Spotted: A coronal hole was seen on the Sun on May 2-4, 2018. The dark coronal hole extends about halfway across the solar disk when observed in a wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light. This type of light is typically invisible to our eyes, but was captured here by our Solar Dynamics Observatory and colorized in purple.
Coronal holes are magnetically open areas on the Sun from which solar wind — the Sun’s constant outflow of material — rushes out into space. Such solar wind streams can trigger the aurora when they interact with Earth’s magnetic field.
Credit: NASA/SDO
#nasa #space #sun #solar #sdo #light #earth #solarsystem #science #video #ultraviolet #uv #uvlight #picoftheday
What’s up for May?
InSight, our first mission to explore Mars’ deep interior, launches tomorrow with a launch window that begins at 4:05 a.m. PDT and lasts for two hours. Some lucky viewers in central and southern California and even parts of the Mexican Pacific coast will get a chance to see the spacecraft launch with their unaided eyes and its destination, Mars, at the same time.
Mars shines a little brighter than last month, as it approaches opposition on July 27th. That’s when Mars and the Sun will be on opposite sides of the Earth. This will be Mars’ closest approach to Earth since 2003! Compare the planet’s increases in brightness with your own eyes between now and July 27th.
Our Solar Dynamics Observatory watched an active region on the Sun — an area with intense, complex magnetic activity — rotate into view on April 18-19, seen here in extreme ultraviolet. These bright, towering arches consist of charged particles spiraling along magnetic field lines that were revealed in this view in a wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light. They rise up above the Sun's surface many times the size of Earth. This view covers just 16 hours of activity and our scientists are keeping their eyes on this region to see if it has the potential to produce solar storms.
Video Credit: NASA/SDO
#nasa #space #sun #solar #sdo #light #earth #solarsystem #science #video #ultraviolet #uv #uvlight #picoftheday
LIFTOFF! Our Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) launched at 6:51 p.m. EDT from Space Launch Complex 40 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida to search for unknown worlds beyond our solar system.
When a planet crosses in front of the star it’s orbiting, that event is called a transit – and the telltale sign of a transit is a drop in the brightness of that star’s light. TESS is heading into high Earth orbit, where it will rely on the transit method to locate planets that are outside our solar system, but close enough to study with ground-based telescopes. Since its launch in 2009, our Kepler space telescope has discovered nearly 2,700 of these worlds orbiting other stars known as “exoplanets” using the transit method. Now Kepler, the past master of transits, is passing the torch of discovery to TESS whose adventure is just beginning... Credit: NASA
#nasa #space #falcon9 #liftoff #launch #wow #fire #smoke #orbit #spacestation #exoplanets #rocket #spacex #tess #stars #picoftheday #imageofthedaytv
How do we spot something as tiny and faint as a planet trillions of miles away? The trick is to look at the star! So far, most of the exoplanets – worlds beyond our solar system – we’ve found were detected by looking for tiny dips in the brightness of their host stars!
These dips are caused by the planet passing between us and its star – an event called a “transit.” Our newest planet hunter, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), will seek out transits around 200,000 of the nearest and brightest stars in the sky. TESS is slated to launch tomorrow, April 18, at 6:51 p.m. EDT on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
Credit: @NASAGoddard
#nasa #space #exoplanets #planets #astronomy #satellite #picoftheday #spacecraft #tess #science #nasatess #habitableplanets #star #NewWorlds #astrophysics #launch #transit #solarsystem
Today at the National Space Foundation's 34th #SpaceSymposium, Vice President Mike Pence (@VP) congratulated Acting Administrator Lightfoot on his 30 years of service and reemphasized plans to return humans to the Moon. To learn more about our missions what's next for us visit nasa.gov.
What’s up for April in the night sky? The Lyrid Meteor Shower, which peaks on April 22!
Mid-April, start looking for the Lyrid meteors, which are active from April 14 – 30. In the early morning sky, a patient observer will see up to a dozen or more meteors per hour. Observers in the United States should see good meteor rates on the nights before and after the April 22 peak.
