These polar maps show the first global, topographic mapping of Saturn’s moon Titan, using data from NASA’s Cassini mission. To create these maps, scientists employed a mathematical process called splining, which uses smooth curved surfaces to “join” the areas between grids of existing topography profiles obtained by Cassini’s radar instrument.Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASI/JHUAPL/Cornell/Weizmann
Scientists have created the first global topographic map … Read the rest of this article
Bright arcs are smeared around the heart of galaxy cluster Abell S1077 in this image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble space telescope. The arcs are stretched images of distant galaxies distorted by the cluster’s enormous gravitational field.
Galaxy clusters are large groupings of galaxies, each hosting millions of stars. They are the largest existing structures in the Universe, bound by … Read the rest of this article
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has found the building blocks for Earth-sized planets in an unlikely place– the atmospheres of a pair of burned-out stars called white dwarfs.
These dead stars are located 150 light-years from Earth in a relatively young star cluster, Hyades, in the constellation Taurus. The star cluster is only 625 million years old. The white dwarfs are … Read the rest of this article
In February, a speeding asteroid slammed into our atmosphere and exploded high over Russia’s Ural region, injuring hundreds and causing millions of euros of damage. What should we do if we have a similar – or even bigger – strike in the future?
Of the more than 600,000 known asteroids in our Solar System, almost 10,000 are classified as near-Earth … Read the rest of this article
The Herschel observatory, a European space telescope for which NASA helped build instruments and process data, has stopped making observations after running out of liquid coolant as expected.
The European Space Agency mission, launched almost four years ago, revealed the universe’s “coolest” secrets by observing the frigid side of planet, star and galaxy formation.
“Herschel gave us the opportunity to … Read the rest of this article
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has provided scientists the first close-up, visible-light views of a behemoth hurricane swirling around Saturn’s north pole.
In high-resolution pictures and video, scientists see the hurricane’s eye is about 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) wide, 20 times larger than the average hurricane eye on Earth. Thin, bright clouds at the outer edge of the hurricane are traveling 330 … Read the rest of this article
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has provided the first direct evidence of small meteoroids breaking into streams of rubble and crashing into Saturn’s rings.
These observations make Saturn’s rings the only location besides Earth, the moon and Jupiter where scientists and amateur astronomers have been able to observe impacts as they occur. Studying the impact rate of meteoroids from outside the Saturnian … Read the rest of this article
An amateur video of a concert in Salta, Argentina captured footage of a meteor exploding in the night sky, lighting the sky briefly on April 21, 2013.
The spectacle happened at about 3.30am local time (6.30am GMT), according to local media reports.
The light the meteor created was so bright that it turned the night sky into day as it … Read the rest of this article
SpaceX’s Grasshopper flies 820 feet, tripling its March 7th leap.
Grasshopper is a 10-story Vertical Takeoff Vertical Landing (VTVL) vehicle that SpaceX has designed to test the technologies needed to return a rocket back to Earth intact. While most rockets are designed to burn up in the atmosphere during reentry, SpaceX’s rockets are being designed to return to the launch … Read the rest of this article
The Solar System is a beautiful place filled with wonders that NASA space probes are only beginning to discover. There’s a tendency, though, for people to become indifferent; every year Hubble, Cassini, MESSENGER and other spacecraft beam back gigabytes of jaw-dropping images. After a while, you don’t have any more “gasps” left in you.
Well, maybe just one more. Inhale … Read the rest of this article
The Sun Now (Visible light)
|
The Sun Now (H-Alpha light)
|
|
Aurora Oval
(Northern Hemisphere) |
Aurora Oval
(Southern Hemisphere) |
|
