Fact ! 🤣😅 But the good thing is I am now ready to share lots of remaining material from the mission, and to document the next steps of the journey!! We need some positive news… It’s hard, though, to find the time to share my adventures on social media, entirely by myself and on top of work hours… but hey no one said being an astronaut was going to be easy. Just out of curiosity… would anyone be willing to help? 😉
Heureusement j’ai plein de photos/vidéos restantes (y compris les coulisses 😉😇), et après un peu de repos les nouvelles étapes vont reprendre qui m’emmèneront je l’espère une nouvelle fois dans l’espace ! Pas facile en ce moment de conjuguer travail intense, un peu de repos et de temps pour les miens, et le partage de mes aventures sur les réseaux sociaux… surtout tout seul ! Juste par curiosité : il y en a qui seraient prêts à me donner un coup de main ? 😇😉🙃
#astronaut#esa#nasa#iss#space#exploration#earth#flight#spaceflight#science#technology#environment#climatechange#france#cnes#jaxa#csa#roscosmos#cosmos#explore#train#fitness#goals
A Cosmic Flower in Bloom 🌸
Captured in all of its glory by our Spitzer Space Telescope, this delicate cosmic "flower" can be found in the Ring Nebula. The outer shell of this planetary nebula is formed from material ejected from a dying star. Despite the star decaying, it releases a beautiful display that looks surprisingly similar to the delicate petals of a camellia blossom.
The “ring” in the center of the image is a thick cylinder of glowing gas and dust around the doomed star. As the star begins to run out of fuel, its core becomes smaller and hotter, boiling off its outer layers.
Spitzer's infrared array camera detected this material expelled from the withering star. Previous images of the Ring Nebula taken by visible-light telescopes usually showed just the inner glowing loop of gas around the star. The outer regions resembling petals are especially prominent in this image because Spitzer saw infrared light from hydrogen molecules that absorbed ultraviolet radiation from the star, or were heated by powerful winds from the star.
Located about 2,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra, this is one of the best examples of a planetary nebula, and a favorite target of amateur astronomers.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Harvard-Smithsonian CfA
#NASA#SpitzerTelescope#Spitzer#Space#Cosmos#AstroPhotography#Flowers#Spring#Bloom#RingNebula#Universe#Galaxy#Stars
Dream big, little star. 👶⭐
An energetic outburst from an infant star streaks across this image from the @NASAHubble Space Telescope. This stellar tantrum – produced by an extremely young star in the earliest phase of formation – consists of an incandescent jet of gas traveling at supersonic speeds. The colorful wisps, found in the lower left of the image, are painted onto the sky by a young star swaddled in the partially illuminated cloud of obscuring dust seen to the upper right.
Pictured punching through the enshrouding dust is an extremely hot, blue jet of gas released by the young star. As this jet speeds through space, it collides with cooler surrounding material. The result is the colorful object to the lower left, produced as the cooler material is heated by the jet.
This wispy object resides near the Orion Nebular approximately 1,400 light-years away from Earth. Only a fraction of the entire jet extending between the infant star and the wispy object— called a Herbig-Haro object — is visible using the Hubble telescope. But with the introduction of @NASAWebb, which observes at predominantly infrared wavelengths, we will be able to peer into the dusty envelopes surrounding still-forming infant stars such as this, revolutionizing the study of jets from these young stars.
Credit: @europeanspaceagency/Hubble & NASA
#Astrophotography#Hubble#Webb#Star#Astronomy#Space#Cosmos#SpaceTelescope#Dusty#BabyStar#Baby
You're a shining star no matter who you are 🎶🎶🎶
Hydrogen is the most ubiquitous element in the cosmos; from the biggest star to the smallest single cell organism, hydrogen is the universal connector. It is the most abundant element in the universe, and even in the human body.
This nebula is glowing with hydrogen gas, and filled with enormous stars, dust, and … a bubble? The “superbubble” in this nebula is about 250 light-years wide and scientists aren’t entirely sure why it formed the way it did. Stellar winds generated by massive stars in the interior of the “bubble” may have moved the ionized gas away from the center; another possibility is massive stars dying, resulting in huge explosions carving out the “bubble.”
@NASAHubble captured this nebula located about 170,000 light-years away, and is classified is as an emission nebula, which is a nebula whose gas has been energized or ionized by radiation of nearby stars. As the gas begins to cool from a higher-energy state to a lower-energy state, it emits energy which in turn causes the nebula to glow.
Credit: NASA, @EuropeanSpaceAgency, V. Ksoll and D. Gouliermis (Universität Heidelberg), et al.; Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
#NASA#Hubble#Space#AstroPhotography#Cosmos#Gaseous
La période se prête à regarder l’année écoulée dans le rétroviseur et à en faire le bilan, ce qui est toujours un exercice délicat. Il y a eu comme pour tout le monde des hauts et des bas, des joies intenses et des peines qui ne l’étaient pas moins, des objectifs à atteindre et énormément de travail pour y arriver, des obstacles aussi. Je finis l’année avec des souvenirs incroyables de ma mission et des images inoubliables plein la tête, mais le plus important c’est sans doute qu’aujourd’hui il m’arrive de rencontrer des gens qui disent « si je me suis lancé [dans la sélection d’astronaute, ou dans des études difficiles, ou pour essayer de réaliser mon rêve, etc.] c’est un peu grâce à vous ». Au moins pour ça, et si tant est que ma mission ait amené un peu de rêve et d’évasion, 2021 aura été un succès. Évidemment il reste TELLEMENT à faire sur la planète et ailleurs, alors maintenant au boulot pour la suite en 2022 et au-delà !
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2021 was by any standard a very challenging year, there were bumps in the road, but the year turned out to be amazing for many reasons. Prepping for a space mission in times of COVID required tons of effort from everyone to keep us safe, and executing the mission came with quite a few challenges. When you go to space, expect the unexpected! We had the best crew and faced adversity side-by-side. It was hard to be separated from those we treasure for so long, but I am thankful for all the love we received along the way. To anyone who helped make the mission a success: I am grateful and I feel indebted to you. For those who followed along on social media: thanks for the energy you gave us! I feel like I’ve learned new things and received so much and I’ve had opportunities to grow, so thank you. Of course the work will not end with 2021 and I promise there’s a lot left to look forward to in 2022 and beyond… I can’t wait!
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#bye2021#aurevoir2021#bonjour2022#nouvelan#nouvelan2022#grid#newyear#happynewyear#2021#2022#MissionAlpha#space#esa#europeanspaceagency#spacecraft#iss#nasa#astronaut#astronautlife@astro_kimbrough@astro.megan@novitskiy_iss@anton_astrey#spaceflight#thomaspesquet#espace#exploration#cosmos#earth