|
|
Artist's Concept of Wide-fie
…
PIA06927
Wide-field Infrared Survey E
…
| Title |
Artist's Concept of Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Artist's concept of Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. A new NASA mission will scan the entire sky in infrared light in search of nearby cool stars, planetary construction zones and the brightest galaxies in the universe. Called the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, the mission has been approved to proceed into the preliminary design phase as the next in NASA's Medium-class Explorer program of lower cost, highly focused, rapid-development scientific spacecraft. It is scheduled to launch in 2008. |
|
NASA KSNN - Are You An Explo
…
Are You An Explorer? This se
…
6/1/03
| Description |
Are You An Explorer? This segment describes the future plans NASA has for space exploration. |
| Date |
6/1/03 |
|
NASA 360 Episode 6
This episode of NASA 360 loo
…
2008
| Description |
This episode of NASA 360 looks at how NASA tests the equipment needed for our return to the moon. Highlights include: the lunar truck Chariot, NASA's All Terrain Hex-Limbed Extra-Terrestrial Explorer, or ATHLETE, the rover Scarab and new suits for astronauts. This video is a NASA eClips (TM) program. |
| Date |
2008 |
|
Lillie Burney Elementary Sch
…
Mississippi Rep. Percy Watso
…
9/8/06
| Description |
Mississippi Rep. Percy Watson (left) talks with first-graders Savannah Jones and Levi Meyers, and Astronaut Lee Morin on Sept. 8 during the NASA Explorer School kickoff event at the Lillie Burney Elementary School in Hattiesburg, Miss. NASA Explorer Schools help promote student achievement in mathematics and science through activities using the excitement of NASA research, discoveries and missions. |
| Date |
9/8/06 |
|
NASA Connect - GWTF - MAX Co
…
NASA Connect Segment explori
…
11/1/00
| Description |
NASA Connect Segment exploring computer simulation tools for research on drag. The video features the Mars Airbourne Explorer simulation computer program. |
| Date |
11/1/00 |
|
The three men responsible fo
…
| Description |
The three men responsible for the success of Explorer 1, America's first Earth satellite which was launched January 31, 1958. At left is Dr. W. H. Pickering, former director of JPL, which built and operated the satellite. Dr. James A. van Allen, center, of the State University of Iowa, designed and built the instrument on Explorer that discovered the radiation belts which circle the Earth. At right is the late Dr. Wernher von Braun, leader of the Army's Redstone Arsenal team which built the first stage Redstone rocket that launched Explorer 1. |
|
Advanced Equipment to Use on
…
NASA is currently testing po
…
2008
| Description |
NASA is currently testing potential equipment that can be used on missions back to the moon. Moses Lake, Washington, the site for the tests, has a surface similar to that of the moon. This segment introduces two advanced pieces of equipment that NASA is developing: the All Terrain Hex-Legged Extra Terrestrial Explorer, or ATHLETE, and the Chariot. ATHLETE is a rover with six wheels that will be able to transport up to 450 kg of cargo at a rate of 10 km/h. The Chariot, the new moon buggy, is powered by two motors with twelve wheels that can pivot in all directions at the speed of 24 km/h. This video is a NASA eClips (TM) program. |
| Date |
2008 |
|
ISEE3-ICE
| title |
ISEE3-ICE |
| description |
Known as International Sun-Earth Explorer 3 and International Cometary Explorer, this spacecraft scored a number of firsts - including the first comet flyby. *Image Credit*: NASA |
|
NASA Explorer School
The NASA Explorer School-Eas
…
11/8/07
| Description |
The NASA Explorer School-East Oktibbeha County School District team recently celebrated the start of its three-year partnership with NASA during a two-part kickoff event Nov. 7 and 8. Pictured from left are, Oktibbeha County School District Superintendent Dr. Walter Conley, NES Team Administrator James Covington, Stennis Space Center Deputy Director Gene Goldman, Sharon Bonner, NES Team Lead Yolanda Magee, Andrea Temple, Carolyn Rice, and special guest astronaut Roger Crouch. |
| Date |
11/8/07 |
|
Explorer I
| Title |
Explorer I |
| Explanation |
