Space

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Soyuz Lifts Off to Bring New Crew to Space Station



The Soyuz MS-09 rocket is launched with Soyuz Commander Sergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos and astronauts Serena Auñón-Chancellor of NASA and Alexander Gerst of ESA on June 6, 2018.

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Hubble’s Galaxy Cluster Cornucopia



The swirling spiral to the lower left of the frame is far from the most interesting spectacle here — behind it sits a galaxy cluster.

LittleLionHeart1

Here's something very "Lost In Spacey" and fun. https://youtu.be/fJrw6imp7f8

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Artist's Concept of Jupiter Lightning



This artist's concept of lightning distribution in Jupiter's northern hemisphere incorporates a JunoCam image with artistic embellishments. Data from NASA's Juno mission indicates that most of the lightning activity on Jupiter is near its poles.

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Hubble Uncovers Evidence of Farthest Planet Forming From its Star



Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have found compelling evidence of a planet forming 7.5 billion miles away from its star, a finding that may challenge current theories about planet formation. Of the almost 900 planets outside our solar system that have been confirmed to date, this is the first to be found at such a great distance from its star. The suspected planet is orbiting the diminutive red dwarf TW Hydrae, a popular astronomy target located 176 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Hydra the Sea Serpent.

alancorey1979

M5 taken with my 6” RC and DSLR

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Rising through a billowing cloud of smoke, a long time ago from a planet very very close by, this Delta II rocket left Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's launch pad 17-B at 12:05 pm EDT on June 11, 2008. Snug in the payload section was GLAST, the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope. GLAST's detector technology was developed for use in terrestrial particle accelerators.

So from orbit, GLAST can detect gamma-rays from extreme environments above the Earth and across the distant Universe, including supermassive black holes at the centers of distant active galaxies, and the sources of powerful gamma-ray bursts. Those formidable cosmic accelerators achieve energies not attainable in earthbound laboratories.

Now known as the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, on the 10 year anniversary of its launch, let the Fermi Science Playoffs begin.

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The Cat's Eye Nebula from Hubble



To some, it may look like a cat's eye. The alluring Cat's Eye nebula, however, lies three thousand light-years from Earth across interstellar space. A classic planetary nebula, the Cat's Eye (NGC 6543) represents a final, brief yet glorious phase in the life of a sun-like star.

This nebula's dying central star may have produced the simple, outer pattern of dusty concentric shells by shrugging off outer layers in a series of regular convulsions. But the formation of the beautiful, more complex inner structures is not well understood.

Seen so clearly in this digitally sharpened Hubble Space Telescope image, the truly cosmic eye is over half a light-year across. Of course, gazing into this Cat's Eye, astronomers may well be seeing the fate of our sun, destined to enter its own planetary nebula phase of evolution ... in about 5 billion years.

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Giant, bright coronal loops trace out the magnetic field lines above an active region from June 4-6, 2018. The wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light shown here is emitted by ionized iron travelling along the field lines, super-heated to approximately 1 million degrees K.

Coronal loops were not seen in this level of detail until the Solar Dynamics Observatory was launched in 2010 and came online, giving solar scientists new data with which to study the Sun and its processes.

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History of Hubble Space Telescope (HST)



This is a color Hubble Space Telescope (HST) heritage image of supernova remnant N49, a neighboring galaxy, that was taken with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Color filters were used to sample light emitted by sulfur, oxygen, and hydrogen.

The color image was superimposed on a black and white image of stars in the same field also taken with Hubble. Resembling a fireworks display, these delicate filaments are actually sheets of debris from a stellar explosion.

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This image captures the intensity of the jets and vortices in Jupiter's North North Temperate Belt. NASA's Juno spacecraft took this color-enhanced image at 10:31 p.m. PDT on May 23, 2018 (1:31 a.m. EDT on May 24), as Juno performed its 13th close flyby of Jupiter. At the time, the spacecraft was about 4,900 miles (7,900 kilometers) from the tops of the clouds of the gas giant planet at a northern latitude of about 41 degrees.

The view is oriented with south on Jupiter toward upper left and north toward lower right. The North North Temperate Belt is the prominent reddish-orange band left of center. It rotates in the same direction as the planet and is predominantly cyclonic, which in the northern hemisphere means its features spin in a counter-clockwise direction. Within the belt are two gray-colored anticyclones. To the left of the belt is a brighter band (the North North Temperate Zone) with high clouds whose vertical relief is accentuated by the low angle of sunlight near the terminator.

These clouds are likely made of ammonia-ice crystals, or possibly a combination of ammonia ice and water. Although the region as a whole appears chaotic, there is an alternating pattern of rotating, lighter-colored features on the zone's north and south sides. Scientists think the large-scale dark regions are places where the clouds are deeper, based on infrared observations made at the same time by Juno's JIRAM experiment and Earth-based supporting observations.

Those observations show warmer, and thus deeper, thermal emission from these regions. To the right of the bright zone, and farther north on the planet, Jupiter's striking banded structure becomes less evident and a region of individual cyclones can be seen, interspersed with smaller, darker anticyclones.

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Shades of Martian Darkness



Science operations for NASA's Opportunity rover have been temporarily suspended as it waits out a dust storm on Mars. This series of images shows simulated views of a darkening Martian sky blotting out the Sun from NASA's Opportunity rover's point of view,.

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This image from NASA's Mars Odyssey shows part of a crater located north of Hecates Tholus. The radial grooves in the ejecta blanket are still visible around the crater rim.

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Waves in the rings of Saturn as seen by the Cassini probe.

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"Space was our office yesterday. #EVA51," said International Space Station astronaut Ricky Arnold on Friday.

LiftingRiot

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Blue Dune on Mars



Sand dunes often accumulate in the floors of craters. In this region of Lyot Crater, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) shows a field of classic barchan dunes on Jan. 24, 2018.

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Saturn’s moon Pan, so close to the planet that it makes it’s complete orbit in 14hrs. It has a diameter of only 20mi.

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A small crystal ball seems to hold a whole galaxy in this creative snapshot. Of course, the galaxy is our own Milky Way. Its luminous central bulge marked by rifts of interstellar dust spans thousands of light-years. On this long southern hemisphere night it filled dark Chilean skies over Paranal Observatory.

The single exposure image did not require a Very Large Telescope, though. Experiments with a digital camera on a tripod and crystal ball perched on a handrail outside the Paranal Residencia produced the evocative, cosmic marble portrait of our home galaxy.

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Saturn's moon Enceladus.
Jets of gas and icy particles erupt from the south pole reaching hundreds of miles into space.
This activity is thought to originate from the moon's subsurface ocean of salty liquid water.