Repost from @whitehouse: It’s #AstronomyNight at the White House! @NASA's here on the South Lawn teaching everyone about the science of astronomy. And tonight, they're taking over our account to show different ways of observing the universe and seeing the world around us. Here’s a nighttime view of Washington, D.C. from the astronauts on the International Space Station @ISS on October 17. Can you spot the White House? Follow along tonight as we celebrate everyone who's looking up at the night sky with curiosity! Instagram ดารา @nasa 29,661

A mass of plasma gathered itself into a twisting mass, spun around for a bit, then rose up and broke apart over a 10-hour period (Oct. 13, 2015). The image and video were produced with a combination of two wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light. Prominences are unstable clouds of gas tethered above the surface of the Sun by magnetic forces. Much of the jittering and odd jumping motions above the surface were artifacts caused by brightening and contrast changes used to bring out the detail and structure of the prominence. Credit: Solar Dynamics Observatory, NASA #nasa #space #sun #plasma #nasabeyond #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 22,449

Hubble Sees Elegant Spiral Hiding a Hungry Monster NGC 4639 is a beautiful example of a type of galaxy known as a barred spiral. It lies over 70 million light-years away in the constellation of Virgo and is one of about 1,500 galaxies that make up the Virgo Cluster. In this image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, one can clearly see the bar running through the bright, round core of the galaxy. Bars are found in around two-thirds of spiral galaxies, and are thought to be a natural phase in their evolution. The galaxy’s spiral arms are sprinkled with bright regions of active star formation. Each of these tiny jewels is actually several hundred light-years across and contains hundreds or thousands of newly formed stars. But NGC 4639 also conceals a dark secret in its core — a massive black hole that is consuming the surrounding gas. Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA Instagram ดารา @nasa 35,151

New Spaceflight Record! Just before the 15th anniversary of continuous human presence on the International Space Station (@ISS) on Nov. 2, 2015, U.S. astronaut Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) is breaking spaceflight records. On Friday, Oct. 16, Kelly begins his 383rd day living in space, surpassing U.S. astronaut Mike Fincke's record of 382 cumulative days. Kelly will break another record Oct. 29 on his 216th consecutive day in space, when he will surpass astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria's record for the single-longest spaceflight by an American. Lopez-Alegria spent 215 days in space as commander of the Expedition 14 crew in 2006. In this July 12 photograph, Kelly is seen inside the Cupola, a special module which provides a 360-degree viewing of the Earth and the space station. On each additional day he spends in orbit as part of his one-year mission, Kelly will add to his record and to our understanding of the effects of long-duration spaceflight. Kelly is scheduled to return to Earth on March 3, 2016, by which time he will have compiled 522 total days living in space during four missions. Image Credit: NASA #nasa #space #yearinspace #iss #spacestation #exp45 Instagram ดารา @nasa 23,987

Our Cassini spacecraft zoomed by Saturn's icy moon Enceladus on Wednesday, Oct. 14, capturing this stunning image of the moon's north pole. A companion view from the wide-angle camera (PIA20010) shows a zoomed out view of the same region for context. Scientists expected the north polar region of Enceladus to be heavily cratered, based on low-resolution images from the Voyager mission, but high-resolution Cassini images show a landscape of stark contrasts. Thin cracks cross over the pole -- the northernmost extent of a global system of such fractures. Before this Cassini flyby, scientists did not know if the fractures extended so far north on Enceladus. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute #nasa #cassini #saturn #enceladus #moon #nasabeyond #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 974

The dark area across the top of the sun in this image is a coronal hole, a region on the sun where the magnetic field is open to interplanetary space, sending coronal material speeding out in what is called a high-speed solar wind stream. The high-speed solar wind originating from this coronal hole, imaged here on Oct. 10 by our Solar Dynamics Observatory, created a geomagnetic storm near Earth that resulted in several nights of auroras. This image was taken in wavelengths of 193 Angstroms, which is invisible to our eyes and is typically colorized in bronze. Image credit: NASA/SDO #nasa #space #sdo #sun #earth #nasabeyond #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 42,575

New imagery from our Hubble Space Telescope is revealing details never before seen on Jupiter. High-resolution maps and spinning globes are the first products to come from a program to study the solar system's outer planets each year using Hubble. The observations are designed to capture a broad range of features, including winds, clouds, storms and atmospheric chemistry. These annual studies will help current and future scientists see how such giant worlds change over time. Already, the Jupiter images have revealed a rare wave just north of the planet's equator and a unique filamentary feature in the core of the Great Red Spot not seen previously. Credits: NASA/ESA/Goddard/UCBerkeley/JPL-Caltech/STScI #nasa #space #hubble #jupiter #hst #planet #nasabeyond #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 23,182