A bright first quarter Moon plays havoc with sky conditions, but Lyra will be high overhead after the Moon sets at midnight, so that’s the best time to look for Lyrids!
Credit: NASA
#nasa #space #lyrids #lyridmeteor #meteor #shootingstar #meteorshower #lyra #april #whatsup #nightsky #astronomy #solarsystem #observe #moon #stars #peak
Special delivery! This time-lapse video packs 90 minutes from the SpaceX (@SpaceX) Dragon resupply ship arrival at the International Space Station (@ISS) on April 4 into just one minute.
Captured here is the rendezvous and capture maneuvers as the Dragon cargo craft delivered more than 5,800 pounds of research, equipment, cargo and supplies to the crew living aboard the orbiting laboratory, including science that studies thunderstorms on Earth, space gardening, potential pathogens in space, new ways to patch up wounds and more.
The Dragon spacecraft will spend approximately one month attached to the station. Once the Dragon cargo craft leaves the station, it will conduct its deorbit burn to reenter the Earth’s atmosphere and splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja California.
Video credit: NASA
#nasa #spacex #earth #international #space #station #cargo #spacex #nasa #spacestation #internationalspacestation #research #dragoncargocraft #science #technology #picofthday
How far is the farthest star we've ever seen? More than halfway across the universe, an enormous blue star nicknamed Icarus was spotted by the Hubble Space Telescope (@NASAHubble) through a quirk of nature that amplified the star's feeble glow. The star, harbored in a very distant spiral galaxy, is so far away that its light has taken 9 billion years to reach Earth. It appears to us as it did when the universe was about 30 percent of its current age.
This video shows a galaxy cluster located about 5 billion light-years from Earth. This massive cluster of galaxies sits between the Earth and the galaxy that contains the distant star. Thanks to a lucky alignment between the cluster, a dense object within it and a distant star, the image of the distant star was magnified by a factor of 2000, making it visible by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Like the galaxy in which the star is located, the star is actually visible several times. However, the light from the second image of the star was redirected by another massive object in the cluster and only became visible when this object moved out of the line of sight.
The video shows the position of the two images of the star within the cluster.
Credit: @europeanspaceagency/Hubble, NASA
#nasa #space #hubble #spothubble #spacetelescope #telescope #galaxy #cluster #star #universe #solarsystem #lightyears #billions #visible #beautiful #earth #video #science
What’s up for April in the night sky? This month, you won’t want to miss red Mars and golden Saturn in the south-southeast sky. By April 7, the Moon joins the pair and if you’re in a dark area, you may see some glow from the nearby Milky Way.
Credit: NASA
#nasa #space #mars #saturn #moon #planets #south #southeast #stargazing #astronomy #solarsystem #pair #milkyway #nightsky #whatsup #lookup #sky #stars #april
LIFTOFF! A #Dragon 🐉 went soaring into the sky atop a @SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket! The Dragon cargo craft will deliver more than 5,800 pounds of research, equipment, cargo and supplies to the crew living aboard the International Space Station (@iss), including science that studies thunderstorms on Earth, space gardening, potential pathogens in space, new ways to patch up wounds and more. Liftoff was at 4:00 p.m. EDT. This was SpaceX’s 14th resupply mission to the orbiting laboratory.
Photo credit: NASA
#spacex #nasa #spacestation #internationalspacestation #research #dragoncargocraft #science #technology #falcon9 #rocket #launch #picofthday
Ready to find some planets? The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is getting ready for launch! TESS is the next step in our search for planets outside our solar system, known as exoplanets. This planet hunter will scan nearly the entire sky over two years to monitor 200,000 of the nearest and brightest stars in search of transits - periodic dips in a star’s brightness caused by planets passing in front of their stars.
Led out of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, TESS is expected to find thousands of new exoplanets. Powerful telescopes could then study these planets in more detail to help determine what they are made of, and what their atmospheres are like. Stay tuned for more about TESS as we get closer to launch, which is currently scheduled for no earlier than April 16!
