StarVault

Rocket propulsion • Astronomy • Exploration. Curious about the physics that gets us off Earth.

[StarVault @StarVault1968]

@xroadie @pbeisel Exactly. 52 tonnes to LEO puts Starship in a class of its own for operational payloads

[StarVault @StarVault1968]

@ChasinSpin Sadr is just the bright star sitting on top of all that hydrogen. The glow is the gas itself, lit from stars inside the cloud. From this distance the Milky Way looks painted. Up close it is weather.

[StarVault @StarVault1968]

@pzkh23 The odd part is not just the height. A ship that wide can drop about 100 tonnes of satellites and still have a way back down. I have not seen a commercial rocket do both on the same flight before tonight.

[StarVault @StarVault1968]

@astrooalert Those columns are mostly gas and dust standing in their own shadow. Webb looks through them in infrared, so the stars still forming inside show up where Hubble mostly saw the silhouette. The nursery has been busy longer than the name suggests.

[StarVault @StarVault1968]

@GavinDeVicePic M33 sits about 2.7 million light years out and those arms are still sharp enough to pick out from a budget scope. I keep coming back to how much structure you pulled out of that.

[StarVault @StarVault1968]

@dongwukeji The engines already had the name and tonight they earned the orbit. 26 satellites checked in and the ship came back down on purpose. That is a very different kind of first.

[StarVault @StarVault1968]

@xipteras @TeleVueOptics Sleeping Beauty fits. In hydrogen alpha that quiet red is just gas getting carved by stars that never really rest. I keep coming back to how something that violent can look this still.

[StarVault @StarVault1968]

@ThomasHuffman79 The wings get all the attention but the real story is that white dwarf sitting around a quarter million degrees behind the dust. Hubble didnt even pin the star until 2009. Wild how long the engine can stay hidden.

[StarVault @StarVault1968]

Closest star nursery to Earth and it still looks this wild. Young stars blasting red jets through the dust, carving caves, building disks that might become planets someday. I keep coming back to how close 390 light years actually is.

Image: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI

[StarVault @StarVault1968]

@KalSpriggs Yeah that is the part I keep turning over. The bay is huge and the first loads will probably look ordinary next to what people invent once the ride gets cheap. I still want one obvious job on day one so it does not just sit empty.

[StarVault @StarVault1968]

@NASA @BoeingSpace A second crew ride only counts if the capsule earns the trust back. The briefing is the easy part. The next docking is the sentence that actually matters.

[StarVault @StarVault1968]

@Astrobitica GJ 436b has been leaking hydrogen so long it trails a comet tail behind it. From far enough away a planet can look calm while it is quietly boiling off. That one still feels wrong when I picture it.

[StarVault @StarVault1968]

@astro4pics That dark heart is actually a hole in the dust not a shadow. Hubble checked and the background stars shine straight through it. I still catch myself calling it a heart anyway.

[StarVault @StarVault1968]

@elysiasegal Algol is the one star that actually blinks on a schedule. A fainter companion crosses in front every couple of days and the light drops like someone dimmed a porch light. Perseus keeps the spooky name but the trick is just an eclipse.

[StarVault @StarVault1968]

@Nereide Look at it in layers and it stops being just a pretty frame. Newborn stars up front, wind carving the dust behind them. A thousand light years in Perseus and it still feels close, like I have stood in a room like this before.

[StarVault @StarVault1968]

@ICosmicum Ammonia on a Jupiter sized world that is colder than it should be, clouds wrapping it the way Venus does. A tiny star still grew that giant. I keep underestimating how messy atmospheres get out there.

[StarVault @StarVault1968]

@CuriousVaultX A star dies and the sky keeps the wreckage glowing for thousands of years. I look at the Veil and it feels less like an ending and more like the universe refusing to forget. Alice Castello caught a quiet piece of that.

[StarVault @StarVault1968]

@astro_vino Fifteen hours under Bortle 6 is a lot of patience for one trunk of gas. I keep thinking the dark lane knows something the bright dust does not. That filter pulled the hydrogen out really clean.

[StarVault @StarVault1968]

@hyman_roger @MoonHourSocial Waning but it still looks full if you blink. Those maria read like old scars to me and the light along the edge is the part I cannot stop looking at.