Tag Archive for 'NASA'

A series of JunoCam images from Juno’s 23rd close science pass by Jupiter on November 3, 2019, revealed a sixth circumpolar cyclone in the cluster around Jupiter’s south pole. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS.

Juno Spots New Circumpolar Cyclone at Jupiter’s South Pole

Dec 14, 2019 by News Staff

NASA’s Juno spacecraft spied the new Jovian cyclone on November 3, 2019, during its 23rd science pass of the gas giant. A series of JunoCam images from...

X-ray image of the gravitational lens system SDSS J1004+4112 taken by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory; the central red extended emission is from the hot gas in the foreground lens galaxy cluster and the four blue point sources are the lensed images of the background quasar. Image credit: University of Oklahoma.

Free-Floating Planet-Mass Objects are Common in Galaxies

Dec 13, 2019 by Enrico de Lazaro

Using a technique called quasar microlensing, a team of astronomers at the University of Oklahoma has detected populations of free-floating planet-mass...

Computer-generated visualization of the orbital paths (white dots) taken by NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft as it mapped winds (blue lines) in the Martian upper atmosphere; red lines coming from the white dots represent local wind speed and direction, measured by MAVEN’s Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer instrument. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / MAVEN / SVS / Greg Shirah.

NASA’s MAVEN Orbiter Maps Martian Upper Atmospheric Winds

Dec 13, 2019 by News Staff

Using NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft, a team of planetary researchers have measured the speed and direction of winds...

On Earth, the Northern and Southern lights occur when the solar wind (electrically charged particles from the Sun) follow our planet’s geomagnetic field lines to the poles and collide with the upper atmosphere. Mars lacks a global magnetic field, so instead the solar wind piles up in front of Mars in a bow shock, which blocks charged particles from reaching the bulk of the atmosphere. However, in a process first observed by NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft, some solar wind protons can slip past the bow shock by first bonding with electrons from the Martian upper atmosphere to form hydrogen atoms. Because these hydrogen atoms are electrically neutral, they can pass through the bow shock and go on to create an ultraviolet proton aurora on the dayside of Mars. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

‘Proton Aurora’ is Most Common Type of Aurora on Mars, Researchers Say

Dec 13, 2019 by News Staff

Proton aurora, a type of Martian aurora first identified in 2016, forms when protons from the solar wind interact with hydrogen in the extended portions...

Hubble Team Releases New Photos of Interstellar Comet 2I/Borisov

Dec 13, 2019 by News Staff

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have captured two new images of 2I/Borisov, the first known interstellar comet to travel through...

Milky Way’s center produces more high-energy gamma rays than can be explained by known sources. This image shows the Milky Way in visible light and a gamma-ray map from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / A. Mellinger, Central Michigan University / T. Linden, University of Chicago.

Annihilating Dark Matter May Lurk in Milky Way’s Center

Dec 12, 2019 by News Staff

Gamma rays — the most energetic waves in the electromagnetic spectrum — are typically produced by the hottest, most extreme objects in the...

This map shows near-surface water ice on Mars; cool colors represent less than one foot (30 cm) below the surface; warm colors are over two feet (60 cm) deep; sprawling brown zones on the map represent areas where a landing spacecraft would sink into fine dust; the outlined box represents the ideal region to send astronauts for them to be able to dig up water ice. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / ASU.

New Map Shows Near-Surface Water Ice on Mars

Dec 12, 2019 by News Staff

Using data from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey orbiter, a team of planetary researchers have crated a map of the water ice depth...

Magnetic fields in the spiral galaxy Messier 77, also known as M77 and NGC 1086, are shown as streamlines over a visible light and X-ray composite image of the galaxy from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The magnetic fields align along the entire length of the massive spiral arms of Messier 77, implying that the gravitational forces that created the galaxy’s shape are also compressing the its magnetic field. This supports the leading theory of how the spiral arms are forced into their iconic shape known as ‘density wave theory.’ SOFIA studied the galaxy using far-infrared light (89 microns) to reveal facets of its magnetic fields that previous observations using visible and radio telescopes could not detect. Image credit: NASA / SOFIA / JPL-Caltech / Roma Tre University.

Magnetic Fields Play Important Role in Shaping Spiral Galaxies

Dec 11, 2019 by News Staff

New infrared observations from NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) of Messier 77, a spiral galaxy located 47 million light-years...

Schematic diagram of orbit determination model output for the 19 January 2019 particle ejection event from Bennu observed by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft: Bennu is depicted in gray and has a diameter of 1,640 feet (500 m). OSIRIS-REx is indicated with the brown dot, 1.2 miles (2 km) from Bennu’s center of mass; the cone represents the viewing angle; blue arcs are particle trajectories, ending or with gaps where the trajectories pass into shadow; the Sun-angular momentum frame coordinates are shown at bottom right: x - solar vector, y - Bennu orbital direction, z - Bennu north. Image credit: Lauretta et al, doi: 10.1126/science.aay3544.

Bennu is Active Asteroid, OSIRIS-REx Team Says

Dec 11, 2019 by News Staff

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer) spacecraft recently observed several particle...

An artist’s impression of the Saturn-sized exoplanet TOI 813b. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

TOI 813b: Saturn-Sized Exoplanet Found Orbiting Subgiant Star

Dec 9, 2019 by Natali Anderson

Citizen scientists from the Planet Hunters TESS (PHT) project have discovered a Saturn-sized planet orbiting around TOI 813, a bright subgiant star located...

