Space

mattig89ch

From the Nasa RSS feeds.



Galactic Cherry Blossoms

cee134

The Space Station Crosses a Spotless Sun



That's no sunspot. It's the International Space Station (ISS) caught passing in front of the Sun. Sunspots, individually, have a dark central umbra, a lighter surrounding penumbra, and no solar panels. By contrast, the ISS is a complex and multi-spired mechanism, one of the largest and most sophisticated machines ever created by humanity.

Also, sunspots occur on the Sun, whereas the ISS orbits the Earth. Transiting the Sun is not very unusual for the ISS, which orbits the Earth about every 90 minutes, but getting one's timing and equipment just right for a great image is rare. Strangely, besides that fake spot, in this recent two-image composite, the Sun lacked any real sunspots. The featured picture combines two images -- one capturing the space station transiting the Sun -- and another taken consecutively capturing details of the Sun's surface.

Sunspots have been rare on the Sun since the dawn of the current Solar Minimum, a period of low solar activity. For reasons not yet fully understood, the number of sunspots occurring during both the previous and current solar minima have been unusually low.

cee134

NGC 1566: The Spanish Dancer Spiral Galaxy



If not perfect, then this spiral galaxy is at least one of the most photogenic. An island universe containing billions of stars and situated about 40 million light-years away toward the constellation of the Dolphinfish (Dorado), NGC 1566 presents a gorgeous face-on view.

Classified as a grand design spiral, NGC 1566's shows two prominent and graceful spiral arms that are traced by bright blue star clusters and dark cosmic dust lanes. Numerous Hubble Space Telescope images of NGC 1566 have been taken to study star formation, supernovas, and the spiral's unusually active center.

Some of these images, stored online in the Hubble Legacy Archive, were freely downloaded, combined, and digitally processed by an industrious amateur to create the featured image. NGC 1566's flaring center makes the spiral one of the closest and brightest Seyfert galaxies, likely housing a central supermassive black hole wreaking havoc on surrounding stars and gas.

honeybee__12

cee134 wrote: »

The Space Station Crosses a Spotless Sun



That's no sunspot. It's the International Space Station (ISS) caught passing in front of the Sun. Sunspots, individually, have a dark central umbra, a lighter surrounding penumbra, and no solar panels. By contrast, the ISS is a complex and multi-spired mechanism, one of the largest and most sophisticated machines ever created by humanity.

Also, sunspots occur on the Sun, whereas the ISS orbits the Earth. Transiting the Sun is not very unusual for the ISS, which orbits the Earth about every 90 minutes, but getting one's timing and equipment just right for a great image is rare. Strangely, besides that fake spot, in this recent two-image composite, the Sun lacked any real sunspots. The featured picture combines two images -- one capturing the space station transiting the Sun -- and another taken consecutively capturing details of the Sun's surface.

Sunspots have been rare on the Sun since the dawn of the current Solar Minimum, a period of low solar activity. For reasons not yet fully understood, the number of sunspots occurring during both the previous and current solar minima have been unusually low.

Amazing photo!

kevinflemming1982

I'm always fascinated by space and the sheer incomprehensible size of the known universe, let alone the rest of it we don't know about. Honestly blows my tiny little mind. Black holes, dark matter, the last bits of light coming from stars which died millions of years ago. It's a wonderful thing to be alive and have so much thirst for knowledge about everything that surrounds and penetrates us (there are neutrino particles passing through you right now!).

kevinflemming1982

Some people think it's a waste of time exploring beyond our own planet. But given that the chances of another intelligent species such as us, are extremely-slim (at least with our current knowledge) and the possibility that we might be the only species capable of observing, exploring, recording and being inquisitive enough to want to do these things, I think it's our duty to understand as much as we can before our brief existence ends.

By brief existence, I mean that in the big scale of things, humanity is but a blip on the overall timescale. The fact that we consider the universe to be roughly 14 billions years old, means that our 200,000 year existence (of modern humans) is practically nothing. Who is to say just how long we will last as a species, but I can't see it being very long with how things are progressing lol.

That sounds rather nihilistic, I know. It's really not. That just means we have to make the most of it. Chase your dreams, live a good life, be a decent person, leave something wonderful behind. So that if there are other intelligent species out there, they can one day find our remains and show that we tried to do something amazing.

kevinflemming1982

A little bit of space porn (not what you think lol).

This is NGC 5033, an inclined spiral galaxy, in the Canes Venatici constellation.


It's roughly 50 million light years away, and due to the size of it, can be seen using amateur telescopes.


It contains a Seyfert nucleus, which grants the galaxy incredible brightness and ion radiation, making it clearly visible compared to some. Plenty of warping of light in this galaxy leads us to believe that is has a super-massive black hole, the size of which could potentially be billions of times larger than our sun.

At some point during it's lifetime, it's believed that this galaxy merged with another, due to the nucleus location. It's not in the kinematic centre (the point where stars rotate around the galaxy itself), which is often evidence of other influences such as collision and displacement.

NCG 5033 shares it's location with another nearby galaxy, NGC 5005. The are considered a pair, and have minor gravitational influence on the other. Although, they are far away enough to not directly interfere.

cee134

Apollo 11 and Landing Site 2 in the Sea of Tranquility



This photographic illustration compares the size of Apollo 11 Landing Site 2 with that of the metropolitan New York City area. Site 2 was one of three Apollo 11 lunar landing sites. This was the planned site if Apollo 11 launched on July 16, 1969, as scheduled.

