Thursday, October 11, 2012
NASA Suomi NPP Image: Aurora Borealis over Canada
CREDIT: NASA Earth Observatory
When a powerful solar flare, known as a coronal mass ejection, hit Earth's magnetic field on Oct. 8, people living in North America's northern latitudes were treated to a spectacular light show.
This visible light image from the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) satellite shows the northern lights swirling across Canada's Quebec and Ontario provinces.
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| Suomi NPP Satellite |
The aurora borealis, also called the northern lights, forms when charged particles from the sun collide with particles in Earth's magnetic field.
The aurora is typically limited to high northern latitudes because the magnetic field sweeps the charged particles toward the poles. But when large solar flares bombard the Earth, the aurora can dip south to lower latitudes.
NASA MARS Rover Curiosity: Sample Too Big for the Sieve
After a full-scoop sample had been vibrated over the sieve, this held-back portion was returned to the scoop to be accessible for inspection by the rover's Mast Camera.
The decontamination exercise involved scooping some soil, shaking it thoroughly inside the sample-processing chambers to scrub the internal surfaces, putting it through a sieve, dividing it into the appropriate portions and then discarding the sample.
This image was taken by Curiosity's right Mast Camera (Mastcam-100) on Oct. 10, 2012, the 64th sol, or Martian day, of operations.
Scientists white-balanced the color in this view to show the Martian scene as it would appear under the lighting conditions we have on Earth.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
ESA Envisat Image: Indonesian Volcanic Islands
All three islands are volcanoes, part of the Sunda Arc.
This image is a compilation of three passes by Envisat on June 20, Aug. 19 and Dec. 17, 2011.
CREDIT: European Space Agency
The tropical islands of Bali, Lombok and Sumbawa tower above the waves in this image from the European Space Agency's Envisat satellite.
The island on the west, or left side of the picture, is Bali, one of Indonesia's main tourist destinations.
The island's central mountains include peaks that reach 9,800 feet (3,000 meters), including an active volcano on the right side of the island.
The central island is Lombok. To the east is Sumbawa island, dominated by mountainous terrain and home to Mount Tambora, an active volcano.
Mount Tambora's last major eruption was in 1815, killing more than 70,000 people and cooling much of the Northern Hemisphere, causing "the year without a summer."
The eruption is one of the biggest and deadliest in recorded history.
As the plate descends into Earth's mantle, fluids from the crust move into the mantle rock, letting it melt more easily, and the melted rock rises upwards like lava lamp blobs.
These lava blobs punch through the crust, forming volcanoes.
ROCOSMOS Soyuz: A Star is launched
The former wife of composer Andrew Lloyd Weber has confirmed she will be travelling to the International Space Station with the Russian Space Agency, ROSCOSMOS.
Reports in the US said she had ‘bumped’ an astronaut off the next flight after outbidding Nasa to secure her seat as the next space tourist.
The 52-year-old singer refused to say how much she paid for her place aboard the Soyuz spacecraft, but said she was getting sponsorship.
A US TV station said she had paid $51million (around £31.8million) – the highest sum ever offered for a ticket.
Miss Brightman will begin training for the mission in 2014 after a 12-month world tour and will lift off later that year for two weeks orbiting Earth.
She said: ‘I am more excited about this than I have been about anything I have done. ‘Most of my life I have felt an incredible desire to take the journey to space that I have now begun. This is beyond my wildest dreams.'
She has already undergone physical and psychological tests in Moscow to prove she is fit enough for the challenge. ‘I was prodded and poked and a lot of blood was taken,’ she said.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
GALEX Image of the Helix Nebula: Bigger in Death than Life
In death, the star's dusty outer layers are unraveling into space, glowing from the intense ultraviolet radiation being pumped out by the hot stellar core.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.
This object, called the Helix nebula, lies 650 light-years away in the constellation of Aquarius.
Also known as NGC 7293, it is a typical example of a class of objects called a planetary nebulae.
Discovered in the 18th century, these cosmic works of art were erroneously named for their resemblance to gas-giant planets.
Planetary nebulae are actually the remains of stars that once looked a lot like our sun. These stars spend most of their lives turning hydrogen into helium in massive runaway nuclear fusion reactions in their cores.
In fact, this process of fusion provides all the light and heat that we get from our sun. Our sun will blossom into a planetary nebula when it dies in about five billion years.
When the hydrogen fuel for the fusion reaction runs out, the star turns to helium for a fuel source, burning it into an even heavier mix of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen.
Eventually, the helium will also be exhausted, and the star dies, puffing off its outer gaseous layers and leaving behind the tiny, hot, dense core, called a white dwarf.
The white dwarf is about the size of Earth, but has a mass very close to that of the original star; in fact, a teaspoon of a white dwarf would weigh as much as a few elephants!
The intense ultraviolet radiation from the white dwarf heats up the expelled layers of gas, which shine brightly in the infrared.
GALEX has picked out the ultraviolet light pouring out of this system, shown throughout the nebula in blue, while Spitzer has snagged the detailed infrared signature of the dust and gas in red, yellow and green.
Where red Spitzer and blue GALEX data combine in the middle, the nebula appears pink. A portion of the extended field beyond the nebula, which was not observed by Spitzer, is from NASA's all-sky Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE).
The white dwarf star itself is a tiny white pinprick right at the center of the nebula.
NASA Saturn Cassini Solstice Mission - Interactive
The weirdest thing about them is that they actually sound like a Theremin with it's warbles and whoosh sounds, like a ‘50s movies about space.
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