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Space : Images : Photos

2014-11-14T00:00:00.000-05:00

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Saturn Rings, Tethys, Cassini Spacecraft Photo

2014-11-07T00:00:00.000-05:00

Saturn Rings, Tethys, Cassini Spacecraft Photo

Stuck on the Rings

Like a drop of dew hanging on a leaf, Tethys appears to be stuck to the A and F rings from this perspective.

Tethys (660 miles, or 1,062 kilometers across), like the ring particles, is composed primarily of ice. The gap in the A ring through which Tethys is visible is the Keeler gap, which is kept clear by the small moon Daphnis (not visible here).

This view looks toward the Saturn-facing hemisphere of Tethys. North on Tethys is up and rotated 43 degrees to the right. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on July 14, 2014.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.1 million miles (1.8 million kilometers) from Tethys and at a Sun-Tethys-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 22 degrees. Image scale is 7 miles (11 kilometers) per pixel.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visithttp://www.nasa.gov/cassini andhttp://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org .

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

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X-class Solar Flare, NASA photo, Solar Dynamics Observatory

2014-10-31T00:00:00.000-04:00

The sun emitted a significant solar flare on Oct. 19, 2014, peaking at 1:01 a.m. EDT. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which is always observing the sun, captured this image of the event in extreme ultraviolet wavelength of 131 Angstroms – a wavelength that can see the intense heat of a flare and that is typically colorized in teal.

This flare is classified as an X1.1-class flare. X-class denotes the most intense flares, while the number provides more information about its strength. An X2 flare is twice as intense as an X1, and an X3 is three times as intense.

Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however -- when intense enough -- they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel.

More: NASA's SDO Observes an X-class Solar Flare

Image Credit: NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory

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Florida to Louisiana Viewed From the International Space Station

2014-10-24T08:00:00.000-04:00

Florida to Louisiana Viewed From the International Space Station
NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman captured this image of Florida to Louisiana just before dawn, taken from the International Space Station, and posted it to social media on Friday, Sept. 12. Wiseman, Commander Max Suraev and Flight Engineer Alexander Gerst began their first full workweek Monday as a three-person crew aboard the space station, while the three additional flight engineers who will round out the Expedition 41 crew spent the day training for next week’s launch to the orbiting complex.
Image Credit: NASA

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Powerful, Pulsating Core of Star

2014-10-17T08:00:00.000-04:00

Powerful, Pulsating Core of Star

The blue dot in this image marks the spot of an energetic pulsar -- the magnetic, spinning core of star that blew up in a supernova explosion. NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, discovered the pulsar by identifying its telltale pulse -- a rotating beam of X-rays, that like a cosmic lighthouse, intersects Earth every 0.2 seconds.

The pulsar, called PSR J1640-4631, lies in our inner Milky Way galaxy about 42,000 light-years away. It was originally identified by as an intense source of gamma rays by the High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) in Namibia. NuSTAR helped pin down the source of the gamma rays to a pulsar.

The other pink dots in this picture show low-energy X-rays detected by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

In this image, NuSTAR data is blue and shows high-energy X-rays with 3 to 79 kiloelectron volts; Chandra data is pink and shows X-rays with 0.5 to 10 kiloeletron volts.

The background image shows infrared light and was captured by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SAO

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The Odd Trio, Saturn's Moons, Prometheus, Tethys, Hyperion

2014-10-10T08:00:00.000-04:00

The Cassini spacecraft captures a rare family photo of three of Saturn's moons that couldn't be more different from each other! As the largest of the three, Tethys (image center) is round and has a variety of terrains across its surface. Meanwhile, Hyperion (to the upper-left of Tethys) is the "wild one" with a chaotic spin and Prometheus (lower-left) is a tiny moon that busies itself sculpting the F ring.

To learn more about the surface of Tethys (660 miles, or 1,062 kilometers across), see PIA17164. More on the chaotic spin of Hyperion (168 miles, or 270 kilometers across) can be found at PIA07683. And discover more about the role of Prometheus (53 miles, or 86 kilometers across) in shaping the F ring in PIA12786.

