Solar material repeatedly bursts from the sun in this close-up captured on July 9-10, 2016, by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO. The sun is composed of plasma, a gas in which the negative electrons move freely around the positive ions, forming a powerful mix of charged particles. Each burst of plasma licks out from the surface only to withdraw back into the active region – a dance commanded by complex magnetic forces above the sun. SDO captured this video in wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light, which are typically invisible to our eyes. The imagery is colorized here in red for easy viewing.
Credits: NASA/SDO/Goddard Space Flight Center/Joy Ng
[Artist Concept] Vulcan may not be real, but Spock's home system is. It takes a little imagination to wish some favorite fictional universes into existence. But, for legions of "Star Trek" fans, they don't have to wish: one star system really exists in our Milky Way galaxy. In Star Trek lore, Vulcan is the home of logic, learning and the deeply beloved first officer Mr. Spock. While Vulcan is fictional, the star system it belongs to-40 Eridani-is very real. It's located only 16.5 light-years away from Earth and its primary star can be spotted with the naked eye. So how much is science fiction and how much is science fact? "Could there be an Earth-like planet in this system? We have no way of knowing that now," said Karl Stapelfeldt, chief scientist of NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program. So while Vulcan (as far as we know) doesn't exist, a fascinating triple sunset would occur on any rocky planet in the system, because 40 Eridani has three stars that circle each other.
Our sun observing spacecraft took a spin! On July 6, engineers instructed the Solar Dynamics Observatory to roll 360 degrees on one axis. It dutifully performed the seven-hour maneuver, while producing some dizzying data: For this period of time, SDO images - taken every 12 seconds - appeared to show the sun spinning, as if stuck on a pinwheel.
Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/SDO/Joy Ng
Happy anniversary! One year ago today, our New Horizons mission made history by exploring Pluto and its moons - giving humankind our first close-up look at this fascinating world on the frontier of our solar system. Since those amazing days in July 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft has transmitted numerous images and many other kinds of data home for scientists and the public alike to study, analyze, and just plain love. Our view of this cold, previously unexplored world, 4.67 billion miles from Earth, has evolved since its discovery by Clyde W. Tombaugh in 1930. These short clips and images are from Tombaugh, Hubble and New Horizons over the years, arranged to illustrate improvements in resolution.
What's up for July? Use Saturn as your guide to a tour of the summer Milky Way. Spot planets, constellations, nebulae and galaxies. Watch and see when and where to look up.
Credit: NASA
Moon 'photobombs' our view of the Earth. On July 5, the moon passed between NOAA's DSCOVR satellite and Earth. Our EPIC camera aboard DSCOVR snapped these images over a period of about four hours. In this set, the far side of the moon, which is never seen from Earth, passes by. In the backdrop, Earth rotates, starting with the Australia and Pacific and gradually revealing Asia and Africa.
Juno's Final Approach to Jupiter! After five years traveling through space to its destination, our Juno spacecraft will arrive in orbit around Jupiter today, July 4, 2016. This video shows a peek of what the spacecraft saw as it closed in on its destination before instruments were turned off.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS
#space #science #astronomy #NASA #NASASocial #Jupiter #Juno #planet #moon #moons #nasabeyond #solarsystem
Bright auroras on Jupiter! This composite video illustrates the auroras on Jupiter relative to their position on the giant planet. As on Earth, auroras are produced by the interaction of a planet's magnetic field with its atmosphere. The Jupiter auroras observed by our Hubble Space Telescope are some of the most active and brightest ever caught by Hubble, reaching intensities over a thousand times brighter than those seen on Earth. Hubble's sensitivity to ultraviolet light captures the glow of the auroras above Jupiter's cloud top.
Fourth of July, our solar-powered Juno spacecraft will arrive at Jupiter after an almost five-year journey. In the evening of July 4, Juno will perform a suspenseful orbit insertion maneuver. Once in Jupiter’s orbit, the spacecraft will circle the Jovian world 37 times during 20 months, skimming to within 3,100 miles (5,000 km) above the cloud tops. This is the first time a spacecraft will orbit the poles of Jupiter, providing new answers to ongoing mysteries about the planet’s core, composition and magnetic fields.
Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Nichols (University of Leicester), and G. Bacon (STScI)
Fired up! A booster for the most powerful rocket in the world, our Space Launch System (SLS), successfully fired up today for its second qualification ground test in Utah. This was the last full-scale test for the booster before SLS’s first uncrewed test flight with NASA’s Orion spacecraft in late 2018, a key milestone on our journey to Mars.
When completed, two five-segment boosters and four RS-25 main engines will power SLS on deep space missions. The solid rocket boosters operate in parallel with SLS’s main engines for the first two minutes of flight. They will provide more than 75 percent of the thrust needed for the rocket and Orion spacecraft to escape Earth’s gravitational pull.