Apollo 11 did launch on schedule and landed on Site 2, which is located at 23 degrees 42 minutes 28 seconds east longitude and 0 degrees 42 minutes 50 seconds north latitude in southwestern Mare Tranquillitatis (Sea of Tranquility).

The white overlay is printed over a lunar surface photograph taken from Apollo 10 during its lunar orbit mission and is numbered AS10-31-4537.

cee134

HDR: Earth's Circular Shadow on the Moon



What could create such a large circular shadow on the Moon? The Earth. Last week's full Moon -- the Buck Moon -- was so full that it fell almost exactly in a line with the Sun and the Earth. When that happens the Earth casts its shadow onto the Moon.

The circularity of the Earth's shadow on the Moon was commented on by Aristotle and so has been noticed since at least the 4th century BC. What's new is humanity's ability to record this shadow with such high dynamic range (HDR).

The featured HDR composite of last week's partial lunar eclipse combines 15 images and include an exposure as short as 1/400th of a second -- so as not to overexpose the brightest part -- and an exposure that lasted five seconds -- to bring up the dimmest part.

This dimmest part -- inside Earth's umbra -- is not completely dark because some light is refracted through the Earth's atmosphere onto the Moon. A total lunar eclipse will occur next in 2021 May.

kevinflemming1982

That's such a nice picture of the Moon. I love that technology allows us to capture such high-resolution and detailed pictures now. Not only of close celestial bodies, but ones further away too.

cee134

M82: Galaxy with a Supergalactic Wind



Why is the Cigar Galaxy billowing red smoke? M82, as this starburst galaxy is also known, was stirred up by a recent pass near large spiral galaxy M81. This doesn't fully explain the source of the red-glowing outwardly expanding gas and dust, however.

Evidence indicates that this gas and dust is being driven out by the combined emerging particle winds of many stars, together creating a galactic superwind. The dust particles are thought to originate in M82's interstellar medium and are actually similar in size to particles in cigar smoke.

The featured photographic mosaic highlights a specific color of red light strongly emitted by ionized hydrogen gas, showing detailed filaments of this gas and dust. The filaments extend for over 10,000 light years.

The 12-million light-year distant Cigar Galaxy is the brightest galaxy in the sky in infrared light, and can be seen in visible light with a small telescope towards the constellation of the Great Bear (Ursa Major).

cee134

Zodiacal Road



What's that strange light down the road? Dust orbiting the Sun. At certain times of the year, a band of sun-reflecting dust from the inner Solar System appears prominently just after sunset -- or just before sunrise -- and is called zodiacal light.

Although the origin of this dust is still being researched, a leading hypothesis holds that zodiacal dust originates mostly from faint Jupiter-family comets and slowly spirals into the Sun. Recent analysis of dust emitted by Comet 67P, visited by ESA's robotic Rosetta spacecraft, bolster this hypothesis.

Pictured when climbing a road up to Teide National Park in the Canary Islands of Spain, a bright triangle of zodiacal light appeared in the distance soon after sunset. Captured on June 21, the scene includes bright Regulus, alpha star of Leo, standing above center toward the left.

The Beehive Star Cluster (M44) can be spotted below center, closer to the horizon and also immersed in the zodiacal glow.

cee134

JustReadTheInstructions wrote: »

I take some dec ones with my telescope

Is that a scientific term about space?

cee134

Cygnus Skyscape



In brush strokes of interstellar dust and glowing hydrogen gas, this beautiful skyscape is painted across the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy near the northern end of the Great Rift and the constellation Cygnus the Swan. Composed with three different telescopes and about 90 hours of image data the widefield mosaic spans an impressive 24 degrees across the sky. Alpha star of Cygnus, bright, hot, supergiant Deneb lies near top center.

Crowded with stars and luminous gas clouds Cygnus is also home to the dark, obscuring Northern Coal Sack Nebula, extending from Deneb toward the center of the view. The reddish glow of star forming regions NGC 7000, the North America Nebula and IC 5070, the Pelican Nebula, are just left of Deneb. The Veil Nebula is a standout below and left of center.

A supernova remnant, the Veil is some 1,400 light years away, but many other nebulae and star clusters are identifiable throughout the cosmic scene. Of course, Deneb itself is also known to northern hemisphere skygazers for its place in two asterisms -- marking the top of the Northern Cross and a vertex of the Summer Triangle.

cee134

cee134

Central IC 1805



Cosmic clouds seem to form fantastic shapes in the central regions of emission nebula IC 1805. Of course, the clouds are sculpted by stellar winds and radiation from massive hot stars in the nebula's newborn star cluster (aka Melotte 15).

About 1.5 million years young, the cluster stars appear in this colorful skyscape, along with dark dust clouds silhouetted against glowing atomic gas. A composite of narrow band telescopic images, the view spans about 15 light-years and shows emission from hydrogen in green, sulfur in red, and oxygen in blue hues.

Wider field images reveal that IC 1805's simpler, overall outline suggests its popular name - The Heart Nebula. IC 1805 is located about 7,500 light years away toward the constellation Cassiopeia.