This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 1 degree above the ringplane. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on July 14, 2014.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.2 million miles (1.9 million kilometers) from Tethys and at a Sun-Tethys-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 22 degrees. Image scale is 7 miles (11 kilometers) per pixel.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org .Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

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Saturn at Equinox

2014-10-05T08:00:00.000-04:00

Saturn at Equinox
Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, ISS, JPL, ESA, NASA
Explanation: How would Saturn look if its ring plane pointed right at the Sun? Before August 2009, nobody knew. Every 15 years, as seen from Earth, Saturn's rings point toward the Earth and appear to disappear. The disappearing rings are no longer a mystery -- Saturn's rings are known to be so thin and the Earth is so near the Sun that when the rings point toward the Sun, they also point nearly edge-on at the Earth. Fortunately, in this third millennium, humanity is advanced enough to have a spacecraft that can see the rings during equinox from the side. In August 2009, that Saturn-orbiting spacecraft, Cassini, was able to snap a series of unprecedented pictures of Saturn's rings during equinox. A digital composite of 75 such images is shown above. The rings appear unusually dark, and a very thin ring shadow line can be made out on Saturn's cloud-tops. Objects sticking out of the ring plane are brightly illuminated and cast long shadows. Inspection of these images is helping humanity to understand the specific sizes of Saturn's ring particles and the general dynamics of orbital motion. This week, Earth undergoes an equinox.

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Unusual Rocks near Pahrump Hills on Mars

2014-09-29T03:30:00.000-04:00

Unusual Rocks near Pahrump Hills on Mars
Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, MSSS

Explanation: How did these Martian rocks form? As the robotic Curiosity rover has approached Pahrump Hills on Mars, it has seen an interesting and textured landscape dotted by some unusual rocks. The featured image shows a curiously round rock spanning about two centimeters across. Seemingly a larger version of numerous spherules dubbed blueberries found by the Opportunity rover on Mars in 2004, what caused this roundness remains unknown. Possibilities include frequent tumbling in flowing water, sprayed molten rock in a volcanic eruption, or a concretion mechanism. The inset image, taken a few days later, shows another small but unusually shaped rock structure. As Curiosity rolls around and up Mount Sharp, different layers of the landscape will be imaged and studied to better understand the ancient history of the region and to investigate whether Mars could once have harbored life.

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Solar Dynamics Observatory, Late Summer Solar Flare

2014-09-21T08:00:00.000-04:00

On Aug. 24, 2014, the sun emitted a mid-level solar flare, peaking at 8:16 a.m. EDT. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured images of the flare, which erupted on the left side of the sun. Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however -- when intense enough -- they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel. This flare is classified as an M5 flare. M-class flares are ten times less powerful than the most intense flares, called X-class flares.

Image Credit: NASA/SDO

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Earth From Space, An Astronaut View

2014-09-14T08:00:00.000-04:00

NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman tweeted this photo from the International Space Station on Tuesday morning, Sept. 2, 2014. "My favorite views from #space – just past #sunrise over the ocean," the Expedition 40 astronaut tweeted.

The Expedition 40 crew has been busy aboard the Space Station, recently performing health checks and humanoid robot upgrades. In the meantime, a trio of orbital residents is packing up gear as they prepare to return home in less than two weeks. Commander Steve Swanson powered down and stowed Robonaut 2 after wrapping up its mobility upgrades this week. He installed new legs on the humanoid robot including external and internal gear as well as cables. This sets the stage for more upgrades in the fall before Robonaut takes its first steps as an assistant crew member. Robonaut was designed to enhance crew productivity and safety while also aiding people on Earth with physical disabilities.

Image Credit: NASA/Reid Wiseman (@astro_reid)

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The Beat of a Midsize Black Hole (video)

2014-09-07T08:00:00.000-04:00

NASA | RXTE Satellite Catches the Beat of a Midsize Black Hole -

Aug 18, 2014--Astronomers from the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP) and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center have uncovered rhythmic pulsations from a rare breed of black hole in archival data from NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) satellite. The signals provide compelling evidence that the object, known as M82 X-1, is one of only a few midsize black holes known.

