A room with Earth views! 🌎Earlier this week, astronaut Ricky Arnold (@astro_ricky) captured this spectacular view of our home planet while he was orbiting at a speed of 17,500 miles per hour. If you’re wondering where in the world this video was taken, it starts as the International Space Station (@ISS) is above San Francisco and moving southward through the Americas. Each day, the station completes 16 orbits of our home planet as the six humans living and working aboard our orbiting laboratory conduct important science and research. Their work will not only benefit life here on Earth, but will help us venture deeper into space than ever before.
Aerospace engineers take you on a tour of the Kraken – the Disorientation Research Device at Naval Medical Research Unit in Dayton, Ohio. We're working with a U.S. Navy research team to develop and evaluate cockpit displays to help pilots recover from upsets or unusual attitudes.
This animation shows a supermassive black hole billions of times the mass of the Sun. This particular black hole anchors a type of galaxy called a blazar, which produces two jets of particles moving at nearly the speed of light — one of which points almost directly at Earth.
On September 22, our Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope saw a powerful flare of high-energy light from this blazar. At the same time, the National Science Foundation’s (@nsfgov) IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole detected a neutrino — a high-energy cosmic particle — from the same direction.
The neutrino was the first we’ve ever detected from a source outside our galactic neighborhood, and this discovery is also the first time we’ve seen light and a neutrino from the same black hole source. Fermi and IceCube’s work represents a new chapter in multimessenger astronomy – viewing the same event using different messengers like light, particles and gravitational waves.
#nasa #space #science #astronomy #blackhole #galaxy #light #particles #gammaray #blazar #neutrino
NASA’s study of our home planet includes the cryosphere — the frozen regions of the world — and specifically, how it changes. For 10 years, scientists and engineers with NASA’s Operation IceBridge have flown over glaciers, sea ice and ice sheets, measuring the height of the ice and tracking how it changes from season to season. Learn more at http://www.nasa.gov/icebridge
Happy Independence Day this #FourthOfJuly! Since the beginning of human space flight, our astronauts, rockets and spacecraft have proudly carried the American flag to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Watch & take a look: https://go.nasa.gov/USflag
What's up in the night sky? Enjoy a ringside seat for Saturn! Saturn is at opposition tonight, June 27th, when it and the Sun are on opposite sides of Earth. It rises at sunset and sets at sunrise.
Great Saturn viewing will last several more months. The best views will be just after midnight. All year, the rings have been tilted wide open--almost 26 degrees wide this month--giving us a great view of Saturn's distinctive rings. The tilt offers us a view of the north polar region. Near Saturn, the brightest asteroid--Vesta--is so bright that it can be seen with your unaided eye. It will be visible for several months. A detailed star chart will help you pick out the asteroid from the stars. The summer Milky way provides a glittery backdrop.
The International Space Station is a specialized laboratory that orbits the Earth every 90 minutes. Research conducted on the @ISS is helping us take humans further into deep space, and benefits our home planet.
To follow the latest in space station science, and learn how to get your research into space, click here: https://www.nasa.gov/iss-science.
The heat is on 🔥! Our Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite captured a relatively small - see the Earth inset for scale - prominence hovering over the Sun’s surface on June 12-14 before breaking off into space. Prominences are clouds of solar material suspended above the Sun’s surface by the solar magnetic field – the same complex magnetism that drives solar events like flares and coronal mass ejections. The solar material in the prominence streams along the Sun’s magnetic field lines before it thins out and gradually breaks away from the solar surface.
Credit: NASA/SDO
What's up in the night sky this month? Enjoy a ringside seat for Saturn, plus a nightlong parade featuring Venus, Jupiter, Mars and Vesta! Learn about all this and more from a @NASAJPL astronomer.
Neil, Paul and Gavin from Irish wedding band Jaker & Co whipped out the ukuleles to entertain passengers on our recent flight from Barcelona to Dublin 👏🎸 #singit #tune #RyanairStories
A powerful X-ray pulsar is whipping around its stellar partner at a record-breaking speed! These two stars orbit each other every 38 minutes, less than the amount of time it takes to stream an episode of your favorite tv sitcom. It’s the fastest-known orbit for this kind of binary star system, where a rapidly spinning, very dense star called a pulsar pulls material away from a lighter companion star. In this visualization you can see that the two stars in this system are closer to each other than Earth is to the Moon! Scientists were able to confirm the new record using our Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer aboard the International Space Station (@ISS). Credit: @NASAGoddard
#nasa #space #spacetelescope #star #universe #science #binarystars #pulsar #spacestation #iss #nicer #neutronstar #stars #xrays #orbit #space
If you viewed Jupiter last month, you can expect the view to be even better this month! As the largest planet in our solar system, Jupiter will be at its brightest tonight when reaches opposition. Opposition occurs when a planet is near the point in its orbit where it is closest to the Earth, making it appear brighter than it does during any other time in its orbit. This means that Jupiter will be visible all night long, rising in the East around sunset and setting to the West around sunrise.
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
