IC 2944 (also known as the Running Chicken Nebula, the Lambda Centauri Nebula or the λ Centauri Nebula, is an open cluster with an associated emission nebula found in the constellation Centaurus, near the star λ Centauri. It features Bok globules, which are frequently a site of active star formation. However, no evidence for star formation has been found in any of the globules in IC 2944. Other designations for IC 2944 include RCW 62, G40 and G42. The ESO Very Large Telescope image on the right is a close up of a set of Bok globules discovered in IC 2944 by astronomer A. David Thackeray in 1950. These globules are now known as Thackeray's Globules. In 2MASS images, 6 stars are visible within the largest globule. The region of nebulosity visible in modern images includes both IC 2944 and IC 2948, as well as the fainter IC 2872 nearby. IC 2948 is the brightest emission and reflection nebulae towards the southeast, while IC 2944 is the cluster of stars and surrounding nebulosity stretching towards λ Centauri. IC 2944 gets the running chicken nebula name from a group of stars that resemble a running chicken. The star Lambda Centauri lies just outside IC 2944. The nebulae is 6,500 light years from earth)

Off to work...................................

24+ hours................

Jessica Meir (is an American-Swedish NASA astronaut, marine biologist, and physiologist. She was previously an assistant professor of anesthesia at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, following postdoctoral research in comparative physiology at the University of British Columbia. She has studied the diving physiology and behavior of emperor penguins in Antarctica, and the physiology of bar-headed geese, which are able to migrate over the Himalayas. In September 2002, Meir served as an aquanaut on the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations 4 (NEEMO 4) crew. In 2013, she was selected by NASA to Astronaut Group 21. In 2016, Meir participated in ESA CAVES, a training course in which international astronauts train in a space-analogue cave environment. Meir launched on September 25, 2019, to the ISS onboard Soyuz MS-15, where she served as a flight Engineer during Expedition 61 and 62. On October 18, 2019, Meir and Christina Koch were the first women to participate in an all-female spacewalk. Meir was included in Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2020)

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Captain James Tiberius Kirk - is a fictional character in the Star Trek media franchise. Originally played by Canadian actor William Shatner, Kirk first appeared in Star Trek serving aboard the starship USS Enterprise as captain. Kirk leads his crew as they explore new worlds, new civilizations, and "boldly go where no man has gone before". Often, the characters of Spock and Leonard "Bones" McCoy act as his logical and emotional sounding boards, respectively. Kirk has also been portrayed in numerous films, books, comics, webisodes, and video games.

Lagoon Nebula ((catalogued as Messier 8 or M8, NGC 6523, Sharpless 25, RCW 146, and Gum 72) is a giant interstellar cloud in the constellation Sagittarius. It is classified as an emission nebula and as an H II region. The Lagoon Nebula was discovered by Giovanni Hodierna before 1654 and is one of only two star-forming nebulae faintly visible to the eye from mid-northern latitudes. Seen with binoculars, it appears as a distinct cloud-like patch with a definite core. Within the nebula is the open cluster NGC 6530. The Lagoon Nebula is estimated to be between 4,000–6,000 light-years away from the Earth. In the sky of Earth, it spans 90' by 40', which translates to an actual dimension of 110 by 50 light years. Like many nebulae, it appears pink in time-exposure color photos but is gray to the eye peering through binoculars or a telescope, human vision having poor color sensitivity at low light levels. The nebula contains a number of Bok globules (dark, collapsing clouds of protostellar material), the most prominent of which have been catalogued by E. E. Barnard as B88, B89 and B296. It also includes a funnel-like or tornado-like structure caused by a hot O-type star that emanates ultraviolet light, heating and ionizing gases on the surface of the nebula. The Lagoon Nebula also contains at its center a structure known as the Hourglass Nebula (so named by John Herschel), which should not be confused with the better known Engraved Hourglass Nebula in the constellation of Musca. In 2006, four Herbig–Haro objects were detected within the Hourglass, providing direct evidence of active star formation by accretion within it)

the center of the nebula..................

Calling it a night..............................

The Martian - is a 2015 science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Matt Damon. Drew Goddard adapted the screenplay from the 2011 novel The Martian by Andy Weir. The film depicts an astronaut's lone struggle to survive on Mars after being left behind and the efforts of NASA to rescue him and bring him home to Earth. It also stars Jessica Chastain, Jeff Daniels, Kristen Wiig, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sean Bean, Michael Peña, Kate Mara, Sebastian Stan, Aksel Hennie, Mackenzie Davis, Donald Glover, and Benedict Wong.

