Sometimes it takes a village to find new and unusual objects in space. Volunteers scanning tens of thousands of starry images from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, using the Web-based Milky Way Project, recently stumbled upon a new class of curiosities that had gone largely unrecognized before: yellow balls. The rounded features are not actually yellow -- they just appear that way in the infrared, color-assigned Spitzer images. Volunteers using the web-based Milky Way Project brought star-forming features nicknamed "yellowballs" to the attention of researchers, who later showed that they are a phase of massive star formation. "With prompting by the volunteers, we analyzed the yellow balls and figured out that they are a new way to detect the early stages of massive star formation," said Charles Kerton of Iowa State University, Ames. "The simple question of 'Hmm, what's that?' led us to this discovery." Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech #nasa #spitzer #telescope #mikyway #galaxy #yellowballs #milkywayproject #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 7,964
The year of 2015 has been declared the International Year of Light (IYL) by the United Nations. Organizations, institutions, and individuals involved in the science and applications of light will be joining together for this yearlong celebration to help spread the word about the wonders of light. In many ways, astronomy uses the science of light. And to celebrate, our Chandra X-ray Observatory released new images. Here's one of them: This galaxy, at a distance of some 700 million light years, contains a giant bubble filled with hot, X-ray emitting gas detected by Chandra (blue). Radio data from the NSF's Very Large Array (red) reveal "hot spots" about 300,000 light years out from the center of the galaxy where powerful jets emanating from the galaxy's supermassive black hole end. Visible light data (yellow) from both Hubble and the DSS complete this view. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: NASA/STScI; Radio: NSF/NRAO/AUI/VLA #nasa #chandra #astronomy #telescope #xray #light #science #IYL2015#IYL #UN #hubble #hst Instagram ดารา @nasa 22,651
Happy 100th birthday to the Rocky Mountain National Park! To mark the milestone, Expedition 42 Flight Engineer Terry Virts posted this photograph, taken from the International Space Station, to Twitter. Virts wrote, "Majestic peaks and trails! Happy 100th anniversary @RockyNPS So much beauty to behold in our @NatlParkService." Image Credit: NASA/Terry Virts @Usinterior #RockyMountain #NationalPark @RockyNPS #Colorado #nasa #space #iss #spacestation #exp42 #birthday #RMNP #NatlParkService Instagram ดารา @nasa 14,273
Light shines on new views: The year of 2015 has been declared the International Year of Light (IYL) by the United Nations. Organizations, institutions, and individuals involved in the science and applications of light will be joining together for this yearlong celebration to help spread the word about the wonders of light. In many ways, astronomy uses the science of light. And to celebrate, our Chandra X-ray Observatory released new images. Here's one of them: When X-rays, shown in blue, from Chandra and XMM-Newton are joined in this image with radio data from the Australia Telescope Compact Array (pink) and visible light data from the Digitized Sky Survey (DSS, yellow), a new view of the region emerges. This object, known as MSH 11-62, contains an inner nebula of charged particles that could be an outflow from the dense spinning core left behind when a massive star exploded. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/P.Slane et al; Optical: DSS; Radio: CSIRO/ATNF/ATCA Instagram ดารา @nasa 7,600
Scientists have developed a way to produce models of where the magnetic field lines are several times each day. The spiraling arcs of magnetic field lines emerge from active regions and connect back to areas with the opposite polarity. The field lines are more concentrated where regions are more magnetically intense. They rotate with the rotation of the Sun. Credit: NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory Instagram ดารา @nasa 22,463
A Whirlpool of Light: The year of 2015 has been declared the International Year of Light (IYL) by the United Nations. Organizations, institutions, and individuals involved in the science and applications of light will be joining together for this yearlong celebration to help spread the word about the wonders of light. In many ways, astronomy uses the science of light. And to celebrate, our Chandra X-ray Observatory released new images. Here's one of them: This galaxy, nicknamed the "Whirlpool," is a spiral galaxy, like our Milky Way, located about 30 million light years from Earth. This composite image combines data collected at X-ray wavelengths by Chandra (purple), ultraviolet by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX, blue); visible light by Hubble (green), and infrared by Spitzer (red). Image Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO #nasa #chandra #astronomy #telescope #xray #light #science #IYL2015#IYL #UN Instagram ดารา @nasa 27,002
Meanwhile, 60 million light-years away from Earth, the spiral galaxy NGC 4217, spotted by the Hubble Space Telescope. The galaxy is seen almost perfectly edge on and is a perfect candidate for studying the nature of extraplanar dust structures — the patterns of gas and dust above and below the plane on the galaxy, seen here as brown wisps coming off NGC 4217. These tentacle-like filaments are visible in the Hubble image only because the contrast with their surroundings is so high. This implies that the structures are denser than their surroundings. The image shows dozens of dust structures some of which reach as far as 7,000 light-years away from the central plane. Typically the structures have a length of about 1,000 light-years and are about 400 light-years in width. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: R. Schoofs #nasa #space #galaxy #astronomy #hubble #hst #hubble25 #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 34,077
