Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction. Physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of a boundless four-dimensional continuum known as spacetime. The concept of space is considered to be of fundamental importance to an understanding of the physical universe. However, disagreement continues between philosophers over whether it is itself an entity, a relationship between entities, or part of a conceptual framework. Here are the most powerful space photos of the week taken from different sources.









Material falling into a black hole casts X-rays out into space—and now astronomers have used the echoes of this radiation to map the dynamic behavior and surroundings of a black hole itself. ( Source



3. Man captured his highest quality color image of the moon so far by blending thousands of shots from 2 different cameras.







4. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket (intentionally) blows up in the skies over Cape Canaveral during this morning’s successful abort test











5. Ever wonder what the moon would look like with stars behind it?







6. Man collected light for 28 hours with an amateur telescope to build this detailed portrait of the Sunflower Galaxy. Its hazy outer halo contains billions of stars that were strewn across space as it absorbed a companion galaxy







7. Man took this 5 hours worth of exposure of the Carina Nebula from his backyard









8. Capella Space reveals new satellite design for real-time control of high-resolution Earth imaging









Satellite and Earth observation startup Capella Space has unveiled a new design for its satellite technology, which improves upon its existing testbed hardware platform to deliver high-resolution imaging capable of providing detail at less than 0.5 meters (1.6 feet). Its new satellite, code-named “Sequoia,” also will be able to provide real-time tasking, meaning Capella’s clients will be able to get imaging from these satellites of a desired area basically on demand. ( Source





9. Two potentially habitable 'Super-Earths' and a record-setting 'Cold Neptune' found in exoplanet haul









Astronomers have found two more potentially life-supporting alien planets in our neck of the cosmic woods, as well as a weird and record-setting "cold Neptune."

The two possibly habitable worlds orbit the red dwarf stars GJ229A and GJ180, which lie about 19 light-years and 39 light-years from Earth, respectively. That's not far in the grand scheme of things, considering that our Milky Way galaxy's famous disk is about 100,000 light-years wide. (The sun's nearest neighbor star, Proxima Centauri, is about 4.2 light-years away.) ( Source





10. Proxima Centauri, the sun's nearest neighbor, may host a 2nd alien planet. Meet Proxima c.









In August 2016, astronomers announced that a roughly Earth-size exoplanet circles the closest star to the sun, the red dwarf Proxima Centauri, which lies a mere 4.2 light-years from us. (For perspective, the Milky Way galaxy's spiral disk is about 100,000 light-years wide.)







That world, called Proxima b, orbits in Proxima Centauri's "habitable zone," the just-right range of distances from a star where liquid water could be stable on a world's surface. So, there's a chance that life as we know it may have taken root in the next solar system over from us. (How good that chance is remains a matter of considerable debate, however. For example, Proxima b is tidally locked to its host star, meaning it has a hot dayside and a cold nightside. And red dwarfs are very active stars, so powerful flares may have stripped the planet's atmosphere long ago.) ( Source

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A pair of stars doing a cosmic dance are getting ready to explode. The two stars make up a binary called V Sagittae in the constellation Sagitta, and they have brightened 10-fold over the course of the last century. In this century, they are due to brighten so much that the explosion will be visible with the naked eye.V Sagittae is made up of a White dwarf, which is the burned-out corpse of a star, and another star about four times as massive. As the two circle around one another, plasma is pulled from the star onto the white dwarf and they get closer together. Bradley Schaefer at Louisiana State University and his colleagues examined photos of the pair of stars from 1890 to the present and found that they have been getting exponentially brighter since then. ( Source