โพสต์เมื่อ 10 พ.ค. 2557 | 02:09 น.
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This bundle of bright stars and dark dust is a dwarf spiral galaxy known as NGC 4605, located around 16 million light-years away in the constellation of Ursa Major (The Great Bear). This galaxy’s spiral structure is not obvious from this image, but NGC 4605 is classified as an SBc type galaxy — meaning that it has sprawling, loosely wound arms and a bright bar of stars cutting through its center. NGC 4605 is a member of the Messier 81 group of galaxies, a gathering of bright galaxies including its namesake Messier 81 (heic0710), and the well-known Messier 82 (heic0604a). Galaxy groups like this usually contain around 50 galaxies, all loosely bound together by gravity. This group is famous for its unusual members, many of which formed from collisions between galaxies. With its somewhat unusual form, NGC 4605 fits in well with the family of perturbed galaxies in the M81 group, although the origin of its abnormal features is not yet clear. With so many galaxies swarming around, NGC 4605 may seem unremarkable. However, astronomers are using this galaxy to test our knowledge of stellar evolution. The newly-formed stars in NGC 4605 are being used to investigate how interactions between galaxies affect the formation, evolution, and behavior of the stars within, how bright stellar nurseries come together to form stellar clusters and stellar associations, and how these stars evolve over time. And that's not all — NGC 4605 is also proving to be a good testing ground for dark matter. Theories on this hypothetical type of matter.have had good success at describing how the Universe looks and behaves on a large scale — for example at the galaxy supercluster level — but when looking at individual galaxies, they have run into problems. Observations of NGC 4605 show that the way in which dark matter is spread throughout its halo is not quite as these models predict. While intriguing, observations in this area are still inconclusive, leaving astronomers to ponder over the contents of the Universe. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA #nasa #esa #hubble #hst #space #universe #galaxy; -
It's a small world! The phrase "encircling the Earth" has a double entendre flavor to it in this picture showing all six Expedition 39 crew members in the Kibo module around a globe while actually orbiting the "real thing" aboard the International Space Station. Expedition 39 Commander Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is at bottom center. Clockwise from his position are Flight Engineers Alexander Skvortsov and Mikhail Tyurin of Russia's Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), Steve Swanson and Rick Mastracchio of NASA and Oleg Artemyev of Roscosmos. Image Credit: NASA #nasa #spacestation #astronauts #exp39 #jaxa #roscosmos #space #iss; -
An adult osprey guards its young in a nest built on a platform in a parking lot at our Kennedy Space Center. In the background is the 12,300-square-foot NASA logo painted on the side of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). The VAB is adjacent to the Turn Basin in Launch Complex 39, making it an ideal osprey nesting place. The Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge overlaps with Kennedy Space Center property and provides a habitat for many types of wildlife, including the osprey, and 330 species of birds. Photo credit: NASA/Ken Thornsley #nasa #usfws #osprey #wildlife #nature #earth #motherearth #nasakennedy #kennedyspacecenter; -
Beautiful colors in space! This image of Saturn's rings, taken on June 30, 2004, during our Cassini spacecraft's orbital insertion at Saturn, shows, from left to right, the outer portion of the C ring and inner portion of the B ring. The B ring begins a little more than halfway across the image. The general pattern is from "dirty" particles indicated by red to cleaner ice particles shown in turquoise in the outer parts of the rings. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Colorado #tbt #throwbackthursday #cassini #saturn #nasa #space #science #planets; -
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) experiences 12 "earthrises" every day, however LROC (short for LRO Camera) is almost always busy imaging the lunar surface so only rarely does an opportunity arise such that LROC can capture a view of Earth. On Feb. 1, 2014, LRO pitched forward while approaching the moon's north pole allowing the LROC Wide Angle Camera to capture Earth rising above Rozhdestvenskiy crater (112 miles, or 180 km, in diameter). This image, captured Feb. 1, 2014, shows a colorized view of Earth from the moon-based perspective of NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Image Credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University #nasa #lro #lunar #moon #earthrise #earth #solarsystem #space;