Inaugurating the era of space exploration [ http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-4406/contents.html ] for the US, the First Explorer [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap970518.html ] was launched [ http://newproducts.jpl.nasa.gov/calander/explorer1.html ] into Earth orbit forty years ago [ http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/98/expl1rel.html ] (February 1, 1958) by the Army Ballistic Missle Agency [ http://www.redstone.army.mil/history/arspace/welcome.html ]. The Explorer I satellite [ http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/history/mm/lk_inst.html ] weighed about 30 pounds, was 6 feet long, 6 inches in diameter and consisted of batteries, transmitters, and scientific instrumentation [ http://www-spof.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/wexp13.html ] built into the fourth stage of a Jupiter-C rocket. Foreshadowing NASA and the adventurous [ http://www.osf.hq.nasa.gov/history/explorer.html ] and successful Explorer Program [ http://msl.jpl.nasa.gov/Programs/explorer.html ], Explorer I bolstered national prestige in the wake of Sputnik [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap970427.html ]. The satellite also contributed to a spectacular scientific bonanza - the discovery of Earth-girdling belts of magnetically trapped charged particles now known as the Van Allen Radiation Belts [ http://www-spof.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/Iradbelt.html ]. |
|
Explorer I
| Name of Image |
Explorer I |
| Date of Image |
1959-10-21 |
| Full Description |
This image is a cutaway illustration of the Explorer I satellite with callouts. The Explorer I satellite was America's first scientific satellite launched aboard the Jupiter C launch vehicle on January 31, 1958. The Explorer I carried the radiation detection experiment designed by Dr. James Van Allen and discovered the Van Allen Radiation Belt. |
|
Installing Explorer VII
| Name of Image |
Installing Explorer VII |
| Date of Image |
1959-10-13 |
| Full Description |
Juno II was a part of America's effort to increase its capability to lift heavier satellites into orbit. One payload was Explorer VII. This photograph depicts workers installing the Explorer VII satellite on Juno II (AM-19A) booster. The Explorer VII investigated energetic particles and obtained data on radiation and magnetic storms. The successful launch of Juno II took place on October 13, 1959. |
|
Jupiter C/Explorer 1 in Gant
…
| Name of Image |
Jupiter C/Explorer 1 in Gantry |
| Date of Image |
1958-01-31 |
| Full Description |
Explorer 1 atop a Jupiter-C in gantry. Jupiter-C carrying the first American satellite, Explorer 1, was successfully launched on January 31, 1958. The Jupiter-C launch vehicle consisted of a modified version of the Redstone rocket's first stage and two upper stages of clustered Baby Sergeant rockets developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and later designated as Juno boosters for space launches |
|
Explorer 1 Architects
| title |
Explorer 1 Architects |
| date |
01.01.1958 |
| description |
The three men responsible for the success of Explorer 1, America's first Earth satellite which was launched January 31, 1958. At left is Dr. William H. Pickering, former director of JPL, which built and operated the satellite. Dr. James A. van Allen, center, of the State University of Iowa, designed and built the instrument on Explorer that discovered the radiation belts which circle the Earth. At right is Dr. Wernher von Braun, leader of the Army's Redstone Arsenal team which built the first stage Redstone rocket that launched Explorer 1. |
|
The First Explorer
| Title |
The First Explorer |
| Explanation |
The first US spacecraft was Explorer 1 [ http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/history/mm/sect001.html#Explorer I ]. The cylindrical 30 pound satellite [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap980213.html ] was launched (above) as the fourth stage of a Jupiter-C rocket (a modified US Army [ http://www.redstone.army.mil/history/firsts/firsts.html ] Redstone [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap970406.html ] ballistic missile) and achieved orbit on January 31, 1958. Explorer I carried instrumentation [ http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/history/mm/lk_inst.html ] to measure internal and external temperatures, micrometeorite impacts, and an experiment designed by James A. Van Allen [ http://www.jamesvanallen.com/productionbiography.html ] to measure the density of electrons and ions in space. The measurements made by Van Allen's experiment led to an unexpected and startling discovery [ http://www-spof.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/wexp13.html ] -- an earth-encircling belt of high energy electrons and ions trapped in the magnetosphere [ http://www-spof.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/Intro.html ] now known as the Van Allen Belt [ http://es91-server1.msfc.nasa.gov/ssl/pad/sppb/MI/imagers.html ]. Explorer I ceased transmitting on February 28 of that year but remained in orbit until March of 1970. |
