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As seen on #Cosmos: The Gravitational Lens Imagine a bright object such as a star, a galaxy, or a quasar, that is very far away from Earth (say...10 billion light years). For our discussion, let us imagine we have a quasar. If there is nothing between it and us, we see one image of the quasar. Yet, if a massive galaxy (or cluster of galaxies) is blocking the direct view to the quasar, the light will be bent by the gravitational field around the galaxy. This is called "gravitational lensing," since the gravity of the intervening galaxy acts like a lens to redirect the light rays. But rather than creating a single image of the quasar, the gravitational lens creates multiple images. We follow the light rays from the Earth to the apparent locations of the quasar. If the galaxy were perfectly symmetric with respect to the line between the quasar and the Earth, then we would see a ring of quasars! The Hubble Space Telescope has peered nearly 5 billion light-years away to resolve intricate details in the galaxy cluster Abell 370, seen here. Abell 370 is one of the very first galaxy clusters where astronomers observed the phenomenon of gravitational lensing, where the warping of space by the cluster's gravitational field distorts the light from galaxies lying far behind it. This is manifested as arcs and streaks in the picture, which are the stretched images of background galaxies. Image credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble SM4 ERO Team, and ST-ECF #space #nasa #universe #hubble; -
Astronaut Reid Wiseman, aboard the International Space Station, shared this image on Friday, June 6 wishing everyone a great weekend. He shared that this image shows "Trinidad and Tobago in the evening sun." The crew of the ISS is preparing to take out the trash when a resupply craft undocks Monday morning. The crew is also counting down to a Russian spacewalk on June 19. In the meantime, science, maintenance and exercise are filling the rest of the crew’s time. The ISS Progress 53 (53P) cargo craft has been filled with trash and discarded gear. Flight Engineers Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev closed the hatches Friday morning and monitored for leak checks in the afternoon. It will undock from the aft end of the Zvezda service module Monday at 9:30 a.m. EDT and reenter the Earth’s atmosphere a few hours later for a fiery destruction over the Pacific Ocean. Image credit: NASA #nasa #space #exp40 #iss #spacestation #astro_reid #earth; -
Grand Swirls: This new Hubble image shows NGC 1566, a beautiful galaxy located approximately 40 million light-years away in the constellation of Dorado (The Dolphinfish). NGC 1566 is an intermediate spiral galaxy, meaning that while it does not have a well-defined bar-shaped region of stars at its center — like barred spirals — it is not quite an unbarred spiral either. The centers of such galaxies are very active and luminous, emitting strong bursts of radiation and potentially harboring supermassive black holes that are many millions of times the mass of the sun. Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA #nasa #hst #galaxy #hubble #astronomy #space #esa #science; -
Giant Landform on Mars: Sandy landforms formed by the wind, or aeolian bedforms, are classified by the wavelength--or length--between crests. On Mars, we can observe four classes of bedforms (in order of increasing wavelengths): ripples, transverse aeolian ridges (known as TARs), dunes, and what are called “draa.” All of these are visible in this Juventae Chasma image. Here, this giant draa possesses steep faces or slip faces several hundreds of meters tall and has lower-order superposed bedforms, such as ripples and dunes. A bedform this size likely formed over thousands of Mars years, probably longer. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona #hirise #nasa #mars #marscuriosity #msl #planets #science; -
With the #BelmontStakes this Saturday and the #NBAFinals heating up, let's Throwback Thursday to one of the tallest and one of the shortest professional athletes finding a middle ground on the topic of space technology. They mention scratch-resistant lenses, a popular NASA spinoff. It's a technology, originally developed to meet NASA mission needs, that has been transferred to the public and now provides benefits for the nation and world as a commercial product or service. Video credit: NASA #tbt #321TechOff #BelmontStakes #NBAFinals #throwbackthursday #vintage #history #nasahistory @kaj33;
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NASA Technology: As we prepare for the Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) experimental flight test in Hawaii, now set to launch no earlier than June 7, the agency continues work on other entry, descent and landing technologies. As seen in this image, technicians prepare the Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (HIAD) for structural loads testing beginning in mid-2013 at our Armstrong's Flight Loads Laboratory. The donut-shaped, inflatable test article is designed to more effectively slow down a spacecraft upon atmospheric re-entry to Earth or other planets. Image credit: NASA #321techoff #nasaarmstrong #nasatech #nasa #technology #ldsd #hiad; -
High Vortex: Titan's polar vortex stands illuminated where all else is in shadow. Scientists deduce that the vortex must extend higher into Titan's atmosphere than the surrounding clouds because it is still lit in images like this. Although the south polar region is now in winter, the Sun can still reach high features like the vortex. Titan (3,200 miles, or 5,150 kilometers across) is Saturn's largest moon. This view looks toward the Saturn-facing hemisphere of Titan. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Feb. 3 using a spectral filter which preferentially admits wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 742 nanometers. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 134,000 miles (215,000 kilometers) from Titan. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute #cassini #nasa #space #moon #saturn #titan #science; -
New Suspect Identified in Supernova Explosion: Supernovas are often thought of as tremendous explosions that mark the ends of massive stars' lives, but not all supernovas occur in this fashion. A common supernova class, Type Ia, involves the detonation of white dwarfs -- small, dense stars that are already dead. New results from our Spitzer Space Telescope have revealed a rare example of Type Ia explosion, in which a dead star "fed" off an aging star like a cosmic zombie, triggering a blast. The results help researchers piece together how these powerful and diverse events occur. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Goddard #nasa #spitzer #supernova #astronomy #stars #telescope #science; -
