What’s up in the night sky this December? Meteor showers and the circle of constellations!
The Geminid meteor shower peaks on the morning of Dec. 14. If you’re in a dark area, you may be able to see up to 120 meteors per hour between midnight and 4 a.m. local time. The Ursid meteor shower also peaks this month on Dec. 22.
This month you can also enjoy the circle of constellations and the brightest stars around Gemini.
Watch to find out when and where to look up!
Credit: NASA
#nasa #space #solarsystem #stargazing #astronomy #stars #constellations #meteor #meteorshower #geminids #ursids #nightsky #december #whatsup
We brought some friends out to Copenhagen for an unforgettable food experience. New Nordic feast in a one-room CRANE HOTEL? Yes please 🙋♀️🇩🇰 #visitdenmark #newnordic #food #travelforfood #munchies #foodstagram #copenhagen #denmark
An office with a view…this video, captured by NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik, shows off the spectacular view during a recent spacewalk. He posted the footage on social media saying: “Sometimes on a #spacewalk, you just have to take a moment to enjoy the beauty of our planet Earth.
This Go-Pro footage is from our spacewalk where Joe Acaba and I refurbished the Canadarm2 robotic arm and the Dextre robotic arm extension.” Currently, six humans are living and working on the International Space Station (@iss), which orbits our planet at 17,500 mph. Located 250 miles above Earth, the crew conducts important science and research that will help send us deeper into the solar system than ever before.
Credit: NASA/@AstroKomrade
#nasa #space #spacestation #science #gopro #spacewalk #earth #crew #view #repair #astronauts #spacesuit
What's up in the night skies this #November? On Nov. 13 and 14, early risers all around the world will have a chance to see #Venus and #Jupiter together before dawn. At their closest on Monday morning, they will be about half the diameter of the full moon from each other.
This month, both Jupiter and Venus rise above the eastern horizon about an hour before the sun rises. You should be able to see the two planets about 5 degrees above the horizon a half hour later (5 degrees can be measured by holding three fingers of your outstretched hand to the horizon). Venus will be to the lower right of Jupiter on Monday, when they will be less than one finger length apart, and farther below Jupiter on the Tuesday.
Look with your binoculars, but take care not to aim on the horizon at the rising sun because you will damage your eyes. On Thursday, the moon will be visible above Jupiter in the dawn sky. A conjunction occurs when the apparent motion of one or both of two planets brings them into apparent proximity. In reality, since conjunctions are only from our perspective here on Earth, the objects are never really close to each other physically. You can make a conjunction by holding up your thumb near the moon in the sky: They look close together, but are really far apart.
Credit: NASA/JPL
#astronomy #fun #free #night #sky #planets #stars #moon #NASA #JPL #whatsup #science #video #nightsky #stargazing #space #jupiter #venus
What's up in the night skies this #November? The Moon shines near star clusters and there is meteor activity all month long. This video shows where and when to look to see this in the night sky.
Three meteor showers take place this month, with the Leonids peaking on a moonless November 17th. The Northern and Southern sub-branches of the Taurid meteor shower offer sparse counts of meteors and the Orionids peak on November 28th. In contrast to the Taurids, the Orionids are swift.
The moon also glides by three beautiful star clusters in the morning sky this month, and a pair of binoculars will allow you to see the individual stars in the clusters.
Credit: NASA
Today, two humans worked outside the International Space Station (@iss) in the vacuum of space for 6 hours and 49 minutes. During their time outside, NASA astronauts Randy Bresnik (@astrokomrade) and Joe Acaba made important improvements to the orbiting laboratory. From a new HD camera installation, to fixing a blown fuse, the duo worked quickly and completed all of their planned tasks.
In this GIF, Acaba uses a grease tool to lubricate the bearings on the new latching end effector, which is like the “hand” of the space station’s robotic arm.
Currently, there are six people living and working on the orbiting laboratory. Every day they conduct important research and science that will not only help life here on Earth, but will help us venture deeper into the solar system than ever before.