|
Explorer 1 During the Instal
…
| Name of Image |
Explorer 1 During the Installation to Jupiter-C |
| Date of Image |
1958-01-01 |
| Full Description |
Explorer 1 satellite. This photo was taken during the installation of Explorer-1, the first United States' Earth-orbiting satellite, to its launch vehicle, Jupiter-C, in January 1958 |
|
Nearby Newborns
PIA07143
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Nearby Newborns |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Figure 1 This image shows six of the three-dozen "ultraviolet luminous galaxies" spotted in our corner of the universe by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer. These massive galaxies greatly resemble newborn galaxies that were common in the early universe. The discovery came as a surprise, because astronomers had thought that the universe's "birth-rate" had declined, and that massive galaxies were no longer forming. The galaxies, located in the center of each panel, were discovered after the Galaxy Evolution Explorer scanned a large portion of the sky with its highly sensitive ultraviolet-light detectors. Because young stars pack most of their light into ultraviolet wavelengths, young galaxies appear to the Galaxy Evolution Explorer like diamonds in a field of stones. Astronomers mined for these rare "gems" before, but missed them because they weren't able to examine a large enough slice of the sky. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer surveyed thousands of nearby galaxies before finding three-dozen newborns. While still relatively close in astronomical terms, these galaxies are far enough away to appear small to the Galaxy Evolution Explorer. Clockwise beginning from the upper left, they are called: GALEX_J232539.24+004507.1, GALEX_J231812.98-004126.1, GALEX_J015028.39+130858.5, GALEX_J021348.52+125951.3, GALEX_J143417.15+020742.5, GALEX_J020354.02-092452.5. |
|
Nearby Newborns
PIA07143
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Nearby Newborns |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Figure 1 This image shows six of the three-dozen "ultraviolet luminous galaxies" spotted in our corner of the universe by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer. These massive galaxies greatly resemble newborn galaxies that were common in the early universe. The discovery came as a surprise, because astronomers had thought that the universe's "birth-rate" had declined, and that massive galaxies were no longer forming. The galaxies, located in the center of each panel, were discovered after the Galaxy Evolution Explorer scanned a large portion of the sky with its highly sensitive ultraviolet-light detectors. Because young stars pack most of their light into ultraviolet wavelengths, young galaxies appear to the Galaxy Evolution Explorer like diamonds in a field of stones. Astronomers mined for these rare "gems" before, but missed them because they weren't able to examine a large enough slice of the sky. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer surveyed thousands of nearby galaxies before finding three-dozen newborns. While still relatively close in astronomical terms, these galaxies are far enough away to appear small to the Galaxy Evolution Explorer. Clockwise beginning from the upper left, they are called: GALEX_J232539.24+004507.1, GALEX_J231812.98-004126.1, GALEX_J015028.39+130858.5, GALEX_J021348.52+125951.3, GALEX_J143417.15+020742.5, GALEX_J020354.02-092452.5. |
|
Explorer 1 Preparations
| title |
Explorer 1 Preparations |
| date |
01.20.1958 |
| description |
Technicians lower Explorer 1, the first American satellite, onto the launch vehicle's fourth stage motor. This photo was taken in the gantry at Launch Complex 26 at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida. *Image Credit*: Jet Propulsion Laboratory |
|
Explanatory Image of the Fir
…
| Title |
Explanatory Image of the First Explorer VI Picture of Earth |
| Full Description |
The lined areas at the left represent a cloud-cover map, prepared from meteorology charts, which have been superimposed on a glove to show how the lighted area which the Explorer VI television scanner saw on August 14, 1959. |
| Date |
08/14/1959 |
| NASA Center |
Headquarters |
|
Explorer 24
| Title |
Explorer 24 |
| Full Description |