Credit: NASA/NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab
We ran together three sequences of the Sun taken in three different extreme ultraviolet wavelengths by our Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO) to better illustrate how features that appear in one sequence are difficult, if not impossible, to see in the others (Mar. 20-21, 2018). In the red sequence, we can see very small jets of solar material burst from the Sun’s surface and some small prominences, bright features extending outward, at the edge, which are not easily discerned in the other two sequences.
In the second clip, we can readily observe a coronal hole, the large and dark region where the Sun's magnetic field is open to interplanetary space, though it is difficult to distinguish in the others.
In the third clip, we can see strands of plasma waving above the surface, especially above the one small, but bright, active region near the right edge.
These are just three of the 10 extreme ultraviolet wavelengths in which SDO images the Sun every 12 seconds every day. That's a lot of data and a lot of science!
Credit: NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory
#nasa #space #sun #solar #sdo #light #earth #solarsystem #science #video #ultraviolet #uv #uvlight #picoftheday
The March morning sky offers some dazzling views of Mars and Saturn all month long. Through a telescope, you can almost make out some of the surface features on the Red Planet.
Look a little farther into Mars’ future and circle May 5 on your calendars – that’s when our InSight lander will launch to the Red Planet on a 6 month journey. During that time, Mars will be easily visible in the sky.
Keep watching Mars as it travels closer to Earth. It will be closest in late July, when the Red Planet will appear larger in apparent diameter than it has since 2003.
Credit: NASA
#credit #nasa #space #astronomy #whatsup #nightsky #sky #stargazing #solarsystem #universe #planets #stars #moon #mars #insight #lander #journey
What’s up in the sky this month? You’re in for a real treat if you’re able to get away to a dark sky location on a Moonless night this month. The Zodiacal light and the Milky Way intersect!
The Zodiacal light is a faint triangular glow seen from a dark sky just after sunset in the spring or just before sunrise in the fall. The more familiar Milky Way is one of the spiral arms of our galaxy.
What we’re seeing is sunlight reflecting off dust grains that circle the Sun in the inner solar system. These dust grains journey across our sky in the ecliptic – the same plane as the Moon and the planets.
Credit: NASA
#credit #nasa #space #astronomy #whatsup #nightsky #sky #stargazing #solarsystem #universe #planets #stars #moon #zodiacal #light #milkyway #dust #galaxy #lookup
Curious about what objects you can spot in the night sky this month? We can help!
Both Venus and Mercury will be visible in the evening sky this month. At the beginning of this month, they appear low on the western horizon. The Moon itself joins the pair from March 18 – 20.
The Moon will then skim by the Pleiades star cluster and Taurus’ bright red star, named Aldebaran, on the next few evenings – March 21 – 23.
Jupiter – king of the planets – rises just before midnight this month, and earlier by month end. Even through the smallest telescope or average binoculars, you should see the four Galilean moons – Europa, Io, Callisto and Ganymede.
So get outside this month and look up!
Credit: NASA
#credit #nasa #space #astronomy #whatsup #nightsky #sky #stargazing #solarsystem #universe #planets #stars #moon #venus #mercury #jupiter #cluster #taurus #pleiades #aldebaran #lookup
LIFT OFF! The United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (@noaa) next-generation weather satellite – GOES-S onboard, launched at 5:02 p.m. EST from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
GOES-S is the second satellite in NOAA’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) – R Series. GOES-R, the first satellite in the series, launched in November 2016 and is now GOES-16. GOES-S will be designated GOES-17 upon reaching geostationary orbit. After a period of on-orbit test and checkout, GOES-17 will be operational as GOES-West, providing coverage of the western U.S., Alaska, Hawaii and the Pacific Ocean. Together, GOES-16 and GOES-17 will observe Earth from the west coast of Africa all the way to Guam, providing researchers and meteorologists with valuable data on weather systems five times faster and at four times the image resolution than previous GOES spacecraft, offering more accurate, reliable forecasts and severe weather outlooks.
Credit: NASA
#space #rocket #goess #goes17 #noaa #weather #satellite #rocketlaunch #picoftheday #nasa #ula #atlasv #launch #liftoff #Earth #meteorology
