Space pictures

[Tammy]

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[Joan]

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[Tammy]

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[Joan]

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[Tammy]

International Sunrise An example of the increasingly international nature of space science, the Japanese Hinode (“Sunrise”) spacecraft was launched five years ago this week. Hinode is a solar observing spacecraft built with the cooperation of the United States, United Kingdom, and Europe.

Part of NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Probes program, Hinode carries a suite of instruments to study the Sun in optical, extreme ultraviolet, and x-ray wavelengths. Scientists around the world are using data from Hinode to study the interaction between the Sun’s magnetic field and its corona, or high-energy atmosphere. In this Hinode image, a solar flare near the bottom sunspot offers clues about high-energy particle acceleration within the Sun. The Earth is slightly bigger than the black part of the large sunspot.

Image credit: NASA / JAXA

[Tammy]

Tadpoles in Space Located about 12,000 light-years away in the constellation Auriga, the dusty emission nebula IC 410 is a gorgeous site of star birth. The central cluster of young, energetic stars is partially obscured by a patch of dark nebulosity. Intense radiation from the young stars is sculpting the core of the nebula, carving away all but the denser regions of gas and dust. In the upper right of the central nebula, two long streamers are clearly visible. These “tadpoles” are potential sites of new star formation.

To obtain this image, astrophotographer Antonio Fernandez acquired more than fourteen hours of exposure data using a high-resolution CCD imager mounted on a 10-inch f/3.6 astrograph. His advanced rooftop observatory, located at his home in Madrid, is capable of being operated remotely.

Image credit: Antonio Fernandez / http://www.afernandez.net

[Tammy]

Special Delivery The H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) is seen here approaching the International Space Station in September, 2009, just prior to being grappled by the ISS’s Canadarm2 and pulled to a berthing port on the station’s Harmony module. The HTV, built by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, is the latest in a series of remotely-piloted cargo and resupply spacecraft to regularly service the ISS; however, unlike the more complex Russian Progress or European Automated Transfer Vehicle, the HTV does not have an automated system for docking with the ISS, but simply maneuvers close enough to be grabbed by the ISS robot arm, which executes the final docking itself. The HTV can carry six tons of supplies to the ISS and stay docked for a month, after which it undocks and burns up in the atmosphere.

Image credit: NASA

[Tammy]

Brewing up a New Moon William Lassell made a fortune brewing beer in Liverpool during the mid-19th century. With his sizable profits, Lassell financed his real passion, astronomy. He built a 24-inch reflecting telescope, which at the time was the most powerful telescope in England. In September, 1846, he read about the discovery of the planet Neptune, and less than a month later (165 years ago this week), he turned his telescope toward Neptune and discovered a moon orbiting it.

Triton is the largest moon of Neptune, slightly smaller than Earth’s Moon. It has one of the coldest surfaces known anywhere in the solar system, and it is only one of three worlds that possess a nitrogen-rich atmosphere (the other two are Earth, and Saturn’s moon Titan). This image of Triton’s frozen surface was taken by Voyager 2 in 1989.

Image credit: NASA

[Tammy]

Observatory Mashup Data from three of NASA’s Great Observatories were combined to create one of the most detailed views ever of the core of our galaxy. The near-infrared observations of Hubble (yellow) represent countless stars and energetic regions of star birth. Spitzer Space Telescope’s infrared data (red) reveal radiation and winds from stars that create glowing dust clouds in wildly varying shapes.

Imaging from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory (blue and violet) shows gas heated to millions of degrees by stellar explosions and by outflows from the supermassive black hole in the galaxy’s center. The galaxy’s center lies in the bright region to the right of and just below the middle of the image. The entire image height covers about one-quarter of a degree, about half the angular width of the full moon.

Image credit: NASA / ESA / SSC / CXC / STScI

[Tammy]

STEREO Transit A pair of Sun-watching satellites took to the skies five years ago this week in a bid to make the first regular stereo observations of our nearest star. The twin Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO) satellites were launched into a unique orbit that has one of them traveling ahead of Earth and the other behind.

