Monday, February 16, 2015

Mimas: Small Moon with a Big Crater

Mimas: Small Moon with a Big Crater: APOD: 2014 October 21 - Mimas: Small Moon with a Big Crater


Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2014 October 21


See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available.
Explanation: Whatever hit Mimas nearly destroyed it. What remains is one of the largest impact craters on one of Saturn's smallest moons. The crater, named Herschel after the 1789 discoverer of Mimas, Sir William Herschel, spans about 130 kilometers and is pictured above. Mimas' low mass produces a surface gravity just strong enough to create a spherical body but weak enough to allow such relatively large surface features. Mimas is made of mostly water ice with a smattering of rock - so it is accurately described as a big dirty snowball. The above image was taken during the 2010 February flyby of the robot spacecraft Cassini now in orbit around Saturn. A recent analysis of Mimas's unusual wobble indicates that it might house a liquid water interior ocean.

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 5:41 AM 0 comments
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Galaxies in Pegasus

Galaxies in Pegasus: APOD: 2014 October 23 - Galaxies in Pegasus


Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2014 October 23
See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available.
Explanation: This wide, sharp telescopic view reveals galaxies scattered beyond the stars and faint dust nebulae of the Milky Way at the northern boundary of the high-flying constellation Pegasus. Prominent at the upper right is NGC 7331. A mere 50 million light-years away, the large spiral is one of the brighter galaxies not included in Charles Messier's famous 18th century catalog. The disturbed looking group of galaxies at the lower left is well-known as Stephan's Quintet. About 300 million light-years distant, the quintet dramatically illustrates a multiple galaxy collision, its powerful, ongoing interactions posed for a brief cosmic snapshot. On the sky, the quintet and NGC 7331 are separated by about half a degree.

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 5:40 AM 0 comments
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AR 2192: Giant on the Sun

AR 2192: Giant on the Sun: APOD: 2014 October 24 - AR 2192: Giant on the Sun


Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2014 October 24



See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available.
Explanation: As you (safely!) watched the progress of yesterday's partial solar eclipse, you probably also spotted a giant sunspot group. Captured in this sharp telescopic image from October 22nd the complex AR 2192 is beautiful to see, a sprawling solar active region comparable in size to the diameter of Jupiter. Like other smaller sunspot groups, AR 2192 is now crossing the Earth-facing side of the Sun and appears dark in visible light because it is cooler than the surrounding surface. Still, the energy stored in the region's twisted magnetic fields is enormous and has already generated powerful explosions, including two X-class solar flares this week. Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) associated with the flares have not affected planet Earth, so far. The forecast for further activity from AR 2192 is still significant though, as it swings across the center of the solar disk and Earth-directed CMEs become possible.

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 5:39 AM 0 comments
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Sunday, February 15, 2015

Sunspots and Solar Eclipse

Sunspots and Solar Eclipse: APOD: 2014 October 25 - Sunspots and Solar Eclipse


Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2014 October 25


See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available.
Explanation: A New Moon joined giant sunspot group AR 2192 to dim the bright solar disk during Thursday's much anticipated partial solar eclipse. Visible from much of North America, the Moon's broad silhouette is captured in this extreme telephoto snapshot near eclipse maximum from Santa Cruz, California. About the size of Jupiter, the remarkable AR 2192 itself darkens a noticeable fraction of the Sun, near center and below the curved lunar limb. As the sunspot group slowly rotates across the Sun and out of view in the coming days its activity is difficult to forecast. But the timing of solar eclipses is easier to predict. The next will be a total solar eclipse on March 20, 2015.

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 11:13 AM 0 comments
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Iridescent Cloud Edge Over Colorado

Iridescent Cloud Edge Over Colorado: APOD: 2014 October 29 - Iridescent Cloud Edge Over Colorado


Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2014 October 29


See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available.
Explanation: Sometimes your eclipse viewing goes bad in an interesting way. While watching and photographing last Thursday's partial solar eclipse, a popular astronomy blogger suffered through long periods of clouds blocking the Sun. Unexpectedly, however, a nearby cloud began to show a rare effect: iridescence. Frequently part of a more familiar solar corona effect, iridescence is the diffraction of sunlight around a thin screen of nearly uniformly-sized water droplets. Different colors of the sunlight become deflected by slightly different angles and so come to the observer from slightly different directions. This display, featured here, was quite bright and exhibited an unusually broad range of colors. On the right, the contrails of an airplane are also visible.