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On March 29, 2014, an X-class flare erupted from the right side of the sun... and vaulted into history as the best-observed flare of all time. The flare was witnessed by four different NASA spacecraft and one ground-based observatory – three of which had been fortuitously focused in on the correct spot as programmed into their viewing schedule a full day in advance. To have a record of such an intense flare from so many observatories is unprecedented. Such research can help scientists better understand what catalyst sets off these large explosions on the sun. Perhaps we may even some day be able to predict their onset and forewarn of the radio blackouts solar flares can cause near Earth – blackouts that can interfere with airplane, ship and military communications. Images and data from the various observations can be seen here. The telescopes involved were: NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS; NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO; NASA's Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager, or RHESSI; the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency's Hinode; and the National Solar Observatory's Dunn Solar Telescope located at Sacramento Peak in New Mexico. Numerous other spacecraft provided additional data about what was happening on the sun during the event and what the effects were at Earth. Image credits: NASA or NASA/SDO/AIA or Kevin Reardon (National Solar Observatory), Lucia Kleint (BAER Institute) #nasa #sun #solarflare #solar #sdo #space #solarsystem #flare; -
New Insight Into Formation of Star Clusters - Stars are often born in clusters, in giant clouds of gas and dust. Astronomers have studied two star clusters and the results show that the simplest ideas for the birth of these clusters cannot work. A study of NGC 2024 and the Orion Nebula Cluster, another region where many stars are forming, suggest that the stars on the outskirts of these clusters are older than those in the central regions. This is different from what the simplest idea of star formation predicts, where stars are born first in the center of a collapsing cloud of gas and dust when the density is large enough. For more information, visit: http://go.nasa.gov/1lYyNsN This composite image shows one of the clusters, NGC 2024, which is found in the center of the so-called Flame Nebula about 1,400 light years from Earth. In this image, X-rays from Chandra are seen as purple, while infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope are colored red, green, and blue. #nasa #astronomy #chandra #spitzer #space #stars #nebula #science; -
NASA’s role in studying and protecting our home planet has never been stronger. Climate change is a problem we must deal with right now, and our Earth science satellite missions have become ever more vital to documenting and understanding our home planet, predicting the ramifications of this change, and sharing information across the globe for everyone’s benefit. Today, the Third U.S. National Climate Assessment was released. The report is the most authoritative and comprehensive source of scientific information ever generated about climate-change impacts on all major regions of the United States and critical sectors of society and the national economy. It presents an influential body of practical, useable knowledge that decision-makers will use to anticipate and prepare for the impacts of climate change. The assessment reports on a broad range of topics that illuminate the interconnectedness of everything tied to climate. The focused approaches used to conduct the analyses in this report will help us build the capability to do better and more regular climate assessments in the future. NASA data and NASA scientists contributed to the research reported in many of the Assessment’s chapters. Seen here is NASA Earth Science Division Director Michael Freilich showing meteorologists a model of the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory during a media event for the release of the Third U.S. National Climate Assessment held on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, May 6, 2014. Photo Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls #nasa #usclimatereport #earthrightnow #space #earth #earthscience #climatechange #whitehouse #actonclimate; -
In support of the Mars Science Laboratory Program (MSL), a set of the same wheels currently on the Mars Curiosity Rover were sent to NASA Glenn recently for performance evaluation by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California. The goal is to understand the effects of wheel damage on traction performance. NASA Glenn technician Ariana Miller checks the wheel mount and drive hardware assembly on a Curiosity wheel for tests at the Traction and Excavation Capabilities Lab. Researchers are using a newly built single-wheel tester to simulate a variety of terrain conditions similar to Mars including loose granular soil, dense high shear strength soil and a bedrock-like material. The pace of holes appearing in Curiosity's aluminum wheels increased unexpectedly in late last year, compared with the first 12 months of the rover's mission on Mars. Curiosity was crossing terrain studded with sharp, embedded rocks. By early 2014, changes in route planning and driving methods slowed the pace of wheel damage. The tests at NASA Glenn are part of the rover project's efforts to understand how the damage occurs, to develop methods for further reducing the pace of damage and to anticipate how accumulation of damage to the wheels could affect performance. Image Credit: NASA/Michelle M. Murphy (Wyle Information Systems, LLC) #nasa #mars #msl #marscuriosity #curiosity #marsrover #solarsystem #space; -