Plot - In 2035, the crew of the Ares III mission to Mars is exploring Acidalia Planitia on Martian solar day (sol) 18 of their 31-sol expedition. A severe dust storm threatens to topple their Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV). The mission is scrubbed, but as the crew evacuates, astronaut Mark Watney is struck by debris. The telemetry from his suit's bio-monitor is damaged and Watney is erroneously presumed dead. With the MAV (Mars Ascent Vehicle) on the verge of toppling, the remaining crew takes off for their orbiting vessel, the Hermes.

Watney awakens after the storm, injured and with a low-oxygen warning. He returns to the crew's surface habitat ("Hab") and treats his wound. As Watney recovers, he begins a video diary. Unable to communicate with Earth, his only chance of rescue is the next Mars mission. In four years, the Ares IV will land 3,200 kilometers (2,000 mi) away at the Schiaparelli crater. Watney's immediate concern is food; being a botanist, he creates a garden inside the Hab using Martian soil fertilized with the crew's bio-waste and manufactures water from leftover rocket fuel. He then cultivates potatoes using whole potatoes reserved for a special Thanksgiving meal. He also begins modifying the rover for the journey to the Ares IV MAV site.

On Earth, NASA satellite planner Mindy Park, reviewing satellite images, notices moved equipment and realizes Watney must be alive. NASA director Teddy Sanders releases the news to the public, but decides not to tell the Ares III crew so that they will remain focused on their mission, over flight director Mitch Henderson's strong objection.

Mark Watney's route on Mars - 

Wadi Rum in Jordan was used for external scenes on Mars in filming The Martian.

Comment: I read the book and saw the movie. Both were excellent.

New Horizons (is an interplanetary space probe that was launched as a part of NASA's New Frontiers program. Engineered by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) and the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), with a team led by Alan Stern, the spacecraft was launched in 2006 with the primary mission to perform a flyby study of the Pluto system in 2015, and a secondary mission to fly by and study one or more other Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) in the decade to follow, which became a mission to 486958 Arrokoth. It is the fifth space probe to achieve the escape velocity needed to leave the Solar System. On January 19, 2006, New Horizons was launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station by an Atlas V rocket directly into an Earth-and-solar escape trajectory with a speed of about 16.26 km/s (10.10 mi/s; 58,500 km/h; 36,400 mph). It was the fastest (average speed with respect to Earth) man-made object ever launched from Earth. It is not the fastest speed recorded for a spacecraft, which as of 2021 is that of the Parker Solar Probe. After a brief encounter with asteroid 132524 APL, New Horizons proceeded to Jupiter, making its closest approach on February 28, 2007, at a distance of 2.3 million kilometers (1.4 million miles). The Jupiter flyby provided a gravity assist that increased New Horizons' speed; the flyby also enabled a general test of New Horizons' scientific capabilities, returning data about the planet's atmosphere, moons, and magnetosphere. Most of the post-Jupiter voyage was spent in hibernation mode to preserve on-board systems, except for brief annual checkouts. On December 6, 2014, New Horizons was brought back online for the Pluto encounter, and instrument check-out began. On January 15, 2015, the spacecraft began its approach phase to Pluto. On July 14, 2015, at 11:49 UTC, it flew 12,500 km (7,800 mi) above the surface of Pluto, which at the time was 34 AU from the Sun, making it the first spacecraft to explore the dwarf planet. In August 2016, New Horizons was reported to have traveled at speeds of more than 84,000 km/h (52,000 mph). On October 25, 2016, at 21:48 UTC, the last of the recorded data from the Pluto flyby was received from New Horizons. Having completed its flyby of Pluto,[18] New Horizons then maneuvered for a flyby of Kuiper belt object 486958 Arrokoth (then nicknamed Ultima Thule), which occurred on January 1, 2019, when it was 43.4 AU from the Sun. In August 2018, NASA cited results by Alice on New Horizons to confirm the existence of a "hydrogen wall" at the outer edges of the Solar System. This "wall" was first detected in 1992 by the two Voyager spacecraft)

Off to work..............................

