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Waiting for the ball to drop this New Year's eve? Enjoy this cluster of sparkle from the Hubble Space Telescope: This image captures the stunning NGC 6535, a globular cluster 22,000 light-years away in the constellation of Serpens (The Serpent) that measures one light-year across. Globular clusters are tightly bound groups of stars which orbit galaxies. The large mass in the rich stellar centre of the globular cluster pulls the stars inward to form a ball of stars. The word globulus, from which these clusters take their name, is Latin for small sphere. Globular clusters are generally very ancient objects formed around the same time as their host galaxy. To date, no new star formation has been observed within a globular cluster, which explains the abundance of aging yellow stars in this image, most of them containing very few heavy elements. NGC 6535 was first discovered in 1852 by English astronomer John Russell Hind. The cluster would have appeared to Hind as a small, faint smudge through his telescope. Now, over 160 years later, instruments like the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) on the NASA/ European Space Agency (ESA) Hubble Space Telescope allow us to marvel at the cluster and its contents in greater detail. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Gilles Chapdelaine; -
"This is what space science is all about," said NASA photographer Chris Gunn, who captured a photo from outside the enormous mouth of NASA's giant thermal vacuum chamber called Chamber A at Johnson Space Center in Houston. Previously used for manned spaceflight missions, this historic chamber is now filled with engineers and technicians preparing for one of NASA's biggest missions, the James Webb Space Telescope. Once fully assembled and launched into space, this telescope will allow us to explore ever further into the cosmos, seeing things that even the mighty Hubble Space Telescope can’t. Before this telescope is launched one million miles into space to its destination, it must undergo a series of detailed tests to ensure it's ready for the harsh environment of space. This spring, a model of the telescope called "Pathfinder" will begin cryogenic optical testing inside this chamber. The James Webb Space Telescope is the scientific successor to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. It will be the most powerful space telescope ever built. Webb is an international project led by NASA with its partners, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. Seen here are engineers and technicians inside Chamber A preparing a lift system that will be used to hold JWST during testing. Image Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn; -
View of the Alps From Space Expedition 42 Flight Engineer Samantha Cristoforetti of the European Space Agency (ESA) took this photograph of the Alps from the International Space Station, and posted it to social media on Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2014. She wrote, "I'm biased, but aren't the Alps from space spectacular? What a foggy day on the Po plane, though! #Italy" Image Credit: NASA/ESA/Samantha Cristoforetti; -
Earth From Space: 15 Years of Amazing Things The view of Earth from orbit is never the same – from minute to minute, day to day, year to year. In December of 1999 NASA launched a satellite that opened up a new era in our ability to see, measure and understand Earth. The satellite called Terra rocketed to space on Dec. 18, 1999. (And while it was designed for a five-year mission life – Terra is still up there, collecting invaluable data on Earth’s land, atmosphere and oceans.) In 2002 and 2004, satellites named Aqua and Aura followed. These are often called the three flagship satellites of NASA’s Earth Observing System -- which began in earnest with Terra and now comprises a fleet of 18 Earth-observing satellites that have revolutionized our ability to observe our home planet from space. NASA and other space agencies had launched satellites to study Earth before. But the past 15 years have produced a more comprehensive look at Earth from space than any other period in history. At a time when our planet is undergoing critically important changes, this global view offers not only stunning imagery but also vitally important information about how Earth is changing. In 2002, NASA scientists and visualizers stitched together strips of brand new data, in natural color, collected over four months from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS, instrument aboard Terra. Seen here is the western hemisphere of that Blue Marble image. Image Credit: NASA's Earth Observatory; -
Astronaut Terry Virts on the International Space Station shared this image on Twitter saying you can see a view of the Earth looking "across the Sahara to the Med." Astronauts have used hand-held cameras to photograph the Earth for more than 50 years. Beginning with the Mercury missions in the early 1960s, astronauts have taken more than 700,000 photographs of the Earth. Today, the International Space Station continues the NASA tradition of Earth observation from human-tended spacecraft. Image credit: NASA #iss @iss;
