gaeln9796 | Entries tagged with science

It gratifies me that a number of my friend's list friends comment that they like these, generally, weekly doses of, mainly, Hubble amazingness. Encourages me to carry on posting them. Also, please note that NASA is link crazy, many of which, because they are so text-heavy, I remove leaving behind only those I believe to be the most informative or pretty or funny or cute :)

NGC 6960: The Witch's Broom Nebula_Image Credit & Copyright: Martin Pugh (Heaven's Mirror Observatory)
Explanation: Ten thousand years ago, before the dawn of recorded human history, a new light would have suddenly have appeared in the night sky and faded after a few weeks. Today we know this light was from a supernova, or exploding star, and record the expanding debris cloud as the Veil Nebula, a supernova remnant. This sharp telescopic view is centered on a western segment of the Veil Nebula cataloged as NGC 6960 but less formally known as the Witch's Broom Nebula. Blasted out in the cataclysmic explosion, the interstellar shock wave plows through space sweeping up and exciting interstellar material. Imaged with narrow band filters, the glowing filaments are like long ripples in a sheet seen almost edge on, remarkably well separated into atomic hydrogen (red) and oxygen (blue-green) gas. The complete supernova remnant lies about 1400 light-years away towards the constellation Cygnus. This Witch's Broom actually spans about 35 light-years. The bright star in the frame is 52 Cygni, visible with the unaided eye from a dark location but unrelated to the ancient supernova remnant.

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Current Mood: calm
Current Location: the ever lovely bay area
Current Music: comcast 943

Astonishing to realize, to remember, that each and every bright dot is a galaxy!

NGC 247 and Friends
Image Credit & Copyright: CHART32 Team, Processing_Johannes Schedler

Explanation: About 70,000 light-years across, NGC 247 is a spiral galaxy smaller than our Milky Way. Measured to be only 11 million light-years distant it is nearby though. Tilted nearly edge-on as seen from our perspective, it dominates this telescopic field of view toward the southern constellation Cetus. The pronounced void on one side of the galaxy's disk recalls for some its popular name, the Needle's Eye galaxy. Many background galaxies are visible in this sharp galaxy portrait, including the remarkable string of four galaxies just below and left of NGC 247 known as Burbidge's Chain. Burbidge's Chain galaxies are about 300 million light-years distant. The deep image even reveals that the two leftmost galaxies in the chain are apparently interacting, joined by a faint bridge of material. NGC 247 itself is part of the Sculptor Group of galaxies along with the shiny spiral NGC 253.

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Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: bay area
Current Music: comcast 943

The Butterfly Nebula from Hubble_Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble, HLA:
Reprocessing & Copyright: Jesús M.Vargas & Maritxu Poyal

Explanation: The bright clusters and nebulae of planet Earth's night sky are often named for flowers or insects. Though its wingspan covers over 3 light-years, NGC 6302 is no exception. With an estimated surface temperature of about 250,000 degrees C, the dying central star of this particular planetary nebula has become exceptionally hot, shining brightly in ultraviolet light but hidden from direct view by a dense torus of dust. This sharp close-up of the dying star's nebula was recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope and is presented here in reprocessed colors. Cutting across a bright cavity of ionized gas, the dust torus surrounding the central star is near the center of this view, almost edge-on to the line-of-sight. Molecular hydrogen has been detected in the hot star's dusty cosmic shroud. NGC 6302 lies about 4,000 light-years away in the arachnologically correct constellation of the Scorpion (Scorpius).

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Current Mood: enthralled
Current Location: bay area
Current Music: comcast 943

Image Credit: NOAA, NASA

Explanation: Launched last November 19 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the satellite now known as GOES-16 can now observes planet Earth from a geostationary orbit 22,300 miles above the equator. Its Advanced Baseline Imager captured this contrasting view of Earth and a gibbous Moon on January 15. The stark and airless Moon is not really the focus of GOES-16, though. Capable of providing a high resolution full disk image of Earth every 15 minutes in 16 spectral channels, the new generation satellite's instrumentation is geared to provide sharper, more detailed views of Earth's dynamic weather systems and enable more accurate weather forecasting. Like previous GOES weather satellites, GOES-16 will use the moon over our fair planet as a calibration target.

