NASA: Speedy star

The Shocking Behavior of a Speedy Star 

 02/21/2014

Roguish runaway stars can have a big impact on their surroundings as they plunge through the Milky Way galaxy. Their high-speed encounters shock the galaxy, creating arcs, as seen in this newly released image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. In this case, the speedster star is known as Kappa Cassiopeiae, or HD 2905 to astronomers. It is a massive, hot supergiant moving at around 2.5 million mph relative to its neighbors (1,100 kilometers per second). But what really makes the star stand out in this image is the surrounding, streaky red glow of material in its path. Such structures are called bow shocks, and they can often be seen in front of the fastest, most massive stars in the galaxy. Bow shocks form where the magnetic fields and wind of particles flowing off a star collide with the diffuse, and usually invisible, gas and dust that fill the space between stars. How these shocks light up tells astronomers about the conditions around the star and in space. Slow-moving stars like our sun have bow shocks that are nearly invisible at all wavelengths of light, but fast stars like Kappa Cassiopeiae create shocks that can be seen by Spitzer’s infrared detectors.  

 

NASA: Crescent Moon Rising

Crescent Moon Rising and Earth's Atmosphere 

 

On Feb. 1, 2014, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata tweeted this view of a crescent moon rising and the cusp of Earth's atmosphere. Distinct colors are visible because the dominant gases and particles in each layer of the atmosphere act as prisms, filtering out certain colors of light.
> Follow @Astro_Wakata on Twitter
Image Credit: NASA

NASA: Center Renamed in Honor of Neil A. Armstrong

From NASA:

This photograph shows Neil Armstrong next to the X-15 rocket-powered aircraft after a research flight. President Barack Obama has signed HR 667, the congressional resolution that redesignates NASA's Hugh L. Dryden Flight Research Center as the Neil A. Armstrong Flight Research Center, into law. The resolution also names Dryden's Western Aeronautical Test Range as the Hugh L. Dryden Aeronautical Test Range. Both Hugh Dryden and Neil Armstrong are aerospace pioneers whose contributions are historic to NASA and the nation as a whole. NASA is developing a timeline to implement the name change.

Neil A. Armstrong was born Aug. 5, 1930, in Wapakoneta, Ohio. He earned an aeronautical engineering degree from Purdue University and a master's in aerospace engineering from the University of Southern California. He was a naval aviator from 1949 to 1952. During the Korean War he flew 78 combat missions. In 1955 he joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), NASA's predecessor, as a research pilot at Lewis Laboratory in Cleveland.

Armstrong later transferred to NACA's High Speed Flight Research Station at Edwards AFB, Calif., later named NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center. As a research project test pilot over the course of seven years at the center from 1955 through 1962, he was in the forefront of the development of many high-speed aircraft. He was one of only 12 pilots to fly the hypersonic X-15 as well as the first of 12 men to later walk on the moon. In all, he flew more than 200 different types of aircraft.
Image Credit: NASA

NASA: Ammonia Pump Removed - Next Spacewalk set

From NASA:

 

Astronaut Rick Mastracchio works outside the International Space Station during the first of a series of spacewalks to replace a degraded ammonia pump module.

Image Credit: NASA TV

 

Space Station Crew Removes Ammonia Pump; Next Spacewalk Set for Tuesday

Dec. 21, 2013

 

Expedition 38 Flight Engineers Rick Mastracchio and Mike Hopkins wrapped up a 5-hour, 28-minute spacewalk outside the International Space Station at 12:29 p.m. EST Saturday, completing the first in a series of excursions aimed at replacing a degraded ammonia pump module associated with one of the station's two external cooling loops that keeps both internal and external equipment cool.

  › View video of spacewalk highlights

A second spacewalk to install a replacement pump module, originally planned for Monday, is now scheduled for Tuesday.

The extra day will allow time for the crew to resize a spare spacesuit on the space station for use by Mastracchio. During repressurization of the station's airlock following the spacewalk, a spacesuit configuration issue put the suit Mastracchio was wearing in question for the next excursion.-- specifically whether water entered into the suit's sublimator inside the airlock. The flight control team at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston decided to switch to a backup suit for the next spacewalk....

