Latest Posts by dangerous-space - Page 2

M83, Southern Pinwheel

Up for some virtual cloud watching? ☁️

What do you see in Jupiter’s hazy atmosphere?

Our NASA JunoCam mission captured this look at the planet’s thunderous northern region during the spacecraft’s close approach to the planet on Feb. 17, 2020.

Some notable features in this view are the long, thin bands that run through the center of the image from top to bottom. Juno has observed these long streaks since its first close pass by Jupiter in 2016.

Image Credits: Image data: NASA / JPL / SwRI / MSSS Image Processing: Citizen Scientist Eichstädt

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

May Ms. Johnson forever rest in peace knowing she helped forward humanity to the stars.

Mathematician. Leader. Heroine. Remembering Hidden Figure Katherine Johnson

Tonight, count the stars and remember a trailblazer. 

We’re saddened by the passing of celebrated #HiddenFigures mathematician Katherine Johnson. She passed away at 101 years old. 

An America hero, Johnson’s legacy of excellence broke down racial and social barriers while helping get our space agency off the ground.

Once a “human computer”, she famously calculated the flight trajectory for Alan Shepard, the first American in space.

And when we began to use electronic computers for calculations, astronaut John Glenn said that he’d trust the computers only after Johnson personally checked the math.

As a girl, Katherine Johnson counted everything. As a mathematician, her calculations proved critical to our early successes in space travel.

With slide rules and pencils, Katherine Johnson’s brilliant mind helped launch our nation into space. No longer a Hidden Figure, her bravery and commitment to excellence leaves an eternal legacy for us all.

“We will always have STEM with us. Some things will drop out of the public eye and will go away, but there will always be science, engineering and technology. And there will always, always be mathematics.” - Katherine Johnson 1918 -2020 

May she rest in peace, and may her powerful legacy inspire generations to come! What does Katherine Johnson’s legacy mean to you? Share in the comments. 

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com 

NGC 253: The Silver Coin Galaxy via NASA https://ift.tt/2yYJ2NM

NGC 253 is one of the brightest spiral galaxies visible, but also one of the dustiest. Dubbed the Silver Coin for its appearance in smalltelescopes, it is more formally known as the Sculptor Galaxy for its location within the boundaries of the southern constellation Sculptor. Discovered in 1783 by mathematician and astronomer Caroline Herschel, the dusty island universe lies a mere 10 million light-years away. About 70 thousand light-years across, NGC 253, pictured, is the largest member of the Sculptor Group of Galaxies, the nearest to our own Local Group of galaxies. In addition to its spiral dust lanes, tendrils of dust seem to be rising from a galactic disk laced with young star clusters and star forming regions in this sharp color image. The high dust content accompanies frantic star formation, earning NGC 253 the designation of a starburst galaxy. NGC 253 is also known to be a strong source of high-energy x-rays and gamma rays, likely due to massive black holes near the galaxy’s center. Take a trip through extragalactic space in this short video flyby of NGC 253.

(Published April 14, 2020)

The best shot for the SuperMoon 2020.

Source: Ohrid, MK - Ohrid Astronomy Association.

📸🎥 stojan stojanovski.

NGC 253, Silver Coin

On this day in 1981, the Space Shuttle Columbia landed on Rogers Dry Lake at Edwards Air Force Base after completing its first orbital odyssey.

2020 March 25

Star Forming Region S106 Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Legacy Archive; Processing & Copyright: Utkarsh Mishra

Explanation: Massive star IRS 4 is beginning to spread its wings. Born only about 100,000 years ago, material streaming out from this newborn star has formed the nebula dubbed Sharpless 2-106 Nebula (S106), featured here. A large disk of dust and gas orbiting Infrared Source 4 (IRS 4), visible in brown near the image center, gives the nebula an hourglass or butterfly shape. S106 gas near IRS 4 acts as an emission nebula as it emits light after being ionized, while dust far from IRS 4 reflects light from the central star and so acts as a reflection nebula. Detailed inspection of a relevant infrared image of S106 reveal hundreds of low-mass brown dwarf stars lurking in the nebula’s gas. S106 spans about 2 light-years and lies about 2000 light-years away toward the constellation of the Swan (Cygnus).

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap200325.html

Hubble Hooks a One-Arm Galaxy via NASA https://ift.tt/3bGuO2f

I wonder how likely it would be for NASA to find another planet like ours that has CO2 emissions detected from Hubble. That would be evidence of civilization and people on another planet we could possibly make contact with. I wouldn’t be surprised if we sent over a little Hello package (sterile, of course, to prevent a fatal epidemic on their world or maybe we could send some chemicals that they could know).

