If you enjoyed the recent video from Nasa’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) – “Three years in three minutes” – but would have liked more of an explanation of what was going on with our own local star… here it is again! This time, though, extended, and narrated by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center heliophysicist Alex Young. [Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center] Pete Baker
As I mentioned previously, Saturn doesn’t get the love some of our other gas giants do. [All hail our friend and lord, Jupiter! Keeping Ogdy at bay… – Ed] Indeed… [new link] But, with the help of Cassini, Saturn does provide some wondrous images. In some of its first sunlit images of Saturn’s north pole, Cassini has looked inside the mysterious hexagon-shaped jet-stream noted here, and spied an enormous hurricane. In high-resolution pictures and video, scientists see the hurricane’s eye is about 1,250 miles …
What it says on the tin. Three years after First Light, Nasa’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has released three stunning minutes of images compiled during its virtually unbroken coverage of the sun’s rise toward solar maximum. Enjoy! [Video from NasaExplorer on YouTube. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/SDO] As they note in the associated text During the course of the video, the sun subtly increases and decreases in apparent size. This is because the distance between the SDO spacecraft and the …
Here’s something to think about whilst waiting to see if Comet ISON will fizzle, or sizzle. The latest Science at Nasa video looks at the trajectory, and consequences for Mars missions, of Comet 2013 A1 (Siding Spring). Discovered as recently as 3 January this year, this Oort cloud object will pass “extraordinarily close” to the planet Mars on 19 October 2014 – an actual collision, although unlikely, has not been ruled out yet [1:2000]. It’s estimated that an impact of the ~1-3 km-wide Comet 2013 A1, travelling at around …
As the BBC reported on Wednesday, having opened its eyes in 2011, and with 57 of its 66 antennas now ready to receive data on the Chajnantor Plateau in the Atacama desert, Chile, the Atacama Large Millimetre/Sub-millimetre Array (ALMA) was officially inaugurated on March 13. Here’s the associated ESOcast 55: The ALMA Inauguration. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO). Editing: Martin Kornmesser and Herbert Zodet. Web and technical support: Mathias André and Raquel Yumi Shida. Written by: Javier Perez Barbuzano and Herbert Zodet. Narration: Sara Mendes …
ScienceAtNasa has a sobering video on the latest information about the visitation by the god Ogdy unexpected meteor strike in the Chelyabinsk region of Russia on 15 February. Video credit: ScienceAtNasa. From the accompanying ScienceAtNasa press release The Russian meteor’s infrasound signal was was the strongest ever detected by the CTBTO network. The furthest station to record the sub-audible sound was 15,000km away in Antarctica. Western Ontario Professor of Physics Peter Brown analyzed the data: “The asteroid was about 17 meters in diameter and weighed approximately …
As I mentioned previously, asteroid 2012 DA14 is due to make its close encounter with Earth later this evening. Meanwhile, earlier today several hundred people in the Chelyabinsk region of Russia were injured during a visitation by the god Ogdy by debris caused by the unexpected appearance of a relatively large meteor. It’s reported that a crater 6m (20ft) wide has been found on the shore of a lake 1km outside Chebarkul, a town in the region – created by a fragment of the meteor. …
Science at Nasa has a great assessment of the potential for Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON) to become the ‘Comet of the Century’. Worth watching. Just remember – “comets are like cats: they have tails, and do whatever they want to do.” But as the Science at Nasa assessment notes “Comet ISON is probably at least twice as big as Comet Lovejoy and will pass a bit farther from the sun’s surface” notes Knight. “This would seem to favor Comet ISON surviving and …
In the BBC’s science news preview of 2013, reporter Jason Palmer highlights a couple of astronomical events worth keeping an eye out for. In mid-February we will get another reminder we live in a (potentially) violent cosmos – asteroid 2012 DA14 will make a harmless but attention-grabbing pass near the Earth, at a distance just a tenth that of the Moon. Exactly what happens then will determine how near the asteroid’s next pass will be, in 2026. (Don’t worry, signs are pretty …
Stunning views of the Earth accompany this seasonal message from the crew of the International Space Station. Pete Baker