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) captured this photograph of the green lights of the aurora from the International Space Station on Oct. 7. Sharing with his social media followers, Kelly wrote, "The daily morning dose of #aurora to help wake you up. #GoodMorning from @ISS! #YearInSpace Image credit: NASA #nasa #space #iss #spacestation #earth Instagram ดารา @nasa 45,910

Archives, in their many forms, save information from today that people will want to access and study in the future. This is a critical function of all archives, but it is especially important when it comes to storing data from today's modern telescopes. our Chandra X-ray Observatory has collected data for over sixteen years on thousands of different objects throughout the universe. Once the data is processed, all of the data goes into an archive and is available to the public. To celebrate American Archive Month, we are releasing a collection of new images from the Chandra archive. By combining data from different observation dates, new perspectives of cosmic objects can be created. With archives like those from Chandra and other major observatories, such vistas will be available for future exploration. Image Credit: NASA #nasa #astronomy #chandra #space #nasabeyond #xray #universe #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 35,435

On the night of Oct. 8, a photographer in Harstad, Norway captured this image of the dancing northern lights. Auroras are created when fast-moving, magnetic solar material strikes Earth's magnetic bubble, the magnetosphere. This collision rattles the magnetosphere in an event called a geomagnetic storm, sending trapped charged particles zooming down magnetic field lines towards the atmosphere, where they collide brilliantly with molecules in the air, creating auroras. Though many geomagnetic storms are associated with clouds of solar material that explode from the sun in an event called a coronal mass ejection, or CME, this storm was caused by an especially fast stream of solar wind. "Geomagnetic storms caused by high-speed solar wind streams aren't uncommon," said Leila Mays, a space physicist at our Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "Near solar minimum-when solar activity like CMEs are less frequent-these fast streams are actually the most common cause of geomagnetic storms that create auroras." Image courtesy of Johnny Henriksen/Spaceweather.com #nasa #space #photography #aurora #spaceweather #nasabeyond #sun #earth #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 83,549

When stars that are around the mass of the sun reach their final stages of life, they shed their outer layers into space, which appear as glowing clouds of gas called planetary nebulae. The ejection of mass in stellar burnout is irregular and not symmetrical, so that planetary nebulae can have very complex shapes. In the case of this one, the nebula forms a winding blue cloud that perfectly aligns with two stars at its center. In 1999 astronomers discovered that the star at the upper right is in fact the central star of the nebula, and the star to the lower left is probably a true physical companion of the central star. For tens of thousands of years the stellar core will be cocooned in spectacular clouds of gas and then, over a period of a few thousand years, the gas will fade away into the depths of the universe. The curving structure of this planetary nebula resembles a last goodbye before the star reaches its final stage of retirement as a white dwarf. Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Serge Meunier #nasa #nebula #stars #space #astronomy #nasabeyond #science #hubble #hst #hubble25 Instagram ดารา @nasa 61,432

Pluto's haze layer shows its blue color in this picture taken by our New Horizons Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC). The high-altitude haze is thought to be similar in nature to that seen at Saturn's moon Titan. The source of both hazes likely involves sunlight-initiated chemical reactions of nitrogen and methane, leading to relatively small, soot-like particles (called tholins) that grow as they settle toward the surface. This image was generated by software that combines information from blue, red and near-infrared images to replicate the color a human eye would perceive as closely as possible. Image Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI #nasa #space #pluto #plutoflyby #solarsystem #newhorizons #nasabeyond #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 49,810

Scientists compared ground-based videos of pulsating auroras—a certain type of aurora that appears as patches of brightness regularly flickering on and off—with satellite measurements of the numbers and energies of electrons raining down towards the surface from inside Earth’s magnetic bubble, the magnetosphere. The team found something unexpected: A drop in the number of low-energy electrons, long thought to have little or no effect, corresponds with especially fast changes in the shape and structure of pulsating auroras. This image of a colorful aurora was taken in Delta Junction, Alaska, on April 10, 2015. All auroras are created by energetic electrons, which rain down from Earth’s magnetic bubble and interact with particles in the upper atmosphere to create glowing lights that stretch across the sky. Credits: Image courtesy of Sebastian Saarloos #nasa #aurora #earth #earthrightnow #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 48,364

This map-projected view of Ceres was created from images taken by our Dawn spacecraft during its high-altitude mapping orbit, in August and September 2015. Images taken using infrared (920 nanometers), red (750 nanometers) and blue (440 nanometers) spectral filters were combined to create this false-color view. Redder colors indicate places on Ceres' surface that reflect light strongly in the infrared, while bluish colors indicate enhanced reflectivity at short (bluer) wavelengths; green indicates places where albedo, or overall brightness, is strongly enhanced. Scientists use this technique in order to highlight subtle color differences across Ceres, which would appear fairly uniform in natural color. This can provide valuable insights into the mineral composition of the surface, as well as the relative ages of surface features. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA #nasa #dawn #nasadawn #ceres #solarsystem #space #nasabeyond #science @NASAJPL Instagram ดารา @nasa 3,313

