Photos of Nature, Nature Photography Across The Universe. All about Nature, Love, Travel, Beautiful Photo, Landscape, Sunset, Summer, Mountains, Flowers, Photographer, Wallpaper, Portrait, Photo, what is the Universe
Photos of Nature | Nature Photography What is The Universe
A United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket with the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) observatory onboard is seen in this long exposure photograph as it launches from Space Launch Complex 2, Saturday, Jan. 31, 2015, Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. SMAP is NASA’s first Earth-observing satellite designed to collect global observations of surface soil moisture and its freeze/thaw state. SMAP will provide high resolution global measurements of soil moisture from space. The data will be used to enhance scientists' understanding of the processes that link Earth's water, energy, and carbon cycles. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)
Page Last Updated: January 31st, 2015 Page Editor: Brian Dunbar
Island of Hawaii From the International Space Station
From the International Space Station, European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti (@AstroSamantha) took this photograph of the island of Hawaii and posted it to social media on Feb. 28, 2015. Cristoforetti wrote, "And suddenly as we flew over the Pacific... the island of #Hawaii with its volcanoes! #HelloEarth"
Crewmembers on the space station photograph the Earth from their unique point of view located 200 miles above the surface as part of the Crew Earth Observations program. Photographs record how the planet is changing over time, from human-caused changes like urban growth and reservoir construction, to natural dynamic events such as hurricanes, floods and volcanic eruptions. Astronauts have used hand-held cameras to photograph the Earth for more than 40 years, beginning with the Mercury missions in the early 1960s. The ISS maintains an altitude between 220 - 286 miles (354 - 460 km) above the Earth, and an orbital inclination of 51.6˚, providing an excellent stage for observing most populated areas of the world.
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.
2015 February 26
Explanation:Venus, named for the Roman goddess of love, and Mars, the war god's namesake, came together by moonlight in this lovely skyview, recorded on February 20 from Charleston, South Carolina, USA, planet Earth. Made in twilight with a digital camera, the three second time exposure also records earthshine illuminating the otherwise dark surface of the young crescent Moon. Of course, the Moon has moved on from this much anticipated triple conjunction. Venus still shines in the west though as the evening star, third brightest object in Earth's sky, after the Sun and the Moon itself. Seen here within almost a Moon's width of Venus, much fainter Mars approached even closer on the following evening. But Mars has since been moving slowly away from brilliant Venus, though Mars is still visible too in the western twilight.
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.
2015 February 27
Explanation: Buffeted by the solar wind, Comet Lovejoy's crooked ion tail stretches over 3 degrees across this telescopic field of view, recorded on February 20. The starry background includes awesome bluish star Phi Persei below, and pretty planetary nebula M76 just above Lovejoy's long tail. Also known as the Little Dumbbell Nebula, after its brighter cousin M27 the Dumbbell Nebula, M76 is only a Full Moon's width away from the comet's greenish coma. Still shining in northern hemisphere skies, this Comet Lovejoy (C/2014 Q2) is outbound from the inner solar system some 10 light-minutes or 190 million kilometers from Earth. But the Little Dumbbell actually lies over 3 thousand light-years away. Now sweeping steadily north toward the constellation Cassiopeia Comet Lovejoy is fading more slowly than predicted and is still a good target for small telescopes.
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.
2015 February 28
Explanation: Taken on February 20, five different exposures made in rapid succession were used to created this tantalizing telephoto image. In combination, they reveal a wide range of brightness visible to the eye on that frigid evening, from the urban glow of the Quebec City skyline to the triple conjunction of Moon, Venus and Mars. Shortly after sunset the young Moon shows off its bright crescent next to brilliant Venus. Fainter Mars is near the top of the frame. Though details in the Moon's sunlit crescent are washed out, features on the dark, shadowed part of the lunar disk are remarkably clear. Still lacking city lights the lunar night is illuminated solely by earthshine, light reflected from the sunlit side of planet Earth.
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.
2015 March 1
Explanation: Almost every object in the above photograph is a galaxy. The Coma Cluster of Galaxiespictured above is one of the densest clusters known - it contains thousands of galaxies. Each of these galaxies houses billions of stars - just as our own Milky Way Galaxy does. Although nearby when compared to most other clusters, light from the Coma Cluster still takes hundreds of millions of years to reach us. In fact, the Coma Cluster is so big it takes light millions of years just to go from one side to the other! The above mosaic of images of a small portion of Coma was taken in unprecedented detail in 2006 by the Hubble Space Telescope to investigate how galaxies in rich clusters form and evolve. Most galaxies in Coma and other clusters are ellipticals, although some imaged here are clearly spirals. The spiral galaxy on the upper left of the above image can also be found as one of the bluer galaxies on the upper left of this wider field image. In the background thousands of unrelated galaxies are visible far across the universe.
