HALcommunity.de

Engineers and technicians are continuing to prepare for the Artemis I wet dress rehearsal test which is slated to begin on April 1 and conclude on April 3.   via NASA https://ift.tt/Ta2A67h

The natural filter of a hazy atmosphere offered this recognizable architecture and sunset view on March 27. Dark against the solar disk, large sunspots in solar active regions 2975 and 2976 are wedged between the Duomo of Pisa and its famous Leaning Tower. Only one day later, Sun-staring spacecraft watched active region 2975 unleash a frenzy of solar flares along with two coronal mass ejections. The largest impacted the magnetosphere on March 31 triggering a geomagnetic storm and aurorae in high-latitude night skies. On March 30, active region 2975 erupted again with a powerful X-class solar flare that caused a temporary radio blackout on planet Earth. via NASA https://ift.tt/BVAjD4T

NASA astronaut and SpaceX Crew-4 pilot Bob Hines is pictured during a training session inside a mockup of the Crew Dragon vehicle at SpaceX Headquarters. via NASA https://ift.tt/hUNbYqa

Some 60 million light-years away in the southerly constellation Corvus, two large galaxies are colliding. Stars in the two galaxies, cataloged as NGC 4038 and NGC 4039, very rarely collide in the course of the ponderous cataclysm that lasts for hundreds of millions of years. But the galaxies‘ large clouds of molecular gas and dust often do, triggering furious episodes of star formation near the center of the cosmic wreckage. Spanning over 500 thousand light-years, this stunning view also reveals new star clusters and matter flung far from the scene of the accident by gravitational tidal forces. The remarkably sharp ground-based image, an accumulation of 88 hours of exposure captured during 2012-2021, follows the faint tidal tails and distant background galaxies in the field of view. The suggestive overall visual appearance of the extended arcing structures gives the galaxy pair, also known as Arp 244, its popular name – The Antennae. via NASA https://ift.tt/QUdrJ1a

NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei, left, and cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov, center, and Pyotr Dubrov are seen inside their Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft after landing. via NASA https://ift.tt/tcRPWjf

What do you call a cosmic puzzle that no one expected to see? In this case, Odd Radio Circles, aka ORCs. ORC-1 typifies the enigmatic five objects, only visible at radio frequencies, that were serendipitously discovered in 2019 using the new Australian SKA Pathfinder radio array. The final image in the featured video uses 2021 data from the South African MeerKAT array to reveal more detail. The radio data, assigned turquoise colors, are combined with a Dark Energy Survey optical/IR map. The animated artist’s illustration explores just one idea about the ORCs’ origins. If two supermassive black holes merge in the center of a galaxy, the associated shockwaves could generate rings of radio radiation. These grow to fill the video frame. The video zooms out so the expansion the ORC can be tracked until it is about a million light-years across. Fortunately, the up-coming Square Kilometer Array can help test this and other promising scenarios. via NASA https://ift.tt/h1R8Atk

Astronaut Mark Vande Hei arrived at the International Space Station on April 9, 2021, and will return home March 30, 2022, after spending 355 days in low-Earth orbit. via NASA https://ift.tt/PAgeEb7