- Carl Sagan, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey

Beware of the Big, Bad Wolf

Visible within the center of the Crescent nebula is what’s classified as a Wolf-Rayet star. This star is a staggering 250,000 times brighter than the Sun, 15 times more massive, and 3.3 times larger. Its surface temperature is nearly 70,000° C/ 125,000° F. At just 4.7 million years old, it is already toward the end of it’s life and is shedding its outer envelope, ejecting the equivalent of the Sun’s mass every 10,000 years. Within a few hundred thousand years, it is expected to explode as a supernova.   (Image Credit: Michael Miller, Jimmy Walker)

This is Pluto as never seen before in human history.

Enceladus, a beautiful moon of Saturn

M51: The Whirlpool Galaxy

Credit: NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI), and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler Telescope has spotted the first roughly Earth-sized world orbiting in the “Goldilocks zone” of another star – offering perhaps the best bet so far for life elsewhere in the universe.

A year on Kepler 452b, which is about 1,400 light years from us in the constellation Cygnus, is 385 days, meaning its orbit is just a bit farther away from its star than the Earth is from the sun. That places it squarely within what planetary scientists call the habitable zone, or “Goldilocks” zone — not too cold and not too hot.

“In my mind, this is the closest planet indeed to Earth,” Jon Jenkins, Kepler data analysis lead at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif, said at a media briefing. “The star is a little bit older and a little bit bigger and brighter, so it’s good that it’s a bit farther from its star.”

Kepler Telescope Introduces Earth To A Very Distant Cousin

Image: Artist’s concept compares Earth (left) to the new planet, called Kepler-452b, which is about 60 percent larger in diameter. Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle

The planet Saturn, observed by the Hubble Space Telescope.

All here… Sorry, Pluto, you don’t belong here

PS: I do follow back

Cygnus entering the atmosphere, photographed by Alexander Gerst on the ISS.

The Infrared Visible Andromeda: This remarkable synthetic color composite image was assembled from archives of visible light and infrared astronomy image data. The field of view spans the Andromeda Galaxy are also included in the frame. via NASA

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The only home we’ve ever known. Clouds and sunlight over the Indian Ocean, as seen from Discovery during the STS-96 mission in 1999.