Credit: NASA
#nasa #space #spacestation #spacewalk #crew #astronaut #home #work #Friday #picoftheday #spacesuit #grease #camera #hd #fuse
View these celestial beauties taken by the Hubble Space Telescope (@NASAHubble) and released as a set of modern views of the "Messier Catalog." Spotting comets was all the rage in the middle of the 18th century, and at the forefront of the comet hunt was a young French astronomer named Charles Messier. In 1774, in an effort to help fellow comet seekers steer clear of astronomical objects that were not comets (something that frustrated his own search for these elusive entities), Messier published the first version of his “Catalog of Nebulae and Star Clusters,” a collection of celestial objects that weren’t comets and should be avoided during comet hunting. Today, rather than avoiding these objects, many amateur astronomers actively seek them out as interesting targets to observe with backyard telescopes, binoculars or sometimes even with the naked eye.
Hubble’s version of the Messier catalog includes eight newly processed images never before released by NASA. The images were extracted from more than 1.3 million observations that now reside in the Hubble data archive. Some of these images represent the first Hubble views of the objects, while others include newer, higher resolution images taken with Hubble’s latest cameras.
Round and round they go - then BOOM! This animation begins with the final moments of two neutron stars (the super-dense cores of exploded massive stars), whirling around each other in a galaxy 130 million light-years away. Gravitational waves (rippling disturbance in space-time, shown here as pale arcs) bleed away orbital energy, causing the stars to move closer together and merge.
As the stars collide, this explosive event emits light across a series of different wavelengths - first gamma rays (magenta), then ultraviolet (violet), then visible and infrared (blue-white to red) and once the jet directed toward us expanded into our view from Earth, X-rays (blue). Our Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope witnessed this event on August 17, 2017 and we watched it unfold over multiple days with a variety of other telescopes, including the Swift spacecraft, the Hubble Space Telescope (@NASAHubble), the Spitzer Space Telescope, our Chandra X-Ray Observatory (@NASAChandraXray) and our NuSTAR mission. The detectors at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) received a gravitational wave signal just 1.7 seconds before the first light was seen by Fermi, making this the first event observed in both light and gravitational waves.
Credit: @NASAGoddard/CI Lab
#space #nasa #universe #galaxy #stars #astrophysics #astronomy #science #gammarays #ultraviolet #infrared #xrays #gravitationalwaves #neutronstars #hubble #chandra #spitzer #nustar #fermi #swift
Over a 17-hour period, a pair of active regions – with solar plasma heated to over a million degrees – rotated into our Solar Dynamic Observatory’s view Oct. 4-5. They were observed in a wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light.
The arches above the regions consist of charge particles spinning along and revealing magnetic field lines. Each one shows a few minor bursts of material, none of which were serious.
Credit: NASA
#nasa #space #sun #SUNday #picoftheday #solarsystem #universe #yellow #light #magnetic #plasma #hot
Fish-eye view of planet Earth. NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik (@astrokomrade) captured this timelapse video from his unique vantage point on the International Space Station (@iss) , 250 miles above our home planet. He posted it to his social media accounts on Oct. 1 saying, “Desert sands, wispy clouds, and blue ocean, the cupola fish-eye spies many features along the spine of Africa in this #timelapse.” There are currently six people living and working on the space station, which is orbiting our planet at 17,500 mph. They are conducting important science and research on the orbiting laboratory that will not only help us send humans to deep space destinations, like Mars, but also has direct benefits to live here on Earth.
Credit: NASA
#nasa #space #spacestation #international #science #research #laboratory #microgravity #earth #africa #sand #desert #ocean #clouds #fisheye #astronaut
Did you know that some of the technology developed by our techies is also used in the commercial world? For example, the camera used during parachute testing for our deep space capsule is now used for car crash tests.
Credit: NASA/Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
#nasa #space #tech #techies #technology #nationaltechiesday #science #engineering #math #stem #develop #innovate #missions #people
Our techies are always testing new and cutting-edge ideas in extreme environments both here on Earth and in space. For example, techies working on our Deep Space Engine project are looking to create a spacecraft propulsion system that is high-performance, lightweight, compact and low-cost.
It’s National Techies Day…and here at NASA we have quite a few people who get REALLY excited about technology. Without techies and the technology they develop, we wouldn’t be able to do the amazing things we do at NASA, or on Earth and in space.
