Breaking News & Random Musings on Space, Technology, Sci-Fi & the View From A Writer’s Window
I’m sure you all know that the Artemis II lunar flyby mission was a tremendous success, and the astronauts returned home safely. They captured a ton of incredible images while they were up there. I’ve included a few of the best below, but you can see more at https://images.nasa.gov or just scroll my X feed to check out my many, many posts and shares about the mission: https://x.com/GSJennsen.
Or around it, anyway…. The Artemis II astronauts are officially on the their way to orbit the moon (and briefly journey farther than any human has ever traveled). First, though, they'll orbit Earth and test out a bunch of systems.
I won't lie; the SLS rocket had me nervous. I am a child of the shuttle disasters, and I was biting my nails during the ascent. But SLS got it done.
Now, onward into our future in space.
Enjoy some spectacular shots of the launch, and a bonus shot of Earth from the Orion spacecraft this morning (a view human eyes haven’t enjoyed in too many decades).
Image credit:
Pictures 1 and 2: Eric Kuna https://x.com/erikkuna)
Picture 3: Andrew McCarthy (https://x.com/AJamesMcCarthy)
Picture 4: NASA
A stunning new image of the Milky Way galactic core just dropped!
This view was captured by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a powerful network of radio telescopes in Chile.
What you’re seeing is the crowded, chaotic heart of our galaxy, a region packed with cold gas and dust, the raw material that forms new stars. The image maps an area called the Central Molecular Zone, stretching more than 650 light-years across.
Image credit:: ALMA(ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/S. Longmore et al. Background: ESO/D. Minniti et al.
More info: https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2603/
The Rosette Nebula's blue-white speckles are among the most luminous stars in the galaxy, with some burning millions of times brighter than the Sun. Happy Valentine's Day!
Via APOD: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260214.html
Webb has dropped an absolutely INSANELY detailed image of a portion of the Helix Nebula. The image was taken by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera. From NASA: “pillars that look like comets with extended tails trace the circumference of the inner region of an expanding shell of gas. Here, blistering winds of fast-moving hot gas from the dying star are crashing into slower moving colder shells of dust and gas that were shed earlier in its life, sculpting the nebula’s remarkable structure.”
You can learn more about the image and the Helix Nebula here: https://science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/intricacies-of-helix-nebula-revealed-with-nasas-webb/
For comparison, here is the Helix Nebula as imaged by Hubble and Spitzer:
The Cassini spacecraft imaged Jupier and Ganymede together on January 6, 2001, from about 11.8 million km beyond Jupiter. What a lovely, haunting image!
Cassini was such a gift. It revealed our solar system to be as beautiful as we'd long dreamed it must be.
Via Jason Major.
Jim Lovell: “The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth."
Earthrise, captured on Christmas Eve 1968 during Apollo 8, remains one of the most captivating and enduring images in history.
Absolutely gorgeous capture of Earth’s atmosphere from the ISS, courtesy of astronaut/astrophotographer Don Petit.
“The colors of our atmosphere seen from space! Multiple vibrant layers of green atomic oxygen, orange hydroxyl radicals, and red airglow excited from solar activity.” Source
I tripped and fell into Mass Effect. Yes, again. It feels like the holiday thing to do. :)
This is what the Milky Way would look like at night if your eyes could see radio waves. It's a new image created by the Murchison Widefield Array, which scanned the sky in 20 radio "colors" over frequencies from 72 to 231 megahertz.
What do I think when I see an image like this? Space isn't cold, dark and silent at all. It's vibrant, busy and fiercely, chaotically alive. Which makes it a fantastic place for stories.
Learn more here.
Check out this stunning image of Comet C2025 A6/Lemmon (what a mouthful) captured by astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy. Note, this isn’t our current interstellar visitor, but a different comet that’s puttings on quite a show this week.
Source: https://x.com/AJamesMcCarthy/status/1982601788621803521
A new header image went up on the social media profiles this week, and I thought you all might enjoy seeing it. The theme: “The people who will save the universe - if it can be saved.”
You can see high-res versions of the character art - and some additional characters - on my concept art page: https://www.gsjennsen.com/concept-art/. Click to expand a pic, then right click to download it if you like.