The Orion Nebula (also known as Messier 42, M42, or NGC 1976) is a diffuse nebula situated in the Milky Way, being south of Orion's Belt in the constellation of Orion. It is one of the brightest nebulae and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky with apparent magnitude 4.0. It is 1,344 ± 20 light-years (412.1 ± 6.1 pc) away and is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth. The M42 nebula is estimated to be 24 light-years across (so its apparent size from Earth is approximately 1 degree). It has a mass of about 2,000 times that of the Sun. Older texts frequently refer to the Orion Nebula as the Great Nebula in Orion or the Great Orion Nebula.

The Orion Nebula is one of the most scrutinized and photographed objects in the night sky and is among the most intensely studied celestial features. The nebula has revealed much about the process of how stars and planetary systems are formed from collapsing clouds of gas and dust. Astronomers have directly observed protoplanetary disks and brown dwarfs within the nebula, intense and turbulent motions of the gas, and the photo-ionizing effects of massive nearby stars in the nebula.

The constellation of Orion with the Orion Nebula (circled in red)

YouTube

Hubble, Journey Through the Orion Nebula

http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/glfqg/hubble_journey_through_the_orion_nebulahd_amazing/Hubble, Journey Through the Orion Nebula

Prawn Nebula (also known as IC 4628, is an emission nebula located in the Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way, around 6,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Scorpius. It forms part of the tail of the "False Comet" anchored by the bright open cluster NGC 6231)

Different areas of the nebula.........................................

Off to work..............................

Deng Qingming (simplified Chinese: ???; traditional Chinese: ???; pinyin: Dèng Qingmíng; born 16 March 1966) is a Chinese People's Liberation Army Astronaut Corps (PLAAC) taikonaut selected as part of the Shenzhou program. He was born in the Yihuang County, Jiangxi province of China. A fighter pilot in the People's Liberation Army Air Force, he was selected to be an astronaut in 1998. He was announced as a backup member of Shenzhou 9, Shenzhou 10, Shenzhou 11 and Shenzhou 12 before finally being selected as one of the three crew members of Shenzhou 15 in November 2022.

The "Red Planet" (aka Mars, is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Roman god of war. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin atmosphere (less than 1% that of Earth's), and has a crust primarily composed of elements similar to Earth's crust, as well as a core made of iron and nickel. Mars has surface features such as impact craters, valleys, dunes and polar ice caps. It has two small and irregularly shaped moons, Phobos and Deimos. Some of the most notable surface features on Mars include Olympus Mons, the largest volcano and highest known  mountain in the Solar System and Valles Marineris, one of the largest canyons in the Solar System. The Borealis basin in the Northern Hemisphere covers approximately 40% of the planet and may be a large impact feature. Days and seasons on Mars are comparable to those of Earth, as the planets have a similar rotation period and tilt of the rotational axis relative to the ecliptic plane. Liquid water on the surface of Mars cannot exist due to low atmospheric pressure, which is less than 1% of the atmospheric pressure on Earth. Both of Mars's polar ice caps appear to be made largely of water. In the distant past, Mars was likely wetter, and thus possibly more suited for life. It is not known whether life has ever existed on Mars. Mars has been explored by several uncrewed spacecraft, beginning with Mariner 4 in 1965. NASA's Viking 1 lander transmitted the first images from the Martian surface in 1976. Two countries have successfully deployed rovers on Mars, the United States first doing so with Sojourner in 1997 and China with Zhurong in 2021. There are also planned future missions to Mars, such as a NASA-ESA Mars Sample Return set to happen in 2026, and the Rosalind Franklin rover mission, which was intended to launch in 2018 but was delayed to 2024 at the earliest, with a more likely launch date at 2028. Mars can be viewed from Earth with the naked eye, as can its reddish coloring. This appearance, due to the iron oxide prevalent on its surface, has led to Mars often being called the Red Planet. It is among the brightest objects in Earth's sky, with an apparent magnitude that reaches −2.94, comparable to that of Jupiter and surpassed only by Venus, the Moon and the Sun. Historically, Mars has been observed since ancient times, and over the millennia has been featured in culture and the arts in ways that have reflected humanity's growing knowledge of it)

A sunset on Mars is blue. Mars has less than 1% of the Earth’s atmosphere. So the sunsets on Mars appear as blue due to the way the blue light from the Sun is captured within the atmosphere of Mars...........................

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