Space
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Space Station Silhouette on the Moon
What's that unusual spot on the Moon? It's the International Space Station. Using precise timing, the Earth-orbiting space platform was photographed in front of a partially lit gibbous Moon last month.
The featured image was taken from Palo Alto, California, USA with an exposure time of only 1/667 of a second. In contrast, the duration of the transit of the ISS across the entire Moon was about half a second. A close inspection of this unusually crisp ISS silhouette will reveal the outlines of numerous solar panels and trusses.
The bright crater Tycho is visible on the lower left, as well as comparatively rough, light colored terrain known as highlands, and relatively smooth, dark colored areas known as maria. On-line tools can tell you when the International Space Station will be visible from your area.1 -
Wisps Surrounding the Horsehead Nebula
The famous Horsehead Nebula in Orion is not alone. A deep exposure shows that the dark familiar shaped indentation, visible just below center, is part of a vast complex of absorbing dust and glowing gas. To bring out details of the Horsehead's pasture, an amateur astronomer used a backyard telescope in Austria to accumulate and artistically combine 7.5 hours of images in the light of Hydrogen (red), Oxygen (green), and Sulfur (blue).
The resulting spectacular picture details an intricate tapestry of gaseous wisps and dust-laden filaments that were created and sculpted over eons by stellar winds and ancient supernovas. The Flame Nebula is visible just to the left of the Horsehead, while the bright star on the upper left is Alnilam, the central star in Orion's Belt.
The Horsehead Nebula lies 1,500 light years distant towards the constellation of Orion.2 -
A Scorpius Sky Spectacular
If Scorpius looked this good to the unaided eye, humans might remember it better. Scorpius more typically appears as a few bright stars in a well-known but rarely pointed out zodiacal constellation. To get a spectacular image like this, though, one needs a good camera, color filters, and a digital image processor. To bring out detail, the featured image not only involved long duration exposures taken in several colors, but one exposure in a very specific red color emitted by hydrogen.
The resulting image shows many breathtaking features. Vertically across the image left is part of the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy. Visible there are vast clouds of bright stars and long filaments of dark dust. Jutting out diagonally from the Milky Way in the image center are dark dust bands known as the Dark River. This river connects to several bright stars on the right that are part of Scorpius' head and claws, and include the bright star Antares. Above and right of Antares is an even brighter planet: Jupiter.
Numerous red emission nebulas and blue reflection nebulas are visible throughout the image. Scorpius appears prominently in southern skies after sunset during the middle of the year.0 -
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JustReadTheInstructions wrote: »Two rockets dropped tracers into the northern lights and the result was glorious
https://youtu.be/GwT-00aaZd0
This NASA-funded AZURE mission, which stands for Auroral Zone Upwelling Rocket Experiment, is one of a series of sounding rocket missions launching over the next two years as part of an international collaboration known as The Grand Challenge Initiative – Cusp. The goal of these flights is to study the region where Earth's magnetic field lines bend down into the atmosphere, and particles from space mix with those from the planet.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/04/nasa-just-launched-a-stunning-mission-to-study-the-northern-lights/
Leave it to NASA to mess up Northern Lights for everyone.
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I know nothing about space but I really enjoy the pics you all post here.1
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JustReadTheInstructions wrote: »JustReadTheInstructions wrote: »Two rockets dropped tracers into the northern lights and the result was glorioushttps://youtu.be/GwT-00aaZd0
This NASA-funded AZURE mission, which stands for Auroral Zone Upwelling Rocket Experiment, is one of a series of sounding rocket missions launching over the next two years as part of an international collaboration known as The Grand Challenge Initiative – Cusp. The goal of these flights is to study the region where Earth's magnetic field lines bend down into the atmosphere, and particles from space mix with those from the planet.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/04/nasa-just-launched-a-stunning-mission-to-study-the-northern-lights/
Leave it to NASA to mess up Northern Lights for everyone.
DID YOU SEE THE VIDEO - IT WAS SO COOL
Looked hot to me.1 -
Moon Occults Saturn
Sometimes Saturn disappears. It doesn't really go away, though, it just disappears from view when our Moon moves in front. Such a Saturnian eclipse was visible along a small swath of Earth -- from Brazil to Sri Lanka -- near the end of last month.
The featured color image is a digital fusion of the clearest images captured by successive videos of the event taken in red, green, and blue, and taken separately for Saturn and the comparative bright Moon. The exposures were taken from South Africa just before occultation -- and also just before sunrise. When Saturn re-appeared on the other side of the Moon almost two hours later, the Sun had risen.