Ribbons of dust festoon the galaxy NGC 613 in this image from the Hubble Space Telescope. NGC 613 is classified as a barred spiral galaxy for the bar-shaped band of stars and dust crossing its intensely glowing center. About two-thirds of spiral galaxies show a characteristic bar shape like NGC 613 - our own galaxy appears to have one of these bars through its midline as well. As with nearly all spiral galaxies, a monstrous black hole resides at the heart of NGC 613. Its mass is estimated at about 10 times that of the Milky Way's supermassive black hole and it is consuming stars, gas and dust. Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA and S. Smartt (Queen's University Belfast) #nasa #hubble #hst #hubble25 #galaxy #space #blackhole #nasaebeyond #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 1,588

Before drifting off to sleep, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly (@stationcdrkelly) captured this images from the International Space Station and wrote, " Day 180. Moonlight over Italy. #BuonaNotte Good night from @ISS! #YearInSpace‬." Kelly is living and working off the Earth, for the Earth aboard the station for a yearlong mission. Traveling the world about 250 miles above the Earth, and at 17,500 mph, he circumnavigates the globe more than a dozen times a day. Image Credit: NASA #nasa #spacestation #space #earth #iss Instagram ดารา @nasa 24,238

The film "The Martian" is set in the 2030s, when our astronauts are regularly traveling to Mars and living on the surface. Right now, we're developing the capabilities needed to send humans to the Red Planet. A fleet of robotic spacecraft and rovers already are on and around Mars, dramatically increasing our knowledge about the Red Planet and paving the way for future human explorers. The Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover measured radiation on the way to Mars and is sending back radiation data from the surface. This data will help us plan how to protect the astronauts who will explore Mars. Future missions like the Mars 2020 rover, seeking signs of past life, also will demonstrate new technologies that could help astronauts survive on Mars. Image Credit: NASA #nasa #mars #journeytomars #themartian #marsrover #curiosity #curiosityrover #space #redplanet #nasabeyond #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 38,190

NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly (@stationcdrkelly) captured this photo today, from the International Space Station and wrote on Twitter, "Early morning shot of Hurricane #‎Joaquin‬ from @ISS before reaching ‪#‎Bahamas‬. Hope all is safe. #‎YearInSpace‬." In addition to the crew Earth observations from the space station, NASA and NOAA satellites are tracking the progress of this powerful storm. Image Credit: NASA #nasa #spacestation #space earth #hurricane #earthrightnow #hurricanejoaquin #storm #weather #science #iss Instagram ดารา @nasa 34,375

Our New Horizons spacecraft has returned the best color and the highest resolution images yet of Pluto's largest moon, Charon - and these pictures show a surprisingly complex and violent history. This high-resolution enhanced color view of Charon was captured just before closest approach on July 14. The image combines blue, red and infrared images; the colors are processed to best highlight the variation of surface properties across Charon. Charon's color palette is not as diverse as Pluto's; most striking is the reddish north (top) polar region, informally named Mordor Macula. Charon is 754 miles (1,214 kilometers) across; this image resolves details as small as 1.8 miles (2.9 kilometers). Many scientists expected Charon to be a monotonous, crater-battered world; instead, they're finding a landscape covered with mountains, canyons, landslides, surface-color variations and more. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI #nasa #space #newhorizons #plutoflyby #pluto #charon #nasabeyond #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 65,413

A Fresh Perspective on an Extraordinary Cluster of Galaxies: Galaxy clusters are huge conglomerations of galaxies, hot gas, and dark matter and represent the largest structures in the universe held together by gravity. The Phoenix Cluster, pictured here, has shattered multiple records in the past: In 2012, scientists announced that the Phoenix cluster featured the highest rate of cooling hot gas and star formation ever seen in the center of a galaxy cluster, and is the most powerful producer of X-rays of all known clusters. The rate at which hot gas is cooling in the center of the cluster is also the largest ever observed. New observations of this galaxy cluster are helping astronomers better understand this remarkable object. Data reveal narrow filaments from the center of the cluster where stars are forming. These massive cosmic threads of gas and dust, most of which had never been detected before, extend for 160,000 to 330,000 lights years. This is longer than the entire breadth of the Milky Way galaxy, making them the most extensive filaments ever seen in a galaxy cluster. Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/MIT/M. McDonald et al.; Optical: NASA/STScI #nasa #space #hubble #chandra #nasabeyond #galaxy #stars #milkyway #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 35,006