When we get to that point, I know we’ll have that figured out. I just hope it’s within my lifetime. Humanity refuses to notice just how close we are to interplanetary travel and comminication. There are tens of millions of planets out there suitable for intelligent life. Will we ever get to meet them?

Orion Molecular Cloud

Jupiter’s four largest moons, known as the Galilean satellites. From top to bottom: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. Credit: NASA See more on my twitter page

Sharpless-308, Water Dolphin 

“Using nothing more than Newton’s laws of gravitation, we astronomers can confidently predict that several billion years from now, our home galaxy, the Milky Way, will merge with our neighboring galaxy Andromeda. Because the distances between the stars are so great compared to their sizes, few if any stars in either galaxy will actually collide.

Any life on the worlds of that far-off future should be safe, but they would be treated to an amazing, billion-year-long light show a dance of a half a trillion stars to music first heard on one little world by a man who had but one true friend.”

COSMOS: A Spacetime Odyssey (2014) written by Ann Druyan and Steven Soter

UGC 12591: The Fastest Rotating Galaxy Known via NASA https://ift.tt/326jqJe

Arp 84, Slowdancers 

The Great Red Spot of Jupiter, observed by Voyager 1 on this day in 1979.

Milky Way over Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent : To see the feathered serpent descend the Mayan pyramid requires exquisite timing. You must visit El Castillo – in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula – near an equinox. Then, during the late afternoon if the sky is clear, the pyramid’s own shadows create triangles that merge into the famous illusion of the slithering viper. Also known as the Temple of Kukulkan, the impressive step-pyramid stands 30 meters tall and 55 meters wide at the base. Built up as a series of square terraces by the pre-Columbian civilization between the 9th and 12th century, the structure can be used as a calendar and is noted for astronomical alignments. To see the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy descend overhead the Mayan pyramid, however, requires less exquisite timing. Even the ancient Mayans might have been impressed, though, to know that the exact positions of the Milky Way, Saturn (left) and Jupiter (right) in the featured image give it a time stamp more specific than equinox – in fact 2019 April 7 at 5 am. via NASA

Science in space

This week on NASA Explorers, we’re aboard the International Space Station!

Now that our scientists’ experiment has made it to space, it’s time to see how their samples behave in microgravity.

See how astronauts conduct science in space, while a team back here on Earth conducts their own piece of the project. Watch the episode here:

Follow NASA Explorers on Facebook to catch new episodes of season 4 every Wednesday!

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

UGC 12591, Gateway to the Universe

(via Voyager 2 is gathering science data again after recovering from a glitch in interstellar space | Space)

All five remaining instruments on NASA’s venerable Voyager 2 spacecraft are back to gathering science data after power overuse in late January interrupted the probe’s operations.

NASA made the announcement yesterday (March 3), over a month after the incident occurred. Troubleshooting for the spacecraft is a slow process because of its distance from Earth; it takes 17 hours for each command to reach the probe and for data indicating its efficacy to reach engineers.

NGC 7023, Iris Nebula

Moke Lake, Queenstown | south_of_home

2020 March 1

A Hole in Mars Image Credit: NASA, JPL, U. Arizona

Explanation: What created this unusual hole in Mars? The hole was discovered by chance in 2011 on images of the dusty slopes of Mars’ Pavonis Mons volcano taken by the HiRISE instrument aboard the robotic Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter currently circling Mars. The hole, shown in representative color, appears to be an opening to an underground cavern, partly illuminated on the image right. Analysis of this and follow-up images revealed the opening to be about 35 meters across, while the interior shadow angle indicates that the underlying cavern is roughly 20 meters deep. Why there is a circular crater surrounding this hole remains a topic of speculation, as is the full extent of the underlying cavern. Holes such as this are of particular interest because their interior caves are relatively protected from the harsh surface of Mars, making them relatively good candidates to contain Martian life. These pits are therefore prime targets for possible future spacecraft, robots, and even human interplanetary explorers.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap200301.html

Jupiter’s Equator via NASA https://ift.tt/2HEWcAo

Milky Way at Boddington, Western Australia

Nikon d5500 - 50mm - ISO 4000 - f/3.2 - Foreground: 7 x 15 seconds - Sky: 26 x 30 seconds - iOptron SkyTracker - Hoya Red Intensifier filter