Monday, February 6, 2012

Amazing Panorama of Western Europe at Night from Space Station

Amazing Panorama of Western Europe at Night from Space Station:

Western Europe at Night
European ‘Cities at Night’ from the ISS with station solar arrays and robotic hand in foreground.
Credit: NASA
See below a stunning view of Comet Lovejoy taken by the ISS crew

An amazing panorama revealing Western Europe’s ‘Cities at Night’ with hardware from the stations robotic ‘hand’ and solar arrays in the foreground was captured by the crew in a beautiful new image showing millions of Earth’s inhabitants from the Earth-orbiting International Space Station (ISS).

The sweeping panoramic vista shows several Western European countries starting with the British Isles partially obscured by twin solar arrays at left, the North Sea at left center, Belgium and the Netherlands (Holland) at bottom center, and the Scandinavian land mass at right center by the hand, or end effector, of the Canadian-built ISS robotic arm known as (...)
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Astrophoto: Zodiacal Light with Venus and Jupiter

Astrophoto: Zodiacal Light with Venus and Jupiter:

Astrophoto: Zodiacal Light with Venus and Jupiter

Zodiacal Light with Venus and Jupiter

This image of the zodiacal light was taken by Felipe Gallego on January 23, 2012 near the natural park of Sierra Norte de Sevilla in Spain.

Zodiacal light appears as a faint, diffused, triangular, white glow extending up from the vicinity of the Sun along the ecliptic or zodiac. Ideally, zodiacal light can be seen during springtime or autumn, just after sunset and before sunrise.

Felipe used a Canon 5d Mark II camera, with a Samyang 14 mm at f2,8, 25 s of exposure and ISO 5000. The image was processed with Gimp.

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Canada Looks to the Future in Space

Canada Looks to the Future in Space:

The Canadarm2 on the International Space Station. Credit: NASA

When it comes to space, the first thing most people think of is NASA. Or Russia and the European Space Agency, or even more recently, countries like China and Japan. In the public eye, Canada has tended to be a bit farther down on the list. There is the Canadian Space Agency, but it is better known for developing space and satellite technologies, not awe-inspiring launches to the Moon or other planets, which naturally tend to get the most attention.

Canada has its own astronauts, too, but they go into orbit on the Space Shuttle or Russian rockets. Canada’s role in space should not, however, be underestimated. It was, for example, the first country to have a domestic communications satellite in geostationary orbit, Anik A1, in 1972. There is also the well-known Canadarm used on the Space Shuttle and Canadarm2 on the International Space Station, as well as the space robot Dextre on the ISS. Canada has also contributed technology to various robotic planetary missions as well.

But even in these times of budget constraints, new ventures are being planned, including a mission to place two video cameras on the International Space Station late next year, via a Russian mission.

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Russia To Try Again For Phobos-Grunt?

Russia To Try Again For Phobos-Grunt?:

Poster art for the Russian Phobos-Grunt mission. (Russian Federal Space Agency/IKI)

Russia says “eish odin ras”* for its Mars moon lander mission, according to Roscomos chief Vladimir Popovkin.

If the European Space Agency does not include Russia in its ExoMars program, a two-mission plan to explore Mars via orbiter and lander and then with twin rovers (slated to launch in 2016 and 2018, respectively), Roscosmos will try for a “take-two” on their failed Phobos-Grunt mission.

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Hayabusa 2 Mission Approved by Japanese Government

Hayabusa 2 Mission Approved by Japanese Government:

Artist's conception of Hayabusa 2 approaching the asteroid 1999 JU3. Credit: Akihiro Ikeshita/JAXA

In 2010, the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa completed an exciting although nail-biting mission to the asteroid Itokawa, successfully returning samples to Earth after first reaching the asteroid in 2005; the mission almost failed, with the spacecraft plagued by technical problems. The canister containing the microscopic rock samples made a soft landing in Australia, the first time that samples from an asteroid had been brought back to Earth for study.

Now, the Japanese government has approved a follow-up mission, Hayabusa 2. This time the probe is scheduled to be launched in 2014 and rendezvous with the asteroid known as 1999 JU3 in mid-2018. Samples would again be taken and returned to Earth in late 2020.

