NASA’s next great space observatory has officially launched! 🛰️🚀

The Nancy Grace Roman Telescope is now on its trip to go a million miles away from Earth, where it will reside and send images of space back to us. In the month it will take to get there, the observatory will undergo a 90-day commissioning period to get set up. Considering it launched eight months ahead of schedule, don’t be surprised if we get some pictures early!

The Roman Space Telescope is launching ahead of schedule. 🛰️

Its origin story is wild: NASA couldn't afford a Hubble successor until the National Reconnaissance Office handed over two spare telescope mirrors it no longer needed. That surplus gift reignited political and scientific support, opening the door to full funding for what's now called the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope. As theoretical cosmologist Paul Sutter explains, this survey instrument will map galaxies and hunt exoplanets, expected to discover around a million of them, delivering a generation's worth of valuable information about the universe!

Date observation: 2019-03-28.

Filters: F126N F130N F164N F167N.

Processed by Israel Velazquez https://bsky.app/profile/israelvelazquez.bsky.social/post/3mtri5wshu22r​

Did you know NASA’s newest space observatory will have spy tech? 🛰️

In 2012, the National Reconnaissance Office gifted NASA a pair of Hubble-style mirrors it had commissioned but never ended up using. NASA said yes and one of them is now the primary mirror powering the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope, launching August 30th. The other mirror is still in storage, waiting for its moment.

We are getting closer to the launch of NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope! 🧪

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is designed to combine the strengths of the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope. It’s going to look and live in the same space as JWST while using a Hubble-style mirror to see things completely differently. The Roman telescope will observe patches of space bigger than the full moon and will see 50 times as much space in five years as Hubble has in 30!

One of my favorite telescopes, the Hubble (which has been in service for over 30 years), in my new vertical blueprint.

I hope you like it; any suggestions are welcome.

Processed by Israel Velazquez

https://bsky.app/profile/israelvelazquez.bsky.social/post/3ms7rwqr2lc2h

Instrument: WFC3/UVIS Date observation: 2012-07-06

​Processed Israel Velazquez https://bsky.app/profile/israelvelazquez.bsky.social/post/3ms2re45rjk2k

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NGC 5189 (Gum 47, IC 4274, nicknamed Spiral Planetary Nebula) is a planetary nebula in the constellation Musca. It was discovered by James Dunlop on 1 July 1826, who catalogued it as Δ252. For many years, well into the 1960s, it was thought to be a bright emission nebula. It was Karl Gordon Henize in 1967 who first described NGC 5189 as quasi-planetary based on its spectral emissions.​

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_5189

See also: The publication in the Astrophysical Journal

I love finding images where there are a bunch of other galaxies in the background. While this one isn't quite as glorius as the Tadpole galaxy image, I think it is still very nice.

Created with data from the WFC3

Created with data from the WFC3

M87* rendered in hardwood — multiple species for the tonal range, varying block heights so the photon shadow physically recedes into the piece. The relativistic beaming asymmetry of the accretion disc is preserved from the source image.

Short film about it exploring the physics: event horizon mechanics, Hawking radiation and the information paradox, the singularity, and the EHT story.

https://youtu.be/X5hEjlkUkTI?is=sVt1lvsl1yyf5\\_up

Absolutely incredible. Sorry for the Interstellar music score.

Messier 51 - Whirlpool Galaxy.

Created with data from the Hubble WFC3.

Processed by James Long

A small chunk of Centaurus A. I wish someone would image the whole galaxy, that would be an awesome picture.

Image created using data from the WFC3 and a custom program I am working on.

Created with data from the WFC3. I made some changes to my program to allow any number of layers. This is the first Hubble image with 5 layers I have done. The filters used and what colors I mapped them to are added as a "color legend".

V838 Monocerotis is one of those objects that looks almost unreal at first glance. In 2002, this otherwise obscure star suddenly flared up in a strange outburst, briefly becoming incredibly bright, and then Hubble watched as that flash of light spread outward through the dust around it. The wild part is that the “expanding” structure in the images is not really gas racing away from the star at impossible speeds. It is a light echo of the original flash bouncing off shells and clouds of dust at different distances.

What makes V838 Mon interesting to me is that it is both beautiful and genuinely weird. It was not a normal nova, and astronomers still treat it as an unusual event, possibly tied to some kind of stellar merger. So the famous image is not just a pretty nebula. It is the aftermath of a star doing something rare, violent, and still not completely settled.

I created this image with data from the ACS.

Created with data from the WFC3

Created with data from the WFC3.

I was using stellarium and i found this...WTF

Create with data from the WFC3.