Photo reblogged from FUCK YEAH, SPACE EXPLORATION. with 72 notes
SpaceX Dragon during its fly-under, earlier today before docking with the ISS. Astronaut (and photographer) André Kuipers took this stunning picture.
Source: fuckyeahspaceexploration
Photo reblogged from Space And Stuff, IDK with 67,022 notes
Solar Eclipse on May 20, 2012
Source: kingudamu.com
Photo reblogged from Atomos with 308 notes
Image Credit: M101 - NASA, ESA, CFHT, NOAO; Typhoon Rammasun - MODIS, NASA Comparison: Lawrence Anderson-Huang (Ritter Astrophysical Obs., Univ. Toledo)
Uncomfortably close Typhoon Rammasun (right) and 25 million light-year distant galaxy M101 don’t seem to have much in common.
For starters, Rammasun was only a thousand kilometers or so across while M101 (aka the Pinwheel Galaxy) spans about 170,000 light-years, making them vastly dissimilar in scale, not to mention the different physical environments that control their formation and development.
But they do look amazingly alike: each with arms exhibiting the shape of a simple and beautiful mathematical curve known as a logarithmic spiral, a spiral whose separation grows in a geometric way with increasing distance from the center.
Also known as the equiangular spiral, growth spiral, and Bernoulli’s spiral or spira mirabilis, this curve’s rich properties have fascinated mathematicians since its discovery by 17th century philosopher Descartes.
Intriguingly, this abstract shape is much more abundant in nature than suggested by the striking visual comparison above. For example, logarithmic spirals can also describe the tracks of subatomic particles in a bubble chamber, the arrangement of sunflower seeds and, of course, cauliflower.
Source: ikenbot
Photo reblogged from NASA with 580 notes
NGC 604: X-rays from a Giant Stellar Nursery
Credit: X-ray: NASA / CXC / R. Tuellmann (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA) et al.; Optical: NASA/AURA/STScI
Source: apod.nasa.gov
Photo reblogged from NASA with 1,298 notes
Star Formation in the Tarantula Nebula
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, ESO, D. Lennon (ESA/STScI) et al., and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Source: apod.nasa.gov
Photo reblogged from Scinerds with 292 notes
Shadows of the Sun.
This gives you an idea of what SDO will see on June 5-6, 2012. It’s not long now, only ~20 days away!
Source: the-star-stuff
Photo reblogged from Hello, Universe. with 13 notes
Piecing together a global color map of Saturn’s largest moon.
An international team led by the University of Nantes has pieced together images gathered over six years by the Cassini mission to create a global mosaic of the surface of Titan. The global maps and animations of Saturn’s largest moon are being presented by Stephane Le Mouelic at the EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting 2011 in Nantes, France on Tuesday 4th October.
The team has compiled all the infrared images acquired by the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) during Cassini’s first seventy flybys of Titan. Fitting the pieces of the puzzle together is a painstaking task.
The images must be corrected for differences in the illuminating conditions and each image is filtered on a pixel-by-pixel basis to screen out atmospheric distortions.
itan is veiled by a thick, opaque atmosphere composed mainly of nitrogen. It has clouds of methane and ethane and there is increasing evidence for methane rain. Only a few specific infrared wavelengths can penetrate the cloud and haze to provide a window down to Titan’s surface. An exotic frozen world with many Earth-like geological features has progressively emerged from darkness.
Stephane Le Mouelic explains: “As Cassini is orbiting Saturn and not Titan, we can observe Titan only once a month on average. The surface of Titan is therefore revealed year after year, as pieces of the puzzle are progressively put together. Deriving a final map with no seams is challenging due to the effects of the atmosphere - clouds, mist etc. - and due to the changing geometries of observation between each flyby.”
Cassini has made 78 flybys of Titan since it arrived in orbit around Saturn in July 2004. A further 48 flybys are planned up to 2017. On flybys to date, VIMS has only had a few opportunities to observe Titan with a high spatial resolution. This means that the global map currently shows some regions of Titan in more detail than others.
“We have created the maps using low resolution images as a background with the high resolution data on top. In the few opportunities where we have VIMS imagery from the closest approach, we can show details as low as 500 metres per pixel.
“An example of this is from the 47th flyby, which allowed the observation of the site where the Huygens descent module landed. This observation is a key one as it might help us to bridge the gap between the ground truth provided by Huygens, and ongoing global mapping from orbit, which will continue up to 2017.”
In addition to improving the spatial coverage, future mapping will allow the observation of seasonal changes in both the atmosphere and the surface. As spring comes to the northern hemispheres of Saturn and its moons, some areas are only now coming into view.
“Lakes in Titan’s northern hemisphere were first discovered by the RADAR instrument in 2006, appearing as completely smooth areas. However, we had to wait up to June 2010 to obtain the first infrared images of the northern lakes, emerging progressively from the northern winter darkness,” says Le Mouelic.
“The infrared observations provide the additional opportunity to investigate the composition of the liquids within the lakes area. Liquid ethane has already been identified by this means.”
Source: thecosmosmadeconscious
Photo reblogged from Cromosfera with 31 notes
Third Quarter / Last Quarter Moon (Labeled) - May 13, 2012 by spacemike on Flickr.
Source: myunexpectedsurprise
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