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The Van Allen Belts and the Great Electron Escape

The Van Allen Belts and the Great Electron Escape:

Artist concept of the twin Radiation Belt Storm Probes spacecraft, scheduled for launch in August 2012. Credit: NASA

During the 1950s and just before the great “Space Race” began, scientists like Kristian Birkeland, Carl Stormer, and Nicholas Christofilos had been paying close attention to a theory – one that involved trapped, charged particles in a ring around the Earth. This plasma donut held in place by our planet’s magnetic field was later confirmed by the first three Explorer missions under the direction of Dr. James Van Allen. Fueled by perhaps solar winds, or cosmic rays, the knowledge of their existence was the stuff of nightmares for an uniformed public. While the “radiation” can affect objects passing through it, it doesn’t reach Earth, and this realization quickly caused fears to die. However, there are still many unanswered questions about the Van Allen Radiation Belts that mystify modern science. (...)
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“Cool” Gas May Be At The Root Of Sunspots

“Cool” Gas May Be At The Root Of Sunspots:

During the initial stage of sunspot emergence and cooling, the formation of H2 may trigger a temporary "runaway" magnetic field intensification. The magnetic field prevents the flow of energy from inside the sun to the outside, and the sunspot cools as the energy shines into space. They form hydrogen molecules that take half the volume of the atoms, thus dropping pressure and concentrating the magnetic field, and so on. (adapted from Jaeggli, 2011; sunspot image by F. Woeger et al

Although well over 40 years old, the Dunn Solar Telescope at Sunspot, New Mexico isn’t going to be looking at an early retirement. On the contrary, it has been outfitted with the new Facility Infrared Spectropolarimeter (FIRS) and is already making news on its solar findings. FIRS provides simultaneous spectral coverage at visible and infrared wavelengths through the use of a unique dual-armed spectrograph. By utilizing adaptive optics to overcome atmospheric “seeing” conditions, the team took on seven active regions on the Sun – one in 2001 and six during December 2010 to December 2011 – as Sunspot Cycle 23 faded away. The full sunspot sample has 56 observations of 23 different active regions… and showed that hydrogen might act as a type of energy dissipation device which helps the Sun get a magnetic grip on its spots. (...)
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Night Sky Guide: February 2012

Night Sky Guide: February 2012:

This month, the Solar System gives us a lot to observe and we’ll even start to see the ‘spring’ constellations appear later in the evenings. But February still has the grand constellations of winter, with mighty Orion as a centrepiece to long winter nights.

The Sun has finally started to perform as it should as it approaches “Solar Maximum.” This means we get a chance to see the northern lights (Aurora), especially if you live in such places as Scotland, Canada, Scandinavia, or Alaska or the southern light (Aurora Australis) if you live in the southern latitudes of South America, New Zealand and Australia. Over the past few weeks we have seen some fine aurora displays and will we hope to seesome in February!

We have a bit of a treat in store with a comet being this month’s favourite object with binoculars as well, so please read on to find out more about February’s night sky wonders.(...)
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IBEX Captures ‘Alien’ Material From Beyond Our Solar System

IBEX Captures ‘Alien’ Material From Beyond Our Solar System:

NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) has found that there's more oxygen in our solar system than there is in the nearby interstellar material. That suggests that either the sun formed in a different part of the galaxy or that outside our solar system life-giving oxygen lies trapped in dust or ice grains unable to move freely in space. Credit: NASA/Goddard

If we could board the starship Enterprise-D and were able to look through Giordi LaForge’s visor we might be able to see the interstellar medium – the ‘stuff’ between the stars — as wispy clouds of oxygen, hydrogen, helium and neon. Instead, since we are back in the 21st century, we have the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft, which has now made the first–ever direct observations of neutral hydrogen and oxygen atoms drifting into our solar system from the region outside our heliosphere. Surprisingly, this material is more ‘alien’ than scientists were expecting, as the matter in the galactic wind doesn’t contain the same exact material as what our solar system is made of.
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Astrophoto: Flame Nebula by Trevor Durity

Astrophoto: Flame Nebula by Trevor Durity:

Astrophoto: Flame Nebula by Trevor Durity

Flame Nebula. Image Credit: Trevor Durity

Trevor Durity captured this beautiful image of the Flame Nebula on January 30, 2012 at Annaghkeen, County Galway, Ireland. The Flame Nebula, also known as NGC 2024, is an emission nebula located in the constellation Orion.