Eventually, as the distance between the two spacecraft gradually increased, they were so far apart that stereo imaging of the Sun was no longer possible. In February, 2011, they were on opposite sides of the Sun, allowing simultaneous observations of the entire Sun for the first time in history. In February, 2007, the STEREO-B spacecraft captured this image of the Moon crossing in front of the Sun; from the spacecraft’s position, the Moon was smaller than seen from Earth.

Image credit: NASA

[Tammy]

End of an Era Gemini XII, the tenth and final piloted Gemini mission, was launched forty-five years ago this week. Astronauts Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin rounded out the program in style with an almost flawless five-day mission. Objectives included rendezvous and docking with another Gemini-Agena Target Vehicle, and completing several extravehicular activities.

On one of these space walks, Aldrin (above) attached a 100-foot tether to the GATV. Aldrin accumulated five-and-a-half hours of EVA time during the flight, a record at the time. After undocking from the GATV, the crew noted that the two vehicles became slightly stabilized because of the tether. After Gemini XII, the next time NASA launched another crew of just two astronauts into space was on the first space shuttle mission in 1981.

Image credit: NASA

[Tammy]

Spy in the Sky Twenty years ago this week, the space shuttle Atlantis was launched on a mission for the Department of Defense. The main objective of the STS-44 mission was the deployment of the Defense Support Program satellite, a surveillance satellite designed to detect nuclear detonations and missile launches from its stationary perch in geosynchronous orbit 22,300 miles above the equator.

At the end of the seven-day mission, Atlantis and its crew of six astronauts landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Seen here during post-flight processing, Atlantis is being hoisted on top of one of NASA’s two Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, specially modified 747s that can ferry shuttles in piggyback fashion back to Florida. The large gantry-like structure is known as the Mate-Demate Device.

Image credit: NASA .

[Tammy]

A Warmer, Wetter Mars Fifteen years ago this week saw the launch of a truly unique mission to the Red Planet. Mars Pathfinder, the first mission to bring a rover to Mars, would also be the first to use inflatable landing bags (one of which is partially visible above) to cushion the final descent to the surface. Once safely settled, Pathfinder deployed the remote-controlled Sojourner rover, seen above inspecting a rock called Yogi. Pathfinder’s landing site uncovered evidence that water once flowed on Mars.

The rocks and rounded pebbles in the Ares Valley appear to have been washed down from the highlands and deposited in this ancient outflow channel by a catastrophic flood. Abundant liquid water could only have existed in the past if Mars once had a thicker atmosphere and was warmer.

Image credit: NASA / JPL

[Tammy]

It’s Just Like Folding a Map When they lifted off five years ago this week, the crew of the STS-116 mission had an ambitious schedule that included installing the International Space Station’s third port truss segment. The shuttle Discovery also ferried astronaut Sunita Williams to the ISS as she began her record-setting stay at the orbiting outpost.

Crew member Christer Fuglesang, Sweden’s first astronaut, is seen here with Robert Curbeam (attached to the ISS Canadarm2 robot arm) as the pair guide one of the station’s collapsible solar array wings into a temporary storage position before another solar array can be deployed to rotate and track the Sun. Curbeam himself set a record during the two-week flight, becoming the first astronaut to make four separate space walks during the same mission.

Image credit: NASA

[Tammy]

Blast from the Past Born 465 years ago this week, Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe revolutionized astronomy. His observations of the positions of planets and stars were unprecedented in their accuracy and sheer volume. In 1572, Tycho observed a bright object in the sky and correctly deduced it was a new star or “stella nova,” thus giving birth to the term “nova” to describe an exploding star.

Tycho’s growing reputation and fame convinced the King of Denmark to subsidize the construction of Uraniborg, the first truly modern astronomical research center. This image of the supernova Tycho observed more than four centuries ago combines infrared and X-ray observations obtained with NASA’s Spitzer and Chandra space telescopes. It shows a blazing hot cloud of expanding debris some 7,500 light-years away.

