Schlagwort: NASA

NASA’s Orion spacecraft that flew Exploration Flight Test-1 on Dec. 5, 2014, is seen after being uncovered in preparation for being moved onto the White House complex, Saturday, July 21, 2018, in Washington, DC. More than 1,000 companies across the country manufactured or contributed elements to the spacecraft. via NASA https://ift.tt/2Lz15P8

What kind of celestial object is this? A relatively normal galaxy — but seen from its edge. Many disk galaxies are actually just as thin as NGC 5866, pictured here, but are not seen edge-on from our vantage point. A perhaps more familiar galaxy seen edge-on is our own Milky Way Galaxy. Cataloged as M102 and NGC 5866, the Spindle galaxy has numerous and complex dust lanes appearing dark and red, while many of the bright stars in the disk give it a more blue underlying hue. The blue disk of young stars can be seen extending past the dust in the extremely thin galactic plane. There is evidence that the Spindle galaxy has cannibalized smaller galaxies over the past billion years or so, including multiple streams of faint stars, dark dust that extends away from the main galactic plane, and a surrounding group of galaxies (not shown). In general, many disk galaxies become thin because the gas that forms them collides with itself as it rotates about the gravitational center. The Spindle galaxy lies about 50 million light years distant toward the constellation of the Dragon (Draco). via NASA https://ift.tt/2A7FIjr

On July 24, 1969, the Apollo 11 crew splashed down in the Pacific Ocean. via NASA https://ift.tt/2JQl0nC

If you go high enough, you may find yourself on a picturesque perch between the water clouds of the Earth and the star clouds of the Milky Way. Such was the case last month for one adventurous alpinist astrophotographer. Captured here in the foreground above white clouds are mountain peaks in the Dolomite range in northern Italy. This multi-exposure image was captured from Lagazuoi, one of the Dolomites. Hundreds of millions of years ago, the Dolomites were not mountains but islands an ancient sea that rose through colliding tectonic plates. The Dolomites divergent history accounts for its unusually contrasting features, which include jagged crests and ancient marine fossils. High above even the Dolomites, and far in the distance, dark dust lanes streak out from the central plane of our Milky Way Galaxy. The stars and dust are dotted with bright red clouds of glowing hydrogen gas — such as the Lagoon Nebula just above and to the left of center. via NASA https://ift.tt/2JUnnWU

In July 2018, an iceberg weighing 11 million tons parked just offshore of Innaarsuit, a small island village in northwestern Greenland. via NASA https://ift.tt/2mB6oPX

The Fermi Science Playoffs celebrate 10 years of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope’s exploration of the high-energy universe. Surviving all early rounds of voting, these two finalists in the competion square off at last. Digital illustrations from a list of 16 of Fermi’s top scientific discoveries, they represent the competition’s two top seeds, defeating 12th seed New Clues to Dark Matter and 14th seed Starquakes in Magnetar Storm in the semifinal round. On the left are unprecedented, unpredicted, 25,000 light-year tall Gamma-ray Bubbles above and below the plane of our Milky Way galaxy. On the right, violently merging Neutron Stars Collide to create the first gamma-ray detected gravitational wave event. Pick one now and cast your vote here to crown the most popular science result from Fermi’s first decade. via NASA https://ift.tt/2LGerG7

What is our universe made of? To help find out, ESA launched the Planck satellite from 2009 to 2013 to map, in unprecedented detail, slight temperature differences on the oldest optical surface known — the background sky when our universe first became transparent to light. Visible in all directions, this cosmic microwave background is a complex tapestry that could only show the hot and cold patterns observed were the universe to be composed of specific types of energy that evolved in specific ways. The final results, reported last week, confirm again that most of our universe is mostly composed of mysterious and unfamiliar dark energy, and that even most of the remaining matter energy is strangely dark. Additionally, the „final“ 2018 Planck data impressively peg the age of the universe at about 13.8 billion years and the local expansion rate — called the Hubble constant — at 67.4 (+/- 0.5) km/sec/Mpc. Oddly, this early-universe determined Hubble constant is slightly lower than that determined by other methods in the late-universe, creating a tension that is causing much discussion and speculation. via NASA https://ift.tt/2JJfGm0