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Record-Breaking Outburst from Milky Way's Black Hole: Astronomers have observed the largest X-ray flare ever detected from the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. This event, detected by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, raises questions about the behavior of this giant black hole and its surrounding environment. The supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, called Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A*, is estimated to contain about 4.5 million times the mass of our sun. Image Credit: NASA/CXC/Stanford/I. Zhuravleva et al. #nasa #space #blackhole #chandra #milkyway #astronomy #xray #aas225 #science; -
Iconic Hubble Space Telescope 'Pillars of Creation' image, taken in near-infrared light, transforms the pillars into eerie, wispy silhouettes, which are seen against a background of myriad stars. The near-infrared light can penetrate much of the gas and dust, revealing stars behind the nebula as well as hidden away inside the pillars. Some of the gas and dust clouds are so dense that even the near-infrared light cannot penetrate them. New stars embedded in the tops of the pillars, however, are apparent as bright sources that are unseen in the visible image. Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) #nasa #hubble #hubble25 #hst #space #astronomy #aas225 #telescope #science; -
Hubble’s High-Definition Panoramic View of the Andromeda Galaxy: This sweeping bird's-eye view of a portion of the Andromeda galaxy (M31) is the sharpest image ever taken of our galactic next-door neighbor. This ambitious photographic cartography of the Andromeda galaxy represents a new benchmark for precision studies of large spiral galaxies that dominate the universe's population of over 100 billion galaxies. Never before have astronomers been able to see individual stars inside an external spiral galaxy over such a large contiguous area. Most of the stars in the universe live inside such majestic star cities, and this is the first data that reveal populations of stars in context to their home galaxy. Image credit: NASA, ESA, J. Dalcanton, B.F. Williams, and L.C. Johnson (University of Washington), the PHAT team, and R. Gendler #nasa #hubble #hst #space #hubble25 #aas225 #galaxy #telescope #science; -
Twas the night before launch, and the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft were prepared to liftoff to the International Space Station to deliver cargo that will be sent aloft on the resupply flight. Launch of the Falcon 9 rocket on the SpaceX CRS-5 mission is scheduled for 6:20 a.m. EST Tuesday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40 in Florida. The flight will deliver supplies, experiments and CATS, a laser instrument to measure clouds and the location and distribution of pollution, dust, smoke, and other particulates in the atmosphere. Clouds across the launch area are expected to thin out, and forecasters with the U.S. Air Force’s 45th Weather Squadron are predicting a 70 percent chance of favorable conditions at launch time. Image Credit: SpaceX #nasa #spacex #iss #isscargo #space #spacestation #launch #science #exp42; -
Hubble Goes High-Definition to Revisit Iconic Image: Although NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has taken many breathtaking images of the universe, one snapshot stands out from the rest: the iconic view of the so-called "Pillars of Creation." The jaw-dropping photo, taken in 1995, revealed never-before-seen details of three giant columns of cold gas bathed in the scorching ultraviolet light from a cluster of young, massive stars in a small region of the Eagle Nebula, or M16. The dust and gas in the pillars is seared by the intense radiation from young stars and eroded by strong winds from massive nearby stars. With these new images comes better contrast and a clearer view for astronomers to study how the structure of the pillars is changing over time. Credit: NASA, ESA/Hubble and the Hubble Heritage Team #nasa #hst #hubble #hubble25 #aas225 #astronomy #space #telescope #science;
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Commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore on the International Space Station shared this beautiful image of #sunrise earlier today. 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; -
Solar Dynamics Observatory Welcomes the New Year There were no fireworks on the sun to welcome in the New Year and only a few C-class flares during the last day of 2014. Instead, the sun starts 2015 with an enormous coronal hole near the south pole. This image, captured on Jan. 1, 2015 by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) instrument on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, shows the coronal hole as a dark region in the south. Coronal holes are regions of the corona where the magnetic field reaches out into space rather than looping back down onto the surface. Particles moving along those magnetic fields can leave the sun rather than being trapped near the surface. Those trapped particles can heat up and glow, giving us the lovely AIA images. In the parts of the corona where the particles leave the sun, the glow is much dimmer and the coronal hole looks dark. Coronal holes were first seen in images taken by astronauts on