Credit: NASA
#nasa #test #sls #slsfiredup #space #rocket #booster #journeytomars
Solar material twists above the sun’s surface in this close-up captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory on June 7-8, 2016, showcasing the turbulence caused by combative magnetic forces on the sun. This spinning cloud of solar material is part of a dark filament angling down from the upper left of the frame. Filaments are long, unstable clouds of solar material suspended above the sun’s surface by magnetic forces. SDO captured this video in wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light, which is typically invisible to our eyes, but is colorized here in red for easy viewing.
Credit: NASA/SDO/Goddard Space Flight Center, Joy Ng
A relatively small but growing active region on our sun illustrated the fierce battle of magnetic fields as they connect and reconnect and struggle from May 30-31, 2016. As we observe it close-up in extreme ultraviolet light using the Solar Dynamics Observatory, we can see the magnetic field lines shift and change very quickly. The field lines are visible because charged particles, visible in this wavelength, are spinning along the magnetic arcs reaching between areas of opposite polarities. The area was the source of numerous small eruptions, including one or two solar flares.
What's up in the night sky this June? It's #Saturn opposition and you can see it after dark this month. This #video tells where and when to look, plus what "opposition" means.
Credit: @NASAJPL
#space #science #NASA #planets #astronomy #fun #telescope #saturn #cassini
Astronaut Jeff Williams shared this incredible time-lapse video of sunrise seen from his unique perspective on the International Space Station.
The station is a unique place - a convergence of science, technology and human innovation that demonstrates new technologies and makes research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. It is a microgravity laboratory in which an international crew of six people live and work while traveling at a speed of 17,500 mph, orbiting Earth every 90 minutes.
Image Credit: NASA
#nasa #space #stationstation #iss #astronauts #photography #nofilter #earth #sunrise #astronomy @iss
Today's #MercuryTransit in full from our Solar Dynamics Observatory: For more than seven hours today, Mercury was visible as a tiny black dot crossing the face of the sun. This rare event – which happens only slightly more than once a decade – is called a transit.
The 2016 Mercury transit occurred on May 9th, between about 7:12 a.m. and 2:42 p.m. EDT.
Transits provide a great opportunity to study the way planets and stars move in space– information that has been used throughout the ages to better understand the solar system and which still helps scientists today calibrate their instruments.
Although Mercury whips around the sun every 88 days – over four times faster than Earth – the three bodies rarely align. Because Mercury orbits in a plane 7 degrees tilted from Earth’s orbit, it usually darts above or below our line of sight to the sun. As a result, a Mercury transit happens only about 13 times a century. The last one was in 2006, and the next one isn’t until 2019.
What’s up for May? Mercury transits the sun and Mars is closer to Earth than it has been in 11 years. See what else you can spot in the sky this month.
Soaring Over Titan: Extraterrestrial Land of Lakes! Of the hundreds of moons in our solar system, Titan is the only one with a dense atmosphere and large liquid reservoirs on its surface, making it in some ways more like a terrestrial planet. Both Earth and Titan have nitrogen-dominated atmospheres -- over 95 percent nitrogen in Titan's case. However, unlike Earth, Titan has very little oxygen; the rest of the atmosphere is mostly methane and trace amounts of other gases, including ethane. And at the frigid temperatures found at Saturn's great distance from the sun, the methane and ethane can exist on the surface in liquid form.
This colorized movie from our Cassini mission takes viewers over the largest seas and lakes on Saturn's moon Titan. The movie is made from radar data received during multiple flyovers of Titan from 2004 to 2013.
Be amazed! See video of our home planet from the view of the International Space Station crew. We monitors Earth's vital signs from land, air and space with a fleet of satellites and ambitious airborne and ground-based observation campaigns. The International Space Station hosts a variety of payloads and experiments supporting climate research, weather predictions, hurricane monitoring, pollution tracking, disaster response and more.
Credit: NASA
Arches of magnetic field lines towered over the sun’s edge as a pair of active regions began to rotate into view in this video captured by our Solar Dynamics Observatory on April 5-6. Active regions are areas of very concentrated magnetic field. Charged particles spiraling along these magnetic fields emit extreme ultraviolet light, which is typically not visible to our eyes, but colorized here in gold. The light given off from the particles helps trace out the magnetic field lines, which are otherwise invisible. Scientists use images such as this to observe how magnetic fields move around the sun and learn more about what causes active regions.
Looking down on Earth from the International Space Station (@ISS), astronaut Jeff Williams (@astro_jeffw) captured a 'closer look at Patagonia and its magnificence.' The video was created from merged panorama. The station is a unique place - a convergence of science, technology and human innovation that demonstrates new technologies and makes research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. It is a microgravity laboratory in which an international crew of six people live and work while traveling at a speed of 17,500 mph, orbiting Earth every 90 minutes.
Image Credit: NASA
#nasa #space #stationstation #iss #astronauts #patagonia