Space Station Flyover of Gulf of Aden and Horn of Africa
European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti took this photograph from the International Space Station and posted it to social media on Jan. 30, 2015. Cristoforetti wrote, "A spectacular flyover of the Gulf of Aden and the Horn of Africa. #HelloEarth"
Image Credit: NASA/ESA/Samantha Cristoforetti
Page Last Updated: February 9th, 2015 Page Editor: Sarah Loff
This image was taken by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft of dwarf planet Ceres on Feb. 19 from a distance of nearly 29,000 miles (46,000 km). It shows that the brightest spot on the dwarf planet has a dimmer companion which lies in the same crater. Note also the “cracks” or faults in its crust at bottom right. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Aliens making dinner with a solar cooker? Laser beams aimed at hapless earthlings? Whatever can that – now those – bright spots on Ceres be? The most recent images taken by the Dawn spacecraft now reveal that the bright pimple has a companion spot. Both are tucked inside a substantial crater and seem to glow with an intensity out of proportion to the otherwise dark and dusky surrounding landscape.“The brightest spot continues to be too small to resolve with our camera, but despite its size it is brighter than anything else on Ceres,” said Andreas Nathues, lead investigator for the framing camera team at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Gottingen, Germany. “This is truly unexpected and still a mystery to us.”
Tight crop of the two bright spots. Could they be ice? Volcano-related? Credit:
It’s a mystery bound to stir fresh waves of online speculative pseudoscience. The hucksters better get moving. Dawn is fewer than 29,000 miles (46,000 km) away and closing fast. On March 6 it will be captured by Ceres gravity and begin orbiting the dwarf planet for a year or more. Like waking up and rubbing the sleep from your eyes, our view of Ceres and its enigmatic “twin glows” will become increasingly clear in about six weeks.
Dawn approaches Ceres from the left (direction of the Sun) and gets captured by its gravity. The craft first gets closer as it approaches but then recedes (moves off to right) before closing in again and ultimately settling into orbit around the asteroid. The solid lines show where Dawn is thrusting with its ion engine. As it swings to the right, photos will show Ceres as a crescent. Credit: NASA/Marc Rayman
Why not March 6th when it enters orbit? Momentum is temporarily carrying the probe beyond Ceres. Only after a series of balletic moves to reshape its orbit to match that of Ceres will it be able to return more detailed images. You’ll recall that Rosetta did the same before finally settling into orbit around Comet 67P.
Closest approach occurred on Feb. 23 at 24,000 miles (38,600 km); at the moment the spacecraft is moving beyond Ceres at the very relaxed rate of 35 mph (55 kph).
This and the photo below were taken on Feb. 19, 2015 and processed to enhance clarity. Notice the very large but shallow crater below center. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
We do know that unlike Dawn’s first target, the asteroid Vesta, Ceres is rich in water ice. It’s thought that it possesses a mantle of ice and possibly even ice on its surface. In January 2014, ESA’s orbiting Herschel infrared observatory detected water vapor given off by the dwarf planet. Clays have been identified in its crust as well, making Ceres unique compared to many asteroids in the main belt that orbit between Mars and Jupiter.
Given the evidence for H20, we could be seeing ice reflecting sunlight possibly from a recent impact that exposed new material beneath the asteroid’s space-weathered skin. If so, it’s odd that the spot should be almost perfectly centered in the crater.
A different hemisphere of Ceres photographed on Feb. 19. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Chris Russell, principal investigator for the Dawn mission, offers another possible scenario, where the bright spots “may be pointing to a volcano-like origin.” Might icy volcanism in the form of cryovolcanoes have created the dual white spots? Or is the white material fresh, pale-colored rock either erupted from below or exposed by a recent impact? Ceres is a very dark world with an albedo or reflectivity even less than our asphalt-dark Moon. Freshly exposed rock or ice might stand out starkly.
A part slice of the eucrite meteorite NWA 3147. Most eucrites are derived from lava flows on the asteroid Vesta and are rich in light-toned minerals. Credit: Bob King
One of the more common forms of asteroid lava found on Earth are the eucrite achondrite meteorites. Many are rich in plagioclase and other pale minerals that are good reflectors of light. Of course, these are all speculations, but the striking contrast of bright and dark certainly piques our curiosity.
