightest member of the visual grouping (and the only non-member of the true group) is NGC 7320, which has extensive H II regions, identified as red blobs, where active star formation is occurring.

Stephan's Quintet

The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is one of the Milky Way's closest galactic neighbors. Even though it is a small or so-called dwarf galaxy, the SMC is so bright that it is visible to the unaided eye from the Southern Hemisphere and near the equator. Many navigators, including Ferdinand Magellan who lends his name to the SMC, used it to help find their way across the oceans. Modern astronomers are also interested in studying the SMC (and its cousin, the Large Magellanic Cloud), but for very different reasons. Because the SMC is so close and bright, it offers an opportunity to study phenomena that are difficult to examine in more distant galaxies. Credits NASA, ESA, CXC and the University of Potsdam, JPL-Caltech, and STScI

Taken Under the "Wing" of the Small Magellanic Cloud

Xmas party today, was nice

This is a true 'once-in-a-lifetime shot.
A meteor and Milky Way galaxy in the same frame

Australia weather: after hottest spring on record, a very warm and humid start to summer forecast BoM says rainfall to bring brief respite from temperatures in 30s for parts of Victoria, NSW, Tasmania and Queensland

Finally a column about heat due to climate change not featuring a photo of people at the beach!

www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

I'm a lesbian

Venus is a planet in our solar system with many interesting facts, including: Temperature:Venus is the hottest planet in our solar system, with a surface temperature of around 878°F (470°C). This is hot enough to melt lead. Atmosphere:Venus has a thick atmosphere made up of mostly carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid clouds. The atmosphere is so thick that the sun appears as a smear of light from the surface. Size and mass:Venus is similar in size and mass to Earth, and is sometimes called Earth's twin

Stunning image of Venus

Credits: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory-Caltech

Gluing an unbalanced tree to a base to stabilise it, working on my winter diorama now