This satellite, Explorer 24, was a 12-foot-diameter inflatable sphere developed by an engineering team at Langley. It provided information on complex solar radiation/air-density relationships in the upper atmosphere. |
| Date |
9/28/1964 |
| NASA Center |
Langley Research Center |
|
Marjorie Townsend and SAS-1
| Title |
Marjorie Townsend and SAS-1 |
| Full Description |
Marjorie Townsend discusses the X-ray Explorer Satellite's performance with a colleague during preflight tests at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Townsend, a Washington DC native, was the first woman to receive an engineering degree from The George Washington University. She joined NASA in 1959 and later advanced to become the project manager of the Small Astronomy Satellite (SAS) Program. The satellite shown in the picture, SAS-1, was the 42nd in NASA's Explorer series, a family of small, simple satellites sent to perform important scientific missions for minimal cost. The first Explorer satellite launched in 1958, months prior to the formation of NASA, initiating a program of exploration that has continued into the twenty-first century. SAS-1 continued the tradition of crucial science projects by carrying the first set of sensitive instruments designed to map X-ray sources both within and beyond our own galaxy, the Milky Way. Also known as Explorer 42 and the X-ray Explorer, it became the first American spacecraft launched by another country when an Italian space team launched it on December 12, 1970 from a mobile launch platform located in international waters off the coast of East Africa. It mapped the universe in X-ray wavelengths and discovered X-ray pulsars and evidence of black holes. The satellite was named Uhuru, which means freedom in Swahili, because it was launched from San Marco off the coast of Kenya on Kenya's Independence Day. In the 1970's the Italian Government made Townsend a Knight of the Italian Republic Order for her contributions to the United States-Italian space efforts. In 1990, Townsend joined BDM International Inc., as the director of Space Systems Engineering with the Space Science and Applications Division. |
| Date |
12/02/1970 |
| NASA Center |
Goddard Space Flight Center |
|
Dora'& Kids at Day of Play
From left, Cobie Smith, 5, a
…
10/5/05
| Description |
From left, Cobie Smith, 5, and Tatume Smith, also 5, have their picture taken with 'Dora the Explorer.' The children were participants in Nickelodeon's Worldwide Day of Play celebration at Stennis Space Center (SSC) on Oct. 1. The Worldwide Day of Play is sponsored annually by Nickelodeon television network to encourage children to be physically active. Approximately 150 children participated in the event at SSC. |
| Date |
10/5/05 |
|
Juno I -- Explorer I
| Name of Image |
Juno I -- Explorer I |
| Date of Image |
1958-01-31 |
| Full Description |
Juno I, a slightly modified Jupiter-C launch vehicle, shortly before the January 31, 1958 launch of America's first satellite, Explorer I. The Jupiter-C, developed by Dr. Wernher von Braun and the rocket team at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, consisted of a modified version of the Redstone rocket's first stage and two upper stages of clustered Baby Sergeant rockets developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. |
|
Installation of Explorer 1
| Name of Image |
Installation of Explorer 1 |
| Date of Image |
1958-01-01 |
| Full Description |
Installation of Explorer 1, the first United States' satellite, to its launch vehicle, Jupiter-C, January 1958 |
|
View of Explorer VII
| Name of Image |
View of Explorer VII |
| Date of Image |
1959-01-01 |
| Full Description |
A Juno II launched an Explorer VII satellite on October 13, 1959. Explorer VII, with a total weight of 91.5 pounds, carried a scientific package for detecting micrometeors, measuring the Earth's radiation balance, and conducting other experiments. |
|
Juno II (AM-19A)/Explorer VI
…
| Name of Image |
Juno II (AM-19A)/Explorer VII |
| Date of Image |
1959-10-11 |
| Full Description |
The Juno II vehicle in gantry for fueling. The Juno II AM-19A mission was launched on October 13, 1959 and successfully deployed an astronomical satellite, Explorer VII |
|
Jupiter C/Explorer I Charact
…
| Name of Image |
Jupiter C/Explorer I Characteristics |
| Date of Image |
1958-01-31 |
| Full Description |
