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Our researchers discover new clues to determining the solar cycle. Approximately every 11 years, the sun undergoes a complete personality change from quiet and calm to violently active. The height of the sun’s activity, known as solar maximum, is a time of numerous sunspots, punctuated with profound eruptions that send radiation and solar particles out into the far reaches of space. However, the timing of the solar cycle is far from precise. Since humans began regularly recording sunspots in the 17th century, the time between successive solar maxima has been as short as nine years, but as long as 14, making it hard to determine its cause. Now, researchers have discovered a new marker to track the course of the solar cycle—brightpoints, little bright spots in the solar atmosphere that allow us to observe the constant roiling of material inside the sun. These markers provide a new way to watch the way the magnetic fields evolve and move through our closest star. They also show that a substantial adjustment to established theories about what drives this mysterious cycle may be needed. Image Credit: NASA #nasa #space #sun #solarsystem #solar #science; -
What's that in the sky? It's our researchers taking to the skies to capture data about the effects of jet biofuels on aircraft emissions and contrails. In this image, our DC-8 research aircraft, which had the job of burning the biofuel, leads one of the "sampling" chase aircraft across an early morning sky near NASA's Armstrong Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale, Calif. The science instruments on the chase aircraft, as they were flown through the DC-8's wake, were able to record more data about how the emissions mixed with air. The tests confirm that the biofuels result in at least 50 percent reduction in soot emissions when burning the blended fuel as opposed to standard jet fuel. The goal of the research is to help lead to more environmentally friendly aircraft designs. Image Credit: NASA/ORAU Richard Moore #nasa #nasaaero #accessii #earthrightnow #biofuels #aeronautics #science; -
A View from Space: Astronaut Reid Wiseman tweeted this photo from the International Space Station today and write, "My favorite views from #space - just past #sunrise over the ocean." The crew has been busy aboard the space station, recently performing health checks and humanoid robot upgrades. In the meantime, a trio of orbital residents is packing up gear as they prepare to return home in less than two weeks. Image Credit: NASA/Reid Wiseman #nasa #space #spacestation #exp40 #iss #science #earth; -
The Expedition 40 crew headed into the Labor Day weekend with crew health checks and humanoid robot upgrades. In the meantime, a trio of orbital residents has been packing up gear as they prepare to return home in less than two weeks. One of the Expedition 40 crew members aboard the Earth-orbiting International Space Station photographed this image of New York City on Aug. 25, 2014. Manhattan Island and its Central Park are tell-tale points for recognition purposes for the six-person crew of the orbital outpost, flying approximately 225 nautical miles above the city. The 800mm focal length used by the crew member provides great detail in the scene. Image credit: NASA #nasa #space #exp40 #iss #spacestation; -
Astronaut Reid Wiseman shared this view of Denver, Colorado today from the International Space Station tweeting "#Denver through the 800mm looking behind us." Beginning with the Mercury missions in the early 1960s, astronauts have taken photographs of the Earth. Today, the International Space Station (ISS) continues the NASA tradition of Earth observation from human-tended spacecraft. Operational since November 2000, the ISS is well suited for documenting Earth features and provides an excellent stage for observing most populated areas of the world. Images coming down from the International Space Station are processed on a daily basis and include over 1.2 million images through Nov. 1, 2013. Image credit: NASA #denver #co #nasa #space #iss #exp40 #spacestation #earthpic #astropic #astropics;
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Astronaut Reid Wiseman shared this view of Boston today from the International Space Station tweeting "Wicked cool view of #Boston through the 800mm lens." Beginning with the Mercury missions in the early 1960s, astronauts have taken photographs of the Earth. Today, the International Space Station (ISS) continues the NASA tradition of Earth observation from human-tended spacecraft. Operational since November 2000, the ISS is well suited for documenting Earth features and provides an excellent stage for observing most populated areas of the world. Images coming down from the International Space Station are processed on a daily basis and include over 1.2 million images through Nov. 1, 2013. Image credit: NASA #boston #ma #nasa #space #iss #exp40 #spacestation #earthpic #astropic #astropics; -
Astronaut Reid Wiseman on the International Space Station shared this image of Earth earlier Sunday morning tweeting, "Clouds cast thousand-mile shadows into the black of #space. A favorite view of ours." Beginning with the Mercury missions in the early 1960s, astronauts have taken photographs of the Earth. Today, the International Space Station (ISS) continues the NASA tradition of Earth observation from human-tended spacecraft. Operational since November 2000, the ISS is well suited for documenting Earth features and provides an excellent stage for observing most populated areas of the world. Images coming down from the International Space Station are processed on a daily basis and include over 1.2 million images through Nov. 1, 2013. Image credit: NASA; -
Hubble Looks at Light and Dark in the Universe: This image shows a variety of intriguing cosmic phenomena. Surrounded by bright stars, towards the upper middle of the frame we see a small young stellar object. Located in the constellation of Perseus, this star is in the early stages of its life and is still forming into a fully-grown star. It appears to have a murky chimney of material emanating outwards and downwards, framed by bright bursts of gas flowing from the star itself. This fledgling star is actually surrounded by a bright disk of material swirling around it as it forms — a disc that we see edge-on from our perspective. Credit: ESA/NASA #nasa #space #esa #hst #hubble #astronomy #stars #universe #science; -
