Space pictures

[Tammy]

Explanation: Braided, serpentine filaments of glowing gas suggest this nebula's popular name, The Medusa Nebula. Also known as Abell 21, this Medusa is an old planetary nebula some 1,500 light-years away in the constellation Gemini. Like its mythological namesake, the nebula is associated with a dramatic transformation. The planetary nebula phase represents a final stage in the evolution of low mass stars like the sun, as they transform themselves from red giants to hot white dwarf stars and in the process shrug off their outer layers. Ultraviolet radiation from the hot star powers the nebular glow. The Medusa's transforming star is near the center of the overall bright crescent shape. In this deep, wide telescopic view, fainter filaments clearly extend below and to the left of the bright crescent region. The Medusa Nebula is estimated to be over 4 light-years across.

[Tammy]

Explanation: Long before Stonehenge was built, well before the Dead Sea Scrolls were written, ancient artists painted life-sized figures on canyon walls in Utah, USA -- but why? Nobody is sure. The entire panel of figures, which dates back about 7,000 years, is called the Great Gallery and was found on the walls of Horseshoe Canyon in Canyonlands National Park. The humans who painted them likely hunted Mammoths. The unusual fuzziness of largest figure led to this mural section's informal designation as the Holy Ghost Panel, although the intended attribution and societal importance of the figure are really unknown. The above image was taken during a clear night in March. The oldest objects in the above image are not the pictographs, however, but the stars of our Milky Way Galaxy far in the background, some of which are billions of years old.

[Tammy]

Venus Vortex With only a brisk three years elapsing between approval and launch, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Venus Express mission earned its name. Launched five years ago this week, the ESA’s first mission to Venus has been uncovering the atmospheric secrets of this perpetually cloud-shrouded planet. In both of these composite images, blue represents ultraviolet images of the day-side cloud top layer at an altitude of about thirty-nine miles, and red represents infrared images of the lower layers of the cloud deck surrounding the planet at an altitude of about twenty-seven miles. The central panel of the bottom image, centered on the southern hemisphere, shows the unique double vortex at the south pole of Venus, at an altitude of about thirty-six miles, surrounded by a collar of "cold" air.

[Tammy]

A Year-Old Rosette

This image of the Rosette Nebula in the constellation Monoceros was taken by amateur astrophotographer Antonio Fernandez from his home observatory in Madrid, Spain, using an 11-megapixel CCD imager mounted on a ten-inch astrograph. He obtained three sets of images totaling eight hours of exposures through Hydrogen-Alpha, Oxygen-III, and Sulfur-II filters on two separate evenings nearly a year apart. He then recombined these three monochromatic images using imaging software and assigned each to either red, green, or blue, so as to create the final full-color result. The Rosette is located at the edge of a large molecular cloud about 5,000 light-years away. It is the site of stellar birth, and radiation from the hot young stars within are sculpting the nebula’s delicate shape.

[Tammy]

Erector Sets in Space The space shuttle Atlantis rocketed into orbit twenty-five years ago this week, carrying a crew of seven and a cargo bay filled with satellites and building materials. Early in the STS-61B mission, the crew deployed three communications satellites which later reached geostationary orbit. Astronauts Jerry Ross and Wood Spring conducted two spacewalks on as many days, evaluating ACCESS (Assembly Concept for Construction of Erectable Space Structures) and EASE (Experimental Assembly of Structures in EVA). Their experience erecting a forty-five-foot tower was a prelude to the International Space Station. Atlantis is seen here landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California, where shuttles were temporarily diverted in late 1985 while issues with their brakes were being resolved.

Image credit: NASA

[Tammy]

Hungry for Power Until November 2000, the fledgling International Space Station derived power from two small sets of solar panels on the Zarya and Zvezda modules. The STS-97 mission, launched ten years ago this week, saw the delivery of the first of four 240-foot-long solar array panels—the largest ever flown in space—which provided thirty-two kilowatts of DC power and quintupled the power available to the outpost. The solar array and its P6 truss were originally mounted to the central Z1 truss, as seen here, but were redeployed in 2007 to their permanent position at the end of the 300-foot-long Integrated Truss Structure, which was assembled over several shuttle flights. STS-97 was also the first mission to dock with an inhabited ISS, whose Expedition 1 crew had been on board for a month.