Artist’s concept of Dawn in its survey orbit at dwarf planet Ceres. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Additional higher resolutions photos streamed back by Dawn show a fascinating array of crater types from small and deep to large and shallow. On icy worlds, ancient impact craters gradually “relax” and lose relief over time, flattening as it were. We’ve seen this on the icy Galilean moons of Jupiter and perhaps the largest impact basins on Ceres are examples of same.
Questions, speculations. Our investigation of any new world seen up close for the first time always begins with questions … and often ends with them, too.
I'm a long-time amateur astronomer and member of the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO). My observing passions include everything from auroras to Z Cam stars. Every day the universe offers up something both beautiful and thought-provoking. I also write a daily astronomy blog called Astro Bob.
Sirius (lower center) rules the anthropocene night. Credit and copyright: Alan Dyer.
What’s the brightest star you can see in the sky tonight?
If you live below 83 degrees north latitude, the brightest star in the sky is Canis Alpha Majoris, or Sirius. Seriously, (bad pun intended) the -1st magnitude star is usually the fifth brightest natural object in the sky, and sits high to the south on February evenings… but has it always ruled the night?
Sure, the brightest star in the sky (next to the Sun, of course) is Sirius. At 8.6 light years distant, Sirius can even be seen against the deep blue sky while the Sun is still above the horizon if you known exactly where to look for it. In fact, spotting Sirius was so important to the ancient Egyptians that they based their calendar on its first summer sightings (known as a heliacal rising) at dawn.
-Fun factoid: the brightest star north of the celestial equator is -0.04 magnitude Arcturus.
Remember the star Vega of Contact fame? Keep that name in mind, as Sirius will hand over the title of the ‘brightest star in the sky’ to Vega over 200,000 years from now.
Canopus rules the night of 90,000 B.C. Credit: Starry Night.
It all has to do with motion. Our Sun — and the solar system along with it — is moving at about 250 kilometres per second around the core of the Milky Way, completing one revolution around the galaxy about every quarter of a billion years. Think about that for a second: in the 4.5 billion year history of the Earth, we’ve orbited the galaxy only 18 times. A quarter of a billion years ago, the Permian-Triassic extinction event was well underway.
Feel puny yet? Well, in addition to our orbit, the solar system is also oscillating up in down through the galactic plane, taking 93 million years to travel from peak to trough. All the stars around us are in motion as well, like hurried travelers along a busy Manhattan sidewalk.
And just like people, this stellar motion is wonderfully chaotic over vast stretches of time. We currently see some ordinary pedestrian stars like Sirius or Alpha Centuari as ‘bright’ because they’re close by in the stellar ‘hood, and some — such as Rigel and Deneb — seem bright to us only because they’re luminous stars that are far away. This is what’s known as apparent magnitude. To make sense of the true properties of stars, astronomers refer to a star’s absolute magnitude or its brightness if it were placed 10 parsecs (32.6 light years) distant. Place massive Deneb 10 parsecs away, and it would be easily visible in the daytime at magnitude -8.4.
The stars appear fixed during our short human life spans: Orion looks pretty much the same on the day you were born as the day you die. Watch the stars over centuries, however, and they slowly move with respect to our terrestrial point of view. This is what’s known as proper motion, which is a star’s apparent movement across our sky. Even fast movers such as Barnard’s Star or 61 Cygni only exhibit a proper motion of 10” and 3.2” arc seconds per year. Think of driving by a grove of trees: the closer trees appear to move by faster than the distant ones. This tiny motion gave early 19th century astronomers an inkling that these ‘flying stars,’ though not the brightest, may be close by. Of course, going back to the forest analogy, this motion is an illusion: ‘proper’ motion measures the traverse velocity along our line of sight, which is merely a product of a star’s true vector through space and its radial velocity towards our away from us.
A guide to proper motion. Credit: “Proper motion” by Brews ohare. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
And radial motion is the key to who is ‘top dog’ in the brightness game over time. Like gravity, light fades intrinsically with the inverse square of its distance. Move a candle twice as far away, and its one fourth (1/22) as luminous. This is actually pretty nifty, as 5 magnitudes in brightness corresponds to a hundredfold (102) change in luminosity.
We’re currently moving toward the solar apex located near the star Omicron Herculis at a speed relative to local stars of 16.5 kilometres per second.
And there’s a wiki for that: here’s a breakdown of selected bright stars over the current 10 million year epoch, which was itself adopted from Sky and Telescope.