NGC 3175 can be seen slicing across the frame in this Hubble image, with its mix of bright patches of glowing gas, dark lanes of dust, bright core, and whirling, pinwheeling arms coming together to paint a beautiful celestial scene. This image is made up of observations from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) in the infrared and optical parts of the spectrum. Two filters were used to sample various wavelengths. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / D. Rosario et al.

Hubble Captures Detailed Image of Edge-On Spiral Galaxy NGC 3175

Dec 9, 2019 by Enrico de Lazaro

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has delivered an incredible snapshot of a nearby spiral galaxy called NGC 3175. NGC 3175 can be seen slicing across...

From a great distance, our Milky Way Galaxy would look like a thin disk of stars that orbits once every few hundred million years around its central region, where hundreds of billions of stars provide the gravitational ‘glue’ to hold it all together. But this pull of gravity is much weaker in the Galaxy’s far outer disk. There, the hydrogen atoms making up most of the Milky Way’s gas disk are no longer confined to a thin plane, instead they give the disk an S-like, or warped, appearance. Image credit: Xiaodian Chen.

Milky Way’s Thick Disk is 10 Billion Years Old, Astronomers Say

Dec 6, 2019 by News Staff

Our Milky Way Galaxy consists of two disk-like structures, known as ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ disks. The thick disk contains only about 20% of the Galaxy’s...

Illustration of NASA’s Parker Solar Probe approaching the Sun. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Steve Gribben.

NASA Releases First Science Results from Parker Solar Probe Mission

Dec 6, 2019 by NASA

The four instruments of NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, a robotic spacecraft designed to explore the Sun’s atmosphere, have returned unprecedented science...

This composite image shows the surroundings of a supermassive black hole that is triggering star formation across the longest distance ever seen; as hot gas swirls around the black hole, it emits large amounts of X-rays that Chandra detects; the black hole is also the source of radio-wave emission from a jet of high-energy particles -- previously detected by scientists with the VLA -- that stretches about a million light-years. Image credit: NASA / CXC / INAF / R. Gilli et al / NRAO / VLA / STScI.

Supermassive Black Hole Triggers Star Formation in Multiple Galaxies

Dec 5, 2019 by News Staff

Enormous black holes usually affect their surroundings through the so-called ‘negative feedback’ — in other words, suppressing the formation...

This schematic of the heliosphere shows the solar wind begins slowing at approximately 4 AU radial distance from the Sun and continues to slow as it moves toward the outer Solar System and picks up interstellar material. Current extrapolations reveal the termination shock may currently be closer than found by the Voyager spacecraft. However, increasing solar activity will soon expand the heliosphere and push the termination shock farther out, possibly to the 84-94 AU range encountered by the Voyager spacecraft. Image credit: Southwest Research Institute / NASA / Adler Planetarium.

Solar Wind Slows in Outer Heliosphere, Data from New Horizons Confirm

Dec 4, 2019 by News Staff

As the solar wind — the supersonic stream of charged particles blown out by the Sun — moves farther from the Sun, it encounters an increasing...

Hubble captured this view of comet 46P/Wirtanen on December 13, 2018. Image credit: NASA / ESA / D. Bodewits, Auburn University / J.-Y. Li, Planetary Science Institute.

TESS Observes Huge Outburst from Comet 46P/Wirtanen

Dec 4, 2019 by News Staff

On September 26, 2018, NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) observed an outburst of gas, ice and dust from the nucleus of comet 46P/Wirtanen....

This Hubble image shows the face-on spiral galaxy NGC 5468. The color image was made from separate exposures taken in the visible and infrared regions of the spectrum with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). Four filters were used to sample various wavelengths. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / W. Li et al / Judy Schmidt, www.geckzilla.com.

Hubble Space Telescope Observes NGC 5468

Dec 2, 2019 by News Staff

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has produced a spectacularly detailed image of a spiral galaxy called NGC 5468. This Hubble image shows the face-on...

The yellow-white cloud in the bottom-center of this image, taken on November 30, 2010 by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, is a ‘dust tower’ -- a concentrated cloud of dust that can be lofted dozens of miles above the surface. The blue-white plumes are water vapor clouds. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS.

‘Dust Towers’ Spotted on Mars

Nov 28, 2019 by News Staff

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter observed a high number of ‘dust towers’ — concentrated clouds of dust that warm in sunlight and rise high...

This Hubble image shows the pair of interacting galaxies Arp 293. The image includes infrared observations from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). Three filters were used to sample various wavelengths. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / K. Larson et al.

Hubble Witnesses Dance of Galaxies: Arp 293

Nov 25, 2019 by Natali Anderson

NASA has released a beautiful photo taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope of the peculiar pair of interacting galaxies called Arp 293. This Hubble...

This image of the Phoenix Cluster combines X-ray, radio and optical data; side panels show the individual images making up the composite. Image credit: NASA / CXC / MIT / M. McDonald et al / NRAO / AUI / NSF / STScI.

Enormous Black Hole Boosts Star Formation in Phoenix Galaxy Cluster

Nov 22, 2019 by News Staff

Supermassive black holes in the center of galaxy clusters usually suppress star formation, but the one in the Phoenix Cluster, a group of about 1,000 galaxies...

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