This year, eclipses of Saturn by the Moon occur almost monthly, but, unfortunately, are visible only to those with the right location and with clear and dark skies.3 -
Black Hole Picture Revealed for the First Time
Astronomers announced on Wednesday that at last they had seen the unseeable: a black hole, a cosmic abyss so deep and dense that not even light can escape it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/science/black-hole-picture.html5 -
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JustReadTheInstructions wrote: »Two rockets dropped tracers into the northern lights and the result was glorioushttps://youtu.be/GwT-00aaZd0
This NASA-funded AZURE mission, which stands for Auroral Zone Upwelling Rocket Experiment, is one of a series of sounding rocket missions launching over the next two years as part of an international collaboration known as The Grand Challenge Initiative – Cusp. The goal of these flights is to study the region where Earth's magnetic field lines bend down into the atmosphere, and particles from space mix with those from the planet.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/04/nasa-just-launched-a-stunning-mission-to-study-the-northern-lights/
AZURE Vapor Tracers over Norway
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The Double Cluster
A lovely starfield in the heroic northern constellation Perseus holds this famous pair of open or galactic star clusters, h and Chi Persei. Also cataloged as NGC 869 (right) and NGC 884, both clusters are about 7,000 light-years away and contain stars much younger and hotter than the Sun.
Separated by only a few hundred light-years, the clusters' ages based on their individual stars are similar - evidence that they were likely a product of the same star-forming region. Always a rewarding sight in binoculars, the Double Cluster is even visible to the unaided eye from dark locations. Star colors (and spikes) are enhanced in this beautiful, wide field, telescopic image.1 -
JustReadTheInstructions wrote: »At 2:45pm EST the Israeli satellite Beresheet will be landing on the moon and you can watch live
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMdUcchBYRA&fbclid=IwAR3i-dWVSK4i8uRuoImSqqZxqvWl1udeZ0gjJ-8xxIUbMYi0oykwino_HKg
If Beresheet succeeds, Israel will join an exclusive moon-landing club.
Israel's Beresheet lunar lander captured this view of the moon in early April from a distance of 341 miles (550 kilometers).
If Beresheet succeeds, Israel will become just the fourth nation to land a spacecraft softly on the moon, following the Soviet Union, the United States and China.
Beresheet is currently orbiting the moon and remains on an "excellent" track, said its operators, the nonprofit group SpaceIL and the company Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI).0 -
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Enhanced: The Dolphin Cloud on Jupiter
Do you see the dolphin-shaped cloud on Jupiter? The cloud was visible last year during perijove 16, the sixteenth time that NASA's robotic spacecraft Juno passed near Jupiter since it arrived in mid-2016. During each perijove, Juno passes near a slightly different part of Jupiter's cloud tops.
The dolphin shape may be surprising but is not scientifically significant -- clouds on Jupiter and Earth are constantly shifting and can temporarily mimic many familiar shapes. The cloud appears in Jupiter's South Temperate Belt (STB), a band of dark and dropping clouds that rings the planet and also contains Oval BA, dubbed Red Spot Jr.
The featured image was digitally processed to enhance color and contrast. Juno's next swoop near Jupiter -- perijove 20 -- will occur on late May.1 -
JustReadTheInstructions wrote: »...Did not land successfully
Israel's Moon probe snaps a final photo before crashing
Unfortunately, during the approach, the engine stopped. Mission control managed to bring it back online after performing a system reset, but the probe had already lost too much altitude to shed the excessive speed. When it contacted the surface, it was traveling at about 300MPH vertically, according to the final telemetry values.
Minutes before that happened, it snapped the a selfie with the rapidly approaching Moon in the background.JustReadTheInstructions wrote: »Beresheet selfies ~20Km from the landing
Shortly after that, it snapped the much closer photo at top.
Other than the high-speed crash, SpaceIL's attempt was actually pretty successful. It's only the fourth nation to put a spacecraft on the Moon -- even in pieces -- after the US, former Soviet Union and China. It managed to do that with a mission cost of just $100 million, a tiny percentage of any previous effort.
The company said that it's encouraged by the first effort and plans to build another Beresheet lander to "complete the mission."
https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/14/beresheet-moon-probe-final-image-the-big-picture/
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In the Vicinity of the Cone Nebula
Strange shapes and textures can be found in neighborhood of the Cone Nebula. The unusual shapes originate from fine interstellar dust reacting in complex ways with the energetic light and hot gas being expelled by the young stars. The brightest star on the right of the featured picture is S Mon, while the region just below it has been nicknamed the Fox Fur Nebula for its color and structure.
