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Hubble Sees a Star Set to Explode: Floating at the center of this new Hubble image is a lidless purple eye, staring back at us through space. This ethereal object, known officially as [SBW2007] 1 but sometimes nicknamed SBW1, is a nebula with a giant star at its center. The star was originally twenty times more massive than our sun, and is now encased in a swirling ring of purple gas, the remains of the distant era when it cast off its outer layers via violent pulsations and winds. But the star is not just any star; scientists say that it is destined to go supernova. Twenty-six years ago, another star with striking similarities went supernova — SN 1987A. Early Hubble images of SN 1987A show eerie similarities to SBW1. Both stars had identical rings of the same size and age, which were travelling at similar speeds; both were located in similar HII regions; and they had the same brightness. In this way SBW1 is a snapshot of SN1987a's appearance before it exploded, and unsurprisingly, astronomers love studying them together. At a distance of more than 20 000 light-years it will be safe to watch when the supernova goes off. If we are very lucky it may happen in our own lifetimes. Credit: ESA/NASA, acknowledgement: Nick Rose. #hubble #stars #universe #star #sun #nasa #space; -
An Orbital Sciences Corporation Antares rocket is seen as it launches from Pad-0A at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, Thursday, January 9, 2014, Wallops Island, VA. Antares is carrying the Cygnus spacecraft on a cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station. The Orbital-1 mission is Orbital Sciences' first contracted cargo delivery flight to the space station for NASA. Cygnus is carrying science experiments, crew provisions, spare parts and other hardware to the space station. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls) #orb1 #antares #cygnus #orbitalsciences #launch #launchpics #launchpix #rocket #rocketlaunch #iss #space #nasa; -
Can you see the shape of a hand in this new X-ray image? The hand might look like an X-ray from the doctor's office, but it is actually a cloud of material ejected from a star that exploded. The new 'Hand' image shows a nebula 17,000 light-years away, powered by a dead, spinning star called PSR B1509-58, or B1509 for short. The dead star, called a pulsar, is the leftover core of a star that exploded in a supernova. The pulsar is only about 19 kilometers (12 miles) in diameter but packs a big punch: it is spinning around nearly seven times every second, spewing particles into material that was upheaved during the star's violent death. These particles are interacting with magnetic fields around the ejected material, causing it to glow with X-rays. The result is a cloud that, in previous images, looked like an open hand. One of the big mysteries of this object, called a pulsar wind nebula, is whether the pulsar's particles are interacting with the material in a specific way to make it appear as a hand, or if the material is in fact shaped like a hand. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/McGill #NuSTAR #hand #space #nasa #nasajpl #xray #xrayimage; -
NASA's Curiosity Mars rover and tracks left by its driving appear in this portion of a Dec. 11, 2013, observation by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The rover is near the lower-left corner of this view. For scale, the two parallel lines of the wheel tracks are about 10 feet (3 meters) apart. Curiosity has been on the move. By the time this image was taken, it had driven about 2.86 miles (4.61 kilometers) since its August 2012 landing in Gale Crater. This view shows where the rover has driven generally southwestward, with some variation to get around obstacles, on its route toward its long-term destination on the lower slopes of Mount Sharp. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona #mars #nasa #curiosity #marscuriosity #redplanet #rover #hirise #space #solarsystem #nasajpl; -
An Orbital Sciences Corporation Antares rocket is seen as it launches from Pad-0A at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, Thursday, January 9, 2014, Wallops Island, VA. Antares is carrying the Cygnus spacecraft on a cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station. The Orbital-1 mission is Orbital Sciences' first contracted cargo delivery flight to the space station for NASA. Cygnus is carrying science experiments, crew provisions, spare parts and other hardware to the space station. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls) #orb1 #antares #cygnus #orbitalsciences #launch #launchpics #launchpix #rocket #rocketlaunch #iss #space #nasa;
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International Space Station Awaits Orbital-1 Resupply Mission - The sun shines through a truss-based radiator panel and a primary solar array panel on the Earth-orbiting International Space Station (ISS) in this photograph taken by an Expedition 38 crew member on Jan. 2, 2014. The crew on the ISS is awaiting the first commercial resupply mission to the ISS by Orbital Sciences, Orbital-1. Orbital Sciences will proceed with a 1:07 p.m. EST launch attempt of the Orbital-1 cargo resupply mission to the ISS today, Thursday, Jan. 9. Meanwhile, as more than 30 heads of space agencies from around the world gather in Washington Jan. 9-10 for an unprecedented summit on the future of space exploration, the Obama Administration has approved an extension of the ISS until at least 2024. Image Credit: NASA #nasa #iss #orb1 #antares #cygnus #space #spacestation #earth #science #isef; -