More details - and video - here.
 

 

NASA: Anchored to Canadarm2

Anchored

Anchored to a Canadarm2 mobile foot restraint, NASA astronaut Steve Bowen participates in the STS-133 mission's second spacewalk as construction and maintenance continue on the International Space Station. During the six-hour, 14-minute spacewalk, Bowen and fellow astronaut Alvin Drew tackled a variety of tasks, including venting into space some remaining ammonia from a failed pump module they moved during the mission's first spacewalk.

Image Credit: NASA

NASA: City of Blinding Lights

("The more you see, the less you know
The less you find out as you go
I knew much more then than I do now")

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 04:14:41 -0600Today's wake up song was "City of Blinding Lights" by U2, suggested by Tim Kopra and played for the entire crew at 5:05 a.m. EST. The call was delayed slightly because of a poor communications signal.

Space shuttle Discovery's astronauts will enjoy some off-duty time today and field questions from reporters. Also, NASA Television will air video of launch from the Solid Rocket Booster Cameras.

(Source: NASA)

Questions with Edge....;)

NASA: Fountain

Fountain

Originally released May 30, 2007, this image is centered on a small cone on the side of one of Mars' giant shield volcanoes. The cone shows some layers of hard rock but most of it is made of relatively soft material. This appears to be an example of a "cinder" cone composed of pieces of lava thrown into the air during a small volcanic eruption.

Typically, such eruptions produce fountains of molten lava. Most of the lava would have cooled in this fountain, producing a loose pile of lava rocks. However, it appears that some pulses of the eruption allowed the lava to land without cooling much. These pieces were hot enough to weld together to make the hard layers seen today. The cone is about 2,300 x 3,600 feet, or 700 x 1,100 meters, in size, similar to many cinder cones on Earth.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

NASA

Hubbles Lagoon

Hubble's Lagoon

Like brush strokes on a canvas, ridges of color seem to flow across the Lagoon Nebula, a canvas nearly 3 light-years wide. The colors map emission from ionized gas in the nebula were recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys. Also known as M8, the nebula is a star-forming region in the constellation Sagittarius. Hubble's remarkably sharp, close-up view reveals undulating shapes sculpted by the energetic light and winds from the region's new born stars. Of course, the Lagoon Nebula is a popular target for earthbound skygazers, too.

Image Credit: NASA

Icy Triton

Icy Triton

Taken in 1989 by Voyager 2 during its flyby of the Neptune system, this is a global color mosaic of Triton. The color was synthesized by combining high-resolution images taken through orange, violet and ultraviolet filters; these images were displayed as red, green, and blue images and combined to create this color version.

With a radius about 22 percent smaller than Earth's moon, Triton is the largest satellite of Neptune and is one of the few bodies in the solar system known to have a nitrogen-dominated atmosphere. The others are Earth and Saturn's giant moon, Titan.

Triton is so cold that most of its nitrogen is condensed as frost, making it the only satellite in the solar system known to have a surface made mainly of nitrogen ice. The pinkish deposits constitute a vast south polar cap believed to contain methane ice, which would have reacted under sunlight to form pink or red compounds. The dark streaks overlying these pink ices are believed to be an icy and perhaps carbonaceous dust deposited from huge geyser-like plumes, some of which were found to be active during the Voyager 2 flyby.

The bluish-green band visible in this image extends all the way around Triton near the equator; it may consist of relatively fresh nitrogen frost deposits. The greenish areas includes what is called the cantaloupe terrain, whose origin is unknown, and a set of "cryovolcanic" landscapes apparently produced by icy-cold liquids (now frozen) erupted from Triton's interior.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/USGS

Ghostly Encounter

Ghostly Encounter

The surface of Saturn's moon Dione is rendered in crisp detail against a hazy, ghostly Titan. Visible in this image are hints of atmospheric banding around Titan's north pole.

