Thankful For Views Like This One —————————————– Camera Info •Canon 5D Mk3

Planetary Nebula Mz3: The Ant Nebula by R. Sahai

How do you feel about space movies like Gravity or the Martian etc?

I thought they were great. I watched them both here aboard the International Space Station. Movie night looks like this!

Views of Pluto

10 Images to Celebrate the Historic Exploration of the Pluto System

One year ago, our New Horizons mission made history by exploring Pluto and its moons – giving humankind our first close-up look at this fascinating world on the frontier of our solar system.

Since those amazing days in July 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft has transmitted numerous images and many other kinds of data home for scientists and the public alike to study, analyze, and just plain love. From Pluto’s iconic “heart” and sweeping ice-mountain vistas to its flowing glaciers and dramatic blue skies, it’s hard to pick just one favorite picture. So the mission team has picked 10 – and in no special order, placed them here.

Click the titles for more information about each image. You’ve seen nine of them before, and the team added a 10th favorite, also sure to become one of New Horizons’ “greatest hits.”

Vast Glacial Flows

In the northern region of Pluto’s Sputnik Planum, swirl-shaped patterns of light and dark suggest that a surface layer of exotic ices has flowed around obstacles and into depressions, much like glaciers on Earth.

Jagged Ice Shorelines and Snowy Pits

This dramatic image from our New Horizons spacecraft shows the dark, rugged highlands known as Krun Macula (lower right), which border a section of Pluto’s icy plains.

Blue Skies

Pluto’s haze layer shows its blue color in this picture taken by the New Horizons Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC). The high-altitude haze is thought to be similar in nature to that seen at Saturn’s moon Titan.

Charon Becomes a Real World

At half the diameter of Pluto, Charon is the largest satellite relative to its planet in the solar system. Many New Horizons scientists expected Charon to be a monotonous, crater-battered world; instead, they’re finding a landscape covered with mountains, canyons, landslides, surface-color variations and more. 

The Vistas of Pluto

Our New Horizons spacecraft looked back toward the sun and captured this near-sunset view of the rugged, icy mountains and flat ice plains extending to Pluto’s horizon. The backlighting highlights over a dozen layers of haze in Pluto’s tenuous but distended atmosphere.

The Dynamic Duo: Pluto and Charon in Enhanced Color

The color and brightness of both Pluto and Charon have been processed identically to allow direct comparison of their surface properties, and to highlight the similarity between Charon’s polar red terrain and Pluto’s equatorial red terrain. Pluto and Charon are shown with approximately correct relative sizes, but their true separation is not to scale. 

Strange Snakeskin Terrain

A moment’s study reveals surface features that appear to be texturally ‘snakeskin’-like, owing to their north-south oriented scaly raised relief. A digital elevation model created by the New Horizons’ geology shows that these bladed structures have typical relief of about 550 yards (500 meters). Their relative spacing of about 3-5 kilometers makes them some of the steepest features seen on Pluto.

Pluto’s Heart

This view is dominated by the large, bright feature informally named the “heart,” which measures approximately 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) across. The heart borders darker equatorial terrains, and the mottled terrain to its east (right) are complex. However, even at this resolution, much of the heart’s interior appears remarkably featureless—possibly a sign of ongoing geologic processes.

Far Away Snow-Capped Mountains

One of Pluto’s most identifiable features, Cthulhu (pronounced kuh-THU-lu) stretches nearly halfway around Pluto’s equator, starting from the west of the great nitrogen ice plains known as Sputnik Planum. Measuring approximately 1,850 miles (3,000 kilometers) long and 450 miles (750 kilometers) wide, Cthulhu is a bit larger than the state of Alaska.

Colorful Composition Maps of Pluto

The powerful instruments on New Horizons not only gave scientists insight on what Pluto looked like, their data also confirmed (or, in many cases, dispelled) their ideas of what Pluto was made of. These compositional maps – assembled using data from the Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array (LEISA) component of the Ralph instrument – indicate the regions rich in ices of methane (CH4), nitrogen (N2) and carbon monoxide (CO),  and, of course, water ice (H2O).