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Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: bay area
Current Music: comcast 943

Image Credit & Copyright: Data - ESO/INAF/R. Colombari/E. Recurt, Processing - R. Colombari+-

Explanation: South of Antares, in the tail of the nebula-rich constellation Scorpius, lies emission nebula IC 4628. Nearby hot, massive stars, millions of years young, irradiate the nebula with invisible ultraviolet light, stripping electrons from atoms. The electrons eventually recombine with the atoms to produce the visible nebular glow, dominated by the red emission of hydrogen. At an estimated distance of 6,000 light-years, the region shown is about 250 light-years across, spanning over three full moons on the sky. The nebula is also cataloged as Gum 56 for Australian astronomer Colin Stanley Gum, but seafood-loving astronomers might know this cosmic cloud as the Prawn Nebula. The tantalizing color image is a new astronomical composition using data from the European Southern Observatory's wide field OmegaCAM and amateur images made under dark skies on the Canary Island of Tenerife.

Number one can be found here!
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Current Mood: impressed
Current Location: bay area

It is astonishing to me how zooming in just keeps going and going. Space is incredible!!

Taken from here at Hubble Space Telescope
This sequence takes the viewer from a wide view of the Milky Way to the central regions, where many bright star forming regions and star clusters can be seen. The final view is a close-up of the sky around the star cluster Terzan 5 taken with Hubble, the Very Large Telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory and the Keck Telescope.

Enjoy!!

Current Mood: enthralled
Current Location: bay area
Current Music: frickin' news

I know no one EVER clicks ALL the links associated with these NASA posts but, if you only have time for a couple, please click 'Earth dwellers' and 'imaged together'. I do click ALL of the links associated with the images I post hoping to find just the kind of images these two links lead to. I adore their sense of whimsy and fun interspersed among all the amazing information.
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Image Credit & Copyright: Alex Cherney (Terrastro, TWAN) Taken on August 16, 2016

Explanation: It is not a coincidence that planets line up. That's because all of the planets orbit the Sun in (nearly) a single sheet called the plane of the ecliptic. When viewed from inside that plane -- as Earth dwellers are likely to do -- the planets all appear confined to a single band. It is a coincidence, though, when several of the brightest planets all appear in nearly the same direction. Such a coincidence was captured last week. Featured above, six planets and Earth's Moon were all imaged together last week, just after sunset, from Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, Australia. A second band is visible across the top of this tall image -- the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy.

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Current Mood: enthralled
Current Location: bay area

In a mere minute and a half, Expedition 47 Flight Engineer Jeff Williams sums up what ISS has accomlished to date. A truly international effort, this mission proves how, when motivated, the world can come together to create something utterly amazing.

May ISS have at least another 100,000 orbits!!
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Current Mood: hopeful
Current Location: bay area

FROM NASA Goddard YouTube Channel
Around 13 times per century, Mercury passes between Earth and the sun in a rare astronomical event known as a planetary transit. The 2016 Mercury transit occurred on May 9, between roughly 7:12 a.m. and 2:42 p.m. EDT.

You know the planets are real but seeing them like this, in transit, makes them seem even more so. Such a little world tranversing the face of our beautiful star.

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Current Mood: excited
Current Location: Saratoga

This one sent to me by Lauren. Keep up the good work ISS.

-Enjoy!!

Current Mood: enthralled
Current Location: bay area

From: NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day

Explanation: When did Orion become so flashy? This colorful rendition of part of the constellation of Orion comes from red light emitted by hydrogen and sulfur (SII), and blue-green light emitted by oxygen (OIII). Hues on the featured image were then digitally reassigned to be indicative of their elemental origins -- but also striking to the human eye.