Image credit: MPIA / NASA.

[Tammy]

Long and Winding Road Floating eerily like a ghostly road to nowhere, the aurora australis (southern lights) and their northern counterparts—aurora borealis—are stunning when viewed from Earth, but nearly defy description when viewed from above. These ever-shifting displays of colored ribbons, curtains, rays, and spots occur when charged particles (ions) streaming from the Sun interact with Earth’s magnetic field.

Aurora generally occur close to the poles, but severe magnetic storms on the Sun can shift these displays toward Earth’s equator and closer to the path traveled by the International Space Station in its orbit. A geomagnetic storm in mid-2010 was the likely culprit behind this display over the Southern Indian Ocean, trailing off toward Antarctica, and captured by an observer on the ISS.


Image credit: NASA

[Tammy]

These Laws Can’t Be Broken Johannes Kepler, born 440 years ago this week, was a German mathematician who used decades of precise measurements of planetary positions made by Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe to formulate three laws that describe planetary motion. These humble laws, which in part state that planets move in elliptical orbits, speeding up when closer to the Sun and slowing down when farther away, form the basis for our current ability to send spacecraft to explore the planets.

Jupiter (above) obeys these laws as it orbits the Sun; the Hubble Space Telescope (which took the picture) follows them as it orbits the Earth; and even the rogue asteroid that slammed into Jupiter in 2009 leaving a “black eye” in the southern hemisphere was itself simply obeying these immutable laws.

Image credit: NASA / ESA / H. Hammel (Space Science Institute) / Jupiter Impact Team

[Tammy]

Transforming the Space Frontier Forty years ago this week, President Richard Nixon announced that he was directing NASA to develop “an entirely new type of space transportation system designed to help transform the space frontier of the 1970s into familiar territory, easily accessible for human endeavor in the 1980s and ‘90s.”

The Space Transportation System, more commonly known as the Space Shuttle, flew 135 missions beginning with the April 1981 STS-1 mission of the shuttle Columbia, and ending in July 2011 with the STS-135 mission of Atlantis, seen here during its final liftoff. Over those thirty years, five different orbiters flew in space, circling Earth more than 21,000 times and logging more than 800 million kilometers (500 million miles) as a fleet—enough to fly a one-way trip to Jupiter.

Image credit: NASA / Tony Gray and Tom Farrar

[Tammy]

Hitching a Ride Home .

After having spent 118 days on the Mir space station, astronaut John Blaha caught a ride home on the space shuttle Atlantis. Launched fifteen years ago this week, STS-81 was the fifth flight to the Russian space station. In addition to ferrying Blaha back home and leaving astronaut Jerry Linenger to take his place, the crew of Atlantis returned with the first plants to complete a life cycle in space—a crop of wheat grown from seed to seed—and they transferred six tons of supplies and equipment between the shuttle and Mir. This image of Mir, taken by the STS-81 crew, shows the various modules that were joined to the core module to form the space station complex. At the far right is the orange docking module that allowed space shuttles to join up with Mir on nine separate occasions.

Image credit: NASA

[Tammy]

Round and Round They Go The Gemini Observatory consists of a pair of eight-meter (315-inch) optical/infrared telescopes located on two of the best sites on Earth for observing the universe. The Gemini South telescope, seen in this time-lapse star-trail image, is 2,700 meters (9,000 feet) high in the Chilean Andes on Cerro Pachón.

Gemini North is on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea, a long-dormant volcano that rises almost 4,300 meters (14,000 feet) into the dry, stable air of the Pacific. Both spots boast superb viewing conditions that are ideal for astronomical observations, and together, the two Gemini telescopes can observe the entire sky. Gemini South, which was dedicated ten years ago this week, and Gemini North both employ adaptive optics to obtain images of celestial objects with unprecedented resolution.

Image credit: Gemini Observatory