Saturn doesn’t get the love some of our other gas giants do. [All hail our friend and lord, Jupiter! Keeping Ogdy at bay… – Ed] Indeed. But, with the help of Cassini, Saturn does provide some wondrous images. [Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute]. From the image’s associated text NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has delivered a glorious view of Saturn, taken while the spacecraft was in Saturn’s shadow. The cameras were turned toward Saturn and the sun so that the planet and rings are backlit. …
Fascinating image from Nasa’s Cassini probe at Saturn, where we’ve previously watched the weather on Titan. [Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASI.] North is to the right in this view. From the JPLnews press release “Titan is the only place we’ve found besides Earth that has a liquid in continuous movement on its surface,” said Steve Wall, the radar deputy team lead, based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “This picture gives us a snapshot of a world in motion. Rain falls, …
As the BBC’s Spaceman, Jonathan Amos, notes This [above] spectacular night-time view of Earth is called Black Marble. It has been assembled from a series of cloud-free images acquired by one of the most capable satellites in the sky today – the Suomi spacecraft. Here is the associated, wondrous, video from Nasa Explorer This view of Earth at night is a cloud-free view from space as acquired by the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership Satellite (Suomi NPP). A joint program by NASA and …
[Image credit: ESO/Y. Beletsky] Another stunning time-lapse video of the wondrous night sky above the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope [VLT] array on top of Cerro Paranal in Chile’s Atacama Desert. This time presented as ESO Cast 50: Chile Chill 1. [Marvel at the solar system in motion… – Ed] Or, indeed, the galaxy. Stay with it past a relatively slow start for the best images. Video via Eso Observatory. Video Credit: ESO. Editing: Herbert Zodet. Web and technical support: Mathias André and Raquel Yumi …
This week’s #DigitalLunch ‘jumps off’ from where on Herr Baumgartner’s sensational (in more ‘senses’ than one) leap into space lands… If you want to come along or just watch from your desktop (we don’t quite expect the 8 million Felix got, a few dozen would do us at this stage), you’ll be very welcome. I guess some of you are still scratching your head as to what this digital lunch thing is all about. It’s pretty straightforward. It is interactive …
As the BBC’s spaceman, Jonathan Amos, notes, the Hubble Space Telescope team have released an updated version of their stunning Ultra Deep Field image – the eXtreme Deep Field (XDF) – and they have seen further than ever. [Image credit: NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth, D. Magee, and P. Oesch (University of California, Santa Cruz), R. Bouwens (Leiden University), and the HUDF09 Team] From the text accompanying the above image The Hubble Ultra Deep Field is an image of a small area of space in the …
Nasa’s fifth and final Space Shuttle, Endeavour, following in the footsteps of Discovery, undertook a farewell fly-over yesterday atop a modified 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft over numerous west coast landmarks including the shuttle’s future home, the California Science Center. Here it is flying over the Reliant Stadium and the Astrodome in Houston [Image credit: Nasa]. As the JPL press release said Endeavour holds a special place in the hearts of many at JPL. After all, this is the shuttle orbiter that JPLers have had …
As Space Weather notes Around the world, amateur astronomers have been scanning the cloudtops of Jupiter for signs of debris from an explosion witnessed by Dan Peterson and George Hall on Sept. 10th. So far the cloud layer is blank. “Several observers have now obtained excellent images on the second and third rotations after the fireball, and there is nothing new nor distinctive at the impact site,” reports John H. Rogers, director of the Jupiter Section of the British Astronomical …
Having arrived at the 530km-wide giant asteroid Vesta in July 2011, in May this year Nasa’s Dawn Mission scientists published some of their findings. Now Dawn’s ready to head out on the next leg of its journey – Destination [the even larger protoplanet (dwarf planet)] Ceres, ETA 2015. From the JPL press release “Thrust is engaged, and we are now climbing away from Vesta atop a blue-green pillar of xenon ions,” said Marc Rayman, Dawn’s chief engineer and mission director, at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, …
More wondrous images from Nasa’s mobile Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), the 900kg rover Curiosity, now safely on the Martian surface in Gale Crater. And it’s only warming up its instruments. Here’s a panaroma of the landing site and the prime mission target, Mount Sharp. Focusing in on Mount Sharp… [Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS] But the images that have attracted attention are from the telephoto lens [Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS] As the Nasa press release notes The telephoto images beamed back to Earth show a …