NASA's Swift Catches X-ray Action at Milky Way's Center - Recent observations by NASA's Swift spacecraft have provided scientists a unique glimpse into the activity at the center of our galaxy and led to the discovery of a rare celestial entity that may help them test predictions of Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. This week, at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in National Harbor, Md., scientists presented their research into images captured by Swift, explaining how these images will help decipher the physical nature of X-ray flares and enabled their discovery of a rare subclass of neutron star. Swift's seven-year campaign to monitor the center of the Milky Way has doubled the number of images available to scientists of bright X-ray flares occurring at the galaxy's central black hole, dubbed Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). Sgr A* sits in the center of the Milky Way's innermost region, 26,000 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. Its mass is at least 4 million times that of the sun. Despite its considerable size, it is not nearly as bright as it could be if it was more active, according to one expert. This X-ray image of the galactic center merges Swift XRT observations through 2013. Sgr A* is at center. Low-energy X-rays (300 to 1,500 electron volts) are shown in red, medium-energy (1,500 to 3,000 eV) in green, and high-energy (3,000 to 10,000 eV) in blue. The total exposure time is 12.6 days. Image Credit: NASA/Swift/N. Degenaar (Univ. of Michigan) #nasa #science #space #swift #astronony #xray #aas223 #spacecraft #blackhole #sgrA; -
Sun Unleashes First X-class Flare of 2014, Delaying Rocket Launch - The sun emitted a significant solar flare peaking at 1:32 p.m. EST on Jan.7, 2014. This is the first significant flare of 2014, and follows on the heels of mid-level flare earlier in the day. Each flare was centered over a different area of a large sunspot group currently situated at the center of the sun, about half way through its 14-day journey across the front of the disk along with the rotation of the sun. Early this morning, Orbital Sciences Corp. decided to scrub today’s launch attempt of the Antares rocket and the Cygnus cargo spacecraft on the company’s first resupply mission to the International Space Station due to an unusually high level of space radiation that exceeded constraints imposed on Antares. The solar flux activity resulted in an increasing level of radiation beyond what the Antares engineering team monitored earlier in the day. At Mission Control in Houston, the flight control team reported that the ISS crew is not affected by this solar event and does not require any special precautionary measures. Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however -- when intense enough -- they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel. This disrupts the radio signals for as long as the flare is ongoing, anywhere from minutes to hours. This pictures combines two images from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured on Jan. 7, 2013. Image Credit: NASA/SDO #orb1 #iss #space #nasa #science #launch #sdo #spaceweather #weather #storm #solar #sun #solarflare #antares #cygnus #earth; -
'Twas the night before launch… An Orbital Sciences Corporation Antares rocket is seen on launch Pad-0A at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on the evening of Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2014 in advance of a planned Wednesday, Jan. 8th, 1:32 p.m. EST launch. The Antares will launch a Cygnus spacecraft on a cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station. The Orbital-1 mission is Orbital Sciences' first contracted cargo delivery flight to the space station for NASA. Among the cargo aboard Cygnus set to launch to the space station are science experiments, crew provisions, spare parts and other hardware. There is a 95 percent chance of favorable weather at the time of launch. High, thick clouds are the primary concern for a weather violation. If needed, multiple back-up launch opportunities are available through Jan. 12. Live launch coverage on Jan. 8 will be carried live on NASA TV and the agency's website at www.nasa.gov/ntv beginning at 1:00 p.m. EST (18:00 UCT). Image credit: NASA #antares #rocket #rocketlaunch #nasa #iss #orb1 #launch #wallops #orbitalsciences #cygnus #spacestation; -
This long-exposure Hubble Space Telescope image of massive galaxy cluster Abell 2744 (foreground) is the deepest ever made of any cluster of galaxies. It shows some of the faintest and youngest galaxies ever detected in space. Abell 2744 is a massive galaxy cluster located in the constellation Sculptor. The immense gravity in Abell 2744 is being used as a lens to warp space and brighten and magnify images of more distant background galaxies. The more distant galaxies appear as they did longer than 12 billion years ago, not long after the big bang. The Hubble exposure reveals nearly 3,000 of these background galaxies interleaved with images of hundreds of foreground galaxies in the cluster. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is providing a new perspective on the remote universe, including new views of young and distant galaxies bursting with stars. Scientists described the findings Tuesday in a news conference sponsored by the American Astronomical Society (AAS). Image Credit: NASA/ESA/J.Lotz, M.Mountain, A.Koekemoer/STScI HFF Team #aas223 #nasa #space #hst #hubble #bigbang #telescope #astronomy #science;
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NEOWISE's New Find - The three red dots in this composite picture indicate the location of the first new near-Earth asteroid seen by NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) since the spacecraft came out of hibernation in December 2013. The asteroid, called 2013 YP139, is the first of hundreds of space-rock discoveries expected during its renewed mission. The inset shows a zoomed-in view of one of the detections of 2013 YP139. 2013 YP139 was discovered by NEOWISE on Dec. 29, 2013. The mission's sophisticated software picked out the moving object against a background of stationary stars. Near-Earth objects are asteroids and comets with orbits that come close to Earth's path around the sun. 2013 YP139, is currently about 27 million miles (43 million kilometers) from Earth. Based on its infrared brightness, scientists estimate it to be approximately 0.4 miles (650 meters) in diameter and extremely dark. Because NEOWISE is an infrared telescope, it senses heat from asteroids. 2013 YP139 is as dark as a piece of coal, and it glows brightly at infrared wavelengths. The shortest infrared wavelength, 3.4 microns, is color-coded blue, and the longer wavelength, 4.6 microns, is color-coded red. The asteroid appears as a string of red dots because it is much cooler than the stars. Stars are thousands of degrees, but the asteroid is close to room temperature, so it is red in these images. While asteroid 2013 YP139 orbits the sun in an elliptical orbit nearly in the plane of our solar system and is classified as a potentially hazardous asteroid, it is not likely to approach within Earth's vicinity anytime over the next 100 years. However, the asteroid’s future motion can bring it within about 300,000 miles (490,000 kilometers) of Earth’s orbit, so its long-term motion will be closely monitored. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech #nasa #science #space #asteroid #neowise #neo #earth #astronomy; -