The blue glow directly surrounding S Mon results from reflection, where neighboring dust reflects light from the bright star. The red glow that encompasses the whole region results not only from dust reflection but also emission from hydrogen gas ionized by starlight. S Mon is part of a young open cluster of stars named NGC 2264, located about 2500 light years away toward the constellation of the Unicorn (Monoceros).
Even though it points right at S Mon, details of the origin of the mysterious geometric Cone Nebula, visible on the far left, remain a mystery.1 -
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Messier 81
One of the brightest galaxies in planet Earth's sky is similar in size to our Milky Way Galaxy: big, beautiful Messier 81. Also known as NGC 3031 or Bode's galaxy for its 18th century discoverer, this grand spiral can be found toward the northern constellation of Ursa Major, the Great Bear.
The detailed telescopic view reveals M81's bright yellow nucleus, blue spiral arms, pink starforming regions, and sweeping cosmic dust lanes. Some dust lanes actually run through the galactic disk (left of center), contrary to other prominent spiral features though. The errant dust lanes may be the lingering result of a close encounter between M81 and its smaller companion galaxy, M82.
Scrutiny of variable stars in M81 has yielded one of the best determined distances for an external galaxy -- 11.8 million light-years.1 -
JustReadTheInstructions wrote: »The center core of Falcon heavy did not make it home
The octograbber not designed for center cores and rough seas caused it to fall off the droneship.
Until they can figure out how to land rockets on land I'm not sure it will work out. The ocean can be a cold harsh mistress. But I am happy they are having success which seems to happen more than failure. I haven't kept score. Luckily Space X has a nice website for all its rockets info. Some people, around here, I'm sure already know this, even if they kept it to themselves....
SpaceX Stats and next rocket launch. The CRS-17 launches in less than 8 days, FYI for anyone who wants to watch rockets, one of the wonders of the world.
https://www.spacexstats.xyz/
In case any of you wonder why the Ocean.
So. Why Did SpaceX Land a Rocket on a Barge?
Using the floating barge in Florida as an example, all launches from Florida head East over the Atlantic Ocean; a barge in the sea reduces the travel distance back to Earth to perform a landing, as the rocket doesn’t have to travel as far.
So for more ambitious launches, SpaceX can’t return its first stage of the rocket to land. “For half our missions, we will need to land out to sea,” said Musk in a press conference after the launch. “Anything beyond Earth is likely to need to land on the ship.”
SpaceX eventually hopes to have all rockets land on solid ground after launch, which would be similar to what they have accomplished with the Grasshopper rocket. However, according to American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Aerospace Engineer Paul Huter, “landing something that was moving at thousands of miles an hour pretty much straight up is a far cry from what Grasshopper does with its small ‘jumps’ into the air.”
https://futurism.com/spacex-land-rocket-barge1 -
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JustReadTheInstructions wrote: »I mean, they landed the other two boosters on land. They do it sometimes. It just makes more sense to use the droneship for some launches. And some launch bases wouldn't allow them to land the booster back on base. How dare they call Of Course I Still Love You a barge!
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The Leo Trio
This group is popular in the northern spring. Famous as the Leo Triplet, the three magnificent galaxies gather in one field of view. Crowd pleasers when imaged with even modest telescopes, they can be introduced individually as NGC 3628 (left), M66 (bottom right), and M65 (top).
All three are large spiral galaxies but they tend to look dissimilar because their galactic disks are tilted at different angles to our line of sight. NGC 3628, also known as the Hamburger Galaxy, is temptingly seen edge-on, with obscuring dust lanes cutting across its puffy galactic plane. The disks of M66 and M65 are both inclined enough to show off their spiral structure.
Gravitational interactions between galaxies in the group have left telltale signs, including the tidal tails and warped, inflated disk of NGC 3628 and the drawn out spiral arms of M66. This gorgeous view of the region spans almost two degrees (four full moons) on the sky.
The field covers about a million light-years at the trio's estimated distance of 30 million light-years. Of course the spiky foreground stars lie within our own Milky Way.1 -
Spiral Meteor through the Heart Nebula
What is this meteor doing? Dynamically, the unusually short and asymmetric train may indicate that the sand-sized grain at the center of the glow is momentarily spinning as it ablates, causing its path to be slightly spiral. Geographically, the meteor appears to be going through the Heart Nebula, although really it is in Earth's atmosphere and so is about one quadrillion times closer.
Taken last month on the night of the peak, this meteor is likely from the Perseid meteor shower. The Perseids radiant, in the constellation of Perseus, is off the frame to the upper right, toward the direction that the meteor streak is pointing. The Heart Nebula was imaged in 18 one-minute exposures, of which the unusual meteor streak appeared on just one. The meteor train is multicolored as its glow emanates from different elements in the heated gas.1 -
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