This illustration shows the main characteristics of the Jupiter C launch vehicle and its payload, the Explorer I satellite. The Jupiter C, America's first successful space vehicle, launched the free world's first scientific satellite, Explorer 1, on January 31, 1958. The four-stage Jupiter C measured almost 69 feet in length. The first stage was a modified liquid fueled Redstone missile. This main stage was about 57 feet in length and 70 inches in diameter. Fifteen scaled down SERGENT solid propellant motors were used in the upper stages. A "tub" configuration mounted on top of the modified Redstone held the second and third stages. The second stage consisted of 11 rockets placed in a ring formation within the tub. Inserted into the ring of second stage rockets was a cluster of 3 rockets making up the third stage. A fourth stage single rocket and the satellite were mounted atop the third stage. This "tub", all upper stages, and the satellite were set spirning prior to launching. The complete upper assembly measured 12.5 feet in length. The Explorer I carried the radiation detection experiment designed by Dr. James Van Allen and discovered the Van Allen Radiation Belt. |
|
Explorer 1
PIA04601
| Title |
Explorer 1 |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
America's First Satellite America joined the space race with the launch of this small, but important spacecraft. |
|
Europa Explorer
| title |
Europa Explorer |
| description |
The Europa Explorer Mission is a Solar System Exploration Roadmap Mission that examines Europa's subsurface oceans from orbit and searches for possible landing sites for future missions. |
|
NASA SCI Files - Animal Popu
…
In the third segment of the
…
2/16/05
| Description |
In the third segment of the Case of the Zany Animal Antics the tree house detectives simulate population growth with an experiment and learn how to estimate populations with random sampling from a NASA explorer school. In the last part of the Animal Populations and Habitats segment the tree house detectives learn what makes up a good habitat. |
| Date |
2/16/05 |
|
Amazing Andromeda Galaxy
| Title |
Amazing Andromeda Galaxy |
| Description |
The many "personalities" of our great galactic neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy, are exposed in this new composite image from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer and the Spitzer Space Telescope. The wide, ultraviolet eyes of Galaxy Evolution Explorer reveal Andromeda's "fiery" nature -- hotter regions brimming with young and old stars. In contrast, Spitzer's super-sensitive infrared eyes show Andromeda's relatively "cool" side, which includes embryonic stars hidden in their dusty cocoons. Galaxy Evolution Explorer detected young, hot, high-mass stars, which are represented in blue, while populations of relatively older stars are shown as green dots. The bright yellow spot at the galaxy's center depicts a particularly dense population of old stars. Swaths of red in the galaxy's disk indicate areas where Spitzer found cool, dusty regions where stars are forming. These stars are still shrouded by the cosmic clouds of dust and gas that collapsed to form them. Together, Galaxy Evolution Explorer and Spitzer complete the picture of Andromeda's swirling spiral arms. Hints of pinkish purple depict regions where the galaxy's populations of hot, high-mass stars and cooler, dust-enshrouded stars co-exist. Located 2.5 million light-years away, the Andromeda is our largest nearby galactic neighbor. The galaxy's entire disk spans about 260,000 light-years, which means that a light beam would take 260,000 years to travel from one end of the galaxy to the other. By comparison, our Milky Way galaxy's disk is about 100,000 light-years across. This image is a false color composite comprised of data from Galaxy Evolution Explorer's far-ultraviolet detector (blue), near-ultraviolet detector (green), and Spitzer's multiband imaging photometer at 24 microns (red). |
|
Juno II Launch Vehicle
| Name of Image |
Juno II Launch Vehicle |
| Date of Image |
1958-01-01 |
| Full Description |
The modified Jupiter C (sometimes called Juno I), used to launch Explorer I, had minimum payload lifting capabilities. Explorer I weighed slightly less than 31 pounds. Juno II was part of America's effort to increase payload lifting capabilities. Among other achievements, the vehicle successfully launched a Pioneer IV satellite on March 3, 1959, and an Explorer VII satellite on October 13, 1959. Responsibility for Juno II passed from the Army to the Marshall Space Flight Center when the Center was activated on July 1, 1960. On November 3, 1960, a Juno II sent Explorer VIII into a 1,000-mile deep orbit within the ionosphere. |
|
SEDS-I: Subsatellite in moti
…
| Title |
SEDS-I: Subsatellite in motion (every 10th frame) |
| Completed |
1994-04-01 |
|
Dr. von Braun with the Front
…