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 11:12 AM 0 comments
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A Spectre in the Eastern Veil

A Spectre in the Eastern Veil: APOD: 2014 October 30 - A Spectre in the Eastern Veil


Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2014 October 30
See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available.
Explanation: Frightening forms and scary faces are a mark of the Halloween season. They also haunt this cosmic close-up of the eastern Veil Nebula. The Veil Nebula itself is a large supernova remnant, the expanding debris cloud from the death explosion of a massive star. While the Veil is roughly circular in shape and covers nearly 3 degrees on the sky in the constellation Cygnus, this portion of the eastern Veil spans only 1/2 degree, about the apparent size of the Moon. That translates to 12 light-years at the Veil's estimated distance, a reassuring 1,400 light-years from planet Earth. In the composite of image data recorded through broad and narrow band filters, emission from hydrogen atoms in the remnant is shown in red with strong emission from oxygen atoms in blue-green hues. Of course, in the western part of the Veil lies another seasonal apparition, the Witch's Broom.

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 11:11 AM 0 comments
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The Day After Mars

The Day After Mars: APOD: 2014 November 1 - The Day After Mars


Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2014 November 1


See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available.
Explanation: October 31, 1938 was the day after Martians encountered planet Earth, and everything was calm. Reports of the invasion were revealed to be part of a Halloween radio drama, the now famous broadcast based on H.G. Wells' scifi novel War of the Worlds. On Mars October 20, 2014 was calm too, the day after its close encounter with Comet Siding Spring. Not a hoax, this comet really did come within 86,700 miles or so of Mars, about 1/3 the Earth-Moon distance. Earth's spacecraft and rovers in Mars orbit and on the surface reported no ill effects though, and had a ringside seat as a visitor from the outer solar system passed by. Spanning over 2 degrees against stars of the constellation Ophiuchus, this colorful telescopic snapshot captures our view of Mars on the day after. Bluish star 51 Ophiuchi is at the upper right and the comet is just emerging from the Red Planet's bright glare.

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 11:11 AM 0 comments
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The Complex Ion Tail of Comet Lovejoy

The Complex Ion Tail of Comet Lovejoy:

The Complex Ion Tail of Comet Lovejoy

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 11:09 AM 0 comments
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Launch to Lovejoy ( Comet )

Launch to Lovejoy:

Launch to Lovejoy
Blasting skyward

an Atlas V rocket carrying a U.S. Navy satellite
pierces a cloud bank in this starry
night
scene captured on January 20.

On its way to orbit from Space Launch Complex 41, Cape Canaveral Air
Force Station, planet Earth, the rocket streaks past brightest star
Sirius,
as seen from a dark beach at Canaveral National Seashore.

Above the alpha star of Canis Major, Orion the Hunter
strikes a pose
familiar to northern winter skygazers.

Above Orion is the V-shaped Hyades star cluster, head of Taurus the
Bull, and farther still above Taurus it's easy to spot
the compact Pleiades star cluster.

Of course near the top of the frame you'll find the greenish coma
and long tail of Comet Lovejoy, astronomical darling of
these January nights.




Tomorrow's picture: pixels in space

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Posted by Nelio Inacio at 11:08 AM 0 comments

See The Light from Cygnus A

Light from Cygnus A:

Light from Cygnus A

Celebrating astronomy in this
International
Year of Light,
the detailed image reveals spectacular active galaxy
Cygnus A
in light across the electromagnetic spectrum.

Incorporating X-ray data
(
blue) from the orbiting Chandra Observatory,
Cygnus A is seen to be a prodigious source of
high energy x-rays.

But it is actually more
famous
at the low energy end of
the electromagnetic
spectrum.

One of the brightest celestial sources visible to radio telescopes,
at 600 million light-years distant
Cygnus A is the closest powerful radio galaxy.

Radio emission
(
red) extends to either side along the same axis for
nearly 300,000 light-years powered by jets of relativistic particles
emanating from the galaxy's central supermassive black hole.

Hot spots likely mark the ends of the jets impacting surrounding cool,
dense material.

Confined to

yellow hues, optical wavelength data
of the galaxy from Hubble and the surrounding field
in the Digital Sky Survey complete a
remarkable multiwavelength view.




Tomorrow's picture: twisted sun

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Posted by Nelio Inacio at 11:07 AM 0 comments

GIF - A Twisted Solar Eruptive Prominence

A Twisted Solar Eruptive Prominence:

A Twisted Solar Eruptive Prominence

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 11:04 AM 0 comments

Watch Comet Lovejoy in a Winter Sky

Comet Lovejoy in a Winter Sky:

Comet Lovejoy in a Winter Sky

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 11:02 AM 0 comments

WATCH A Night at Poker Flat

A Night at Poker Flat:

A Night at Poker Flat

Four NASA suborbital
sounding rockets leapt
into the night on January 26,
from the University of Alaska's
Poker Flat Research Range.

