Space

vikinglander

HAVE A NICE ETERNITY!

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Crew Autonomous Scheduling Test (CAST)



Astronaut Peggy Whitson is photographed sitting in front of the Cupola windows during the final Crew Autonomous Scheduling Test (CAST) session. The CAST investigation analyzes whether crews can develop plans in a reasonable period of time with appropriate input, whether proximity of planners to the planned operations increases efficiency, and if crew members are more satisfied when given a role in plan development.

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Earth observation taken by the Expedition 52 crew



The aurora and the night sky above Earth’s atmosphere are pictured from the space station. A portion of the station’s solar arrays and a pair of nitrogen/oxygen recharge system tanks are pictured in the foreground.

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Hubble Displays a Dwarf Spiral Galaxy



Dwarf galaxy NGC 5949 sits at a distance of around 44 million light-years from us, placing it within the Milky Way’s cosmic neighborhood.

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Coronal Hole Faces Earth



A substantial coronal hole rotated into a position where it is facing Earth (Aug. 9-11, 2017). Coronal holes are areas of open magnetic field that spew out charged particles as solar wind that spreads into space. If that solar wind interacts with our own magnetosphere it can generate aurora.

In this view of the sun in extreme ultraviolet light, the coronal hole appears as the dark stretch near the center of the sun. It was the most distinctive feature on the sun over the past week. Movies are available at https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA21874

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Cloudy Waves (False Color)



Clouds on Saturn take on the appearance of strokes from a cosmic brush thanks to the wavy way that fluids interact in Saturn's atmosphere. Neighboring bands of clouds move at different speeds and directions depending on their latitudes. This generates turbulence where bands meet and leads to the wavy structure along the interfaces. Saturn's upper atmosphere generates the faint haze seen along the limb of the planet in this image. This false color view is centered on 46 degrees north latitude on Saturn.

The images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on May 18, 2017 using a combination of spectral filters which preferentially admit wavelengths of near-infrared light. The image filter centered at 727 nanometers was used for red in this image; the filter centered at 750 nanometers was used for blue. (The green color channel was simulated using an average of the two filters.)

The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 750,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers) from Saturn. Image scale is about 4 miles (7 kilometers) per pixel.

SomebodyWakeUpHIcks

cee134 wrote: »

Crew Autonomous Scheduling Test (CAST)



Astronaut Peggy Whitson is photographed sitting in front of the Cupola windows during the final Crew Autonomous Scheduling Test (CAST) session. The CAST investigation analyzes whether crews can develop plans in a reasonable period of time with appropriate input, whether proximity of planners to the planned operations increases efficiency, and if crew members are more satisfied when given a role in plan development.

That's a lot of velcro

cee134

A Starburst with the Prospect of Gravitational Waves



More than a hundred years after Swift’s discovery of the "starburst" galaxy IC 10, astronomers are studying IC 10 with the most powerful telescopes of the 21st century.

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Clouds Sailing Overhead on Mars, Unenhanced



Wispy clouds float across the Martian sky in this accelerated sequence of images from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover. The rover's Navigation Camera (Navcam) took these eight images over a span of four minutes early in the morning of the mission's 1,758th Martian day, or sol (July 17, 2017), aiming nearly straight overhead. This sequence uses raw images, which include a bright ring around the center of the frame that is an artifact of sunlight striking the camera lens even though the Sun is not in the shot. A processed version removing that artifact and emphasizing changes between images is also available.

The clouds resemble Earth's cirrus clouds, which are ice crystals at high altitudes. These Martian clouds are likely composed of crystals of water ice that condense onto dust grains in the cold Martian atmosphere. Cirrus wisps appear as ice crystals fall and evaporate in patterns known as "fall streaks" or "mare's tails." Such patterns have been seen before at high latitudes on Mars, for instance by the Phoenix Mars Lander in 2008, and seasonally nearer the equator, for instance by the Opportunity rover. However, Curiosity has not previously observed such clouds so clearly visible from the rover's study area about five degrees south of the equator.