Note that past 1,000,000 A.D., +2.4 magnitude Delta Scuti will swell to magnitude -1.8, topping Sirius’s brightness today. And way back in the day in 4.7 million B.C., the +1.5 magnitude star Adhara (Epsilon Canis Majoris) was a chart-topping -4 magnitude, easily visible in the daytime.
Arcturus is another fast mover, and is currently plunging through our galactic neighborhood at a blazing 2 arc seconds per year. Arcturus is near maximum brightness and gets a few hundredths of a light year closer to us 4,000 years from now before slowly fading from view.
And in the distant future, the star party fave Albireo will be 300 light years closer and shine at -0.5. Perhaps by then, those far future star party patrons will know for sure if Albireo is a true naked eye binary pair or not…
An artist’s conception of Gaia on the hunt. Credit: ESA.
How do we know this? Missions such as Hipparcos have measured and defined the parallax and proper motions of stars to an unprecedented degree of accuracy. Contrast this to astronomers of yore, who had to rely of a wire-welding transit instrument, a stopwatch and quick reaction time.
Surveys such as NEOWISE have turned up even fainter nearby brown and red dwarf stars in their all sky surveys, and missions such as Gaia promise to bring our knowledge of astrometry to a new level of accuracy.
It’s also worth noting that in most cases, ‘brightest’ does not mean closest. Take the example of the recently discovered red dwarf Scholz’s Star which may have passed as close as 0.8 light years distant 70,000 just years ago. Even then, it may only have topped +7th magnitude in Earthly skies. The future passage of HIP 85605 300,000 years from now at 0.5 light years distant may fair much better, at an apparent -2 magnitude. Looking farther back in time, the +4.7 magnitude star Gamma Microscopii passed within 6 light years from the Sun 3.8 million years ago, and would’ve shined at magnitude -3.
Close stellar passes over the current 100,000 year span. Credit: “Near-stars-past-future-en” by FrancescoA – Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
All great thoughts to ponder as we enjoy the night skies gracing our little epoch of space and time. What will the hopes and dreams of those eyes that gaze upon those distorted skies be, million years hence?
David Dickinson is an Earth science teacher, freelance science writer, retired USAF veteran & backyard astronomer. He currently writes and ponders the universe from Tampa Bay, Florida.
Comet 2014 Q2 (Lovejoy), on December 27, 2014, as seen by the Dark Energy Survey. Credit: Fermilab’s Marty Murphy, Nikolay Kuropatkin, Huan Lin and Brian Yanny.
Oops! In a happy accident, Comet Lovejoy just happened to be in the field of view of the 570-megapixel Dark Energy Camera, the world’s most powerful digital camera. One member of the observing team said it was a “shock” to see Comet Lovejoy pop up on the display in the control room.
“It reminds us that before we can look out beyond our Galaxy to the far reaches of the Universe, we need to watch out for celestial objects that are much closer to home!” wrote the team on the Dark Energy Detectives blog.
On December 27, 2014, while the Dark Energy Survey was scanning the southern sky, C2014 Q2 entered the camera’s view. Each of the rectangular shapes above represents one of the 62 individual fields of the camera.
At the time this image was taken, the comet was passing about 82 million km (51 million miles) from Earth. That’s a short distance for the Dark Energy Camera, which is sensitive to light up to 8 billion light years away. The comet’s center is a ball of ice roughly 5 km (3 miles) across, and the visible head of the comet is a cloud of gas and dust about 640,000 km (400,000 miles) in diameter.
The Dark Energy Survey (DES) is designed to probe the origin of the accelerating universe and help uncover the nature of dark energy by measuring the 14-billion-year history of cosmic expansion with high precision.
The camera just finished up the third, six-month-long season of observations, and the camera won’t be observing again until this fall.
You can download higher resolution versions of this image here.
Headless comet D1 SOHO photographed in evening twilight on Feb. 28. The comet survived its Feb. 19 perihelion passage but soon after crumbled apart to form a cloud of glowing dust. Credit: Michael Jaeger
Like coins, most comet have both heads and tails. Occasionally, during a close passage of the Sun, a comet’s head will be greatly diminished yet still retain a classic cometary outline. Rarely are we left with nothing but a tail. How eerie it looks. Like a feather plucked from some cosmic deity floating down from the sky. Welcome to C/2015 D1 SOHO, the comet that almost didn’t make it.
It was discovered on Feb. 18 by Thai amateur astronomer and writer Worachate Boonplod from the comfort of his office while examining photographs taken with the coronagraph on the orbiting Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). A coronagraph blocks the fantastically bright Sun with an opaque disk, allowing researchers to study the solar corona as well as the space near the Sun. Boonplod regularly examines real-time SOHO images for comets and has a knack for spotting them; in 2014 alone he discovered or co-discovered 35 comets without so much as putting on a coat.