Stormy Stars? This Just In: Storms Expected on Brown Dwarfs - This artist's concept shows what the weather might look like on cool star-like bodies known as brown dwarfs. These giant balls of gas start out life like stars, but lack the mass to sustain nuclear fusion at their cores, and instead, fade and cool with time. New research from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope suggests that most brown dwarfs are racked with colossal storms akin to Jupiter's famous "Great Red Spot." These storms may be marked by fierce winds, and possibly lightning. The turbulent clouds might also rain down molten iron, hot sand or salts -- materials thought to make up the cloud layers of brown dwarfs. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Western Ontario/Stony Brook University #nasa #space #science #spitzer #telescope #stars #storm #lightning #astrophysics; -
Sunset at the Pad - An Orbital Sciences Corporation Antares rocket is seen on launch Pad-0A at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, Monday, Jan. 6, 2014, in advance of a planned Wednesday, Jan. 8th, 1:32 p.m. EST launch, Wallops Island, Va. The Antares will launch a Cygnus spacecraft on a cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station. The Orbital-1 mission is Orbital Sciences' first contracted cargo delivery flight to the space station for NASA. Among the cargo aboard Cygnus set to launch to the space station are science experiments, crew provisions, spare parts and other hardware. Photo Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls #antares #rocket #rocketlaunch #nasa #iss #orb1 #launch #wallops #orbitalsciences #cygnus #spacestation; -
Polar Vortex Enters Northern U.S. - The polar vortex is a whirling and persistent large area of low pressure, found typically over both North and South poles. The northern polar vortex was pushing southward over western Wisconsin and eastern Minnesota on Monday, Jan. 6, 2014, and was bringing frigid temperatures to half of the continental United States. It is expected to move northward back over Canada toward the end of the week. This image was captured by NOAA's GOES-East satellite on Jan. 6, 2014, at 11:01 a.m. EST (1601 UTC). A frontal system that brought rain to the coast is draped from north to south along the U.S. East Coast. Behind the front lies the clearer skies bitter cold air associated with the polar vortex. The image also revealed snow on the ground in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Iowa and Missouri, stretching into the Great Plains. Clouds over Texas are associated with a low pressure system centered over western Oklahoma that is part of the cold front connected to the movement of the polar vortex. The GOES image was created at NASA's GOES Project, located at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Both the northern and southern polar vortexes are located in the middle and upper troposphere (lowest level of the atmosphere) and the stratosphere (next level up in the atmosphere). The polar vortex is a winter phenomenon. It develops and strengthens in its respective hemispheres’ winters as the sun sets over the polar region and temperatures cool. They weaken in the summer. In the Northern Hemisphere, they circulate in a counterclockwise direction, so the vortex sitting over western Wisconsin is sweeping in cold Arctic air around it. Image credit: NASA's GOES Project #winter #storm #winterstorm #snow #snowstorm #weather #us #unitedstates #wx #nasa #space #goes #satellite; -
NASA's Fermi Makes First Gamma-ray Study of a Gravitational Lens - An international team of astronomers, using NASA's Fermi observatory, has made the first-ever gamma-ray measurements of a gravitational lens, a kind of natural telescope formed when a rare cosmic alignment allows the gravity of a massive object to bend and amplify light from a more distant source. This accomplishment opens new avenues for research, including a novel way to probe emission regions near supermassive black holes. It may even be possible to find other gravitational lenses with data from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Fermi detected a series of bright gamma-ray flares from a source known as B0218+357, located 4.35 billion light-years from Earth in the direction of a constellation called Triangulum. These powerful flares, in a known gravitational lens system, provided the key to making the lens measurement. Astronomers classify B0218+357 as a blazar -- a type of active galaxy noted for its intense emissions and unpredictable behavior. At the blazar's heart is a supersized black hole with a mass millions to billions of times that of the sun. As matter spirals toward the black hole, some of it blasts outward as jets of particles traveling near the speed of light in opposite directions. This Hubble image of gravitational lens B0218+357 reveals two bright sources separated by about a third of an arcsecond, each an image of the background blazar. Spiral arms belonging to the lensing galaxy also can be seen. B0218+357 boasts the smallest separation of lensed images currently known. Image Credit: NASA/ESA and the Hubble Legacy Archive #nasa #space #astronomy #fermi #blazar #hubble #hst #aas223 #gammaray #telescope #blackhole #science;
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