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Mark McCaughrean

@markmccaughrean.bsky.social

566 Followers 2 Following

Former Senior Advisor for Science & Exploration at the European Space Agency / JWST Science Working Group Interdisciplinary Scientist / Co-founder Space Rocks / Refugee from the other place / Author, cycling, music, science, & Tigger

A picture of the Earth from space illuminated by the full Moon – it looks like daylight, but this is the night side of the planet, not the day side. There are city lights on the continents and a green aurora towards the north and south poles, plus a faint rim of upper atmosphere airglow as well. You can also see a faint dark rim of the Artemis II window frame and the zodiacal light (probably). North is at lower-left and you can see North Africa, then Spain and Portugal on that side. You can see South America and North America on the right side.
A colourful field of stars sprinkled across purple ionised gas and redder dust. The main cluster of stars is seen in a cavity to the upper right, while a very bright source surrounded by more gas and dust is seen in the lower left corner, with the characteristic six bright spikes due to diffraction in the optics of JWST. With a credit line in the lower-left corner that reads "Sharpless 305 & RAFGL5232 with JWST NIRCam / Credit: Mark McCaughrean, MPIA / NASA, ESA, CSA"
n image of a young protostellar outflow called HH288 in the constellation of Cassiopeia, as seen with JWST. Much of the background is dark black and blue, with many stars sprinkled across with different colours and brightnesses, many showing the classic eight-pointed shape that comes from the JWST optics. The Dragon Jet itself is a swath of red, orange, and yellow emission spread horizontally across the image, with at least two crossing flows. The main flow resembles a Chinese dragon, hence the name. The presence of several protostellar outflows associated with The Dragon and also in the separate dense core below it, The Dragon's Egg, suggests that this is an interesting place to study young outflows from protostars spanning a range of masses.
A picture of our gold and brown bengal cat standing next to a copy of a book with a spacey cover and a house plant, on one of our balconies with red tiles.