| Name of Image |
Dr. von Braun with the Front Page of the Huntsville Times |
| Date of Image |
1963-01-01 |
| Full Description |
Dr. von Braun is presented with the front page of the Huntsville Times arnouncing the launch of Explorer I, the first U.S. Earth satellite, which was boosted by the Jupiter-C launch vehicle developed by Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) under the direction of Dr. von Braun. The occasion was the fifth Anniversary of the Explorer I launch in January 1958. |
|
Activities in a Blockhouse D
…
| Name of Image |
Activities in a Blockhouse During Jupiter-C Launch |
| Date of Image |
1958-01-31 |
| Full Description |
Activities in a blockhouse during the launch of Jupiter-C/Explorer 1 on January 31, 1958 |
|
Juno II/Explorer VII
| Name of Image |
Juno II/Explorer VII |
| Date of Image |
1959-10-13 |
| Full Description |
The ignition of Juno II (AM-19A). Juno II (AM-19) successfully placed a physics and astronomy satellite, Explorer VII, in orbit on October 13, 1959. |
|
FIRST LEGO League Kickoff
FIRST LEGO League participan
…
9/23/06
| Description |
FIRST LEGO League participants listen to Aerospace Education Specialist Chris Copelan explain the playing field for 'Nano Quest' during a recent FLL kickoff event at StenniSphere, the visitor center at NASA Stennis Space Center. The kickoff began the 2006 FLL competition season. Eighty-five teachers, mentors, parents and 9- to 14-year-old students from southern and central Mississippi came to SSC to hear the rules for Nano Quest. The challenge requires teams to spend eight weeks building and programming robots from LEGO Mindstorms kits. They'll battle their creations in local and regional competitions. The Dec. 2 competition at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College will involve about 200 students. FIRST LEGO League, considered the 'little league' of the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition, partners FIRST and the LEGO Group. Competitions aim to inspire and celebrate science and technology using real-world context and hands-on experimentation, and to promote the principles of team play and gracious professionalism. Because NASA advocates robotics and science-technology education, the agency and SSC support FIRST by providing team coaches, mentors and training, as well as competition event judges, referees, audio-visual and other volunteer staff personnel. Two of Mississippi's NASA Explorer Schools, Bay-Waveland Middle and Hattiesburg's Lillie Burney Elementary, were in attendance. The following schools were also represented: Ocean Springs Middle, Pearl Upper Elementary, Long Beach Middle, Jackson Preparatory Academy, North Woolmarket Middle, D'Iberville Middle, West Wortham Middle, Picayune's Roseland Park Baptist Academy and Nicholson Elementary, as well as two home-school groups from McComb and Brandon. Gulfport and Picayune Memorial-Pearl River high schools' FIRST Robotics teams conducted robotics demonstrations for the FLL crowd. |
| Date |
9/23/06 |
|
NASA Connect - Geometry and
…
NASA Connect Video containin
…
11/1/00
| Description |
NASA Connect Video containing six segments as described below. NASA Connect Segment explaining air flow. The video describes how drag, lift, and thrust work. NASA Connect Segment exploring drag and agebraic relationships. The video explains flow visualization and air flow and how engineers use algebra in their work. NASA Connect Segment explaining the new concept aircraft in development known as the blended wing body. The video explains how engineers and scientists uses geometry to help with development. NASA Connect Segment involving students in a classroom activity called What A Drag. The video explores how shape affects drag. NASA Connect Segment involving students in a classroom activity. The video explores how surface area affects drag. NASA Connect Segment exploring computer simulation tools for research on drag. The video features the Mars Airbourne Explorer simulation computer program. |
| Date |
11/1/00 |
|
GLOBE Hydrology Workshop SEI
…
Matt Krigbaum (left), a teac
…
6/30/05
| Description |
Matt Krigbaum (left), a teacher at Mitchell Elementary in Ann Arbor, Mich., pours water from the Pearl River into a turbidity tube to measure the river's light penetration. Krigbaum, along with Lois Williams, principal at Elizabeth Courville Elementary in Detroit, Mich., and Carolyn Martin and Arlene Wittmer, teachers at Elizabeth Courville Elementary, conducted the experiment during a GLOBE (Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment) hydrology workshop. GLOBE is a worldwide, hands-on science education program in which teachers can become certified to implement the program at their schools after taking hydrology, land cover/biology, atmosphere/climate and soil protocol workshops. Twelve teachers from across the country attended the recent weeklong GLOBE training at SSC, offered through its Educator Resource Center and the NASA Explorer Schools program. All workshops are free and offer continuing education units. |
