Solar Loops: An active region viewed in profile put on quite a show of erupting plasma and looping arches on Sept. 22-23. The loops, seen above the sun's surface on the right, are light emissions from charged particles spinning along magnetic field lines that dance through the sun's atmosphere. The region, which appeared as a sunspot group in visible light, was observed here in two wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light over a period of about 40 hours. Though invisible to our eyes, light emissions in the extreme ultraviolet wavelength of 171 Angstroms are typically colorized in gold, while emissions in 304 angstroms are colorized in red. Credit: NASA/SDO #nasa #sun #nasabeyond #light #science #sdo Instagram ดารา @nasa 54,735
Water on Mars! New findings from our Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) provide the strongest evidence yet that liquid water flows intermittently on present-day Mars. Dark, narrow streaks on Martian slopes such as these at Hale Crater are inferred to be formed by seasonal flow of water on contemporary Mars. The streaks are roughly the length of a football field. The imaging and topographical information in this processed, false-color view. These dark features on the slopes are called "recurring slope lineae" or RSL. Planetary scientists detected hydrated salts on these slopes at Hale Crater, corroborating the hypothesis that the streaks are formed by briny liquid water. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona #nasa #nasabeyond #mars #mro #space #planets #marsannouncement #journeytomars #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 31,229
It's a #SuperBloodMoon! A perigee full moon, or supermoon, is seen behind the Washington Monument during a total lunar eclipse on Sunday, Sept. 27, in Washington, DC. The combination of a supermoon and total lunar eclipse last occurred in 1982 and will not happen again until 2033. Photo Credit: (NASA/Aubrey Gemignani) #nasa #space #eclipse #lunareclipse #moon #supermoon #earth #nasaebeyond #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 73,407
TONIGHT: #SuperBloodMoon! For the first time in more than 30 years, you can witness a supermoon in combination with a lunar eclipse. Tonight in the U.S. and much of the world, a total lunar eclipse will mask the moon's larger-than-life face. Get your camera and find a great spot to snap a pic of the event, then share it with NASA this evening in our #SuperBloodMoon photo contest. Share your photo with us starting at 10:00pm EDT tonight here: http://go.nasa.gov/superbloodmoon-contest Image Credit: NASA #nasa #bloodmoon #eclipse #lunareclipse #harvestmoon #moon #supermoon #earth #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 22,025
TONIGHT: #SuperBloodMoon! For the first time in more than 30 years, you can witness a supermoon in combination with a lunar eclipse. Tonight in the U.S. and much of the world, a total lunar eclipse will mask the moon's larger-than-life face. Get your camera and find a great spot to snap a pic of the event, then share it with NASA this evening in our #SuperBloodMoon photo contest. Share your photo with us starting at 10:00pm EDT tonight here: http://go.nasa.gov/superbloodmoon-contest Image Credit: NASA #nasa #bloodmoon #eclipse #lunareclipse #harvestmoon #moon #supermoon #earth #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 22,025
This new image of the spiral galaxy NGC 3521 from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is not out of focus. Instead, the galaxy itself has a soft, woolly appearance as it a member of a class of galaxies known as flocculent spirals. Like other flocculent galaxies, NGC 3521 lacks the clearly defined, arcing structure to its spiral arms. In flocculent spirals, fluffy patches of stars and dust show up here and there throughout their disks. Sometimes the tufts of stars are arranged in a generally spiraling form, as with NGC 3521, but illuminated star-filled regions can also appear as short or discontinuous spiral arms. NGC 3521 is located almost 40 million light-years away in the constellation of Leo (The Lion). Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA and S. Smartt (Queen's University Belfast); Acknowledgement: Robert Gendler #nasa #space #hubble #nasahubble #galaxy #stars #star Instagram ดารา @nasa 5,931
The Rich Color Variations of Pluto" Our New Horizons spacecraft captured this high-resolution enhanced color view of Pluto during its July 14, 2015 #PlutoFlyby. The image combines blue, red and infrared images taken by the Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC). Pluto's surface sports a remarkable range of subtle colors, enhanced in this view to a rainbow of pale blues, yellows, oranges, and deep reds. Many landforms have their own distinct colors, telling a complex geological and climatological story that scientists have only just begun to decode. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI #nasa #pluto #space #solarsystem #nasabeyond #newhorizons #planets #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 36,882