The image was taken in visible blue light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on April 10, 2010. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.8 million kilometers (1.1 million miles) from Dione and 2.7 million kilometers (1.7 million miles) from Titan. Scale in the original image was 11 kilometers (7 miles) per pixel on Dione and 16 kilometers (10 miles) on Titan. The image has been magnified by a factor of 1.5 and contrast-enhanced to aid visibility.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

NASA: Seagull nebula

A Matter of Perspective

The Seagull nebula, seen in this infrared mosaic from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, draws its common name from it resemblance to a gull in flight. But it depends on your point of view. When the image is rotated 180 degrees it bears a passing resemblance to a galloping lizard -- or perhaps a dragon or a dinosaur. The image spans an area about seven times as wide as the full moon, and three times as high (3.55 by 1.37 degrees), straddling the border between the constellations Monoceros and Canis Major (the Big Dog). So you might say this lizard is running with the Big Dog, while the gull is flying from it.

Astronomers catalog the nebula as IC 2177. This cosmic cloud is one of many sites of star formation within the Milky Way galaxy. It is located 3,800 light-years away from Earth, inside the Orion spur -- the same partial spiral arm of the Milky Way where our solar system is located. The nebula is nearly 240 light-years across.

WISE is an all-sky survey, snapping pictures of the whole sky -- from asteroids to stars to powerful, distant galaxies.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

Light in the sky

A Light in the Sky

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Hayabusa spacecraft streaked across the sky like a saber of light through the clouds as it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere over the Woomera Test Range in Australia. In Kingoonya, the spacecraft’s re-entry was visible to the human eye for only 15 seconds. Image Credit: NASA/Ed Schilling (source)

Light for the ages

Light for the Ages

Today, our sun reaches its northernmost point in planet Earth's sky. Called a solstice, the date traditionally marks a change of seasons -- from spring to summer in Earth's Northern Hemisphere and from fall to winter in Earth's Southern Hemisphere.

In this image from 2007, NASA's Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO) satellites provided the first three-dimensional images of the sun. STEREO, a two-year mission that launched October 2006, provided a unique and revolutionary view of the Sun-Earth System.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/NRL/GSFC

(NASA here)

Atlantis is HOME!

Homecoming for Atlantis

Space shuttle Atlantis' main gear touched down on Runway 33 at the Shuttle Landing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 8:48 a.m. EDT, completing a 12-day mission to the International Space Station. On board were Commander Ken Ham, pilot Tony Antonelli, Garrett Reisman, Michael Good, Steve Bowen and Piers Sellers. The six-member STS-132 crew carried the Russian-built Mini Research Module-1 to the International Space Station. STS-132 is the last planned flight for Atlantis.

Image Credit: NASA/Carl Winebarger

RELEASE : 10-124

Space Shuttle Atlantis Returns Home After Its Final Planned Mission

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Space shuttle Atlantis and six astronauts ended a 12-day journey of more than 4.8 million miles with an 8:48 a.m. EDT landing Wednesday at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The third of five shuttle missions planned for 2010, this was the last scheduled flight for Atlantis. The mission, designated STS-132, delivered the Russian-built Mini Research Module-1 to the International Space Station. Also known as Rassvet ("dawn" in Russian), the module provides additional storage space and a new docking port for Russian Soyuz and Progress spacecraft.

Ken Ham commanded the flight and was joined by Pilot Tony Antonelli and Mission Specialists Garrett Reisman, Michael Good, Steve Bowen and Piers Sellers.

The mission's three spacewalks focused on replacing and installing components outside the station, including replacing six batteries, installing a communications antenna and adding parts to the Canadian Dextre robotic arm.

A welcome ceremony for the astronauts will be held Thursday, May 27, in Houston. The public is invited to attend the 4 p.m. CDT event at Ellington Field's NASA Hangar 276.

Highlights from the ceremony will be broadcast on NASA Television's Video File. For NASA TV downlink information, schedules and links to streaming video, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

STS-132 was the 132nd shuttle flight, the 32nd flight for Atlantis and the 34th shuttle mission dedicated to station assembly and maintenance.

With Atlantis and its crew safely home, the stage is set for the launch of shuttle Discovery on its STS-133 mission, targeted to lift off in September 2010. Discovery's flight will deliver the Leonardo Permanent Multipurpose Module to house experiments. STS-133 also will bring critical spare components and a cargo carrier to the station. Robonaut 2, or R2, will be the first human-like robot in space when it flies on Discovery to become a permanent resident of the station.

