Space

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  • cee134
    cee134 Posts: 33,711 Member
    Hubble’s Majestic Spiral in Pegasus

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    This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows a spiral galaxy known as NGC 7331.
  • cee134
    cee134 Posts: 33,711 Member
    For the first time ever, scientists say they may have discovered planets beyond our own Milky Way galaxy.

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    https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/first-planets-beyond-milky-way-may-have-been-discovered-ncna844861
  • cee134
    cee134 Posts: 33,711 Member
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    In this view, Saturn's icy moon Rhea passes in front of Titan as seen by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Some of the differences between the two large moons are readily apparent. While Rhea is a heavily-cratered, airless world, Titan's nitrogen-rich atmosphere is even thicker than Earth's.

    This natural color image was taken in visible light with the Cassini narrow-angle camera on Nov. 19, 2009, at a distance of approximately 713,300 miles (1,148,000 kilometers) from Rhea. The Cassini spacecraft ended its mission on Sept. 15, 2017.
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    edited February 2018
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  • cee134
    cee134 Posts: 33,711 Member
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    Intricate gullies have formed on the northern wall of this impact crater located in the Terra Cimmeria region in this image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). This crater may have formed in a region rich in ground water.

    This ground water likely flowed down the wall, eventually eroding numerous gullies while carrying sediments to form fan deposits. Ultimately the water likely infiltrated and froze beneath the surface. Other hypotheses say gullies form through carbon dioxide frost avalanches that we can see today. What about this chain of pits snaking their way downhill?

    After material was transported, subsurface voids may have formed, removing support for the overlying material. The collapse of the surface into the cavities below likely resulted in the pits and troughs, perhaps beginning a new cycle of gully formation.
  • cee134
    cee134 Posts: 33,711 Member
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    (Feb. 6, 2018) --- The Caspian Sea is pictured below the International Space Station as it orbited 253 miles above Earth's surface. The station's robotic arm (left) and solar arrays (right) are seen in the foreground.
  • anl90
    anl90 Posts: 928 Member
    The thought of outer space both terrifies and intrigues me. The idea of all that vast open nothingness freaks me out and gives me anxiety, while the thought of other life out there interests me.
  • cee134
    cee134 Posts: 33,711 Member
    anl90 wrote: »
    The thought of outer space both terrifies and intrigues me. The idea of all that vast open nothingness freaks me out and gives me anxiety, while the thought of other life out there interests me.

    The good news is this as far as nothingness goes:

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    The bad news is that if life exists out there (which is probable) then it exists so far away we will never be able to travel that far with what we know about physics today. Not to mention if we could even see that far, we would be seeing millions of years in the past and would have no idea what would happen for millions of years.
  • cee134
    cee134 Posts: 33,711 Member
    A View of the Winter Olympics From Above

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    Since the Winter Olympics were first held in 1924, they only have been hosted twice in Asia, both times in Japan. This year the games will find a new home in South Korea, in the northeastern cities of Pyeongchang and Gangneung, visible in this natural-color image acquired on Jan. 26, 2018.
  • cee134
    cee134 Posts: 33,711 Member
    December 2006: Constructing the Space Station

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    NASA astronaut Robert Curbeam works on the International Space Station's S1 truss during the space shuttle Discovery's STS-116 mission in Dec. 2006.
  • cee134
    cee134 Posts: 33,711 Member
    Where is Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster with Starman?

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    http://www.whereisroadster.com/index.html
  • cee134
    cee134 Posts: 33,711 Member
    A Lunar Tribute to Former NASA Chief Exploration Scientist

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    Lunar crater is named after NASA’s former chief exploration scientist, Michael Wargo. Wargo Crater is an 8.6-mile (13.8 km) diameter impact crater sitting on the northwest edge of Joule T crater, on the far side of the Moon. Wargo worked at NASA from 1991 until his death in 2013.
  • cee134
    cee134 Posts: 33,711 Member
    edited February 2018
    Today is the New Moon however

    A rare black moon is set to return to our skies this month.

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    There is no single accepted definition of a Black Moon. One definition is:

    No Full Moon in February: About once every 20 years, February does not have a Full Moon. Instead, there are two Full Moons in January and March.

    The next Black Moon by this definition will occur in 2018, while the last one was in 1999. Because of time zone differences, these Black Moons may not happen all over the world.
  • cee134
    cee134 Posts: 33,711 Member
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    This is an image of the Cartwheel Galaxy taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
  • dwrightlaw
    dwrightlaw Posts: 804 Member
    cee134 wrote: »
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    This is an image of the Cartwheel Galaxy taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

    Very cool
  • cee134
    cee134 Posts: 33,711 Member
    Jupiter’s Swirling Cloud Formations

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    See swirling cloud formations in the northern area of Jupiter's north temperate belt in this new view taken by NASA’s Juno spacecraft.
  • cee134
    cee134 Posts: 33,711 Member
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    The sun's only visible active region sputtered and spurted and eventually unleashed a small (C-class) flare (Feb. 7, 2018). The flare appears as a brief, bright flash about mid-way through the half-day clip.

    Normally, we do not pay much attention to flares this small, but it was just about the only real solar activity over the past week as the sun is slowly approaching its quiet period of the 11-year solar cycle. These images were taken in a wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light.
  • cee134
    cee134 Posts: 33,711 Member
    New Day for Longest-Working Mars Rover

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    NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity recorded the dawn of the rover's 4,999th Martian day, or sol, with its Panoramic Camera (Pancam) on Feb. 15, 2018, yielding this processed, approximately true-color scene.