This is the expanding remains of a massive star that exploded about 8,000 years ago. Called the Veil Nebula, the debris is one of the best-known supernova remnants, deriving its name from its delicate, draped filamentary structures. The entire nebula is 110 light-years across, covering six full moons on the sky as seen from Earth, and resides about 2,100 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus, the Swan. This view is a mosaic of six pictures from our Hubble Space Telescope of a small area roughly two light-years across, covering only a tiny fraction of the nebula's vast structure. This close-up look unveils wisps of gas, which are all that remain of what was once a star 20 times more massive than our sun. The fast-moving blast wave from the ancient explosion is plowing into a wall of cool, denser interstellar gas, emitting light. The nebula lies along the edge of a large bubble of low-density gas that was blown into space by the dying star prior to its self-detonation. Image Credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team #nasa #hubble #hst #hubble25 #space #astronomy #nebular #star #nasabeyond #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 62,702
A bright light source and/or speckled background – such as the sun or moon – is necessary for visualizing aerodynamic flow phenomena generated by aircraft or other objects passing between the observer’s camera and the backdrop. This patent-pending method, made possible by improved image processing technology, is called Background-Oriented Schlieren using Celestial Objects, or BOSCO. Flow visualization is one of the fundamental tools of aeronautics research, and schlieren photography has been used for many years to visualize air density gradients caused by aerodynamic flow. Traditionally, this method has required complex and precisely aligned optics as well as a bright light source. Refracted light rays revealed the intensity of air density gradients around the test object, usually a model in a wind tunnel. Capturing schlieren images of a full-scale aircraft in flight was even more challenging due to the need for precise alignment of the plane with the camera and the sun. Using the solar disk as a backdrop, this image reveals details using a calcium-K optical filter. Researchers processed this image to reveal shock waves created by a supersonic T-38C. Credits: NASA #flynasa #nasa #airplanes #avgeek #tech #aircraft #nasaaero #aeronautics Instagram ดารา @nasa 9,377
Before drifting off to tonight, astronaut Scott Kelly (@stationcdrkelly) aboard the International Space Station posted this image and wrote, "Day 179. The #Nile at night is a beautiful sight for these sore eyes. Good night from @ISS! #YearInSpace." Kelly is living and working off the Earth, for the Earth aboard the station for a yearlong mission. Traveling the world about 250 miles above the Earth, and at 17,500 mph, he circumnavigates the globe more than a dozen times a day. Image Credit: NASA #nasa #space #iss #spacestation #earth Instagram ดารา @nasa 54,097
The latest images (as of Sept. 11, 2015) downloaded from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft were stitched together and rendered on a sphere to make this flyover. This animation, made with the LORRI (Long Range Reconnaissance Imager) images, begins with a low-altitude look at the informally named Norgay Montes, flies northward over the boundary between informally named Sputnik Planum and Cthulhu Regio, turns, and drifts slowly east. During the animation, the altitude of the observer rises until it is about 10 times higher to show about 80% of the hemisphere New Horizons flew closest to on July 14, 2015. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI, Stuart Robbins #nasa #pluto #newhorizons #space #solarsystem #flyover Instagram ดารา @nasa 1,956
Clear Skies Over the United States : On Sept. 17, 2015, astronaut Scott Kelly captured images and video from the International Space Station during an early morning flyover of the United States. Sharing with his social media followers, Kelly wrote, "Clear skies over much of the USA today. #GoodMorning from @ISS! #YearInSpace." Tuesday, Sept. 15 marked the midpoint of the one-year mission to the space station for Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko. The average International Space Station expedition lasts four to six months. Research enabled by the one-year mission will help scientists better understand how the human body reacts and adapts to long-duration spaceflight. This knowledge is critical as NASA looks toward human missions deeper into the solar system, including to and from Mars, which could last 500 days or longer. Image Credit: NASA #nasa #iss #spacestation #space #journeytomars Instagram ดารา @nasa 31,902
A merger made in the stars! It is known today that merging galaxies play a large role in the evolution of galaxies and the formation of elliptical galaxies in particular. However there are only a few merging systems close enough to be observed in depth. The pair of interacting galaxies seen here is one of these systems. Observations show that both of the galaxies involved were about the same mass and collided about 700 million years ago. You can see clearly in this image the disturbed morphology, tails and loops characteristic of a post-merger. The clash of galaxies caused a rush of star formation and previous Hubble observations showed over 1,000 bright, young star clusters bursting to life at the heart of the galaxy pair. Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt #nasa #space #hst #hubble #hubble #galaxy #nasabeyond #astronomy #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 36,200