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Astronaut Terry Virts on the International Space Station shared this beautiful sunrise image on Twitter saying "Sunrise on Christmas morning - better than any present I could ask for!!!!" The space station orbits the Earth about every 90 minutes. It circles around the Earth 16 times per day, so astronauts can see 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets each day. During the daylight periods, temperatures reach 200 ºC, while temperatures during the night periods drop to -200 ºC. Image credit: NASA; -
Severe weather in the form of tornadoes is not something people expect on Christmas week but a storm system on Dec. 23 brought tornadoes to Mississippi, Georgia and Louisiana. As the storm moved, NASA's RapidScat captured data on winds while NOAA's GOES satellite tracked the movement of the system. NASA's RapidScat instrument flies aboard the International Space Station and captured a look at some of the high winds from the storms that brought severe weather to the U.S. Gulf Coast on Dec. 23. In addition, this animation of images from NOAA's GOES-East satellite showed the movement of those storms and other weather systems from Canada to South America from Dec. 21 to 24. An animation of visible and infrared satellite data from NOAA's GOES-East satellite that showed the development and movement of the weather system that spawned tornadoes affecting the Gulf Coast of the U.S. on Dec. 23 and early Dec. 24. To create the images and the video, NASA/NOAA's GOES Project takes the cloud data from NOAA's GOES-East satellite and overlays it on a true-color image of land and ocean created by data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites. Together, those data created the entire picture of the storm systems and show their movement. Coupled with local weather observations, soundings, and computer models, data from satellites like NOAA's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite or GOES-East (also known as GOES-13) gives forecasters information about developing weather situations. In real-time, the NOAA's GOES-East satellite data in animated form showed forecasters how the area of severe weather was developing and moving. Image credit: NASA/NOAA GOES Project; -
This new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the galaxy IC 335 in front of a backdrop of distant galaxies. IC 335 is part of a galaxy group containing three other galaxies, and located in the Fornax Galaxy Cluster 60 million light-years away. As seen in this image, the disk of IC 335 appears edge-on from the vantage point of Earth. This makes it harder for astronomers to classify it, as most of the characteristics of a galaxy’s morphology — the arms of a spiral or the bar across the center — are only visible on its face. Still, the 45 000 light-year-long galaxy could be classified as an S0 type. These lenticular galaxies are an intermediate state in galaxy morphological classification schemes between true spiral and elliptical galaxies. They have a thin stellar disk and a bulge, like spiral galaxies, but in contrast to typical spiral galaxies they have used up most of the interstellar medium. Only a few new stars can be created out of the material that is left and the star formation rate is very low. Hence, the population of stars in S0 galaxies consists mainly of aging stars, very similar to the star population in elliptical galaxies. As S0 galaxies have only ill-defined spiral arms they are easily mistaken for elliptical galaxies if they are seen inclined face-on or edge-on as IC 335 here. And indeed, despite the morphological differences between S0 and elliptical class galaxies, they share some common characteristics, like typical sizes and spectral features. Both classes are also deemed "early-type" galaxies, because they are evolving passively. However, while elliptical galaxies may be passively evolving when we observe them, they have usually had violent interactions with other galaxies in their past. In contrast, S0 galaxies are either aging and fading spiral galaxies, which never had any interactions with other galaxies, or they are the aging result of a single merger between two spiral galaxies in the past. The exact nature of these galaxies is still a matter of debate. Credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA; -
This holiday season, look up and see the International Space Station pass over you. As the third brightest object in the sky the space station is easy to see if you know when to look up. NASA’s Spot The Station service gives you a list of upcoming sighting opportunities for thousands of locations worldwide, and will let you sign up to receive notices of opportunities in your email inbox or cell phone. The space station looks like a fast-moving plane in the sky, but it is dozens of times higher than any airplane and traveling thousands of miles an hour faster. It is bright enough that it can even be seen from the middle of a city! Sign up for alerts at http://spotthestation.nasa.gov #SpotTheStation @ISS; -