This time lapse composite image follows all
four launches of the small, multi-stage rockets to explore
winter's mesmerizing,
aurora-filled skies.

During the exposures, stars trailed around the North Celestial Pole,
high above the horizon at the site 30 miles north of Fairbanks, Alaska.

Lidar, beams of pulsed green lasers,
also left traces through the scene.

Operating successfully, the payloads lofted were two
Mesosphere-Lower Thermosphere Turbulence Experiments
(M-TeX)
and two Mesospheric Inversion-layer Stratified Turbulence
(MIST)
experiments,
creating vapor trails
at high altitudes to be tracked by ground-based
observations.




Tomorrow's picture: citizen science

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Posted by Nelio Inacio at 11:00 AM 0 comments

SPACE Yellow Balls in W33

Yellow Balls in W33:

Yellow Balls in W33Infrared
wavelengths of 3.6, 8.0, and 24.0 microns
observed by the Spitzer Space Telescope are mapped
into visible colors red, green, and blue in this striking image.

The cosmic cloud of gas and dust is W33, a massive starforming
complex some 13,000 light-years
distant, near the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy.

So what are all those yellow balls?

Citizen scientists of the web-based
Milky Way Project
found the features they called yellow balls as
they scanned many Spitzer images and persistently asked that question
of researchers.

Now there is an answer.

The yellow balls in Spitzer images
are identified as an early stage of massive star formation.

They appear yellow because they are overlapping regions of
red and green, the assigned colors that correspond to
dust and organic molecules known as PAHs at Spitzer wavelengths.

Yellow balls represent the stage before newborn massive
stars clear out cavities in their surrounding gas and dust
and appear as green-rimmed bubbles with red centers in the Spitzer
image.

Of course, the astronomical crowdsourcing success story is only part of
the Zooniverse.

The Spitzer image spans 0.5 degrees
or about 100 light-years at the estimated distance of W33.




Tomorrow's picture: of mice and galaxies

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Posted by Nelio Inacio at 10:59 AM 0 comments

COLLISION NGC 4676: When Mice Collide

NGC 4676: When Mice Collide:

NGC 4676: When Mice Collide

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 10:58 AM 0 comments

WOW Titan Seas Reflect Sunlight

Titan Seas Reflect Sunlight:

Titan Seas Reflect Sunlight

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 10:57 AM 0 comments

Stars, Sprites, Clouds, Auroras

Stars, Sprites, Clouds, Auroras:

Stars, Sprites, Clouds, Auroras

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 10:56 AM 0 comments

M104: The Sombrero Galaxy - UFO ?

M104: The Sombrero Galaxy:
M104: The Sombrero Galaxy

The striking spiral galaxy
M104 is famous
for its nearly edge-on
profile featuring a broad ring of obscuring dust lanes.

Seen in silhouette against an extensive bulge of stars, the swath of
cosmic dust lends a
broad brimmed hat-like
appearance to the galaxy suggesting
the more popular moniker, The Sombrero Galaxy.

Hubble Space Telescope
and ground-based Subaru data have been
reprocessed with amateur color image data to
create this sharp view of
the well-known galaxy.

The processing results in a natural color appearance
and preserves details often lost in overwhelming glare of M104's
bright central bulge when viewed with smaller ground-based
instruments.

Also known as NGC 4594, the Sombrero galaxy can be seen
across the spectrum
and is thought to host a central
supermassive
black hole.

About 50,000 light-years across and 28 million light-years away,
M104 is one of the largest galaxies at the southern edge of the
Virgo
Galaxy Cluster.




Tomorrow's picture: all the marbles

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Posted by Nelio Inacio at 10:55 AM 0 comments

Jupiter Triple-Moon Conjunction

Jupiter Triple-Moon Conjunction:

Jupiter Triple-Moon Conjunction

Our solar system's ruling giant planet Jupiter and 3 of its 4
large Galilean moons are captured in this single
Hubble snapshot
from January 24.

Crossing in front of Jupiter's banded cloud tops
Europa, Callisto, and Io
are framed from lower left to
upper right in a rare triple-moon conjunction.

Distinguishable by colors alone
icy Europa is almost white,
Callisto's ancient cratered surface looks dark brown,
and volcanic Io appears yellowish.

The transiting moons and
moon shadows can be identified by
sliding your cursor over the image, or following
this link.

Remarkably, two small, inner Jovian moons,
Amalthea and Thebe, along with
their shadows,
can
also be found in the sharp
Hubble view.

The Galilean moons have diameters of 3,000 to 5,000 kilometers or so,
comparable in size to Earth's moon.

But odd-shaped Amalthea and Thebe are only about 260 and 100
kilometers across respectively.