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Largest and Brightest Supermoon 2014, Perigee Moon

2014-08-31T08:00:00.000-04:00

Supermoon 2014: Giant moon lights up sky across the globe -

Stargazers around the globe have been dazzled by the biggest and brightest "supermoon" of the year. This year's Perseid meteor shower in one of the most dramatic and anticipated astronomical events of the year. According to NASA, the moon is said to be 14 per cent closer to Earth making it appear larger than usual. Report by Sarah Kerr. Published on Aug 11, 2014

Largest & Brightest Supermoon Of The Year Over South Florida « CBS Miami: "The full moon on August 10th will be the closest and largest full moon in 2014. When the moon is full as it makes its closest pass to Earth, it becomes a “Supermoon,” and will be up to 31,000 miles closer to Earth than other full moons this year. According to NASA, this weekend’s full moon will be 14-percent closer and 30-percent brighter than other full moons of the year. The scientific term for the phenomenon is “perigee moon” or the point when the moon is closest to the Earth in its monthly orbit. The moon will appear much larger than normal, especially on the horizon."

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ISEE-3, A Spacecraft for All, Chrome Experiment (video)

2014-08-24T08:00:00.000-04:00

A Spacecraft for All: A Chrome Experiment - YouTube: "

Explore the amazing 36-year-long journey of the International Sun/Earth Explorer 3 (ISEE-3) with the ISEE-3 Reboot team in this new Chrome Experiment. Published on Aug 8, 2014.

http://spacecraftforall.com

A Google Chrome Experiment Visualizes The 36-Year Journey Of A Spacecraft | Co.Design | business + design: In 1978, NASA launched the ISEE-3, a spacecraft designed to study the Earth’s magnetic field and its interactions with solar wind. It would later become the first spacecraft visit a comet. NASA decomissioned the spacecraft in 1997, leaving it to orbit the Sun as very expensive space trash. This year, a team of engineers, programmers, and scientists launched a crowdfunding campaign that raised more than $159,000 to try to contact ISEE-3 and take control of its operations, sending it out to chase comets again, this time for citizen science. A new Chrome Experiment from Google Creative Lab called A Spacecraft for All tells the story of ISEE-3’s history and the recent revival effort through a combination and interactive graphics...

36-Year-Old NASA Probe's Engines Successfully Fired Up by Private Team - Scientific American: "An old NASA spacecraft under the control of a private team fired its thrusters yesterday (July 2) for the first time in a generation. NASA's International Sun-Earth Explorer 3 probe (ISEE-3), which the agency retired in 1997, performed the maneuver in preparation for a larger trajectory correction next week. The spacecraft hadn't fired its engines since 1987, ISEE-3 Reboot Project team members said. It took several attempts and days to perform the roll maneuver because ISEE-3 was not responding to test commands. But this time, controllers got in touch. They increased the roll rate from 19.16 revolutions per minute to 19.76 RPM, putting it within mission specifications for trajectory corrections...."

more info: http://spacecollege.org/isee3/

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Re-thinking an Alien World, 55 Cancri e (video)

2014-08-17T08:00:00.000-04:00

ScienceCasts: Re-thinking an Alien World -

A distant super-Earth named ""55 Cancri e"" is wetter and weirder than astronomers thought possible. The discovery has researchers re-thinking the nature of alien worlds.

Visit http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/... for more.

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A Narrow Miss of Earth, Carrington-class CME (video)

2014-08-10T08:00:00.000-04:00

ScienceCasts: Carrington-class CME Narrowly Misses Earth - YouTube:

Two years ago, an intense solar storm narrowly missed Earth. If it had hit, researchers say, we could still be picking up the pieces.

Visit http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/... for more.

