We’ve never seen images of space as astounding as those from the James Webb Space Telescope. And those stunning pictures got us reflecting on the top space images, past and present. These images have moved us because of their drama, beauty or significance. (📸, Pillars of Creation, captured for a second time in 2014: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team, STSCI/ AURA 📸, Apollo 8 Earthrise, taken in 1968: NASA 📸, NASA’s Curiosity rover at Mont Mercou in 2021: NASA 📸, JWST’s close-up of Neptune, taken in 2022: NASA, ESA, CSA, STSCI, Joseph DePasquale/STSCI 📸, Infrared image of the Pillars of Creation, taken in 2014: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team 📸, The Milky Way’s black hole, released in 2022: Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration 📸, Gravitational lensing of quasar 2M1310-1714, captured in 2021: ESA, Hubble, NASA, T. Treu 📸, Pale Blue Dot, taken in 1990: NASA, JPL-Caltech) #science #space #astronomy #jwst #jameswebbspacetelescope #hubble #hubblespacetelescope #pillarsofcreation #nasa #mars #curiosity #milkyway #blackhole #quasar #palebluedot

In a two-star system about 160,000 light-years away from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud, the larger star is stretched and pulled by its companion’s gravity as shown in the illustration. That gravitational tug-of-war causes the star’s brightness to change drastically and rhythmically. Now, a computer simulation suggests that this steady heartbeat of starlight is caused by giant tidal waves undulating and breaking on the star’s surface. Waves would occur about once a month, as the two stars orbit each other and pass near enough that gravitational forces raise tides on both stars’ surfaces, scientists suspect based on the simulation (see second image), much the way the moon tugs on Earth’s oceans. On the stars, though, that tug would be substantially more extreme. The larger star is around 35 times the mass of the sun. The smaller one is around 10 solar masses. And the waves may reach up to 3.3 million kilometers tall or three times the sun’s diameter. (🎨, first illustration: Melissa Weiss/CFA, 📸, second image: M. Macleod and A. Loeb/Nature Astronomy 2023 ) #space #stars #astronomy #gravity #physics