Earth's Atmospheric Layers - Astronauts aboard the International Space Station captured this photo of Earth's atmospheric layers on July 31, 2011, revealing the troposphere (orange-red), stratosphere and above. Satellite instruments allow scientists to better understand the chemistry and dynamics occurring within and between these layers. Image Credit: NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth #Earth #NASA #USClimateReport, #EarthRightNow, #ActOnClimate #ISS #Space #SpaceStation #Astronauts;
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Saturn's moon Titan! Titan's south polar vortex mimics the moon itself, creating an elegant crescent within a crescent. Situated above the surrounding polar atmosphere, the raised walls along the sunward side of the vortex just catch the grazing sunlight, creating a crescent of its own. Titan (3,200 miles, or 5,150 kilometers across) is Saturn's largest moon and possesses a dense and dynamic atmosphere. The image, obtained at a distance of approximately 108,000 miles (174,000 kilometers) from Titan, was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on December 2013 using a spectral filter which preferentially admits wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 939 nanometers. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute #nasa #titan #saturn #moon #cassini #spacecraft #space #planet #science; -
This spiral galaxy, M101, is like our Milky Way, but about 70 percent bigger. It is located about 21 million light years from Earth. X-rays from Chandra reveal the hottest and most energetic areas due to exploded stars, superheated gas and material falling toward black holes. Infrared data from Spitzer shows dusty lanes in the galaxy where stars are forming, while optical data traces the light from stars. This image is part of a "quartet of galaxies" collaboration of professional and amateur astronomers that combines optical data from amateur telescopes with data from the archives of our missions. Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: Detlef Hartmann; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech #astronomy #nasa #space #science #galaxy; -
What a view! On May 5, 1961, astronaut Alan B. Shepard, Jr. had a view of Earth that no American had seen before, looking down on the home planet from the Freedom 7 Mercury capsule on his history-making suborbital flight. The 15 minute flight lifted him to an altitude of over 116 miles and a maximum speed of 5,134 miles per hour. During the flight, Shepard reported seeing the outlines of the west coast of Florida and the Gulf of Mexico, along with Florida's Lake Okeechobee. Image Credit: NASA #nasa #otd #mercury #space #freedom7; -
As seen on #Cosmos: Ocean Currents The swirling flows of tens of thousands of ocean currents were captured in this scientific visualization. The visualization covers the period June 2005 to December 2007 and is based on a synthesis of a numerical model with observational data, created by a NASA project called Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean, or ECCO for short. ECCO uses advanced mathematical tools to combine observations with the MIT numerical ocean model to obtain realistic descriptions of how ocean circulation evolves over time. These model-data syntheses are among the largest computations of their kind ever undertaken. ECCO model-data syntheses are being used to quantify the ocean's role in the global carbon cycle, to understand the recent evolution of the polar oceans, to monitor time-evolving heat, water, and chemical exchanges within and between different components of the Earth system, and for many other science applications. Credit: NASA #oceans #nasa #oceancurrent #svs #earth #earthrightnow #earthscience; -
As seen on #Cosmos: Most life in the ocean does not have fins or flippers. Single celled organisms called phytoplankton far outnumber the sum of all the marine organisms most of us think of first. While phytoplankton individually are largely invisible to the naked eye, their total effects can be seen from space. There are many trillions of phytoplankton in the sea, and together they convert huge quantities of carbon dioxide (CO2) into living matter. In that process they release a major percentage of the world's oxygen into the atmosphere. These life processes help regulate the planet's overall climate and habitability and are a bellwether of planetary health. NASA research using satellite measurements of phytoplankton has opened the door to global observations of these tiny life forms as a group, essentially helping scientists put a finger on the living pulse of the oceans, the rhythm of life upon which we all depend. This data visualization comes from the MODIS instrument on NASA’s AQUA spacecraft. Here we see a measure of global chlorophyll concentrations, derived from data collected between July 1, 2002, and December 31, 2004. This visualization has a 4-kilometer measure of resolution. Credit: NASA #nasa #earth #earthrightnow #earthscience #ocean #phytoplankton;
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