It’s okay to go at your own pace. Typically, the spinning crushed cores of exploded stars spin rapidly when they form. Some whirl around hundreds of times per second. But astronomers found one that turns just once every 18 minutes or so! #MondayMotivation

Welcome home, @NASAArtemis II! 🎉 🔗 twitter.com/i/status/204275...

As @NASAArtemis ushers in a new era of lunar exploration, @NASA missions will provide essential info about the Moon’s resources. In 2023, scientists used data from our retired SOFIA mission to create the first detailed, wide-area map of lunar water: t.co/xrKLHjcjn5 🧵 🔗 go.nasa.gov/4t6DIOs

The @NASAArtemis II crew is looping around the Moon! Our exoplanet-hunter TESS performed a similar flyby in 2018. This maneuver gave it a gravity assist to get into a unique orbit to scan the sky, searching for worlds beyond our solar system and more.

Want to learn more about how important sewing is to space exploration? Check out this episode of Surprisingly STEM: 🔗 go.nasa.gov/41HMp5F

If our @NASAArtemis astronauts could see gamma rays, the Moon might shine brighter than the Sun! The glow is from particles constantly bombarding the lunar surface. Don’t worry, understanding the lunar environment like this helps us protect astronauts. t.co/QkveemLCx4 🔗 go.nasa.gov/4sc7Y9g

Wow, what a launch! We’re excited to follow the @NASAArtemis crew on their journey.

There’s a rhythm to the stars. Astronomers identified a collection of pulsating red giant stars across the sky, each with a unique tone that depends on each star’s interior structure, mass, and size. #MondayMotivation

Smaug isn’t the only dragon in the sky. Draco is a circumpolar constellation that’s visible in the northern sky all year! Within this constellation's hoard is the Cat’s Eye Nebula, and the Spindle and Tadpole galaxies. https://go.nasa.gov/4pyMyTB https://pbs.twimg.com/media/G1efyU8XYAAWKxk.jpg

Stars close to the center of our galaxy dance around what appears to be nothing at all, but is actually a black hole with the mass of 4 million Suns. #MondayMotivation

3, 2, 1 … blast off! 🔢 Help your little learners practice math and develop fine-motor skills with this clip counting activity. Count the space objects on each card and clip the correct number with a clothespin! https://go.nasa.gov/42Gw7uH https://pbs.twimg.com/media/G1OOQllW0Agh6os.png

Of 5,609 confirmed exoplanets, just 200 are thought to be terrestrial – rocky worlds like Earth and Mars. Fewer still are in their stars' habitable zones. That doesn't mean they're inhabited, of course, but we're looking! https://go.nasa.gov/3Ul23RP

In a cosmic ballroom 1,900 light-years away, six stars are dancing in pairs across space. All three pairs are entwined, and all six stars go through eclipses to our view. https://go.nasa.gov/3TZloX4

Pretty in purple 💜 Nearly 200,000 light-years from Earth, the Large Magellanic Cloud circles the Milky Way in a long and slow dance around our galaxy. Vast clouds of gas slowly collapse to form new stars. https://go.nasa.gov/4cVt59F

Earth hasn't always been a pale blue dot. It's also been a lava-covered rock, a tropical riot of earth-shaking dinosaurs, and an Ice Age expanse where cave-dwelling humans hunted mammoths. If we're looking for another Earth, which one? https://go.nasa.gov/3PVaVLl

Our Sun may not look a day over 4.5 billion years old, but it's hard to date stars much farther away. Our next-gen @NASARoman will be able to help determine the ages of hundreds of thousands of stars at the center of our galaxy! 🤩 https://go.nasa.gov/3PSeG40

We are made of star stuff and you can see it! @NASAWebb took a closer look at a starburst galaxy, and its detailed image is flecked with green — areas of iron, most of them supernova remnants — iron like that in the blood running through your veins. https://go.nasa.gov/3TKd65x

As we count down to the eclipse on April 8, it makes us think about similar eclipses among the stars. How often we see them depends on our point of view. Literally. And they offer a wonderland of science! https://go.nasa.gov/3THI0eO

Big, blue and super-hot 💙 Winds from giant stars drive galaxy evolution and seed galaxies with the elements needed for life. Those elements are cooked up in stars and then injected into space as a star dies. https://go.nasa.gov/3Q5tBrV

The closest exoplanet to Earth is just 4 light-years away. But traveling as fast as @NASAVoyager, it would still take us 75,000 years to reach it. Exoplanets are far, yet we've discovered almost 5,600 of them! https://go.nasa.gov/3vooMCT

There is evidence that two exoplanets orbiting a red dwarf star are "water worlds." These worlds, in a planetary system 218 light-years away in the constellation Lyra, are unlike any planet found in our solar system. https://go.nasa.gov/3x6nDQC