The breathtaking composite was painstakingly composed from hundreds of images which took nearly 200 hours to collect. Pictured, Barnard's Loop, across the image bottom, appears to cradle interstellar constructs including the intricate Orion Nebula seen just right of center. The Flame Nebula can also be quickly located, but it takes a careful eye to identify the slight indentation of the dark Horsehead Nebula. As to Orion's flashiness -- a leading explanation for the origin of Barnard's Loop is a supernova blast that occurred about two million years ago.

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Current Mood: enthralled
Current Location: bay area

I don't know about you guys, but I LOVE this stuff :)

Both are from: Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive

Rainbow Airglow over the Azores_Image Credit & Copyright: Miguel Claro (TWAN); Rollover Annotation: Judy Schmidt

Explanation: Why would the sky glow like a giant repeating rainbow? Airglow. Now air glows all of the time, but it is usually hard to see. A disturbance however -- like an approaching storm -- may cause noticeable rippling in the Earth's atmosphere. These gravity waves are oscillations in air analogous to those created when a rock is thrown in calm water. The long-duration exposure nearly along the vertical walls of airglow likely made the undulating structure particularly visible. OK, but where do the colors originate? The deep red glow likely originates from OH molecules about 87-kilometers high, excited by ultraviolet light from the Sun. The orange and green airglow is likely caused by sodium and oxygen atoms slightly higher up. The featured image was captured during a climb up Mount Pico in the Azores of Portugal. Ground lights originate from the island of Faial in the Atlantic Ocean. A spectacular sky is visible through this banded airglow, with the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy running up the image center, and M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, visible near the top left.

AND
Hickson 91 in Piscis Austrinus_Image Credit & Copyright: CHART32 Team, Processing - Johannes Schedler

Explanation: Scanning the skies for galaxies, Canadian astronomer Paul Hickson and colleagues identified some 100 compact groups of galaxies, now appropriately called Hickson Compact Groups (HCGs). This sharp telescopic image captures one such galaxy group, HCG 91, in beautiful detail. The group's three colorful spiral galaxies at the center of the field of view are locked in a gravitational tug of war, their interactions producing faint but visible tidal tails over 100,000 light-years long. Their close encounters trigger furious star formation. On a cosmic timescale the result will be a merger into a large single galaxy, a process now understood to be a normal part of the evolution of galaxies, including our own Milky Way. HCG 91 lies about 320 million light-years away in the constellation Piscis Austrinus. But the impressively deep image also catches evidence of fainter tidal tails and galaxy interactions close to 2 billion light-years distant.

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Current Mood: calm
Current Location: bay area
Current Music: nbc news

To Quote
The International Space Station is a phenomenal laboratory, an unparalleled test bed for new invention and discovery. Yet I often thought, while silently gazing out the window at Earth, that the actual legacy of humanity's attempts to step into space will be a better understanding of our current planet and how to take care of it. Chirs Hadfiled, First Canadian in space, he was also a commander of ISS.
To Unquote

This is a lovely little five minute compliation of Kely's time on the International Space Station. Many of the images from aboard the space station are so beautiful. I especially love the floating bouquet of flowers, one of Kelly's responsibilities as a prelude to growing fruits and veggies in space. And I especially like the use of Coldplay's Speed of Sound as sound track.

FROM the NASA Johnson YouTube Channel
NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on March 27, 2015. With a successful landing 340 days later on March 1, 2016, the pair completed one of the most ambitious missions in the history of the International Space Station and opened a new chapter in human exploration.

During their record-setting mission, nearly 400 investigations were conducted that advance NASA’s mission to reach new heights, reveal the unknown, and benefit all of humanity. Kelly and Kornienko participated in dozens of studies to provide new insights into how the human body adjusts to weightlessness, isolation, radiation and the stress of long-duration spaceflight, which will include the Journey to Mars. Kelly’s twin brother, former NASA astronaut Mark Kelly, participated in parallel twin studies on Earth to help scientists compare the effects on the body and mind in space.

The completion of the one-year mission and its studies will help guide the next steps in planning for long-duration deep space missions that will be necessary as humans move farther into the solar system. Kelly and Kornienko’s mission will inform future decisions and planning for other long-duration missions, whether they are aboard the space station, a deep space habitat in lunar orbit, or a mission to Mars.