Learn why there are so many sungrazing comets
Most of them belong to a group called Kreutz sungrazers, the remains of a much larger comet that broke to pieces in the distant past. The vast majority of the sungrazers fritter away to nothing as they’re pounded by the Sun’s gravity and vaporize in its heat. D1 SOHO turned out to be something different – a non-group comet belonging to neither the Kreutz family nor any other known family.
After a perilously close journey only 2.6 million miles from the Sun’s 10,000° surface, D1 SOHO somehow emerged with two thumbs up en route to the evening sky. After an orbit was determined, we published a sky map here at Universe Today encouraging observers to see if and when the comet might first become visible. Although it was last seen at around magnitude +4.5 on Feb. 21 by SOHO, hopes were high the comet might remain bright enough to see with amateur telescopes.
On Wednesday evening Feb. 25, Justin Cowart, a geologist and amateur astronomer from Alto Pass, Illinois figured he’d have a crack at it. Cowart didn’t have much hope after hearing the news that the comet may very well have crumbled apart after the manner of that most famous of disintegrators, Comet ISON . ISON fragmented even before perihelion in late 2013, leaving behind an expanding cloud of exceedingly faint dust.
Cowart set up a camera and tracking mount anyway and waited for clearing in the west after sunset. Comet D1 SOHO was located some 10° above the horizon near the star Theta Piscium in a bright sky. Justin aimed and shot:
“I was able to see stars down to about 6th magnitude in the raw frames, but no comet,” wrote Cowart. “I decided to stack my frames and see if I could do some heavy processing to bring out a faint fuzzy. To my surprise, when DeepSkyStacker spit out the final image I could see a faint cloud near Theta Picsium, right about where the comet expected to be!”
Comet D1 SOHO’s orbit is steeply inclined to the ecliptic. It’s now headed into the northern sky, sliding up the eastern side of Pegasus into Andromeda as it recedes from both Earth and Sun. Credit: JPL Horizons
Comet D1 SOHO’s orbit is steeply inclined (70°) to the Earth’s orbit. After rounding the Sun, it turned sharply north and now rises higher in the western sky with each passing night for northern hemisphere skywatchers. Pity that the Moon has been a harsh mistress, washing out the sky just as the comet is beginning to gain altitude. These less-than-ideal circumstances haven’t prevented other astrophotographers from capturing the rare sight of a tailless comet. On Feb. 2, Jost Jahn of Amrum, Germany took an even clearer image, confirming Cowart’s results.
This photo, which confirmed Justin Cowart’s observation, was taken on Feb. 27 from Germany. Jost Jahn stacked 59 15-second exposures (ISO 1600, f/2.4) taken with an 85mm telescope to capture D1’s faint tail. Credit: Jost Jahn
To date, there have been no visual observations of D1 SOHO made with binoculars or telescopes, so it’s difficult to say exactly how bright it is. Perhaps magnitude +10? Low altitude, twilight and moonlight as well as the comet’s diffuse appearance have conspired to make it a lofty challenge. That will change soon.
Comet D1 SOHO’s dim remnant on Feb. 28, 2015 looks like it was applied with spray paint. Credit: Francois Kugel / fkometes.pagesperso-orange.fr/index.html
Once the Moon begins its departure from the evening sky on March 6-7, a window of darkness will open. Fortuitously, D1 SOHO will be even higher up and set well after twilight ends. I’m as eager as many of you are to train my scope in its direction and bid both hello and farewell to a comet we’ll never see again.
Map to help you find Comet C/2015 D1 SOHO March 2-7 around 7 p.m. (CST) and 8 p.m. CDT on March 8. Stars are shown to magnitude 8. See also below. Source: Chris Marriott’s SkyMap
Here are fresh maps based on the most recent orbit published by the Minor Planet Center. Assuming you wait until after Full Moon, start looking for the comet in big binoculars or a moderate to large telescope right at the end of evening twilight when it’s highest in a dark sky. The comet sets two hours after the end of twilight on March 7th from the central U.S.
Broader view with north up and west to the right showing nightly comet positions at 7 p.m. CST through March 7 and then 8 p.m. CDT thereafter. Stars to magnitude +9. Click to enlarge. Source: Chris Marriott’s Stellarium
I'm a long-time amateur astronomer and member of the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO). My observing passions include everything from auroras to Z Cam stars. Every day the universe offers up something both beautiful and thought-provoking. I also write a daily astronomy blog called Astro Bob.
