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[space-today]

Space Station Roulette

Bethesda MD (SPX) Jun 19, 2018 Space station astronauts have to be “high-risk-taking” individuals. They volunteer to fly from the Earth to the International Space Station (ISS) onboard a Russian launch vehicle that has a less-than-stellar safety record. Once on board the ISS they are exposed to high radiation levels, weightlessness and the hard vacuum of space. In fact, they are at the mercy of the elements for the duration o Full article

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SpaceX Launch over Southern California 12/22/17

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A time-lapse movie of Neptune’s dynamic atmosphere and satellite orbits was assembled by combining images taken over a 15-hour period by the Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. The movie is composed of natural- and enhanced-color views of Neptune that were assembled from images taken in 14 different colored filters, which allow atmospheric features to be seen above Neptune’s methane haze. Neptune is shown in natural color with its largest satellite, Triton, as it orbits the planet. Triton orbits in a “backwards” or retrograde path relative to the other major satellites, and is opposite to Neptune’s rotation. Zooming into Neptune, the colors were enhanced to show the subtle details in Neptune’s atmosphere. The spectral region of light is changed from the visible to special methane bands in the near-infrared resulting in Neptune’s atmosphere becoming very dark, except for high-altitude clouds. Coming into view are Neptune’s four smaller moons: Proteus, Larissa, Galatea and Despina. Image Credit: NASA/ESA/E. Karkoschka (University of Arizona)/H.B. Hammel (Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.)/G. Bacon (STScI)

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Titan.

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Titan and Rhea.

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The view from Midi Observatory, in the French Pyrenees

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Didn’t realize posts weren’t loading. Just thought ya’ll got really into color gradients recently

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SpaceX Launch over Southern California 12/22/17

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Solstice

About 12 hours ago we passed the solstice, the start of Winter for the Northern Hemisphere and Summer in the Southern Hemisphere. I’d have had this post done but my computer was misbehaving.

Anyway, one of my favorite things to check out on the solstice is the view from the Japanese Himawari-8 weather satellite. That satellite, launched a few years ago, sends back HD pictures and video from a geostationary orbit over the Pacific. That means it can watch as the earth rotates into shadow each night. Here’s its lovely solstice view from today – a thin band of light is always present at the south pole, and the north pole never appears.

-JBB

Video credit: https://twitter.com/himawari8bot/status/943853755753263104

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Sound of Earth - Van Allen Belt 3 - Audiovisual Made with code / Processing

Visible frequency range: 8000Hz Audio length: 180 seconds Resolution: 24 steps per second Speed: 0.25 degree per step / 6 degree per second Various Audio: Chorus from 2012-09-05; 2016-10-27; 2012-10-26; 2014-04-05

The signals in this audiovisual are created by lightning discharges in Earth’s atmosphere which then propagate back and forth along magnetic field lines.

Tumblr // Facebook // Twitter  // Ello // Art Prints // Prints w/ Frames

▶ thedotisblack on YouTube

▶ Playlist of all Sound of Planets, Stars and Space

Drawing detail: 

Print w/ frame (example):

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The prominent ridge of emission featured in this vivid skyscape is designated IC 5067. Part of a larger emission region with a distinctive shape, popularly called The Pelican Nebula, the ridge spans about 10 light-years and follows the curve of the cosmic pelican’s head and neck. https://go.nasa.gov/2hiMiLy

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HiPOD (12 Dec 2017): Ridges in Meridiani Planum

  These ridges are concentric around an impact crater. Are these faults?  (274 km above the surface). 

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Need gift suggestions for my boyfriend. It's our 1 year and I am clueless.

I got mine this last year and he loved it! It basically shows the alignment of the stars on any important date

it’s called under lucky stars

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Measuring Cosmic Rays at the Edge of Space

It’s a bird!  It’s a plane!  It’s a… SuperTIGER?

No, that’s not the latest superhero spinoff movie - it’s an instrument launching soon from Antarctica! It’ll float on a giant balloon above 99.5% of the Earth’s atmosphere, measuring tiny particles called cosmic rays.

Right now, we have a team of several scientists and technicians from Washington University in St. Louis and NASA at McMurdo Station in Antarctica preparing for the launch of the Super Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder, which is called SuperTIGER for short. This is the second flight of this instrument, which last launched in Antarctica in 2012 and circled the continent for a record-breaking 55 days.  

SuperTIGER measures cosmic rays, which are itty-bitty pieces of atoms that are zinging through space at super-fast speeds up to nearly the speed of light. In particular, it studies galactic cosmic rays, which means they come from somewhere in our Milky Way galaxy, outside of our solar system.

Most cosmic rays are just an individual proton, the basic positively-charged building block of matter. But a rarer type of cosmic ray is a whole nucleus (or core) of an atom - a bundle of positively-charged protons and non-charged neutrons - that allows us to identify what element the cosmic ray is. Those rare cosmic-ray nuclei (that’s the plural of nucleus) can help us understand what happened many trillions of miles away to create this particle and send it speeding our way.

The cosmic rays we’re most interested in measuring with SuperTIGER are from elements heavier than iron, like copper and silver. These particles are created in some of the most dynamic and exciting events in the universe - such as exploding and colliding stars.

In fact, we’re especially interested in the cosmic rays created in the collision of two neutron stars, just like the event earlier this year that we saw through both light and gravitational waves. Adding the information from cosmic rays opens another window on these events, helping us understand more about how the material in the galaxy is created.

Why does SuperTIGER fly on a balloon?

While cosmic rays strike our planet harmlessly every day, most of them are blocked by the Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field.  That means that scientists have to get far above Earth - on a balloon or spacecraft - to measure an accurate sample of galactic cosmic rays.  By flying on a balloon bigger than a football field, SuperTIGER can get to the edge of space to take these measurements.  

It’ll float for weeks at over 120,000 feet, which is nearly four times higher than you might fly in a commercial airplane. At the end of the flight, the instrument will return safely to the ice on a huge parachute. The team can recover the payload from its landing site, bring it back to the United States, repair or make changes to it, if needed, and fly it again another year!

There are also cosmic ray instruments on our International Space Station, such as ISS-CREAM and CALET, which each started their development on a series of balloons launched from Antarctica. The SuperTIGER team hopes to eventually take measurements from space, too.  

Why do we launch from Antarctica?

McMurdo Station is a hotspot for all sorts of science while it’s summer in the Southern Hemisphere (which is winter here in the United States), including scientific ballooning.  The circular wind patterns around the pole usually keep the balloon from going out over the ocean, making it easier to land and recover the instrument later. And the 24-hour daylight in the Antarctic summer keeps the balloon at a nearly constant height to get very long flights - it would go up and down if it had to experience the temperature changes of day and night. All of that sunlight shining on the instrument’s array of solar cells also gives a continuous source of electricity to power everything.

Antarctica is an especially good place to fly a cosmic ray instrument like SuperTIGER. The Earth’s magnetic field blocks fewer cosmic rays at the poles, meaning that we can measure more particles as SuperTIGER circles around the South Pole than we would at NASA scientific ballooning sites closer to the Earth’s equator.  

The SuperTIGER team is hard at work preparing for launch right now - and their launch window opens soon! Follow @NASABlueshift for updates and opportunities to interact with our scientists on the ice.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

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Hubble Displays a Dwarf Spiral Galaxy https://go.nasa.gov/2yKhc54

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3D Motions of Stars in Sculptor Dwarf Galaxy Hint at Underlying Dark Matter

http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/sculptor-dwarf-galaxy-dark-matter-05477.html

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*sees moon* *remembers outer space* nice