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Current Mood: enthralled
Current Location: bay area
Current Music: daniel kobialka's braveheart

One hundred years after Einstein predicted that gravitional waves would be creted with the interaction of two massive bodies, there is now direct confirmation. So very cool as is the simulation video below of the two colliiding black holes 1.3 billion years ago from Caltech Ligo.

I include the following little list from BBC News online because it's a nice quick summary

Gravitational waves are prediction of the Theory of General Relativity

Their existence has been inferred by science but only now directly detected

They are ripples in the fabric of space and time produced by violent events

Accelerating masses will produce waves that propagate at the speed of light

Detectable sources ought to include merging black holes and neutron stars

Ligo fires lasers into long, L-shaped tunnels; the waves disturb the light

Detecting the waves opens up the Universe to completely new investigations

FROM: YouTube
Published on Feb 11, 2016

A computer simulation shows the collision of two black holes, a tremendously powerful event detected for the first time ever by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO. LIGO detected gravitational waves, or ripples in space and time generated as the black holes spiraled in toward each other, collided, and merged. This simulation shows how the merger would appear to our eyes if we could somehow travel in a spaceship for a closer look. It was created by solving equations from Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity using the LIGO data.

The two merging black holes are each roughly 30 times the mass of the sun, with one slightly larger than the other. Time has been slowed down by a factor of about 100. The event took place 1.3 billion years ago.

Image credit: SXS
The stars appear warped due to the incredibly strong gravity of the black holes. The black holes warp space and time, and this causes light from the stars to curve around the black holes in a process called gravitational lensing. The ring around the black holes, known as an Einstein ring, arises from the light of all the stars in a small region behind the holes, where gravitational lensing has smeared their images into a ring.

The gravitational waves themselves would not be seen by a human near the black holes and so do not show in this video, with one important exception. The gravitational waves that are traveling outward toward the small region behind the black holes disturb that region’s stellar images in the Einstein ring, causing them to slosh around, even long after the collision. The gravitational waves traveling in other directions cause weaker, and shorter-lived sloshing, everywhere outside the ring.

This simulation was created by the multi-university SXS (Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes) project. For more information, visit http://www.black-holes.org.

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Current Mood: enthralled
Current Location: bay area

From: NASA site
Image Credit & Copyright: Jose Antonio Hervás
Please note that the photo was taken from Ibiza, Spain which, if you are (or were) a part of the QAF fandome, is meaningful :)
Also, the image can by clicked upon to make it much larger in case you actually want to see Mercury.

'Explanation: As January closes and in the coming days of February, early morning risers can spot the five naked-eye planets before dawn. Though some might claim to see six planets, in this seaside panoramic view all five celestial wanderers were found above the horizon along with a bright waning gibbous Moon on January 27. Nearly aligned along the plane of the ecliptic, but not along a line with the Sun, the five planets are spread well over 100 degrees across the sky. Just arriving on the predawn scene, fleeting Mercury stands above the southeastern horizon in the golden light of the approaching sunrise.'

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Current Mood: calm
Current Location: bay area
Current Music: hgtv's fixerupper

just a time from now

day by day

Astronomy Picture of the Day_The Witch's Broom Nebula

Astronomy Picture of the Day!

Astronomy Picture of the Day_Pretty stunning!!

Us and our little brother_GOES-16: Moon over Planet Earth

A Second Beautiful Reddish Picture for the Holidays_IC 4628: The Prawn Nebula

Zooming in on Star Cluster Terzan 5

Five Planets and the Moon over Australia

International Space Station Marks 100,000 Orbits of Earth

NASA's SDO Captures Mercury Transit Time-lapse

Another gorgeous photo from the International Space Station

Orion in Red and Blue

Space in all its beauty!!

A Year in the life of the record-setting NASA Astronaut, Scott Kelly

Two Black Holes Merge into One

Astronomy Picture of the Day_A Five Planet Dawn

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