The Hubble Space Telescope and spacecraft orbiting Mars have observed a band of clouds to appear near the Martian equator around the time of the Martian year when the planet is farthest from the Sun. With a more elliptical orbit than Earth's, Mars experiences more annual variation than Earth in its distance from the Sun. The most distant point in an orbit around the Sun is called the aphelion.

The near-equatorial Martian cloud pattern observed at that time of year is called the "aphelion cloud belt." These new images from Curiosity were taken about two months before aphelion, but the morning clouds observed may be an early stage of the aphelion cloud belt.

An animation is available at https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA21842

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Space Station Flight Over the Bahamas



One of the most recognizable points on the Earth for astronauts to photograph is the Bahamas. Randy Bresnik of NASA shared this Aug. 13 photo from the International Space Station, saying, "The stunning Bahamas were a real treat for us. The vivid turquoise of the water over the reef was absolutely captivating."

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Jupiter: A New Point of View



This striking Jovian vista was created by citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran using data from the JunoCam imager on NASA’s Juno spacecraft.

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thesunmoonandstars wrote: »

Has anyone bought the limited edition solar eclipse stamps that change with body heat from usps to honor the upcoming eclipse? Are they as cool as look? Is anyone going to eat moon pies whilst watching the eclipse?

I didn't plan on it, but I will now.

cee134

The shadow of the moon falls on Earth as seen from the International Space Station, 230 miles above the planet, during a total solar eclipse at about 4:50 a.m. EST March 29.

This digital photo was taken by the Expedition 12 crew, who are wrapping up a six-month mission on the ISS. Visible near the shadow are portions of Cyprus in the Mediterranean Sea and the coast of Turkey.

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(Aug. 21, 2017) --- As millions of people across the United States experienced a total eclipse as the umbra, or moon’s shadow passed over them, only six people witnessed the umbra from space.

Viewing the eclipse from orbit were NASA’s Randy Bresnik, Jack Fischer and Peggy Whitson, ESA (European Space Agency’s) Paolo Nespoli, and Roscosmos’ Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and Sergey Ryazanskiy.

The space station crossed the path of the eclipse three times as it orbited above the continental United States at an altitude of 250 miles.

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Watching the Aurora From Orbit




Expedition 52 Flight Engineer Jack Fischer of NASA shared photos and time-lapse video of a glowing green aurora seen from his vantage point 250 miles up, aboard the International Space Station. This aurora photo was taken on June 26, 2017.

ninerbuff

Any pics of a magnatar exploding?

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
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Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

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Hubble Uses Gravitational Lens to Capture Disk Galaxy




By combining the power of a "natural lens" in space with the capability of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers made a surprising discovery—the first example of a compact yet massive, fast-spinning, disk-shaped galaxy that stopped making stars only a few billion years after the big bang.

LittleLionHeart1

Monkey_Business wrote: »

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A World of Snowy Dunes on Mars




It was spring in the Northern hemisphere when this image was taken on May 21, 2017, by the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Over the winter, snow and ice have inexorably covered the dunes. Unlike on Earth, this snow and ice is carbon dioxide, better known to us as dry ice.

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NASA's CloudSat Sees Tropical Storm Harvey in 3D



Tropical Storm Harvey on Aug. 26, 2017, at 2:45 p.m. CDT (19:45 UTC) as the storm was nearly stationary over south Texas.

At that time, Harvey contained estimated maximum sustained winds of 69 miles per hour (60 knots). CloudSat flew over Harvey northeast of the storm center through an area of moderate to heavy rainfall in the outer rainbands. As seen in the image and animation, large amounts of liquid and ice water (denoted by the red and pink colors) are visible beneath the cloud tops.

The lack of a radar signal (attenuation) beneath the melting layer (located around 3 miles, or 5 kilometers, above ground) can be seen in the heavier areas of precipitation, since CloudSat's cloud profiling radar (CPR) signal dampens when precipitation particles are larger than 0.12 inches (3 millimeters) in size. Smaller cumulus and cumulonimbus clouds are seen north of the area of moderate to heavy precipitation. The cirrus canopy (anvil clouds) extends outward from the storm system (shown in blue and green colors).

An animation is available at https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA17392