“This is a shot of the area close to Alnitak, the left most of the three bright stars in the constellation of Orion The Hunter. Those three starts are often called “Orion’s Belt” from which the “sword” of the incredible Orion Nebula hangs.”

This image was taken using an ASGT mounted William Optics Megrez 90FD 90mm refractor with a Canon 450D camera at prime focus. Subs were 120 secods a piece. Stacked with Deep Sky Stacker. Post processing in Photoshop.

Check out Trevor’s website and Flickr page for more amazing astrophotos.


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Casting Swords into Space Observatories

Casting Swords into Space Observatories:

Earth as seen from lunar orbit. Credit: NASA

Editor’s note – Bruce Dorminey is a science journalist and author of Distant Wanderers: The Search for Planets beyond the Solar System.

Planet hunter extraordinaire Geoff Marcy recently let his frustration surface about the current state of the search for other habitable solar systems. Despite the phenomenal planet-finding success of NASA’s Kepler mission, Marcy, an astronomer at the University of California at Berkeley, correctly pointed out that NASA budget cuts have severely hampered the hunt for extrasolar life.

A decade ago, only a few dozen extrasolar planets had been detected. Today, by some recent gravitational microlensing estimates, there are more planets than stars in the Milky Way. But without the ability to characterize these extrasolar planetary atmospheres from space, we are astrobiologically hamstrung.

NASA’s goal had been that by 2020, we would have a pretty good idea about how frequently terrestrial Earth-mass planets orbit other stars — whether those planets have atmospheres that resemble our own; and, more crucially, whether those atmospheres exhibit the telltale signs of planets harboring life.

But consider how the federal government spends our tax dollars on a daily basis. Each and every day for more than a decade, the U.S. military spent roughly $1 billion a day funding congressionally-undeclared wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In contrast, NASA’s cancelled SIM and TPF missions were both originally estimated to have cost less than $1.5 billion dollars each.
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Russia Will Begin Hunt For Extrasolar Planets

Russia Will Begin Hunt For Extrasolar Planets:

Russia to Start Own Search for Extrasolar Planets - Photo: Paul A. Kempton

Located just south of Saint Petersburg on Pulkovo Heights, one of the greatest Russian Observatories of all times – the Pulkovo Observatory – is about to embark on a very noble study. According to the head of the Institute for Space Research, Lev Zelyony, the Soviet telescopes are about to turn their eyes towards deep skies in search of extrasolar planets. “Scientists from the Pulkovo Observatory are planning to use ground-based instruments to study the transit of planets around their parent stars,” Zelyony said at a roundtable meeting at RIA Novosti headquarters in Moscow. (...)
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Hitchcock Haunts a Nebula

Hitchcock Haunts a Nebula:

The star-forming region NGC 3324. The intense radiation from several of NGC 3324's massive, blue-white stars has carved out a cavity in the surrounding gas and dust. The ultraviolet radiation from these young hot stars also cause the gas cloud to glow in rich colors. Credit: ESO

First impression after seeing this new image of NGC 3324? It’s Alfred Hitchcock, bulbous nose and all (see image below for comparison). The right edge of the wall of gas and dust in this star-forming region really bears a strong resemblance to the famous profile of the British film director and producer, notorious for his thriller movies from the 1940’s through the 1970’s.
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Help Support a ‘New Horizons’ U.S. Postage Stamp!