For more information about the STS-132 mission and the upcoming STS-133 flight, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle

For information about the space station, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/station

- end -

---

(Source: NASA)

Welcome Home!

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 05:19:57 -0500

Space shuttle Discovery astronauts were awakened at 12:21 a.m. EDT to “The Star Spangled Banner” this morning, played for Commander Alan Poindexter.

Since then, the astronauts have been marching through their landing day timeline. Deorbit preparations began at 3:43 a.m. and Discovery’s payload bay doors were closed at about 5 a.m.

Mission Control Entry Flight Director Bryan Lunney and his team are overseeing Discovery’s systems and monitoring weather conditions at Kennedy Space Center’s Shuttle Landing Facility. Currently, conditions are “no go” due to showers in the vicinity. Astronaut Chris Ferguson is flying weather reconnaissance and reporting the results to Mission Control. Lunney and his team are expected to make a “go/no go” decision for the deorbit burn at about 7:30 a.m. The burn would occur at 7:43 a.m. followed by a landing at Kennedy’s runway 33 at 8:48 a.m.

Image above: Space shuttle Discovery lands at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Tuesday, April 20, 2010. Discovery and the STS-131 mission crew, Commander Alan Poindexter, Pilot James P. Dutton Jr. and Mission Specialists Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, Rick Mastracchio, Stephanie Wilson, Clayton Anderson and Japanese astronaut Naoko Yamazaki returned from their mission to the International Space Station. Image credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

"Really Great Mission" for Discovery and Crew

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 09:22:37 AM PDT

Mission managers held a post-landing news conference at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, and described the mission as very successful.

"Wrapping up 131 here from Discovery -- a really great mission. A lot of good science and a lot of good stuff delivered up to the station. Couldn't be more proud of the teams," said Launch Integration Manager Mike Moses, who described post-flight shuttle Discovery as "a very clean vehicle."

Earlier, after physicals aboard the crew transport vehicle, space shuttle Discovery's seven astronauts took a walk around the spacecraft that carried them more than six million miles. They paused to each express their thoughts about the mission and their gratitude to those on the ground who helped make the mission safe and successful.

"We had a lot of adversity but we overcame it all with some great team work," said Mission Specialist Clayton Anderson, who participated in the mission's three spacewalks and previously spent five months at the space station. "I've had two homecomings this flight. I got to go home to the International Space Station and now I get to come home to KSC. To all of you who helped get us up and bring us back, thank you so very much. God bless America."

The astronauts returned to crew quarters aboard the silver Astrovan, the same vehicle that carried them to the launch pad for their liftoff. They are expected to return to their home base at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston tomorrow.

Discovery's touchdown at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida came at 9:08 a.m. EDT on April 20, after a one-day delay due to weather. (here)

Welcome home, Discovery!

Huygens on Titan

Huygens on Titan

In 2005 the robotic Huygens probe landed on Titan, Saturn's enigmatic moon, and sent back the first ever images from beneath Titan's thick cloud layers. This artist's impression is based on those images. In the foreground, sits the car-sized lander that sent back images for more than 90 minutes before running out of battery power. The parachute that slowed Huygen's re-entry is seen in the background, still attached to the lander. Smooth stones, possibly containing water-ice, are strewn about the landscape. Analyses of Huygen's images and data show that Titan's surface today has intriguing similarities to the surface of the early Earth. (here)

Winds of Change

Winds of Change

This is a composite image of NGC 1068, one of the nearest and brightest galaxies containing a rapidly growing supermassive black hole. The X-ray images and spectra obtained using Chandra's High Energy Transmission Grating Spectrometer show that a strong wind is being driven away from the center of NGC 1068 at a rate of about a million miles per hour. This wind is likely generated as surrounding gas is accelerated and heated as it swirls toward the black hole. A portion of the gas is pulled into the black hole, but some of it is blown away. High energy X-rays produced by the gas near the black hole heat the ouflowing gas, causing it to glow at lower X-ray energies.