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Cool Andromeda

2014-08-03T08:00:00.000-04:00

Space Images: Cool Andromeda - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory: "Andromeda, also known as M31, is the nearest major galaxy to our own Milky Way at a distance of 2.5 million light-years, making it an ideal natural laboratory to study star formation and galaxy evolution. Sensitive to the far-infrared light from cool dust mixed in with the gas, Herschel seeks out clouds of gas where stars are born. The new image reveals some of the very coldest dust in the galaxy -- only a few tens of degrees above absolute zero -- colored red in this image. By comparison, warmer regions such as the densely populated central bulge, home to older stars, take on a blue appearance. Intricate structure is present throughout the 200,000-light-year-wide galaxy with star-formation zones organized in spiral arms and at least five concentric rings, interspersed with dark gaps where star formation is absent. Andromeda is host to several hundred billion stars. This new image of it clearly shows that many more stars will soon to spark into existence."

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Flame Nebula image

2014-07-27T08:00:00.000-04:00

Space Images: Inside the Flame Nebula - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory: "Stars are often born in clusters or groups, in giant clouds of gas and dust. Astronomers have studied two star clusters using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and infrared telescopes and the results show that the simplest ideas for the birth of these clusters cannot work. This composite image shows one of the clusters, NGC 2024, which is found in the center of the so-called Flame Nebula about 1,400 light years from Earth. In this image, X-rays from Chandra are seen as purple, while infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope are colored red, green and blue. A study of NGC 2024 and the Orion Nebula Cluster, another region where many stars are forming, suggest that the stars on the outskirts of these clusters are older than those in the central regions. This is different from what the simplest idea of star formation predicts, where stars are born first in the center of a collapsing cloud of gas and dust when the density is large enough. The research team developed a two-step process to make this discovery. First, they used Chandra data on the brightness of the stars in X-rays to determine their masses. Next, they found out how bright these stars were in infrared light using data from Spitzer, the 2MASS telescope and the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope. By combining this information with theoretical models, the ages of the stars throughout the two clusters could be estimated. According to the new results, the stars at the center of NGC 2024 were about 200,000 years old while those on the outskirts were about 1.5 million years in age. In Orion, the age spread went from 1.2 million years in the middle of the cluster to nearly 2 million years for the stars toward the edges...."

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Men Landed on the Moon 45 Years Ago

2014-07-20T00:41:00.001-04:00

After liftoff from the Moon, the lunar module approaches CSM for docking, with earthrise in background. (NASA) -- Apollo 11

more info:
45 Years Ago We Landed Men on the Moon - In Focus - The Atlantic

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Galaxy computer simulation

2014-07-13T08:00:00.000-04:00

Space Images: Cosmic Swirly Straws Feed Galaxy - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory: "Created with the help of supercomputers, this simulation shows the formation of a massive galaxy during the first 2 billion years of the universe. Hydrogen gas is gray, young stars appear blue, and older stars are red. The simulation reveals that gas flows into galaxies along filaments akin to cosmic bendy, or swirly, straws. Jillian Bellovary of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn.; Fabio Governato of the University of Washington, Seattle, and the University of Washington's N-Body Shop helped create the simulation. The work was conducted in part using the resources of the Advanced Computing Center for Research and Education at Vanderbilt University."

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The Fermi Paradox, Where is Everybody?

2014-07-06T08:00:00.000-04:00

The Fermi Paradox - Wait But Why: "Explanation Group 1: There are no signs of higher (Type II and III) civilizations because there are no higher civilizations in existence. Those who subscribe to Group 1 explanations point to something called the non-exclusivity problem, which rebuffs any theory that says, “There are higher civilizations, but none of them have made any kind of contact with us because they all _____.” Group 1 people look at the math, which says there should be so many thousands (or millions) of higher civilizations, that at least one of them would be an exception to the rule. Even if a theory held for 99.99% of higher civilizations, the other .01% would behave differently and we’d become aware of their existence. Therefore, say Group 1 explanations, it must be that there are no super-advanced civilizations. And since the math suggests that there are thousands of them just in our own galaxy, something else must be going on. This something else is called The Great Filter. The Great Filter theory says that at some point from pre-life to Type III intelligence, there’s a wall that all or nearly all attempts at life hit. There’s some stage in that long evolutionary process that is extremely unlikely or impossible for life to get beyond. That stage is The Great Filter."

