Jupiter’s Moon, Callisto.

Elon Musk has released this video of today’s Falcon 9 landing attempt. The first stage of the JASON-3 mission’s Falcon 9 touched down on the surface of the Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship around ten minutes after today’s 1:42pm EST launch.

However, according to Musk, landing strut #3 didn’t lock in to place properly, and vehicle toppled over. In this newly-released video, the Falcon 9 can be seen gently coming to land on the desk of the ship, falling on the improperly secured leg shortly thereafter.

Musk also said that preliminary data suggests ice build up from foggy launch conditions may have caused the strut to improperly secure upon deployment.

Astronauts play ping pong in space using water and hydrophobic padels

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pls listen to this star war theory

What’s Up for January?

A meteor shower, a binocular comet and the winter circle of stars. Here are the details:

Quadrantid Meteor Shower

The Quadrantid meteor shower on Jan. 4 will either sizzle or fizzle for observers in the U.S. The shower may favor the U.S. or it could favor Europe depending on which prediction turns out to be correct. For viewing in the United States, observers should start at 3 a.m. EST. The peak should last about two hours with rates of 120 meteors per hour predicted in areas with a dark sky.

Comet Catalina

In the middle of the month, midnight to predawn will be primetime for viewing Comet Catalina. It should be visible with binoculars if you have a dark sky, but a telescope would be ideal. Between the 14th and 17th the comet will pass by two stunning galaxies: M51, the whirlpool galaxy and M101, a fainter spiral galaxy.

Constellation Orion

Winter is also the best time to view the constellation Orion in the southeastern sky. Even in the city, you’ll see that it’s stars have different colors. Not telescope needed, just look up a few hours after sunset! The colorful stars of Orion are part of the winter circle of stars.

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NGC 660. A rare galaxy type, polar ring galaxies have a substantial population of stars, gas, and dust orbiting in rings nearly perpendicular to the plane of a flat galactic disk. Only about a dozen of such galaxies have been discovered

Source: https://imgur.com/z73B8o3

The Belt of Venus is a pink glowing arch seen across the sky when the shadow of the Earth’s translucent atmosphere casts a shadow back upon itself.

hubble’s panorama of the carina nebula, some 7500 light years away from earth, and about fifty light years in length here. stars old and new illuminate clouds of cosmic dust and gas, like the clumping hydrogen from which they were born. 

the top star seen at the bisection of the first two panels, part of the eta carinae binary star system (most stars are in binary systems), is estimated  to be more than a hundred times the mass of the sun - large enough to go supernoava in about a million years. 

it also produces four million times as much light as the sun, and was once the second brightest star in the night sky. but surrounding dust and gas has dimmed our view of the star, though it’s still visible in the night sky to all but those in the most light polluted cities.

the fifth panel shows ‘the mystic mountain,’ where nascent stars in the dust cloud are spewing hot ionized gas and dust at 850,000 miles an hour. eventually, the ultraviolet radiation from these stars will blow away the dust, leaving visible the stars, like the cluster seen at the top of the panel, which were formed only half a million years ago.

M45, The Pleiades Star Cluster

Southern Cross by Carlos Fairbairn

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