X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory are shown in red, optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope in green and radio data from the Very Large Array in blue. The spiral structure of NGC 1068 is shown by the X-ray and optical data, and a jet powered by the central supermassive black hole is shown by the radio data.

This Chandra study is much deeper than previous X-ray observations. Using this data, researchers believe that each year several times the mass of our sun is being deposited out to large distances, about 3,000 light years from the black hole. The wind likely carries enough energy to heat the surrounding gas and suppress extra star formation.

These results help explain how a supermassive black hole can alter the evolution of its host galaxy. It has long been suspected that material blown away from a black hole can affect its environment, but a key question has been whether such "black hole blowback" typically delivers enough power to have a significant impact.

NGC 1068 is located about 50 million light years from Earth and contains a supermassive black hole about twice as massive as the one in the middle of the Milky Way Galaxy.

Image Credit: X-ray (NASA/CXC/ MIT/C.Canizares, D.Evans et al), Optical (NASA/STScI), Radio (NSF/ NRAO/VLA)

For the full force of this fantastic image, go to NASA here.

Look up look WAY up

The Possibility of a Brand New World

Several of the dwarf galaxies in the Hickson Compact Group 31 are slowly merging. Will the result of these galactic collisions be one big elliptical galaxy? Most assuredly.

The pictured galaxies of Hickson Compact Group 31 will pass through and destroy each other, millions of stars will form and explode, and thousands of nebula will form and dissipate before the dust settles and the final galaxy emerges about one billion years from now. The above image is a composite of images taken in infrared light by the Spitzer Space Telescope, ultraviolet light by the GALEX space telescope, and visible light by the Hubble Space Telescope. Hickson Compact Group 31 spans about 150,000 light years and lies about 150 million light years away toward the constellation of Eridanus.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, J. English (U. Manitoba), and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA); Acknowledgement: S. Gallagher (U. Western Ontario) [here]

Proctor Crator, Mars

Proctor Crater, Mars

This view from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is of the Proctor Crater. The relatively bright, small ridges are ripples. From their study on Earth, and close-up examination by the MER rovers (roving elsewhere on Mars), scientists surmise that the ripples are composed of fine sand (less than 200 microns in diameter) or fine sand coated with coarser sand and granules.

The larger, darker bedforms are dunes composed of sand, most likely of fine size. Ripples tend to move slower than dunes. Because of this, over time, ripples get covered with dust, possibly explaining the bright tone visible here. The dunes are dark probably because they are composed of basaltic sand (derived from dark, volcanic rock) that is blown by the wind enough that dust does not sufficiently accumulate to change their color.

This area in Proctor Crater is being monitored by HiRISE to document any changes over time.

This image is a portion of the HiRISE observation taken on Feb. 9, 2009.

For more information on this image, visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/multimedia/mro20090316.html.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

(source NASA here)

Latest from Mars: Look up, way up

From NASA:

RELEASE : 09-186

Meteorite Found On Mars Yields Clues About Planet's Past

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity is investigating a metallic meteorite the size of a large watermelon that is providing researchers more details about the Red Planet's environmental history.

The rock, dubbed "Block Island," is larger than any other known meteorite on Mars. Scientists calculate it is too massive to have hit the ground without disintegrating unless Mars had a much thicker atmosphere than it has now when the rock fell. Atmosphere slows the descent of meteorites. Additional studies also may provide clues about how weathering has affected the rock since it fell.

Two weeks ago, Opportunity had driven approximately 600 feet past the rock in a Mars region called Meridiani Planum. An image the rover had taken a few days earlier and stored was then transmitted back to Earth. The image showed the rock is approximately 2 feet in length, half that in height, and has a bluish tint that distinguishes it from other rocks in the area. The rover team decided to have Opportunity backtrack for a closer look, eventually touching Block Island with its robotic arm.

"There's no question that it is an iron-nickel meteorite," said Ralf Gellert of the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. Gellert is the lead scientist for the rover's alpha particle X-ray spectrometer, an instrument on the arm used for identifying key elements in an object. "We already investigated several spots that showed elemental variations on the surface. This might tell us if and how the metal was altered since it landed on Mars."...

For more on this, go here.