Tomorrow's picture: all the marbles

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Posted by Nelio Inacio at 10:54 AM 0 comments

An Extremely Long Filament on the Sun

An Extremely Long Filament on the Sun:

An Extremely Long Filament on the Sun

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 10:52 AM 0 comments

M100: A Grand Design Spiral Galaxy

M100: A Grand Design Spiral Galaxy:

M100: A Grand Design Spiral Galaxy

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 10:51 AM 0 comments

WOW Exploring the Antennae

Exploring the Antennae:

Exploring the Antennae

Some 60 million light-years away in the southerly
constellation
Corvus, two large galaxies are
colliding.

The stars in the two galaxies, cataloged as
NGC 4038
and NGC 4039, very rarely collide in the course of the
ponderous cataclysm,
lasting hundreds of millions of years.

But their large clouds of
molecular
gas and dust often do, triggering furious
episodes of star formation near the center of the
cosmic wreckage.

Spanning about 500 thousand light-years, this

stunning composited view also reveals new star clusters and
matter flung far from the scene
of the accident by
gravitational
tidal forces.

The remarkable collaborative image is a mosaic constructed
using data from
small and large ground-based telescopes to bring out large-scale
and faint tidal streams, composited with the
bright cores
imaged in extreme detail by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Of course,
the suggestive visual appearance of the extended arcing structures
gives the galaxy pair its popular name - The Antennae.




Tomorrow's picture: pixels in space

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Posted by Nelio Inacio at 10:50 AM 0 comments

WOW Aurora on Ice

Aurora on Ice:

Aurora on Ice

Not from a snowglobe, this expansive fisheye
view of ice and sky was captured on February 1, from
Jökulsárlón Beach,
southeast Iceland, planet Earth.

Chunks of glacial ice on the black sand beach glisten in the
light of a nearly full moon surrounded by
a shining halo.

The 22 degree lunar halo itself is created by ice crystals in
high, thin clouds refracting the moonlight.

Despite the bright moonlight, curtains of aurora still
dance through the surreal scene.

In early February,
their activity was triggered by Earth's restless magnetosphere
and the energetic wind from a
coronal hole
near the Sun's south pole.

Bright Jupiter, also near opposition, is visible at the
left, beyond the icy lunar halo.




Tomorrow's picture: light-weekend

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Posted by Nelio Inacio at 10:48 AM 0 comments

Saturday, February 14, 2015

Ice ages made Earth's ocean crust thicker

Ice ages made Earth's ocean crust thicker:





Signatures of climate cycles spotted in hillocks on the sea floor.

Nature News doi: 10.1038/nature.2015.16856

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 1:03 PM 0 comments

Light fantastic

Light fantastic:





Scientists are pushing the properties of light to new extremes. A special issue explores these frontiers.

Nature 518 153 doi: 10.1038/518153a

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 1:02 PM 0 comments

The Milky Way over the Seven Strong Men Rock Formations

The Milky Way over the Seven Strong Men Rock Formations:

The Milky Way over the Seven Strong Men Rock Formations <br>


Posted by Nelio Inacio at 12:55 PM 0 comments

Titan Beyond the Rings

Titan Beyond the Rings: APOD: 2014 November 2 - Titan Beyond the Rings


Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2014 November 2



See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available.
Explanation: When orbiting Saturn, be sure to watch for breathtaking superpositions of moons and rings. One such picturesque vista was visible recently to the robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn. In 2006 April, Cassini captured Saturn's A and F rings stretching in front of cloud-shrouded Titan. Near the rings and appearing just above Titan was Epimetheus, a moon which orbits just outside the F ring. The dark space in the A ring is called the Encke Gap, although several thin knotted ringlets and even the small moon Pan orbit there.

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 12:43 PM 0 comments

Infrared Orion from WISE

Infrared Orion from WISE: APOD: 2013 February 13 - Infrared Orion from WISE


Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2013 February 13


See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available.
Explanation: The Great Nebula in Orion is a intriguing place. Visible to the unaided eye, it appears as a small fuzzy patch in the constellation of Orion. But this image, an illusory-color composite of four colors of infrared light taken with the Earth orbiting WISE observatory, shows the Orion Nebula to be a bustling neighborhood or recently formed stars, hot gas, and dark dust. The power behind much of the Orion Nebula (M42) is the stars of the Trapezium star cluster, seen near the center of the above wide field image. The eerie green glow surrounding the bright stars pictured here is their own starlight reflected by intricate dust filaments that cover much of the region. The current Orion Nebula cloud complex, which includes the Horsehead Nebula, will slowly disperse over the next 100,000 years.

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 10:22 AM 0 comments
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