โพสต์เมื่อ 30 พ.ค. 2558 | 21:30 น.
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Arches Cluster, the densest known star cluster in the Milky Way, is located about 25,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Sagittarius (The Archer), close to the heart of our galaxy, the Milky Way. It's a fairly young astronomical object at between two and four million years old. The Arches cluster is so dense that in a region with a radius equal to the distance between the sun and its nearest star there would be over 100,000 stars! At least 150 stars within the cluster are among the brightest ever discovered in the Milky Way. These stars are so bright and massive that they will burn their fuel within a short time (on a cosmological scale that means just a few million years). Then they will die in spectacular supernova explosions. Due to the short lifetime of the stars in the cluster the gas between the stars contains an unusually high amount of heavier elements, which were produced by earlier generations of stars. Image credit: NASA/ESA #nasa #space #milkyway #galaxy #stars #nasabeyond #science; -
For the first time, an international team of scientists have predicted that colorful, glowing aurorae can be seen by the naked eye on a terrestrial planet other than Earth — Mars. Visible Martian aurorae were confirmed in March 2015 by the our MAVEN mission, which completed 1,000 orbits around the red planet on April 6, 2015. The Planeterella simulates aurorae using a magnetic field, charged particles and a sphere. For this study, they replaced the terrestrial atmospheric gas with CO2, the major component of the Martian atmosphere, and then created a discharge in a vacuum similar to Mars’ upper atmosphere. Credits: D. Bernard/IPAG — CNRS #mars #space #nasa #aurora #maven #esa #science; -
New images of huge filamentary structures of gas and dust from the Herschel space observatory reveal how matter is distributed across our Milky Way galaxy. Long and flimsy threads emerge from a twisted mix of material, taking on complex shapes. This image shows a filament called G49, which contains 80,000 suns' worth of mass. This huge but slender structure of gas and dust extends about 280 light-years in length, while its diameter is only about 5 light-years across. In the densest and coolest clumps, the seeds of new generations of stars are taking shape. A brighter clump of matter is visible at the left tip of the wispy thread. This filament is about 18,000 light-years away. The image is oriented with northeast toward the left of the image and southwest toward the right. Image credit: ESA/Herschel/PACS/SPIRE/Ke Wang et al. 2015 #nasa #esa #herschel #space #galaxy #milkyway science; -
This 12-frame mosaic provides the highest resolution view ever obtained of the side of Jupiter's moon Europa that faces the giant planet. It was obtained on Nov. 25, 1999 by the camera onboard the Galileo spacecraft, a past NASA mission to Jupiter and its moons which ended in 2003. Today, we selected nine science instruments for a mission to Jupiter's moon Europa, to investigate whether the mysterious icy moon could harbor conditions suitable for life. The Galileo mission yielded strong evidence that Europa, about the size of Earth's moon, has an ocean beneath a frozen crust of unknown thickness. If proven to exist, this global ocean could have more than twice as much water as Earth. With abundant salt water, a rocky sea floor, and the energy and chemistry provided by tidal heating, Europa could be the best place in the solar system to look for present day life beyond our home planet. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona #nasa #nasabeyond #europa #jupiter #moon #planet #science; -
Today we remember and honor the brave men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice in service to our country. #MemorialDay;
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Astronaut Terry Virts (@Astro_Terry), aboard the International Space Station (@ISS), shared this picture earlier today, stating this was "the view of our Galaxy from space." Normally, the reason you can't see stars in high oblique photos from the space station is that the shutter speed is too fast. Fast shutter speeds are used to eliminate blur from the motion of the orbiting outpost. One exception to this rule is when astronauts use camera settings specifically to photograph features such as the Aurora and the Milky Way. The crew must use slower shutter speeds in order to capture the light of the aurora. In these cases stars also show up in the photograph. The photos are also slightly blurry because very long exposures are needed to capture these dim nighttime features. Image credit: NASA #nasa #space #iss @iss #spacestation @astro_terry #milkyway #galaxy #astropics #astropix; -
Coronal Loops Over a Sunspot Group The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) instrument aboard NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) images the solar atmosphere in multiple wavelengths to link changes in the surface to interior changes. Its data includes images of the sun in 10 wavelengths every 10 seconds. When AIA images are sharpened a bit, such as this AIA 171Å channel image, the magnetic field can be readily visualized through the bright, thin strands that are called "coronal loops". Loops are shown here in a blended overlay with the magnetic field as measured with SDO's Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager underneath. Blue and yellow represent the opposite polarities of the magnetic field. The combined images were taken on Oct. 24, 2014, at 23:50:37 UT. Image Credit: NASA SDO #nasa #sdo #sun #coronalloops #solar #space #solardynamics; -
Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have uncovered surprising new clues about a hefty, rapidly aging star whose behavior has never been seen before in our Milky Way galaxy. In fact, the star is so weird that astronomers have nicknamed it “Nasty 1,” a play on its catalog name of NaSt1. The star may represent a brief transitory stage in the evolution of extremely massive stars. First discovered several decades ago, Nasty 1 was identified as a Wolf-Rayet star, a rapidly evolving star that is much more massive than our sun. The star loses its hydrogen-filled outer layers quickly, exposing its super-hot and extremely bright helium-burning core. But Nasty 1 doesn’t look like a typical Wolf-Rayet star. The astronomers using Hubble had expected to see twin lobes of gas flowing from opposite sides of the star, perhaps similar to those emanating from the massive star Eta Carinae, which is a Wolf-Rayet candidate. Instead, Hubble revealed a pancake-shaped disk of gas encircling the star. The vast disk is nearly 2 trillion miles wide, and may have formed from an unseen companion star that snacked on the outer envelope of the newly formed Wolf-Rayet. Based on current estimates, the nebula surrounding the stars is just a few thousand years old, and as close as 3,000 light-years from Earth. Credits: NASA/Hubble #hubble #hst #nasa #space #nasty1 #wolfrayet #star #stars; -
Not all galaxies are neatly shaped, as this new Hubble Space Telescope image of NGC 6240 clearly demonstrates. Hubble previously released an image of this galaxy back in 2008, but the knotted region, shown here in a pinky-red hue at the center of the galaxies, was only revealed in these new observations from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys. NGC 6240 lies 400 million light-years away in the constellation of Ophiuchus (The Serpent Holder). This galaxy has an elongated shape with branching wisps, loops and tails. This mess of gas, dust and stars bears more than a passing resemblance to a butterfly and a lobster. This bizarrely-shaped galaxy did not begin its life looking like this; its distorted appearance is a result of a galactic merger that occurred when two galaxies drifted too close to one another. This merger sparked bursts of new star formation and triggered many hot young stars to explode as supernovae. Image credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration, and A. Evans (University of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University); -
New record broken! A remote galaxy shining with the light of more than 300 trillion suns has been discovered using data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). The galaxy is the most luminous galaxy found to date and belongs to a new class of objects recently discovered by WISE -- extremely luminous infrared galaxies, or ELIRGs. Image Credit: NASA (artist concept) #nasa #wise #space #astronomy #galaxy #record #nasabeyond #science;
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SpaceX’s Dragon cargo capsule is seen here docked to the Earth facing port of the Harmony module. SpaceX’s sixth commercial resupply flight to the International Space Station launched on April 14th and arrived three days later. It will depart with over 3,100 pounds of research samples and equipment and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on May 21. Image Credit: NASA #spacex #iss #isscargo #dragon #earth #science #spacestation #launchamerica; -
Since measurements began in 1895, Alaska’s Hubbard Glacier has been thickening and steadily advancing into Disenchantment Bay. The advance runs counter to so many thinning and retreating glaciers nearby in Alaska and around the world. This image, acquired by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8, shows Hubbard Glacier on July 22, 2014. According to Leigh Stearns, a glaciologist at the University of Kansas, Hubbard’s advance is due to its large accumulation area; the glacier’s catchment basin extends far into the Saint Elias Mountains. Snow that falls in the basin either melts or flows down to the terminus, causing Hubbard to steadily grow. In addition, Hubbard is building up a large moraine, shoveling sediment, rock, and other debris from Earth’s surface onto the glacier’s leading edge. The moraine at the front gives the glacier stability and allows it to advance more easily because the ice does not need to be as thick to stay grounded. (If it is thin, it can start floating and will not necessarily advance.) Image Credit: NASA/Earth Observatory #earth #nasa #earthrightnow #climate #hubbard #glacier #science; -
Astronaut Scott Kelly shared this aquamarine seascape view of Earth from the International Space Station on May 10, 2015. He noted that it looked like a "watercolor from space." 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 1.5 million 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 space station is well suited for documenting Earth features. The ISS maintains an altitude between 220 - 286 miles (354 - 460 km) above the Earth, and an orbital inclination of 51.6˚, providing an excellent stage for observing most populated areas of the world. Image credit: NASA #nasa #iss #earthobs #spacestation #internationalspacestation #earth #blue #water #aquamarine #seascape #watercolor @StationCDRKelly #space; -
The glowing object in this Hubble Space Telescope image is an elliptical galaxy called NGC 3923. It is located over 90 million light-years away in the constellation of Hydra. NGC 3923 is an example of a shell galaxy where the stars in its halo are arranged in layers. Finding concentric shells of stars enclosing a galaxy is quite common and is observed in many elliptical galaxies. In fact, every tenth elliptical galaxy exhibits this onion-like structure, which has never been observed in spiral galaxies. The shell-like structures are thought to develop as a consequence of galactic cannibalism, when a larger galaxy ingests a smaller companion. As the two centers approach, they initially oscillate about a common center, and this oscillation ripples outwards forming the shells of stars just as ripples on a pond spread when the surface is disturbed. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA #nasa #hubble #hst #hubbe25 #space #astronomy #telescope #galaxy #science; -
Aboard the International Space Station, astronaut Terry Virts (@Astro_Terry) posted this image and wrote, "Flying away from one of the most incredible auroras I've seen, just west of #Australia." Image Credit: NASA #nasa #iss #space #astronauts #aurora;
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