Jets blast across space, slicing through the gas and dust of a nebula in this new @NASAHubble image. The bright object to the far right (hidden by a dark lane of dust) is a forming star, FS Tau B, surrounded by material that can eventually form planets: https://go.nasa.gov/3PwaarB

Good Dog (Stars)!🐶 Sirius A, the brightest star in our night sky, revolves with its faint, tiny stellar companion Sirius B. Both are in the Canis Major (Big Dog) constellation. Sirius B may look tiny, but it's also massive, the remains of an exploded star. #NationalPuppyDay

A cauldron of planetary potential🤩 Two developing stars are swirled by ices containing complex organic molecules – exactly the sort of ingredients needed to form habitable exoplanets! https://go.nasa.gov/3VhOxPM

A black hole just minding its own business 🕶️ @chandraxray sees a supermassive black hole having much less of an impact on its surroundings than expected. https://go.nasa.gov/4a1RMzn

Pity the brown dwarf? Not a planet, not a star, but something in between. Not even brown. These red objects are often born with a binary companion, like many stars, but over time they drift apart due to the pull of passing stars. https://go.nasa.gov/3TJT10h

Happy Equinox! Day and night are equal today, much like every day on a tidally locked exoplanet. Where the sides meet is called the terminator, and it's like twilight on Earth – neither day nor night, but something in between. https://go.nasa.gov/4cpPImq

A galaxy ~52 million light-years from Earth is one of many forcing its way through the massive Virgo cluster of galaxies. The pressure exerted by this intergalactic gas, known as ram pressure, has dramatic effects on star formation in LEDA 42160. https://go.nasa.gov/43m4E0y

Happy #StPatricksDay! 🍀 This glowing emerald nebula seen by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope is thought to have been sculpted by powerful O stars, the most massive type of star known. RCW 120 can be found in the murky clouds encircled by the tail of the constellation Scorpius.

Our artful universe 🎨 Winds from bright, hot, young stars carve cavities in a nebula while ultraviolet radiation ionizes the surrounding gas. Orange streaks signify carbon-based molecules important to the formation of stars and planets! https://go.nasa.gov/4cbJtCx

WASP-189 b is a gas giant exoplanet larger than Jupiter. It's 325 light-years away and a year there, one spin around its star, takes 3.5 days. https://go.nasa.gov/3Ti5TsX

A scattering of stars shining for you✨ @NASAHubble captured a loose collection of bright stars strewn across the cosmos in this image of a section of Messier 67, 2,700 light-years away. https://go.nasa.gov/3vmAddY

Hi, hi, hi! Are you ready for pi, pi, pi? Can you use π (pi) to solve these stellar math problems faced by @NASA scientists and engineers? https://go.nasa.gov/3Iyouw9

A scan of a developing star could be like seeing our solar system in its infancy.🚼 @NASAWebb found complex molecules like ethanol and likely acetic acid. The team also detected sulfur dioxide (a possible driver of metabolic reactions on a young Earth). http://go.nasa.gov/3VhOxPM

Another @NASAWebb discovery! Two developing stars are swirled by ices containing complex organic molecules – exactly the sort of ingredients needed to form habitable exoplanets! https://go.nasa.gov/3VhOxPM

More than 700 light-years from Earth, two Saturn-sized exoplanets could offer a gold mine of data and help us understand how large gaseous planets form. https://go.nasa.gov/3Txnb6H

Because fewer long-period exoplanets transiting their stars have been detected, TOI-4600 b and c could prove to be a gold mine of data. These recently discovered worlds round their star in 83 days (planet b) and 483 days (planet c). https://go.nasa.gov/4a8gU6X

[Staring into the middle distance] What are @NASAWebb and @NASAHubble looking at right now? Now you can see for yourself anytime: https://go.nasa.gov/4a6BCnI

📣Discovery Alert! 📣 It's a long year for a cold Saturn. TOI-4600 c, a bit smaller than our Saturn, rounds its star in 483 days. Companion exoplanet TOI-4600 b orbits in 83 days. Planet b averages 165° F (74 C); planet c averages -116° F (-82 C). 🥶 https://go.nasa.gov/48IDa6w

Happy Friday! (Galactic) high five ✋ Infrared from @NASAWebb and X-ray data from @chandraxray make the five galaxies known as Stephan's Quintet shine. Four of the galaxies are performing an intricate dance. (The fifth, left, is at a different distance.)

More than 4,600 light-years away, seven exoplanets swelter under a star 10% larger than our Sun. They were discovered in the data of a retired space telescope, Kepler. Science never stops! https://go.nasa.gov/3uRXzIo

Boop! It looks as if one galaxy is poking another in this image combining visible light from @NASAHubble with infrared from Spitzer. M51, as you can see, is two interacting galaxies. Many galaxies merge, just as our Milky Way will merge with Andromeda. https://go.nasa.gov/3Ijwd0J