After delivering almost three tons of supplies and scientific experiments to the crew of the International Space Station, Orbital Sciences Corporation's Cygnus cargo spacecraft, the SS Janice Voss, left the station on Friday, Aug. 15. Ground controllers in the Mission Control Center at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston detached Cygnus from the Earth-facing port of the Harmony module and maneuver it into release position. With the assistance of NASA Flight Engineer Reid Wiseman, Expedition 40 Flight Engineer Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency then used the station's Canadarm2 robotic arm, operated from the station’s cupola robotics workstation, to release Cygnus. Once the spacecraft was a safe distance from the station, its engines fired twice Sunday, Aug. 17, pushing it into Earth's atmosphere where it burned up over the Pacific Ocean. Station crew members had an opportunity to photograph Cygnus' fiery reentry back to Earth, gathering engineering data that could be applied to the entry path of the European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle cargo ship in January 2015. Credit: NASA #nasa #cygnus #orbitalsciences #iss #space #spacestation; -
Building Planets Through Collisions Planets, including those like our own Earth, form from epic collisions between asteroids and even bigger bodies, called proto-planets. Sometimes the colliding bodies are ground to dust, and sometimes they stick together to ultimately form larger, mature planets. This artist's concept shows one such smash-up, the evidence for which was collected by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Spitzer's infrared vision detected a huge eruption around the star NGC 2547-ID8 between August 2012 and 2013. Scientists think the dust was kicked up by a massive collision between two large asteroids. They say the smashup took place in the star's "terrestrial zone," the region around stars where rocky planets like Earth take shape. NGC 2547-ID8 is a sun-like star located about 1,200 light-years from Earth in the constellation Vela. It is about 35 million years old, the same age our young sun was when its rocky planets were finally assembled via massive collisions -- including the giant impact on proto-Earth that led to the formation of the moon. The recent impact witnessed by Spitzer may be a sign of similar terrestrial planet building. Near-real-time studies like these help astronomers understand how the chaotic process works. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech #asteroids #planets #rockyworlds #nasa #space #spitzer;
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Colorful Auroras! Astronaut Reid Wiseman on the International Space Station snapped with image of auroras over Earth and stated, "the #aurora got even better as we flew into #sunrise." He also commented that "we can’t stop looking outside" and that the space station was "flying through huge loops of light." The dancing lights of the aurora provide spectacular views on the ground and from the space station, but also capture the imagination of scientists who study incoming energy and particles from the sun. Aurora are one effect of such energetic particles, which can speed out from the sun both in a steady stream called the solar wind and due to giant eruptions known as coronal mass ejections. Image Credit: NASA #iss #aurora #exp40 #spacestation #space #nasa; -
Astronomers have for the first time caught a glimpse of the earliest stages of massive galaxy construction. The building site, dubbed “Sparky,” is a dense galactic core blazing with the light of millions of newborn stars that are forming at a ferocious rate. The discovery was made possible through combined observations from NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, the W.M. Keck Observatory in Mauna Kea, Hawaii, and the European Space Agency's Herschel space observatory, in which NASA plays an important role. A fully developed elliptical galaxy is a gas-deficient gathering of ancient stars theorized to develop from the inside out, with a compact core marking its beginnings. Because the galactic core is so far away, the light of the forming galaxy that is observable from Earth was actually created 11 billion years ago, just 3 billion years after the Big Bang. Although only a fraction of the size of the Milky Way, the tiny powerhouse galactic core already contains about twice as many stars as our own galaxy, all crammed into a region only 6,000 light-years across. The Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years across. Image Credit: NASA, Z. Levay, G. Bacon (STScI) #nasa #hubble #spitzer #space #stars #science; -
The Eta Carinae star system does not lack for superlatives. Not only does it contain one of the biggest and brightest stars in our galaxy, weighing at least 90 times the mass of the Sun, it is also extremely volatile and is expected to have at least one supernova explosion in the future. As one of the first objects observed by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory after its launch some 15 years ago, this double star system continues to reveal new clues about its nature through the X-rays it generates. Astronomers reported extremely volatile behavior from Eta Carinae in the 19th century, when it became very bright for two decades, outshining nearly every star in the entire sky. This event became known as the "Great Eruption." Data from modern telescopes reveal that Eta Carinae threw off about ten times the Sun's mass during that time. Surprisingly, the star survived this tumultuous expulsion of material, adding "extremely hardy" to its list of attributes. Today, astronomers are trying to learn more about the two stars in the Eta Carinae system and how they interact with each other. The heavier of the two stars is quickly losing mass through wind streaming away from its surface at over a million miles per hour. While not the giant purge of the Great Eruption, this star is still losing mass at a very high rate that will add up to the Sun's mass in about a millennium. Image credit: NASA/CXC/GSFC/K.Hamaguchi, et al. #chandra #nasa #space #stars #universe #astronomy #xrays #etacarinae; -
Here's another look at the summer sun and solar flare on Aug. 24, 2014. The sun emitted a mid-level solar flare, peaking at 8:16 a.m. EDT on Aug. 24. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured images of the flare, which erupted on the left side of the sun. 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 flare is classified as an M5 flare. M-class flares are ten times less powerful than the most intense flares, called X-class flares. Image Credit: NASA/SDO #nasa #sun #solarflare #solar #sdo #solardynamics #space; -
On Aug. 24, 2014, the sun emitted a mid-level solar flare, peaking at 8:16 a.m. EDT. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured images of the flare, which erupted on the left side of the sun. 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 flare is classified as an M5 flare. M-class flares are ten times less powerful than the most intense flares, called X-class flares. Pictured here is a close-up of a moderate flare on Aug. 24, 2014, shows light in the 131 and 171 Angstrom wavelengths. The former wavelength, usually colorized in teal, highlights the extremely hot material of a flare. The latter, usually colorized in gold, highlights magnet loops in the sun's atmosphere. Image Credit: NASA/SDO #nasa #sun #solarflare #sdo #solardynamics #space;
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