Help Support a ‘New Horizons’ U.S. Postage Stamp!:
USA FIRST SPACECRAFTTO EXPLORE PLUTO US POSTAGE STAMP
USA FIRST SPACECRAFTTO EXPLORE PLUTO US POSTAGE STAMP
Concept art for a New Horizons postage stamp. Image Credit: Dan Durda/Southwest Research Institute
Today the New Horizons mission team, along with Principal Investigator Alan Stern have unveiled their proposal for a U.S Postage stamp, to honor the first mission to Pluto.
The current concept art for the stamp was done by Dan Durda, a space scientist and artist at The Southwest Research Institute. Durda’s work has appeared on the New Horizons website and in other locations. If the stamp is approved, it would be the successor to a U.S. postage stamp issued in 1990 that labeled Pluto as “Not Yet Explored.”
“You can help make this happen.” says Stern.
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Potential ‘Goldilocks’ Planet Found

Potential ‘Goldilocks’ Planet Found:

The newly discovered planet is depicted in this artist's conception, showing the host star as part of a triple-star system. The diagram below shows the orbits of the detected planets around the host star in relation to the habitable zone. Images courtesy of Guillem Anglada-Escudé, Carnegie Institution.

A new-found planet is in a ‘just-right’ location around its star where liquid water could possibly exist on the planet’s surface. A team of international astronomers have discovered a potentially habitable super-Earth orbiting a nearby star in a habitable zone, where it isn’t too hot or too cold for liquid water to exist. The planet, GJ 667Cc, has an orbital period of about 28 days and with a mass about 4.5 times that of the Earth. The star that it orbits is quite interesting. It is an M-class dwarf star and is a member of a triple star system and appears to be quite different from our Sun, relatively lacking in metallic elements.

The team said this discovery demonstrates that habitable planets could form in a greater variety of environments than previously believed.

“This was expected to be a rather unlikely star to host planets,” said Steven Vogt from UC Santa Cruz, one of the scientists involved in the discovery. “Yet there they are, around a very nearby, metal-poor example of the most common type of star in our galaxy. The detection of this planet, this nearby and this soon, implies that our galaxy must be teeming with billions of potentially habitable rocky planets.”
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NASA’s Blue Marble…Side B.

NASA’s Blue Marble…Side B.:

Earth's eastern hemisphere made from Suomi NPP satellite images. (NASA/NOAA)

In response to last week’s incredibly popular “Blue Marble” image, NASA and NOAA have released a companion version, this one showing part of our planet’s eastern hemisphere.

The image is a composite, made from six separate high-resolution scans taken on January 23 by NASA’s recently-renamed Suomi NPP satellite.(...)
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Astrophoto: Jupiter and Venus at the Beach by Brendan Alexander

Astrophoto: Jupiter and Venus at the Beach by Brendan Alexander:



Venus and Jupiter at the beach. Credit: Brendan Alexander

Brendan Alexander took this beautiful photo showing the two brightest planets currently in our night skies, over Flacarragh County, Donegal, Ireland. Here are the specs:

Canon 1000D (modded), 18-55mm kit lens (18mm), Fixed Tripod

Exposure: 20sec, ISO 800, F3.5 (two panels)

Brendan took the image on February 1, 2012. Check out his “Donegal Skies” Flickr feed.

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Supernova G350 Kicks Up Some X-Ray Dust

Supernova G350 Kicks Up Some X-Ray Dust:



Vital clues about the devastating ends to the lives of massive stars can be found by studying the aftermath of their explosions. In its more than twelve years of science operations, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has studied many of these supernova remnants sprinkled across the Galaxy. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/I.Lovchinsky et al, IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Located some 14,700 light years from the Earth toward the center of our galaxy, a newly photographed supernova remnant cataloged as G350.1+0.3 is making astronomers scratch their heads. The star which created this unusual visage is suspected to have blown its top some 600 to 1,200 years ago. Although it would have been as bright as the event which created the “Crab”, chances are no one saw it due to the massive amounts of gas and dust at the Milky Way’s heart. Now NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the ESA’s XMM-Newton telescope has drawn back the curtain and we’re able to marvel at what happens when a supernova imparts a powerful X-ray “kick” to a neutron star! (...)
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Armadillo Launches a STIG-A Rocket; Captures Awesome Image of ‘Ballute’

Armadillo Launches a STIG-A Rocket; Captures Awesome Image of ‘Ballute’:



View of parachute ballute deployment at apogee during Armadillo Aerospace’s STIG-A III rocket launched from Spaceport America, taken January 28, 2012. Image courtesy of Armadillo Aerospace

Over the weekend, Armadillo Aerospace launched one of their STIG-A rockets and captured a unique image of their recovery system. A ballute is a cross between a balloon and a parachute, and are braking devices that are usually used at high altitudes and high supersonic velocities. The one used by Armadillo looks very reminiscent of space capsule of the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo eras.

