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Sparkling Stars: Some cosmic objects move a little further than others - take the subject of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image, a globular cluster of stars known as Palomar 12. Although it currently lies on the outskirts of the Milky Way's halo, Palomar 12 was not born here. When astronomers first studied this cluster, they were puzzled by its strangely young age when compared to the other clusters in the galaxy. It appeared to be around 30 percent younger than other Milky Way globulars. Surely if it had been born within our galaxy, it would have sprung to life at a similar time to its cluster companions? A bit more digging revealed that Palomar 12 was actually ripped from its initial home, the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical galaxy, around 1.7 billion years ago via tidal interactions between its former home and our galaxy. The dwarf galaxy that Palomar 12 once called home is a satellite galaxy to ours, and closely orbits around us - even occasionally passing through the plane of our galaxy. In fact, it is being slowly torn apart and consumed by the Milky Way. Credit: ESA/NASA #nasa #hst #hubble #hubble25 #space #astronomy #galaxy #science; -
Our Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) and ESA’s (European Space Agency) XMM-Newton telescope are showing that fierce winds from a supermassive black hole blow outward in all directions -- a phenomenon that had been suspected, but difficult to prove until now. This discovery has given astronomers their first opportunity to measure the strength of these ultra-fast winds and prove they are powerful enough to inhibit the host galaxy’s ability to make new stars. Supermassive black holes blast matter into their host galaxies, with X-ray-emitting winds traveling at up to one-third the speed of light. In the new study, astronomers determined PDS 456, an extremely bright black hole known as a quasar more than 2 billion light-years away, sustains winds that carry more energy every second than is emitted by more than a trillion suns. Supermassive black holes at the cores of galaxies blast out radiation and ultra-fast winds, as illustrated in this artist's conception. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech; -
Traveling about 257 miles above the Atlantic Ocean northeast of Puerto Rico, the unpiloted Progress 58 Russian cargo ship docked at 11:57 a.m. EST on Feb. 17 to the rear port of the Zvezda service module of the International Space Station. The craft is delivering three tons of food, fuel, supplies and experiment hardware to the six crew members aboard the orbital laboratory. Progress 58 is scheduled to remain docked to the space station until August. This image was snapped by Samantha Cristoforetti, an Italian European Space Agency astronaut, on Feb. 17 from the space station. She wrote, "Here she comes! Progress #ISScargo craft a few meters from #ISS, she took the parking spot that #ATV5 freed up on Sat." Image Credit: NASA/ESA #nasa #esa #isscargo #space #spacestation #progress #exp42 #roscosmos #rsa #science; -
Happy President's Day! Here's an International Space Station photo of the eastern (Atlantic) coast of the United States, which includes Virginia, where George Washington, the first U.S. president, was born. The image was taken in February 2012 by an Expedition 30 astronaut. Large metropolitan areas and other easily recognizable sites from the Virginia/Maryland/Washington, D.C. area spanning almost to Rhode Island are visible in the scene. Boston is just out of frame at right. Long Island and the Greater Metropolitan area of New York City are visible in the lower right quadrant. Large cities in Pennsylvania (Philadelphia and Pittsburgh) are near center. Parts of two Russian vehicles parked at the orbital outpost are seen in left foreground. Image Credit: NASA #nasa #iss #spacestation #washington #gerogewashington #presidentsday #virginia #space; -
This narrow-angle color image of the Earth, dubbed "Pale Blue Dot," is a part of the first ever "portrait" of the solar system taken by Voyager 1. The images turned 25 Saturday. The late Carl Sagan, a member of the Voyager imaging team at the time, had the idea of pointing the spacecraft back toward its home for a last look. Sagan wrote in his "Pale Blue Dot" book: "That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. ... There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world." The image of Earth contains scattered light that resembles a beam of sunlight, which is an artifact of the camera itself that makes the tiny Earth appear even more dramatic. Voyager 1 was 40 astronomical units from the sun at this moment. One astronomical unit is 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech #nasa #space #palebluedot #history #nasahistory #voyager #carlsagan #sagan #science;
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ESA’s (European Space Agency) fifth and final Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) undocked from the International Space Station’s aft port of the Zvezda service module at 8:42 a.m. EST today. ATV-5 launched to the space station in July 2014, delivering supplies and experiments to the orbital laboratory. It will move to a safe distance from the space station for its deorbit and destructive entry in the Earth’s atmosphere Sunday. This is the last in a series of European resupply spacecraft that began servicing the space station in the spring of 2008. In all, the ATVs delivered approximately 34 tons of supplies to the complex while docked to the station of 776 days. ESA is applying its technology and knowledge from the cargo ship to develop the service module for NASA’s Orion spacecraft. This video was shared earlier today by Astronaut Barry 'Butch' Wilmore on the International Space Station. Video credit: NASA; -
If your eyes could only see the color red, this is how Saturn's rings would look. Many Cassini color images, like this one, are taken in red light so scientists can study the often subtle color variations of Saturn's rings. These variations may reveal clues about the chemical composition and physical nature of the rings. For example, the longer a surface is exposed to the harsh environment in space, the redder it becomes. Putting together many clues derived from such images, scientists are coming to a deeper understanding of the rings without ever actually visiting a single ring particle. This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 11 degrees above the ringplane. The image was taken in red light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Dec. 6, 2014. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 870,000 miles (1.4 million kilometers) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 27 degrees. Image scale is 5 miles (8 kilometers) per pixel. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute; -