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What music do you listen to most?

A wide variety. I created this Spotify playlist of the songs I’ve listened to most during my Year in Space. 

This week, NASA released the most colorful, in-depth photo of the universe ever taken. It took the Hubble Telescope 11 years and 840 orbits to capture the 12-billion-year-old light of 10,000 galaxies.

via Mashable

Images of Hubble Ultra Deep Field (the farthest we’ve ever seen into the universe) and it’s close-ups. Astronomers, in 1996, attempted something extraordinary. They pointed the Hubble Space Telescope into a part of the sky that seemed utterly empty, a patch devoid of any planets, stars and galaxies. This area was close to the Big Dipper, a very familiar constellation. The patch of sky was no bigger than a grain of sand held out at arms length. There was a real risk that the images returned would be as black as the space at which it was being pointed. Nevertheless, they opened the telescope and slowly, over the course of 10 full days, photons that had been travelling for over 13 billion years finally ended their journey on the detector of humanity’s most powerful telescope. When the telescope was finally closed, the light from over 3,000 galaxies had covered the detector, producing one of the most profound and humbling images in all of human history - every single spot, smear, and dot was an entire galaxy, each one containing hundreds of billions of stars. 

Later, in 2004, they did it again, this time pointing the telescope toward an area near the constellation Orion. They opened the shutter for over 11 days and 400 complete orbits around the Earth. Detectors with increased sensitivity and filters that allowed more light through than ever before allowed over 10,000 galaxies to appear in what became known as the Ultra Deep Field, an image that represented the farthest we’ve ever seen into the universe.The photons from these galaxies left when the universe was only 500 million years old, and 13 billion years later, they end their long journey as a small blip on a telescope’s CCD. 

There are over 100 billion galaxies in the universe. Simply saying that number doesn’t really mean much to us because it doesn’t provide any context. Our brains have no way to accurately put that in any meaningful perspective. When we look at this image, however, and think about the context of how it was made, and really understand what it means, we instantly gain the perspective and cannot help but be forever changed by it. We pointed the most powerful telescope ever built by human beings at absolutely nothing, for no other reason than because we were curious, and discovered that we occupy a very tiny place in the heavens.

Cassini Top 10 Images and Science Results of 2015

As our Cassini spacecraft enters its final 20 months before its plunge into Saturn, the mission’s science team has selected their top 10 images from 2015 (above), a year of historic discoveries, as well as the top science results (below). Take a look:

1. First Deep Seafloor Hydrothermal Vents Found Beyond Earth

Cassini found the first evidence of active hot-water chemistry beyond planet Earth. An extensive, four-year analysis of data from the spacecraft, computer simulations and laboratory experiments led researchers to the conclusion the tiny silica (SiCO2) grains most likely form when hot water containing dissolved minerals from the moon’s rocky interior travels upward, coming into contact with cooler water.

2. Global Ocean Beneath Enceladus’ Surface

A global ocean lies beneath the icy crust of Saturn’s geologically active moon Enceladus. Scientists analyzed more than seven years’ worth of images of Enceladus taken by the spacecraft, which has been orbiting Saturn since mid-2004. As a result, they found Enceladus has a tiny, but measurable wobble as it orbits Saturn. This proves that there must be a global layer of liquid separating the surface from the core.

3. Titan Observed Outside of Saturnian Magnetosphere

During Cassini’s flyby of Titan, the giant moon happened to be on the sunward side of Saturn when a powerful outburst of solar activity reached the planet. The strong surge in the solar wind so compressed the sun-facing side of Saturn’s magnetosphere that the bubble’s outer edge was pushed inside the orbit of Titan. This left the moon exposed to, and unprotected from, the raging stream of energetic solar particles. The region of space dominated by Saturn’s magnetic field is called the magnetosphere.

