[Image Description: A small image of a galaxy distorted by gravitational lensing into a dim ring. At the top of the ring are three very bright spots with diffraction spikes coming off them, right next to each other: these are copies of a single quasar in the lensed galaxy, duplicated by the gravitational lens. In the centre of the ring, the elliptical galaxy doing the lensing appears as a small blue dot. The background is black and empty.]

https://esawebb.org/images/potm2406a/

Courtesy ESA Mars Express, via @andrealuck

[Image description: A growing protostar embedded within a molecular cloud. The center of the image shows a bright, red region, where the growing protostar resides, with a thin, gray lane of matter cutting through it horizontally, which is the protostar’s accretion disk. Above and below this region are blue triangular-shaped molecular clouds, which give the overall object an hourglass shape. The areas in the molecular clouds closest to the protostar have more pronounced plumes of blue gas. There are red, yellow, orange, blue, and green stars and galaxies scattered across the background.]

https://esawebb.org/images/L1527-1/

[Image description: A field of galaxies on the black background of space. In the middle is a collection of dozens of yellowish galaxies that form a foreground galaxy cluster. Among them are distorted linear features, which mostly appear to follow invisible concentric circles curving around the centre of the image. The linear features are created when the light of a background galaxy is bent and magnified through gravitational lensing. A variety of brightly coloured, red and blue galaxies of various shapes are scattered across the image, making it feel densely populated.]

https://esawebb.org/images/weic2418d/

*[Image description: This image shows two panels. On the right is field of many galaxies on the black background of space, known as the galaxy cluster SPT-CL J0615−5746. On the left is a callout image from a portion of this galaxy cluster showing two distinct lensed galaxies. The Cosmic Gems arc is shown with several galaxy clusters.]

https://esawebb.org/images/weic2418b/

“We are letting the data drive our decision."

[Image description: A young star-forming region is filled with wispy orange, red, and blue layers of gas and dust. The upper left corner of the image is filled with mostly orange dust and within that orange dust are several small red plumes of gas that extend from the top left to the bottom right, at the same angle. The centre of the image is filled with mostly blue gas. At the centre, there is one particularly bright star that has an hourglass shadow above and below it. To the right of that is what looks like a vertical eye-shaped crevice with a bright star at the centre. The gas to the right of the crevice is a darker orange.]

https://esawebb.org/images/weic2415c/

Un-cropped image and more information:

https://esawebb.org/images/weic2415a/

Alejandro Otero, owner of the Naples, Florida, home struck by the debris, was not home when part of a battery pack from the International Space Station crashed through his home on March 8. His son Daniel, 19, was home but escaped injury. NASA has confirmed the 1.6-pound object, made of the metal alloy Inconel, was part of a battery pack jettisoned from the space station in 2021.

An attorney for the Otero family, Mica Nguyen Worthy, told Ars that she has asked NASA for "in excess of $80,000" for non-insured property damage loss, business interruption damages, emotional and mental anguish damages, and the costs for assistance from third parties.

"We intentionally kept it very reasonable because we did not want it to appear to NASA that my clients are seeking a windfall," Worthy said.

Seems reasonable to me. If I accidentally caused damages to someone's home, I'd certainly be held liable. But, I'm just some guy.

Alt text: An image of our moon against a black starless sky. It is in the waxing gibbous phase, and you are able to see about fifty-five percent of the celestial body.

Think I'm getting the hang of this thing! Shot with my Canon Rebel T7 and a 300mm lens, ISO 100, f/5.6, 1/125 shutter speed.

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope dissected the Crab Nebula’s structure, aiding astronomers as they continue to evaluate leading theories about the supernova remnant’s origins. With the data collected by Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), a team of scientists were able to closely inspect some of the Crab Nebula’s major components.

For the first time ever, astronomers mapped the warm dust emission throughout this supernova remnant. Represented here as fluffy magenta material, the dust grains form a cage-like structure that is most apparent toward the lower left and upper right portions of the remnant. Filaments of dust are also threaded throughout the Crab’s interior and sometimes coincide with regions of doubly ionised sulphur (sulphur III), coloured in green. Yellow-white mottled filaments, which form large loop-like structures around the supernova remnant’s centre, represent areas where dust and doubly ionised sulphur overlap.

The dust’s cage-like structure helps constrain some, but not all of the ghostly synchrotron emission represented in blue. The emission resembles wisps of smoke, most notable toward the Crab’s centre. The thin blue ribbons follow the magnetic field lines created by the Crab’s pulsar heart — a rapidly rotating neutron star.

https://esawebb.org/images/weic2417a/

https://esawebb.org/images/weic2417b/

Canonical YouTube link

William Anders, a NASA astronaut who was part of the Apollo 8 crew who became the first three people to circle the moon, has died in a plane crash.

Evidently the joints on the flaps still need a little work into not letting gases through, but it seemed to still have enough actuation to keep the spacecraft stable until the engines took over for the landing burn.

A detailed discussion of the Shuttle program as well as some ethics in airspace.

https://esawebb.org/images/weic2413a/

[Image description: This image features the ZS7 galaxy system, showing a large field of hundreds of galaxies on the black background of space.]