Image credit: NASA

[Tammy]

Galileo Gets Down to Business After being launched from the orbiting space shuttle Atlantis in 1989, the Galileo spacecraft followed a circuitous route through the inner solar system, passing Venus once and Earth twice. Each time, the sightseeing probe stole some gravity from the planets it was passing, ultimately gaining speed to make it out to its final destination. Upon its arrival at Jupiter fifteen years ago this week, Galileo’s first order of business was to relay signals from the atmospheric entry probe it had released to measure the structure and composition of Jupiter’s atmosphere firsthand. With the probe’s hour-long mission complete, Galileo settled in to an eight-year stint orbiting Jupiter, surveying the gas giant, its ring system, and its many moons, including the volcanically active Io, above.

Image credit: NASA / JPL / University of Arizona

[Anet]

Mooie plaatjes, Tams ... je hebt toch ook een site die het in het Nederlands weergeeft!
Die plaatste ik vroeger hier toch ook?
Kweet de link niet meer ...

[Tammy]

Ik weet het niet of die ook in het nederlands is.

[Tammy]

Quick Thinking Gemini VI was supposed to be the first human space mission to rendezvous and dock with another spacecraft. An Atlas-Agena target vehicle was launched on October 25, 1965, about two hours before Gemini VI was supposed to be launched, but the target vehicle’s propulsion system failed, sending it to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Moments after this failure, NASA engineers suggested that the Gemini VI be postponed until Gemini VII was launched in December, so that Gemini VII could be used as a target for rendezvous (but not docking). So forty-five years ago this week, Gemini VI blasted off to catch Gemini VII (seen here from Gemini VI), which had already been in space for two weeks. The two spacecraft came as close as one foot to each other during their five-hour encounter.

Image credit: NASA

[Tammy]

A Peek at the Pelican The Pelican Nebula, or IC 5070, is a large emission nebula located in the constellation Cygnus, the Swan. In wide-field long-exposure images, this glowing region of ionized gas and dark dust clouds takes on an uncanny resemblance to the bird for which it was named. Like many emission nebulae, IC 5070 is the site of star birth, and radiation from nearby newborn stars is indeed buffeting the Pelican like a strong shore breeze. In this close-up image by amateur astronomer Antonio Fernandez of Spain, the head and neck of the Pelican are revealed as the boundary between hot hydrogen gas and cooler sulfur, riddled with wispy tendrils that contain individual protostars at their tips. Dark, obscuring molecular clouds add dramatic contrast to this star-forming region 2,000 light-years away.

[Tammy]

Hubble Rides Space Mountain Although Space Mountain may be one of the most popular attractions at every Disney amusement park, the lines are much shorter if you want to enjoy another space mountain recently imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope. This turbulent cosmic pinnacle is a three-light-year-tall pillar of gas and dust that is being slowly eaten away by the intense radiation from nearby stars. The chaotic mountain, part of the Carina Nebula some 7,500 light-years away, is also being eaten away from within as infant stars buried inside it fire off jets of gas that can be seen streaming from some of the towering peaks. Scorching radiation and streams of charged particles from super-hot newborn stars nearby are shaping and compressing the pillar, causing new stars to form within it.

Image credit: NASA / ESA / M. Livio / Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI)

[Kuikentje]

aaaaaaaaaah mijn favoriet onderwerp.

[Tammy]

Mooi Kuikentje

[Tammy]

Orion Nebula.

[Tammy]

Centaurus A

[Tammy]

[Tammy]

Stellar Cluster R136

[Tammy]

Green Comet

[Tammy]

Go Discovery!
It was October 23, 2007 at 11:40am EST when I had my first ride to space on Discovery. She's beautiful... just sad that this will be her last voyage. Looking forward to climbing aboard the flight deck when Discovery arrives at the Space Station in November. (9-23-2010). Space Photo: Larry Tanner, NASA.