For over one hundred years, millions of tourists have flocked to the ancient limestone Waitomo Caves on New Zealand’s North Island, where a stunning species of fungus gnat called Arachnocampa luminosa live.
Unique to New Zealand and Australia, they are found in caves, grottoes, and other sheltered places. Arachnocampa means ‘spider-worm,’ as the gnat is known for the way their larvae hang strong vertical silk threads from their underground habitats. Since the larvae are luminescent, the thousands of tiny threads light up cave ceilings like a starry sky.
Expedition 35 Flight Engineers Chris Cassidy and Tom Marshburn completed a spacewalk at 2:14 p.m. EDT Saturday to inspect and replace a pump controller box on the International Space Station’s far port truss (P6) leaking ammonia coolant.
An impressive arc shaped rim of HII structure located in Scorpius tail and known as the Prawn Nebula. The center portion of the nebula is very bright and it seems there is a faint reflection component embedding it. Bright stars are part of Open Cluster named Trumpler 24 which shines at magnitude 8.6 and spans over 60 arc minutes representing approximately 250 light years across.
Stunning emission nebula IC 1396 mixes glowing cosmic gas and dark dust clouds in the high and far off constellation of Cepheus.
Energized by the bright, bluish central star seen here, this star forming region sprawls across hundreds of light-years — spanning over three degrees on the sky while nearly 3,000 light-years from planet Earth. Among the intriguing dark shapes within IC 1396, the winding Elephant’s Trunk nebula lies just below center.
The gorgeous color view is a composition of digitized black and white photographic plates recorded through red and blue astronomical filters. The plates were taken using the Samuel Oschin Telescope, a wide-field survey instrument at Palomar Observatory, between 1989 and 1993.
Image Credit: Digitized Sky Survey, ESA/ESO/NASA FITS Liberator Color Composite: Davide De Martin