    The view looks across Endeavour Crater, which is about 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter, from the inner slope of the crater's western rim. Opportunity has driven a little over 28.02 miles (45.1 kilometers) since it landed in the Meridiani Planum region of Mars in January, 2004, for what was planned as a 90-sol mission.

    A sol lasts about 40 minutes longer than an Earth day.

    This view combines three separate Pancam exposures taken through filters centered on wavelengths of 601 microns (red), 535 microns (green) and 482 microns (blue). It was processed at Texas A&M University to correct for some of the oversaturation and glare, though it still includes some artifacts from pointing a camera with a dusty lens at the Sun.

    The processing includes radiometric correction, interpolation to fill in gaps in the data caused by saturation due to Sun's brightness, and warping the red and blue images to undo the effects of time passing between each of the exposures through different filters.
  • cee134
    cee134 Posts: 33,711 Member
    edited February 2018
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    Saturn moon Enceladus spraying its famous geysers into space, with the gas giant's rings glowing in the background.

    The image, which was captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft in November 2009, shows the 314-mile-wide (505 kilometers).
  • cee134
    cee134 Posts: 33,711 Member
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    The rings have been a source of mystery since their discovery in 1610 by Galileo Galilei. There is not full agreement on how they formed, but among the possibilities are that they may have formed along with Saturn, or that they are debris of a former moon that strayed too close to the planet and was ripped apart.

    The rings are now shepherded by the gravity of some of the planet’s surviving moons. Of more than 60 known natural satellites, two of the most fascinating are also pictured in this image: Titan and Enceladus.

    At 5150 km across, Titan is 10 times larger than Enceladus, which measures just 505 km in diameter. Titan is seen as a disc because light from the distant Sun is being refracted through the moon’s dense atmosphere.

    Somewhere on Titan’s surface rests the Huygens probe. On 25 December 2004, Huygens detached from the Cassini mothership and, a few weeks later, parachuted through the dense atmosphere to return the first pictures of Titan’s rugged landscape of icy mountains.

    Although Enceladus is a smaller moon, it has as much character. The restless interior means that water constantly jets through cracks in the icy surface. In some images, these geysers can be glimpsed at the south pole.

    The image was taken on 10 June 2006 in red light with the Cassini spacecraft’s narrow-angle camera, and is orientated with north facing up. The spacecraft was some 3.9 million km from Enceladus and 5.3 million km from Titan.
  • cee134
    cee134 Posts: 33,711 Member
    Investigating Mars: Ius Chasma

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    The VIS image shows part of the western end of Ius Chasma. Both the north and south canyon walls are visible in this image. At the top of the frame paired faults have created a graben. On the southern face of the canyon, several linear faults parallel the graben. These faults are part of the tectonic formation of Valles Marineris.

    Landslides on both walls created deposits on the crater floor. The easiest to identify is the lobate margin at the right side of the images. Lobate margins and radial surface grooves are common features in low volume landslides. A landslide is a failure of slope due to gravity. They initiate due to several reasons. A lower layer of poorly cemented/resistant material may have been eroded, undermining the wall above which then collapses; earth quake seismic waves can cause the slope to collapse; and even an impact event near the canyon wall can cause collapse.

    As millions of tons of material fall and slide down slope a scalloped cavity forms at the upper part where the slope failure occurred. At the material speeds downhill it will pick up more of the underlying slope, increasing the volume of material entrained into the landslide. Whereas some landslides spread across the canyon floor forming lobate deposits, very large volume slope failures will completely fill the canyon floor in a large complex region of chaotic blocks.

    Ius Chasma is at the western end of Valles Marineris, south of Tithonium Chasma. Valles Marineris is over 4000 kilometers long, wider than the United States. Ius Chasma is almost 850 kilometers long (528 miles), 120 kilometers wide and over 8 kilometers deep. In comparison, the Grand Canyon in Arizona is about 175 kilometers long, 30 kilometers wide, and only 2 kilometers deep.

    The canyons of Valles Marineris were formed by extensive fracturing and pulling apart of the crust during the uplift of the vast Tharsis plateau. Landslides have enlarged the canyon walls and created deposits on the canyon floor. Weathering of the surface and influx of dust and sand have modified the canyon floor, both creating and modifying layered materials. There are many features that indicate flowing and standing water played a part in the chasma formation.

    The Odyssey spacecraft has spent over 15 years in orbit around Mars, circling the planet more than 71,000 times. It holds the record for longest working spacecraft at Mars. THEMIS, the IR/VIS camera system, has collected data for the entire mission and provides images covering all seasons and lighting conditions.
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  • cee134
    cee134 Posts: 33,711 Member
    @Timshel_ prepare for more "what are those lights in the sky?" Today!

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  • empresssue
    empresssue Posts: 2,978 Member
    cee134 wrote: »
    Investigating Mars: Ius Chasma

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    Initially, this looked like a space diaper.
  • princess7955
    princess7955 Posts: 1,277 Member
    At first glance, I thought this was another thread about relationships. ("I need space....") I am pleasantly surprised.
  • cee134
    cee134 Posts: 33,711 Member
    Time-lapse Sequence of Jupiter’s South Pole

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    This series of images captures cloud patterns near Jupiter's south pole, looking up towards the planet’s equator.
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  • cee134
    cee134 Posts: 33,711 Member
    @cee134 speaking of Jupiter, do you remember how much longer that storm spot will be around? I thought 30 years or something but I'm too lazy to look it up.

    They don't know. Maybe 10 - 30 years. Maybe it comes back. Maybe something happens and it starts growing again.

    We can't even predict the weather on our own planet.