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Getting to the Core of Earth’s Falling Snow

Getting to the Core of Earth’s Falling Snow:



Visualization of the GPM Core Observatory and Partner Satellites (NASA)

An international plan is unfolding that will launch satellites into orbit to study global snowfall precipitation with unprecedented detail. With the upcoming Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) satellites, for the first time we will know when, where and how much snow falls on Earth, allowing greater understanding of energy cycles and how best to predict extreme weather.

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Hubble Captures Giant Lensed Galaxy Arc

Hubble Captures Giant Lensed Galaxy Arc:



Thanks to the presence of a natural "zoom lens" in space, this is a close-up look at the brightest distant "magnified" galaxy in the universe known to date. Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Rigby (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), K. Sharon (Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, University of Chicago), and M. Gladders and E. Wuyts (University of Chicago)

Less than a year ago, the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 captured a very unique image – a giant lensed galaxy arc. Gravitational lensing produces a natural “zoom” to observations and this is a look at one of the brightest distant galaxies so far known. Located some 10 billion light years away, the galaxy has been magnified as a nearly 90-degree arc of light against the galaxy cluster RCS2 032727-132623 – which is only half the distance. In this unusual case, the background galaxy is over three times brighter than typically lensed galaxies… and a unique look back in time as to what a powerful star-forming galaxy looked like when the Universe was only about one third its present age. (...)
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Hubble Captures a Classic Barred Spiral Galaxy

Hubble Captures a Classic Barred Spiral Galaxy:



The barred spiral galaxy NGC 1073, which is found in the constellation of Cetus (The Sea Monster). Credit: NASA & ESA



Is this what we look like? Astronomers don’t know for sure exactly what the Milky Way looks like, but searching out other barred spiral galaxies like this one is helping scientists to learn more about our home. Galaxy NGC 1073 is located in the constellation of Cetus (The Sea Monster).Most of the known spiral galaxies have a bar structure in their center, and this new image offer a stunning, if not clear view of one of these types of galaxies.

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How Plants May Have Helped Create Earth’s Unique Landscapes

How Plants May Have Helped Create Earth’s Unique Landscapes:



Early plants on Earth may have helped create the rivers and fertile soil which later allowed forests and farmlands to thrive. Credit: Wikimedia Commons



According to conventional thinking, plant life first took hold on Earth after oceans and rivers formed; the soil produced by liquid water breaking down bare rock provided an ideal medium for plants to grow in. It certainly sounds logical, but a new study is challenging that view – the theory is that vascular plants, those containing a transport system for water and nutrients, actually created a cycle of glaciation and melting, conditions which led to the formation of rivers and mud which allowed forests and farmland to later develop. In short, they helped actually create the landscapes we see today.


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Incredible 3-D View Inside a Martian Crater

Incredible 3-D View Inside a Martian Crater:



A 3-d view of a well-preserved and unnamed impact crater on Mars, as seen by the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona. Click for high-resolution version.



This is why I always keep a pair of 3-D glasses by my computer. This well-preserved crater on Mars may look like just your average, run-of-the-mill impact crater in 2-D, but in 3-D, the sharply raised rim, the deep, cavernous crater body, and especially the steep crater walls will have you grabbing your armchairs so you don’t fall in. The image is courtesy of the HiRISE camera team from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This unnamed crater is about 6 or 7 kilometers wide from rim to rim. HiRISE took the image on New Year’s Eve 2011.

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Cities at Night Panorama of Millions of US East Coast Earthlings

Cities at Night Panorama of Millions of US East Coast Earthlings:

Night time Panorama of US East Coast from the ISS
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) captured this stunning nighttime panorama of the major cities along the East Coast of the United States on Jan. 29, 2012. Credit: NASA

Do you live here?