Pluto’s Majestic Mountains, Frozen Plains and Foggy Hazes: Just 15 minutes after its closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft looked back toward the sun and captured this near-sunset view of the rugged, icy mountains and flat ice plains extending to Pluto’s horizon. The smooth expanse of the informally named icy plain Sputnik Planum (right) is flanked to the west (left) by rugged mountains up to 11,000 feet (3,500 meters) high, including the informally named Norgay Montes in the foreground and Hillary Montes on the skyline. To the right, east of Sputnik, rougher terrain is cut by apparent glaciers. The backlighting highlights over a dozen layers of haze in Pluto’s tenuous but distended atmosphere. The image was taken from a distance of 11,000 miles (18,000 kilometers) to Pluto; the scene is 780 miles (1,250 kilometers) wide. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI #nasa #apl #space #solarsystem #pluto #plutoflyby #nasabeyond #newhorizons #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 24,744
The gravitational forces the moon and sun exert are responsible for Earth’s rising and falling tides. Earth’s gravity also exerts forces on the Moon in the form of solid body tides that distort its shape. The Moon is slowly receding away from Earth and forces build as the Moon’s tidal distortion diminishes with distance and its rotation period slows with time. These tidal forces combined with the shrinking of the Moon from cooling of its interior have influenced the pattern of orientations in the network of young fault scarps. A prominent lobate fault scarp in the Vitello Cluster is one of thousands discovered. This topography image shows a degraded crater has been uplift as the fault scarp has formed (blues are lower elevations and reds are higher elevations). Boulders in the crater have aligned in rows that parallel the orientation of the fault scarp. Credits: NASA/LRO/Arizona State University/Smithsonian Institution #nasa #moon #geology #nasabeyond #earth #gravity #sun science Instagram ดารา @nasa 37,057
Repost from @WhiteHouse: "Good night, Moon. Good night from @ISS!" —Astronaut Scott Kelly on July 2 Thanks for following today's @NASA Instagram takeover featuring photos from the first six months of @StationCDRKelly's #YearInSpace! Instagram ดารา @nasa 36,722
Repost from @WhiteHouse: Check out the American Flag seen on Flag Day, June 14, from the International Space Station's Cupola, the 360-degree Earth observation point. Research enabled by @StationCDRKelly's #YearInSpace on the @ISS will help scientists better understand how the human body reacts and adapts to long-duration spaceflight. This knowledge is critical as @NASA looks toward human missions deeper into the solar system, including to and from Mars, which could last 500 days or longer. It also carries potential benefits for humans on Earth, from helping patients recover after long periods of bed rest to improving monitoring for people whose bodies are unable to fight infections. Instagram ดารา @nasa 10,654
Repost from @WhiteHouse: "Another pass through #Aurora. The sun is very active today, apparently." —@StationCDRKelly on August 15 showing a photo of an aurora from the International Space Station The @ISS is a convergence of science, technology and human innovation that enables us to demonstrate new technologies and make research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. It has been continuously occupied since November 2000. Since then, it has been visited by more than 200 people and a variety of international and commercial spacecraft. The space station remains the springboard to @NASA's next giant leap in exploration, including future missions to Mars. #YearInSpace Instagram ดารา @nasa 35,316
Repost from @WhiteHouse: Here's a photo of @StationCDRKelly aboard the International Space Station that's never been seen before on @Instagram! @NASA hopes that the knowledge gained on Astronaut Scott Kelly's #YearInSpace mission on the @ISS will benefit the Earth and that the data collected will help send humans to new destinations, supporting the next generation of space exploration. That's why to add in another dynamic to the mission: researchers are conducting “twin studies” between Scott and his brother @ShuttleCDRKelly comparing the subtle effects and changes between spaceflight and Earth. Scott and Mark Kelly are twin brothers with almost identical genetics, but they'll be in different environments for one year. Instagram ดารา @nasa 27,251
Repost from @WhiteHouse: "#GoodMorning to those in the western #USA. Looks like there's a lot going on down there." —@StationCDRKelly on August 10th Today marks the midpoint of Astronaut Scott Kelly's #YearInSpace aboard the International Space Station. Almost everything we know about living in space ends at six months, so as he heads into the second half of his mission, he's pushing the edge of our scientific understanding. Follow along today as @NASA takes over our account with photos from the first half of Scott's #YearInSpace on the @ISS. Instagram ดารา @nasa 37,789