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Saturn's C and B Rings From the Inside Out

2014-06-29T08:00:00.000-04:00

Saturn's C and B Rings From the Inside Out - This image, taken on June 30, 2004 during Cassini's orbital insertion at Saturn, shows, from left to right, the outer portion of the C ring and inner portion of the B ring. The B ring begins a little more than halfway across the image. The general pattern is from "dirty" particles indicated by red to cleaner ice particles shown in turquoise in the outer parts of the rings.

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Swirls from NASA's Hubble

2014-06-22T08:00:00.000-04:00

Swirls from NASA's Hubble:
This new Hubble image shows NGC 1566, a beautiful galaxy located approximately 40 million light-years away in the constellation of Dorado (The Dolphinfish). NGC 1566 is an intermediate spiral galaxy, meaning that while it does not have a well-defined bar-shaped region of stars at its center — like barred spirals — it is not quite an unbarred spiral either.
The small but extremely bright nucleus of NGC 1566 is clearly visible in this image, a telltale sign of its membership of the Seyfert class of galaxies. The centers of such galaxies are very active and luminous, emitting strong bursts of radiation and potentially harboring supermassive black holes that are many millions of times the mass of the sun.
NGC 1566 is not just any Seyfert galaxy; it is the second brightest Seyfert galaxy known. It is also the brightest and most dominant member of the Dorado Group, a loose concentration of galaxies that together comprise one of the richest galaxy groups of the southern hemisphere. This image highlights the beauty and awe-inspiring nature of this unique galaxy group, with NGC 1566 glittering and glowing, its bright nucleus framed by swirling and symmetrical lavender arms.
This image was taken by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) in the near-infrared part of the spectrum. A version of the image was entered into the Hubble’s Hidden Treasures image processing competition by Flickr user Det58.

Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Flickr user Det58

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Galaxy NGC 4485 in the constellation of Canes Venatici (The Hunting Dogs)

2014-06-15T08:00:00.000-04:00

This image from NASA/ESA's Hubble Space Telescope shows galaxy NGC 4485 in the constellation of Canes Venatici (The Hunting Dogs). The galaxy is irregular in shape, but it hasn’t always been so. Part of NGC 4485 has been dragged towards a second galaxy, named NGC 4490 — which lies out of frame to the bottom right of this image.

Between them, these two galaxies make up a galaxy pair called Arp 269. Their interactions have warped them both, turning them from spiral galaxies into irregular ones. NGC 4485 is the smaller galaxy in this pair, which provides a fantastic real-world example for astronomers to compare to their computer models of galactic collisions. The most intense interaction between these two galaxies is all but over; they have made their closest approach and are now separating. The trail of bright stars and knotty orange clumps that we see here extending out from NGC 4485 is all that connects them — a trail that spans some 24 000 light-years.
Many of the stars in this connecting trail could never have existed without the galaxies’ fleeting romance. When galaxies interact hydrogen gas is shared between them, triggering intense bursts of star formation. The orange knots of light in this image are examples of such regions, clouded with gas and dust.

European Space Agency
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Kathy van Pelt

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13 billion years of galaxy evolution, Virtual Universe (video)

2014-06-08T08:00:00.000-04:00

A virtual Universe -

Scientists at MIT have traced 13 billion years of galaxy evolution, from shortly after the Big Bang to the present day. Their simulation, named Illustris, captures both the massive scale of the Universe and the intriguing variety of galaxies -- something previous modelers have struggled to do. It produces a Universe that looks remarkably similar to what we see through our telescopes, giving us greater confidence in our understanding of the Universe, from the laws of physics to our theories about galaxy formation. Published on May 7, 2014

Read the research paper: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/...

And the Nature News story: http://www.nature.com/news/model-univ...

Most Expensive Object Ever Is In Space (video)

2014-06-01T08:00:00.000-04:00

The Most Expensive Object Ever (Lives in Space): Video - Bloomberg:
(Allow video to load after clicking play)

The International Space Station is the single most expensive object ever created. Bloomberg takes a look at the numbers behind the near zero gravity laboratory in the series "The Next Space Race." (Source: Bloomberg May 12)

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