Seen here is the moon setting behind the Earth's atmosphere last week. These images were shared via Twitter by Astronaut Terry Virts on the International Space Station. Astronauts have used hand-held cameras to photograph the Earth for more than 40 years. Beginning with the Mercury missions in the early 1960s, astronauts have taken more than 700,000 photographs of the Earth. Today, the International Space Station continues the NASA tradition of Earth observation from human-tended spacecraft. Image credit: NASA #iss @iss;
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Saturn’s main rings, seen here on their ''lit'' face, appear much darker than normal. That’s because they tend to scatter light back toward its source — in this case, the Sun. Usually, when taking images of the rings in geometries like this, exposures times are increased to make the rings more visible. Here, the requirement to not over-expose Saturn's lit crescent reveals just how dark the rings actually become. Scientists are interested in images in this sunward-facing ("high phase") geometry because the way that the rings scatter sunlight can tell us much about the ring particles' physical make-up. This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 6 degrees above the ringplane. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Jan. 12, 2014. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.4 million miles (2.3 million kilometers) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 152 degrees. Image scale is 86 miles (138 kilometers) per pixel. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute; -
Sun Sizzles in High-Energy X-Rays: For the first time, a mission designed to set its eyes on black holes and other objects far from our solar system has turned its gaze back closer to home, capturing images of our sun. Our Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, has taken its first picture of the sun, producing the most sensitive solar portrait ever taken in high-energy X-rays. The NuSTAR data, seen in green and blue, reveal solar high-energy emission (green shows energies between 2 and 3 kiloelectron volts, and blue shows energies between 3 and 5 kiloelectron volts). The high-energy X-rays come from gas heated to above 3 million degrees. The red channel represents ultraviolet light captured by SDO at wavelengths of 171 angstroms, and shows the presence of lower-temperature material in the solar atmosphere at 1 million degrees. This image shows that some of the hotter emission tracked by NuSTAR is coming from different locations in the active regions and the coronal loops than the cooler emission shown in the SDO image. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSFC #nasa #space #nustar #sdo #sun #solar #solarsystem #science; -
As the Christmas holiday approaches this Thursday, December 25, NOAA's GOES-East and GOES-West satellites are keeping a weather eye out for storms that may affect early travelers. In a wide-field image created from GOES-East imagery, two-thirds of the U.S. appeared blanketed in clouds that are bringing areas of rain and snow across the country. NOAA's GOES-East satellite provides visible and infrared images over the eastern U.S. and the Atlantic Ocean, while NOAA's GOES-West satellite covers the western U.S. and Pacific Ocean from their fixed orbits in space. The image was created at NASA's GOES Project on Dec. 22 at 14:45 UTC (9:45 a.m. EST). Image Credit: NASA/NOAA GOES Project; -
Holiday Lights on the Sun: The sun emitted a significant solar flare, peaking at 7:28 p.m. EST on Dec. 19, 2014. Our Solar Dynamics Observatory, which watches the sun constantly, captured an image of the event. 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 X1.8-class flare. X-class denotes the most intense flares, while the number provides more information about its strength. An X2 is twice as intense as an X1, an X3 is three times as intense, etc. Image Credit: NASA/SDO #nasa #sun #sdo #solarflare #space #solarsystem #science; -
Tethys the Spy: Saturn's moon Tethys appears to be peeking out from behind Rhea, watching the watcher. Scientists believe that Tethys' surprisingly high albedo is due to the water ice jets emerging from its neighbor, Enceladus. The fresh water ice becomes the E ring and can eventually arrive at Tethys, giving it a fresh surface layer of clean ice. Lit terrain seen here is on the anti-Saturn side of moon Rhea. North on Rhea is up. The image was taken in red light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on April 20, 2012. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute #nasa #saturn #space #cassini #rhea #tethys #solarsystem #moon #science;
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