The most colorful view of universe captured: Astronomers using our Hubble Space Telescope have assembled a comprehensive picture of the evolving universe – among the most colorful deep space images ever captured by the 24-year-old telescope. This image -- made from 841 orbits of telescope viewing time -- contains approximately 10,000 galaxies, extending back in time to within a few hundred million years of the big bang. This is a composite image showing the visible and near infrared light spectrum collected from Hubble's ACS and WFC3 instruments over a nine-year period. Image Credit: NASA/ESA #nasa #hst #hubble #space #astronomy #galaxy #universe #stars #telescope #science; -
We captured an image of a galaxy sparkling in X-rays: Nearly a million seconds of observing time with our Chandra X-ray Observatory has revealed a spiral galaxy similar to the Milky Way glittering with hundreds of X-ray points of light. The galaxy is officially named Messier 51 (M51) or NGC 5194, but often goes by its nickname of the “Whirlpool Galaxy.” Like the Milky Way, the Whirlpool is a spiral galaxy with spectacular arms of stars and dust. M51 is located 30 million light years from Earth, and its face-on orientation to Earth gives us a perspective that we can never get of our own spiral galactic home. Much of the diffuse, or fuzzy, X-ray emission in M51 comes from gas that has been superheated by supernova explosions of massive stars. Image Credit: NASA #nasa #chandra #galaxy #xray #milkyway #space #astronomy #science;
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How we build a space laser: To build a satellite that will measure all the bumps and dips of our dynamic Earth, engineers started with a black box, built of a composite honeycomb material to make it as light as possible. The structure was precisely manufactured with an opening to allow lasers to beam to Earth, and other windows sized for a telescope that will capture photons that bounce off our planet and return to the satellite. The box was measured and marked to denote where the assembly of aligned mirrors, electronics, lasers and photon detectors would be attached. ICESat-2’s Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System, or ATLAS, will measure the elevation of Earth’s surfaces, from ice sheets to forests to oceans. Its six laser beams will generate a more detailed elevation portrait than single beam of original ICESat, which flew from 2003 to 2009. And with the beams paired, scientists will be able to measure surface slope and better calculate height changes. To measure elevation, ATLAS beams light with a green laser that pulses 10,000 times a second. Only a few photons will bounce off the surface and return to the satellite, but an incredibly sensitive detector counts those that do come back. Using the time of the photons’ return trip, the speed of light and some geometry, scientists can determine the distance the photons traveled and, therefore, the height of Earth below the satellite’s orbit. This image is an artist's concept shows a representation of ICESat-2 and its six-beam scanning pattern. Image credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center #EarthRightNow #TechTuesday #321TechOff @nasagoddard #nasa #space #icesat; -
Astronomers Confounded By Massive Rocky World - Astronomers have discovered a rocky planet that weighs 17 times as much as Earth and is more than twice as large in size. This discovery has planet formation theorists challenged to explain how such a world could have formed. Worlds such as this were not thought possible to exist. The enormous gravitational force of such a massive body would accrete a gas envelope during formation, ballooning the planet to a gas giant the size of Neptune or even Jupiter. However, this planet is thought to be solid, composed primarily of rock. This image is an artist concept that shows the Kepler-10 system, home to two rocky planets. In the foreground is Kepler-10c, a planet that weighs 17 times as much as Earth and is more than twice as large in size. Image Credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics/David Aguilar #planets #nasa #kepler #astronomy #science #exoplanet #earth; -
Venice Lagoon - A narrow barrier island protects the Lagoon of Venice from storm waves in the northern Adriatic Sea, and breakwaters protect inlets to the lagoon. Red tiles on the roofs of Venice contrast with the grays of the sister city of Mestre, and the cities are joined by a prominent causeway. What appears to be another causeway joining the island to the airport (top right) is actually the combined wakes of many boats and water taxis shuttling between them. Small, bright agricultural fields on well-drained soils (top left) contrast with the darker vegetation of back-bay swamps, where fishing is a popular pastime. The image was taken by the space station's Expedition 39 crew. It has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast, and lens artifacts have been removed. Image Credit: NASA #nasa #iss #italy #venice #spacestation #space #adriatic #exp39; -
As seen on #Cosmos: The Apollo 8 mission, first time humans left Earth orbit. This view of the rising Earth greeted the Apollo 8 astronauts as they came from behind the Moon after the lunar orbit insertion burn. Earth is about five degrees above the horizon in the photo. The unnamed surface features in the foreground are near the eastern limb of the Moon as viewed from Earth. The lunar horizon is approximately 780 kilometers from the spacecraft. Width of the photographed area at the horizon is about 175 kilometers. On the Earth 240,000 miles away, the sunset terminator bisects Africa. Image Credit: NASA #nasa #cosmos #earth #earthrightnow #apollo8 #watching cosmos #moon; -
As seen on Cosmos: Solar energy - The Sun’s surface temperature is 5,500° C, and its peak radiation is in visible wavelengths of light. Earth’s effective temperature—the temperature it appears when viewed from space—is -20° C, and it radiates energy that peaks in thermal infrared wavelengths. (Illustration adapted from Robert Rohde.) Incandescent light bulbs radiate 40 to 100 watts. The Sun delivers 1,360 watts per square meter. An astronaut facing the Sun has a surface area of about 0.85 square meters, so he or she receives energy equivalent to 19 60-watt light bulbs. Image Credit: NASA #earth #nasa #earthrightnow #sun #solarenergy #energy #cosmos #watchingcosmos;
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