We love our techies! The passionate engineers, researchers and scientists who work on our technology efforts enable us to make a difference in the world around us. They are responsible for developing the pioneering, new technologies and capabilities needed to achieve our current and future missions.
What’s up in the night sky for October?
This month you can catch planet pairs, our moon near red stars and more! Catch bright Venus in the predawn sky by looking for fainter Mars below it on Oct. 1, really close on the 5th and above Venus after that.
In the Oct. 8 – 11 predawn sky watch the moon glide near the Pleiades star cluster and pass near the red stars Aldebaran in the constellation Taurus and Betelgeuse in Orion.
Watch for more about when and where to look up this month!
Credit: NASA
#nasa #space #stars #moon #stargazing #october #nightsky #saturn #venus #mars #planets #astronomy #whatsup #lookup #universe #solarsystem
The Sun erupted with a solar flare, one of the largest of the current solar cycle on Sept. 10, 2017. Its source was the same sunspot region that produced flares the week before that. In this video, you see two wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light at the same time and each reveals different features of the Sun. Both are colorized to identify in which wavelength they were observed. The coils of loops after the flare are the magnetic field lines reorganizing themselves after the eruption. The video covers about six hours.
Credit: NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory
#nasa #space #sun #science #solar #solarflare #observatory #solarsystem #sunspot #eruption #rotate #orbit #spacecraft #flare
This time-lapse video from astronauts on the International Space Station (@ISS) shows an aurora above Canada beginning over the California coast, to North Dakota then on to Quebec when day breaks. Taken on Sept. 15, 2017, the orbiting laboratory is located 250 miles above Earth and is traveling at 17,500 miles per hour.
At any given time, the station is home to more than 250 experiments, including some that are helping us determine the effects of microgravity on the human body. Research on the station will not only help us send humans deeper into space than ever before, including to Mars, but also benefits life here on Earth.
An unusual object in the asteroid belt is, in fact, two asteroids orbiting each other that have comet-like features. These include a bright halo of material, called a coma, and a long tail of dust. This time-lapse, assembled from a set of Hubble Space Telescope photos, reveals the asteroid pair, called 2006 VW139/288P.
The pair is orbiting each other at a distance of 60 miles and was imaged in September 2016. The more recent Hubble observations revealed ongoing activity in the binary system. We detected strong indications for the sublimation of water ice due to the increased solar heating – similar to how the tail of a comet is created.
The team estimates that 2006 VW139/288P has existed as a binary system only for about 5,000 years. The most probably formation scenario is the breakup due to fast rotation.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. DePasquale and Z Levay (STScI)
#nasa #space #hubble #hubblespacetelescope #telescope #binary #asteroids #orbit #sun #timelapse #gif #astronomy #solarsystem
Look up in the sky tonight and see Saturn!
This month Saturn is the only prominent evening planet low in the southwest sky. Look for it near the constellation Sagittarius. Above and below Saturn--from a dark sky--you can't miss the summer Milky Way spanning the sky from northeast to southwest!
Grab a pair of binoculars and scan the teapot-shaped Sagittarius, where stars and some brighter clumps appear as steam from the teapot. Those bright clumps are near the center of our galaxy, which is full of gas, dust and stars.
Credit: NASA
#nasa #space #astronomy #september #whatsup #night #nightsky #stars #stargazing #saturn #planet
In this video captured at 1,500 frames per second with a high-speed camera, the International Space Station (@ISS), with a crew of six onboard, is seen in silhouette as it transits the sun at roughly five miles per second during a partial solar eclipse, Monday, Aug. 21, 2017 near Banner, Wyoming. Onboard as part of the crew are: NASA astronauts Peggy Whitson, Jack Fischer (@Astro2Fish), and Randy Bresnik (@AstroKomrade); Russian cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Sergey Ryazanskiy (@SergeyISS); and ESA (@EuropeanSpaceAgency) astronaut Paolo Nespoli (@Astro_Paolo). A total solar eclipse swept across a narrow portion of the contiguous United States from Lincoln Beach, Oregon to Charleston, South Carolina. A partial solar eclipse was visible across the entire North American continent along with parts of South America, Africa, and Europe.