Tens of millions of Earthlings live and work in the bustling and seemingly intertwined American mega-metropolis of the Philadelphia-New York City-Boston corridor (bottom-center splotch) captured in this stunning “Cities at Night” panorama of the East Coast of the United States along the Atlantic seaboard (image above).

Look northward and you’ll see the home to millions more Earthlings inhabiting the brilliantly lit Canadian cities of Toronto (launch site for “Lego Man in Space“) and Montreal to the west of Lake Ontario (dark oval at left-center).
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Beautiful Conjunction: Comet Garradd Meets M92

Beautiful Conjunction: Comet Garradd Meets M92:

This lovely image of Comet Garradd (C/2009 PI) as it passes by the globular cluster M92 in the constellation Hercules, was taken remotely from the Tzek Maun Observatory in New Mexico by our friends Giovanni Sostero, Ernest Guido and Nick Howes. While the two objects look like they are right next to each other, M92 is over 25,000 light-years away while Comet Garradd is 12.5 light-minutes away from Earth! The comet looks almost like a bird or winged starship in flight with the dust tail and ion tail shooting off on either side. Comet Garradd is still on show in the northern hemisphere, although you’ll at least need binoculars to see it. The comet is around magnitude 7 now, and is heading north, so over the course of the next few weeks, it should become a little easier to see. For now, you need to get up early to see it, (around 5:30 to 6:30 am), but by the end of the month it should be visible all night long.

You can see another image of Garradd on today’s APOD (but personally I really like the one right here!)
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New Study Shows How Trace Elements Affect Stars’ Habitable Zones

New Study Shows How Trace Elements Affect Stars’ Habitable Zones:

Comparison of the habitable zone around the Sun in our solar system and around the star Gliese 581. Credit: ESO

Habitable zones are the regions around stars, including our own Sun, where conditions are the most favourable for the development of life on any rocky planets that happen to orbit within them. Generally, they are regions where temperatures allow for liquid water to exist on the surface of these planets and are ideal for “life as we know it.” Specific conditions, due to the kind of atmosphere, geological conditions, etc. must also be taken into consideration, on a case-by-case basis.

Now, by examining trace elements in the host stars, researchers have found clues as to how the habitable zones evolve, and how those elements also influence them. To determine what elements are in a star, scientists study the wavelengths of its light. These trace elements are heavier than the hydrogen and helium gases which the star is primarily composed of. Variations in the composition of these stars are now thought to affect the habitable zones around them.

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Recycling Pulsars – The Millisecond Matters…

Recycling Pulsars – The Millisecond Matters…:

An artist's impression of an accreting X-ray millisecond pulsar. The flowing material from the companion star forms a disk around the neutron star which is truncated at the edge of the pulsar magnetosphere. Credit: NASA / Goddard Space Flight Center / Dana Berry

It’s a millisecond pulsar… a rapidly rotating neutron star and it’s about to reach the end of its mass gathering phase. For ages the vampire of this binary system has been sucking matter from a donor star. It has been busy, spinning at incredibly high rotational speeds of about 1 to 10 milliseconds and shooting off X-rays. Now, something is about to happen. It is going to lose a whole lot of energy and age very quickly. (...)
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The Milky Way’s Magnetic Personality

The Milky Way’s Magnetic Personality:

The sky map of the Faraday effect caused by the magnetic fields of the Milky Way. Red and blue colors indicate regions of the sky where the magnetic field points toward and away from the observer, respectively. The band of the Milky Way (the plane of the Galactic disk) extends horizontally in this panoramic view. The center of the Milky Way lies in the middle of the image. The North celestial pole is at the top left and the South Pole is at the bottom right. (Image Credit: Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics)

Recently we took a look at a very unusual type of map – the Faraday Sky. Now an international team of scientists, including those at the Naval Research Laboratory, have pooled their information and created one of the most high precision maps to date of the Milky Way’s magnetic fields. Like all galaxies, ours has a magnetic “personality”, but just where these fields come from and how they are created is a genuine mystery. Researchers have always simply assumed they were created by mechanical processes like those which occur in Earth’s interior and the Sun. Now a new study will give scientists an even better understanding about the structure of galactic magnetic fields as seen throughout our galaxy. (...)
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Super Bowl Cities Seen From Space

Super Bowl Cities Seen From Space:

Satellite image of RI and portions of southeastern Massachusetts. Credit: NASA/GSFC/Landsat 7

If you live in or are from the US, you probably know that today is Super Bowl Sunday. Whatever you happen to be doing, be it tailgating in Indianapolis, getting together with friends and family (and plenty of hot wings and nachos) in your living room or just waiting for all the fuss to be over, remember that, high above, NASA Earth-observing satellites are working hard doing what they do best: observing the Earth. Chances are they’ve imaged your home town many times.