4. Density of a Ring Particles May Indicate Recent Origins

Saturn’s A ring was found to be warmer than expected at the planet’s equinox, and also had an unusually large thermal asymmetry about the equinox. This could be due to the A ring being mostly composed of denser particles made primarily of solid ice, with a thin top layer of fluffy regolith.

5. Titan Southern Polar Ice Cloud

Scientists have detected a monstrous new cloud of frozen compounds in Titan’s low- to mid-stratosphere – a stable atmospheric region above the troposphere, or active weather layer.

6. Curtain Vents on Enceladus?

New research using data from Cassini suggests most of the eruptions from Saturn’s moon Enceladus might actually be diffuse curtains rather than discrete jets. Many features that appear to be individuals jets of material erupting along the length of prominent “tiger stripe” fractures in the moon’s south polar region might be phantoms created by an optical illusion, according to the new study.

7. Discovery of Tethys Red Arcs

Like graffiti sprayed by an unknown artist, unexplained arc-shaped, reddish streaks are visible on the surface of Saturn’s icy moon Tethys. The origin of the features and their reddish color is a mystery to scientists.

8. Saturn’s 30-year Giant Storms Powered by Water Convection

Changes in temperature and the composition of the hydrogen-laden air within the remnants of a giant storm system on Saturn reveal that air was lofted more than 120 miles in altitude from the deeper water condensation levels.

9. Seasonal Change Seen at Saturn’s Poles

Saturn’s polar regions have displayed extreme seasonal changes during Cassini’s decade-long watch, providing the most comprehensive view ever obtained of seasonal change on a giant planet.

10. Huygens Probe Imaging Mosaic of Titan’s Surface and Descent Movie

Ten years ago, an explorer from Earth, the Huygens probe, was released from the Cassini spacecraft and parachuted into the haze of an alien moon toward an uncertain fate. After a gentle descent lasting more than two hours, it landed with a thud on a frigid floodplain on Titan, surrounded by icy cobblestones.

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Gravitational Waves Exist: The Inside Story of How Scientists Finally Found Them

How a group of scientists proved Einstein right—and expanded our view of the universe.

A photo of Jupiter. Took by Voyager with VGISS on February 01, 1979 at 23:13:23. Detail page on OPUS database.

5 Signs You Might Be Ready to Apply to be an Astronaut

Did you hear? Astronaut applications are open! Here are a few signs that might mean you’re ready to apply:

1. You Don’t Mind Having Roommates

When you’re an astronaut, you have to work and live with your crew mates for extended periods of time. It’s important to the mission and your safety that everyone can collaborate and work together.

2. You LOVE Space

If the Milky Way, planets and space travel doesn’t excite you then this might not be the perfect job for you. But if you love galaxies, space station research and deep space exploration, then maybe you should take a look at our application.

3. Adventure Doesn’t Scare You

Being an astronaut means that you get to take part in adventures that most people will never experience. Imagine: sitting on the launch pad in the Orion spacecraft, atop a rocket that’s getting ready to launch. You’ll travel farther into space than any other humans have been and help push the boundaries of technology in the proving ground of deep space lunar orbits, leading the way for future missions to Mars.

4. You Want to be on the Cutting Edge of Science

Not only do astronauts get to travel to space, but they also get to conduct really cool research in microgravity. Did you know that right now they’re growing Zinnia flowers on the International Space Station? This research could help with our future deep space exploration and could teach us a few things about growing plants on Earth. Learn more about all the awesome research on the space station HERE.

5. You’re Not Afraid of Heights

One of the coolest things about being an astronaut, is that you get to go to SPACE! At the very least, you’ll travel to the International Space Station, which is 250 miles above Earth. Or, you could be one of the first astronauts to travel to a distant asteroid or even Mars!

Interested in applying to become an astronaut? You’re in luck, applications open Dec. 14! Learn about some common myths about becoming an astronaut HERE.

Apply to be one of our astronauts HERE.

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