#TBT to 1964 when the TIROS 9 weather satellite launched from the Kennedy Space Center. This Satellite was NASA’s first attempt to place a satellite in a near polar-sun synchronous orbit. Another quality making the TIROS 9 unique were its two-cameras, mounted 180 degrees opposite each other. The TIROS 9 Satellite remained active until June 12, 1968, giving the Satellite a total life-span of 1,238 days. Image: Pictured is the TIROS 9 Satellite, with a clear view of one of the sides of its two cameras. Instagram ดารา @nasa 14,062
The year of 2015 has been declared the International Year of Light (IYL) by the United Nations. Organizations, institutions, and individuals involved in the science and applications of light will be joining together for this yearlong celebration to help spread the word about the wonders of light. In many ways, astronomy uses the science of light. By building telescopes that can detect light in its many forms, from radio waves on one end of the "electromagnetic spectrum" to gamma rays on the other, scientists can get a better understanding of the processes at work in the Universe. To celebrate, our Chandra X-ray Observatory released new images. Here's one of them: When a massive star exploded in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way, it left behind an expanding shell of debris called SNR 0519-69.0. Here, multimillion degree gas is seen in X-rays from Chandra (blue). The outer edge of the explosion (red) and stars in the field of view are seen in visible light from Hubble. Image Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO #nasa #chandra #astronomy #telescope #xray #light #science #IYL2015#IYL #UN Instagram ดารา @nasa 32,139
Greenland's Leidy Glacier: Located in the northwest corner of Greenland, Leidy Glacier is fed by ice from the Academy Glacier (upstream and inland). As Leidy approaches the sea, it is diverted around the tip of an island that separates the Olriks Fjord to the south and Academy Cove to the north. The resulting crisscross pattern is simply the result of ice flowing along the path of least resistance. This view of the region pictured above was acquired Aug. 7, 2012, by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on our Terra satellite. In April 2012, the feature caught the attention of one of our pilots, who snapped this picture from the cockpit of a high-flying ER-2 aircraft during a research flight over the Greenland ice cap. Image Credit: NASA/Terra #nasa #earth #earthrightnow #greenland #terra #satellite #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 3,291
The Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer (LBTI) instrument set its eyes on a dusty star system called Eta Corvi, depicted here in this artist's concept. Recent collisions between comets and rocky bodies within the star system are thought to have generated the surplus of dust. Evidence for this barrage comes from our Spitzer Space Telescope, whose infrared detectors picked up indications that one or more comets was recently torn to shreds after colliding with a rocky body. In this artist's conception, one such giant comet is shown smashing into a rocky planet, flinging ice- and carbon-rich dust into space, while also smashing water and organics into the surface of the planet. A glowing red flash captures the moment of impact on the planet. Yellow-white Eta Corvi is shown to the left, with still more comets streaming toward it. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech #nasa #spitzer #planets #exoplanets #space #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 16,875
NASA astronaut Scott Kelly stands as he is recognized by President Barack Obama, while First lady Michelle Obama, front left, and other guest applaud, during the State of the Union address on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday Jan. 20, 2015. This March, Kelly will launch to the International Space Station and become the first American to live and work aboard the orbiting laboratory for a year-long mission. While living on the station, Kelly and the rest of the crew will carry out hundreds of research experiments and work on cutting-edge technology development that will inspire students here at home in science, technology, engineering and math. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls) #nasa #sotu #sotu2015 #obama #space #iss #spacestation #iss1year #journeytomars Instagram ดารา @nasa 23,552
TelescopeCollects Its 100-Millionth Image: an instrument on our Solar Dynamics Observatory captured its 100 millionth image of the sun. The instrument is the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly, or AIA, which uses four telescopes working parallel to gather eight images of the sun – cycling through 10 different wavelengths -- every 12 seconds. In the almost five years since its launch on Feb. 11, 2010, SDO has provided images of the sun to help scientists better understand how the roiling corona gets to temperatures some 1000 times hotter than the sun's surface, what causes giant eruptions such as solar flares, and why the sun's magnetic fields are constantly on the move. This is a processed image of SDO multiwavelength blend from Jan. 19, 2015, the date of the spacecraft's 100th millionth image release. Credit: NASA/SDO #nasa #sun #sdo #telescope #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 21,096
For Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, here's a photo from the International Space Station of Atlanta, where Dr. King, who inspired us to dream, was born. This image was taken by one of the Expedition 34 crew members in January 2013 aboard the International Space Station, flying at an altitude of approximately 240 miles, photographed this vertical night view of the metropolitan area of Atlanta, Georgia. Image Credit: NASA #nasa #space #atlanta #iss #spacestation #mlk #mlkday #MartinLutherKingDay Instagram ดารา @nasa 24,417
Little Bright Spot: A bright spot can be seen on the left side of Saturn's moon Rhea in this image from our Cassini spacecraft. The spot is the crater Inktomi, named for a Lakota spider spirit. Inktomi is believed to be the youngest feature on Rhea (949 miles or 1527 kilometers across). The relative youth of the feature is evident by its brightness. Material that is newly excavated from below the moon's surface and tossed across the surface by a cratering event appears bright. But as the newly exposed surface is subjected to the harsh space environment, it darkens. This is one technique scientists use to date features on surfaces. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute #nasa #cassini @NASAJPL #space #saturn #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 5,040
So which is it — spiral or elliptical? The answer is neither! NGC 6861, a galaxy discovered in 1826 by the Scottish astronomer James Dunlop, does not belong to either the spiral or the elliptical family of galaxies. It is a lenticular galaxy, a family which has features of both spirals and ellipticals. Dust lanes are very useful for working out whether we are seeing the galaxy disk edge-on, face-on or, as is the case for NGC 6861, somewhat in the middle. Dust lanes like these are typical of a spiral galaxy. The dust lanes are embedded in a white oval shape, which is made up of huge numbers of stars orbiting the center of the galaxy. This oval is, rather puzzlingly, typical of an elliptical galaxy. The relationships between these three kinds of galaxies are not yet well understood. A lenticular galaxy could be a faded spiral that has run out of gas and lost its arms, or the result of two galaxies merging. Being part of a group increases the chances for galactic mergers, so this could be the case for NGC 6861, which is in the small constellation of Telescopium (The Telescope).. Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA; acknowledgement: J. Barrington #nasa #hubble #hubble25 #hst #galaxy #space #telescope #astronomy #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 27,811
The year 2014 ranks as Earth's warmest since 1880, according to two separate analyses by NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists. The 10 warmest years in the instrumental record, with the exception of 1998, have now occurred since 2000. This trend continues a long-term warming of the planet, according to an analysis of surface temperature measurements by scientists at NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) in New York. In an independent analysis of the raw data, also released Friday, NOAA scientists also found 2014 to be the warmest on record. Image Credit: NASA/NOAA #nasa #noaa #earth #earthrightnow #climate #climatechange #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 14,267
Mystery solved! Three images from our Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show Beagle 2 partially deployed on the surface of the planet, ending the mystery of what happened to the mission more than a decade ago. They show that the lander survived its Dec. 25, 2003, touchdown enough to at least partially deploy its solar arrays. This annotated image shows where features seen in an observation by MRO have been interpreted as hardware from the Dec. 25, 2003, arrival at Mars of the United Kingdom's Beagle 2 Lander. The image was taken in 2014 by the orbiter's HiRISE camera. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona/University of Leicester #nasa #esa #hirise #beagle2 #mro #planets #mars #redplanet #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 8,474
Our Near-Earth Object Wide-field Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) spacecraft discovered and characterized 40 near-Earth objects (NEOs) in the first year after the mission was re-started in December 2013. Eight of the discoveries have been classified as potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs), based on their size and how close their orbits could come to Earth's orbit. The mission has further observed and characterized 245 previously known near-Earth objects. It also sees comets. Comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) is one of more than 32 comets imaged by our NEOWISE mission from December 2013 to December 2014. This image of comet Lovejoy combines a series of observations made in November 2013, when comet Lovejoy was 1.7 astronomical units from the sun. (An astronomical unit is the distance between Earth and the sun.) Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech #nasa #neowise #lovejoy #comet #neo #space #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 24,120
Approaching an unexplored world! Our New Horizons spacecraft recently began its long-awaited, historic encounter with Pluto. The spacecraft is entering the first of several approach phases that culminate July 14 with the first close-up flyby of the dwarf planet, 4.67 billion miles (7.5 billion kilometers) from Earth. This image is an artist’s concept of New Horizons spacecraft as it passes Pluto and Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, in July 2015. Image Credit: NASA/JHU APL/SwRI/Steve Gribben #nasa #newhorizons #pluto #solarsystem #science Instagram ดารา @nasa 22,385