Whichever team you’re rooting for, here’s a little bit of space science fun: the folks over at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, have shared some Landsat images of the home cities of this year’s big game.

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Posted by Nelio Inacio at 5:05 PM 0 comments
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Asteroid Vesta Floats in Space in High Resolution 3-D

Asteroid Vesta Floats in Space in High Resolution 3-D:

Vesta’s Eastern Hemisphere Floats in Space in 3-D
This anaglyph shows the varied topography of Vesta’s eastern hemisphere from craters in the north, the equatorial troughs and the huge mountain protruding out the Rheasilvia impact basin (lower left) at the South Pole.
Does water ice lurk beneath the South Pole ?
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA.
More eye-popping 3-D images below

The giant Asteroid Vesta literally floats in space in a new high resolution 3-D image of the battered bodies Eastern Hemisphere taken by NASA’s Dawn Asteroid Orbiter.

Haul out your red-cyan 3-D anaglyph glasses and lets go whirling around Vesta and sledding down mountains to greet the alien Snowman! The sights are fabulous !

The Dawn imaging group based at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), in Berlin, Germany and led by team member Ralf Jaumann has released a trio of new high resolution 3-D images that are the most vivid anaglyphs yet published by the international science team. (...)

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600 Million Year Drought Makes Life on Surface of Mars Unlikely

600 Million Year Drought Makes Life on Surface of Mars Unlikely:

View of Mars' surface near the north pole from the Phoenix lander. Credit: NASA/JPL-Calech/University of Arizona

Mars is often referred to as a desert world, and for good reason – its surface is barren, dry and cold. While water was abundant in the distant past, it has long since disappeared from the surface, although ice, snow, frost and fog are still common. Other than liquid brines possibly trickling at times, all of Mars’ remaining water is now frozen in permafrost and in the polar ice caps. It has long been thought that the harsh conditions would make current life unlikely at best, and now a new study reaffirms that view.

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The Milky Way Galactic Disk – Forever Blowing Bubbles

The Milky Way Galactic Disk – Forever Blowing Bubbles:

Ten Milky Way Project images most-favourited by volunteers, in no particular order. Coordinates are image centres, image sizes are indicated by the zoom level (zoom).

Score another one for citizen science! In a study released just days ago, a new catalog containing over five thousand infrared bubbles entries was added through the “Milky Way Project” website. The work was done independently by at least five participants who measured parameters for position, radius, thickness, eccentricity and position angle. Not only did their work focus on these areas, but the non-professionals were responsible for recovering the locations of at least 86% of additional bubble and HII catalogs. Cool stuff? You bet. Almost one third of the Milky Way Project’s studied bubbles are located at the edge of an even larger bubble – or have more lodged inside. This opens the door to further understanding the dynamics of triggered star formation! (...)
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Posted by Nelio Inacio at 4:58 PM 0 comments
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New Avalanche in Action on Mars Captured by HiRISE

New Avalanche in Action on Mars Captured by HiRISE:

An avalanche on Mars captured by the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on November 27, 2011. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona. Image cropped and edited by Nancy Atkinson.

Its avalanche season on Mars! And once again the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured an avalanche taking place on a steep cliff or scarp in Mars’ north polar region. Back in 2008, the HiRISE team created quite a sensation when it captured an avalanche in action on Mars. The high resolution camera did it again in 2010 when springtime arrived once more. Now, another Mars year later, the team has been monitoring specific areas, looking for evidence of avalanches and they hit pay dirt – literally. This image of an avalanche taking place is from a large image “strip” from HiRISE taken in the extreme northern latitude of Mars, about 85 degrees north.
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