Starship Flight Test 11 on Monday was pretty much perfect. Despite continuing to push the booster and the ship to their limits in multiple ways, not only did nothing blow up,* but both performed precision, controlled soft landings. After some bumps in the road (i.e., explosions) in earlier test flights, with 2 fantastic successes in a row, SpaceX seems to have gotten its mojo back, and Starship's future looks bright indeed.
Moon/Mars, here we come!
You can watch a video of the controlled ocean landing of the ship here: https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1978905901344907726, and read more about the details of the test flight here: https://spacenews.com/starship-successfully-completes-11th-flight-test/
Photo by John Kraus: https://x.com/johnkrausphotos/status/1977883695651467447
*Okay, the ship DID ultimately blow up when it fell over into the ocean (after executing a perfect landing maneuver and hover), but that happens every time and is totally expected, so it doesn’t count. Soon, the MechaZilla chopsticks will be catching the ship, enabling reusability.
I know, I know - wall calendars are so last century. But what if they have gorgeous space art on them....?
I just thought I'd briefly pimp 2 calendars from 3 amazing astrophotographers (2 are a married couple), Catherin Machin and Ian Lauer, and Andrew McCarthy. These are as beautiful as they come. I'm not an affiliate, and no perks come to me from sharing these. I just suspect that some of you, like me, are suckers for a collection of space art you can justify hanging on your wall.
Machin/Lauer: https://catmachin.com/products/2026-calendar
McCarthy: https://cosmicbackground.io/products/2026-cosmic-calendar?variant=46400264405161
13 years ago this week, Curiosity landed on Mars and began an incredible journey of exploration that is still going strong. NASA put together a collage of 13 of Curiosity’s most memorable images so far.
Incredible new image from Curiosity this week, taken from the slopes of Mt Sharp, looking over her shoulder at the floor, and distant rim, of Gale Crater.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/S Atkinson. Source
Astronaut Don Petit is back on Earth now, but while he was on the ISS, he took thousands of incredible pictures and videos from orbit, and many of them are only now being catalogued and shared. Visit his X feed regularly to see a constant stream of beautiful images.
In his words: “High resolution star trail from the SpaceX Crew 9 Dragon, marked by a fleet of flashing Starlink satellites, glowing atmosphere, soon to rise sun, and arcing stars. Captured over the Pacific Ocean with Nikon Z9, Sigma 14mm f1.4 lens, effective 24 minute exposure compiled from individual 30 second frames, f1.4, ISO 1600.”
Last year, we were finishing the house and getting ready to move and moving, and we missed a lot of the summer. This year, we are making up for lost time!
Last weekend, we went to see Mumford & Sons at The Gorge Amphitheatre in George, WA. 2 hours west of Spokane, 2.5 hours east of Seattle, it's in the middle of absolute nowhere - that happens to be on a ridge above the beautiful Columbia River.
The comparison to Red Rocks Park (in Colorado) is immediate and deserved. Is it a better or worse venue than Red Rocks? Oh, why judge! The important thing is, I used to get to go to concerts at Red Rocks, and now I get to go to concerts at The Gorge!
It bills itself as having the most beautiful sunsets of any concert venue in the world, and THAT may well be true, for the sunset was indeed breathtaking (the clouds cleared enough in time to be an accent rather than a hindrance).
Oh, right, the concert itself. Incredible. Easily Top 5 of shows I've seen, and I've seen *a lot* of shows. 9 band members, with a full horn section, an upright bass, and of course the omnipresent fiddle, and their sound was as crisp, clear and in sync as a studio recording. In person, they sounded better than their released live albums.
But let's be honest. While the show would've been a shadow of itself without the ensemble, Marcus Mumford is the indisputable star. He has a strongly charismatic stage presence that I wasn't expecting, and a perfect voice.
10/10, would recommend.*
*Except the exfiltration system. It was a disaster. Never build a venue that can hold 30,000 people at the end of a 3-mile 2-lane road.
Just an appreciation post for my new(ish) hometown, Coeur d’Alene. I’m so happy to have moved to a place this beautiful, where every Sunday brunch looks like this.*
*Okay, every Sunday 6 months out of the year; the other 6 months it's too cold for the patio.
Ace astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy captured a banger of a photo of the ISS against the sun recently (see it here). Now he’s released an incredible bonus shot from the session. This is one hell of an optical illusion!
P.S.: The title of this post is a reference to a quirky but excellent 2007 movie, “Sunshine,” about a team of astronauts sent on a mission to reignite the dying Sun with a nuclear fission bomb.