Aboard the International Space Station (@ISS), astronaut Barry (Butch) Wilmore snapped this photo and wrote, "Spiral of lights BURSTING from Earth! #Spain looks like it is floating away from #Africa" As the second resupply ship this week prepares to leave the space station another spacecraft is being readied for its launch. Meanwhile, the six-member Expedition 42 crew was working a variety of maintenance and science tasks this week. Image Credit: NASA #space #nasa #iss #isscargo #spacestation #exp42 #sun #earth #science #astrobutch #photography #clouds #night #atmosphere #Mediterranean; -
Exploded Star Blooms Like a Cosmic Flower: Because the debris fields of exploded stars, known as supernova remnants, are very hot, energetic, and glow brightly in X-ray light, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has proven to be a valuable tool in studying them. The supernova remnant called G299.2-2.9 (or G299 for short) is located within our Milky Way galaxy, but Chandra’s new image of it is reminiscent of a beautiful flower here on Earth. G299 was left over by a particular class of supernovas called Type Ia. Astronomers think that a Type Ia supernova is a thermonuclear explosion – involving the fusion of elements and release of vast amounts of energy − of a white dwarf star in a tight orbit with a companion star. If the white dwarf’s partner is a typical, Sun-like star, the white dwarf can become unstable and explode as it draws material from its companion. Alternatively, the white dwarf is in orbit with another white dwarf, the two may merge and can trigger an explosion. Image Credit: NASA/CXC/U.Texas #nasa #chandra #space #supernova #astronomy #science; -
And liftoff for @NOAA’s new deep space solar monitoring satellite! A new mission to monitor solar activity is now making its way to an orbit one million miles from Earth. The Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 6:03 p.m. EST Wednesday from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. DSCOVR, a partnership among the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), NASA and the U.S. Air Force, will provide NOAA space weather forecasters more reliable measurements of solar wind conditions, improving their ability to monitor potentially harmful solar activity. Image Credit: NASA #dscovr #nasa #noaa #satellite #space #science #sun #weather #spacecraft #launch #solarstorm #solarwind #nature #solarsystem #instacool;
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Astronaut Barry 'Butch' Wilmore shared this amazing view of the aurora seen from the International Space Station saying that it showed "dancing, swirling, swimming, pulsing, bridging" and that it was "amazing." The dancing lights of the aurora provide spectacular views of incoming energy and particles from the sun. Aurora are one effect of these 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 or CMEs. After a trip toward Earth that can last two to three days, the solar particles and magnetic fields cause the release of particles already trapped near Earth, which in turn trigger reactions in the upper atmosphere in which oxygen and nitrogen molecules release photons of light. The result: an aurora, and a special sight for the astronauts on board the space station. Video credit: NASA/Barry Wilmore; -
A dark line snaked across the lower half of the sun on Feb.10, 2015, as seen in this image from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO. SDO shows colder material as dark and hotter material as light, so the line is, in fact, an enormous swatch of colder material hovering in the sun's atmosphere, the corona. Stretched out, that line – or solar filament as scientists call it – would be more than 533,000 miles long. That is longer than 67 Earths lined up in a row. Filaments can float sedately for days before disappearing. Sometimes they also erupt out into space, releasing solar material in a shower that either rains back down or escapes out into space, becoming a moving cloud known as a coronal mass ejection, or CME. SDO captured images of the filament in numerous wavelengths, each of which helps highlight material of different temperatures on the sun. By looking at such features in different wavelengths and temperatures, scientists learn more about what causes these structures, as well as what catalyzes their occasional eruptions. Image credit: NASA/SDO; -
In the center of this image, taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, is the galaxy cluster SDSS J1038+4849 — and it seems to be smiling. You can make out its two orange eyes and white button nose. In the case of this “happy face”, the two eyes are very bright galaxies and the misleading smile lines are actually arcs caused by an effect known as strong gravitational lensing. Galaxy clusters are the most massive structures in the Universe and exert such a powerful gravitational pull that they warp the spacetime around them and act as cosmic lenses which can magnify, distort and bend the light behind them. This phenomenon, crucial to many of Hubble’s discoveries, can be explained by Einstein’s theory of general relativity. In this special case of gravitational lensing, a ring — known as an Einstein Ring — is produced from this bending of light, a consequence of the exact and symmetrical alignment of the source, lens and observer and resulting in the ring-like structure we see here. Image Credit: NASA/ESA; -
Space Station Flyover of Gulf of Aden and Horn of Africa: European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti took this photograph from the International Space Station and posted it to social media on Jan. 30, 2015. Cristoforetti wrote, "A spectacular flyover of the Gulf of Aden and the Horn of Africa. #HelloEarth" Image Credit: NASA/ESA/Samantha Cristoforetti #nasa #space #esa #astronauts #africa #spacestation #iss; -
Hubble's Little Sombrero: Galaxies can take many shapes and be oriented any way relative to us in the sky. This can make it hard to figure out their actual morphology, as a galaxy can look very different from different viewpoints. A special case is when we are lucky enough to observe a spiral galaxy directly from its edge, providing us with a spectacular view like the one seen in this picture of the week. This is NGC 7814, also known as the "Little Sombrero." Its larger namesake, the Sombrero Galaxy, is another stunning example of an edge-on galaxy - in fact, the "Little Sombrero" is about the same size as its bright namesake at about 60,000 light-years across, but as it lies farther away, and so appears smaller in the sky. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA #nasa #hst #hubble #hubble25 #galaxy #science;
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