board NASA’s Skylab space station in 1973 and 1974. They can be seen for a long time, although the exact shape changes all the time. The polar coronal hole can remain visible for five years or longer. Each time a coronal hole rotates by the Earth we can measure the particles flowing out of the hole as a high-speed stream, another source of space weather. Charged particles in the Earth’s radiation belts are accelerated when the high-speed stream runs into the Earth’s magnetosphere. The acceleration of particles in the magnetosphere is studied by NASA’s Van Allen Probes mission. As Solar Cycle 24 fades, the number of flares each day will get smaller, but the coronal holes provide another source of space weather that needs to be understood and predicted. Image Credit: NASA/SDO Caption: Dean Pesnell; -
Polar Scars In addition to being evidence of past impacts, craters can serve another valuable scientific purpose. By counting the number of craters in an area, scientists can estimate the age of the terrain. Older surfaces, such as on Mimas (246 miles, or 396 kilometers across), will have more craters per unit area than younger surfaces. The view was acquired by the Cassini spacecraft at a distance of approximately 30,000 miles (50,000 kilometers) from Mimas. Image scale is 981 feet (299 meters) per pixel. This view looks toward the trailing hemisphere of Mimas. North on Mimas is up and rotated 4 degrees to the left. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 5, 2012. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 31,000 miles (50,000 kilometers) from Mimas. Image scale is 982 feet (299 meters) per pixel. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute; -
Ceres, Target of NASA's Dawn Mission Discovered on Jan. 1, 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi of Italy, Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt - the strip of solar system real estate between Mars and Jupiter. On March 6, 2015, NASA's Dawn spacecraft will arrive at Ceres, marking the first time that a spacecraft has ever orbited two solar system targets. Dawn previously explored the protoplanet Vesta for 14 months, from 2011 to 2012, capturing detailed images and data about that body. Dawn has entered its approach phase toward Ceres, and the next couple of months promise continually improving views prior to arrival. By the end of January, the spacecraft's images and other data will be the best ever taken of the dwarf planet. This image of Ceres was taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope between December 2003 and January 2004. Hubble images of Vesta and Ceres helped astronomers plan for the Dawn spacecraft’s tour. Astronomers enhanced the sharpness in the image to bring out features on Ceres' surface, including brighter and darker regions that could be asteroid impact features. The observations were made in visible and ultraviolet light. The colors represent the differences between relatively red and blue regions. These differences may simply be due to variation on the surface among different types of material. Ceres' round shape suggests that its interior is layered like those of terrestrial planets such as Earth. Ceres may have a rocky inner core, an icy mantle, and a thin, dusty outer crust inferred from its density and rotation rate of 9 hours. Ceres is approximately 590 miles (950 kilometers) across. Image Credit: NASA/ESA/J. Parker (SWRI), P. Thomas (Cornell U.), L. McFadden (U-Md., College Park), and M. Mutchler and Z. Levay (STScI); -
Recently, astronaut Terry Virts looked out the window aboard the International Space Station and saw the moon. He shared this video on Vine of moonset behind Earth’s atmosphere saying it "appears to land on a soft pillow of clouds." For him and the rest of the station crew, this extraordinary event is a daily occurrence. The space station and its crew orbit Earth from an altitude of about 250 miles, traveling at a speed of approximately 17,500 miles per hour. Since the station orbits Earth every ninety minutes, the crew experiences sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset about sixteen times a day. Credit: NASA/Terry Virts;
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Happy New Year! NOAA's GOES-East satellite captured this stunning view of the Americas on New Years Day, Jan. 1, 2015 at 14:45 UTC/9:45 a.m. EST. The data from GOES-East was made into an image by the NASA/NOAA GOES Project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. GOES satellites provide the kind of continuous monitoring necessary for intensive data analysis. Geostationary describes an orbit in which a satellite is always in the same position with respect to the rotating Earth. This allows GOES to hover continuously over one position on Earth's surface, appearing stationary. As a result, GOES provide a constant vigil for the atmospheric "triggers" for severe weather conditions such as tornadoes, flash floods, hail storms and hurricanes. Image credit: NASA/NOAA GOES Project #nasa @noaa #goes #earth #earthrightnow #happynewyear; -
Astronaut Terry Virts' (@Astro_Terry) photography from the International Space Station (@iss) is featured by @Instagram. Check it out: http://instagram.com/p/xSINEpBQYl/; -
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;
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