| Date |
6/30/05 |
|
Stennis hosts Gulf Pine Coun
…
Tori Williams, of Brownie Gi
…
10/13/07
| Description |
Tori Williams, of Brownie Girl Scout Troop 313, builds her own `stomp rocket' with the help of adult chaperone Pamela Cottrell. The two, of Gulfport, participated in NASA Brownie Day on Oct. 13 at Stennis Space Center. They were among nearly 200 members of Brownie Girl Scout Troops within the Gulf Pines Council who took part in the day of educational activities at SSC. Brownie Day used NASA curriculum support materials to teach about the sun and its significance in our solar system. In addition to building and launching their own model rockets, the girls toured the center's portable Starlab planetarium, viewed demonstrations about living and working in space, played games of `Moon Phasers' that teach about the rotation of the moon around the earth, made bracelets with ultraviolet-sensitive beads, and other activities that celebrated Earth's very own star. They also toured StenniSphere and were able to earn their Earth and Sky and Space Explorer `Try-Its.' |
| Date |
10/13/07 |
|
Launch of Jupiter-C/Explorer
…
| Name of Image |
Launch of Jupiter-C/Explorer 1 |
| Date of Image |
1958-01-31 |
| Full Description |
Launch of Jupiter-C/Explorer 1 at Cape Canaveral, Florida on January 31, 1958. After the Russian Sputnik 1 was launched in October 1957, the launching of an American satellite assumed much greater importance. After the Vanguard rocket exploded on the pad in December 1957, the ability to orbit a satellite became a matter of national prestige. On January 31, 1958, slightly more than four weeks after the launch of Sputnik.The ABMA (Army Ballistic Missile Agency) in Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, Alabama, in cooperation with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, launched a Jupiter from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The rocket consisted of a modified version of the Redstone rocket's first stage and two upper stages of clustered Baby Sergeant rockets developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and later designated as Juno boosters for space launches |
|
High Above
On March 7, 1947, not long a
…
3/6/09
| Description |
On March 7, 1947, not long after the end of World War II and years before Sputnik ushered in the space age, a group of soldiers and scientists in the New Mexico desert saw something new and wonderful in these grainy black-and-white-photos -- the first pictures of Earth as seen from altitude greater than 100 miles in space. Just the year before in 1946, scientists like John T. Mengel, a NASA pioneer who later oversaw the Vanguard Program, began experimenting with captured German V-2 rockets. Mengel conducted upper atmosphere experiments by launching the rockets into near-earth orbit. He designed and fabricated the first research nose shell to replace of the V-2 warhead and began placing cameras in the nose shell. Before the Small Steps Program began in 1946 using V-2 rockets to take images from space, the highest pictures ever taken of the Earth's surface were from the Explorer II balloon, which ascended 13.7 miles in 1935, high enough to discern the curvature of the Earth. The V-2 cameras reached more than five times that altitude and clearly showed the planet set against the blackness of space. When the movie frames were stitched together, the panoramas taken in the late 1940s covered a million square miles or more at a single glance. Image Credit: Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory |
| Date |
3/6/09 |
|
COBE Satellite Marks 20th An
…
NASA's Cosmic Background Exp
…
11/18/09
| Description |
NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite rocketed into Earth orbit on Nov. 18, 1989, and quickly revolutionized our understanding of the early cosmos. Developed and built at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., COBE precisely measured and mapped the oldest light in the universe -- the cosmic microwave background. For these results, COBE scientists John Mather, at Goddard, and George Smoot, at the University of California, Berkeley, shared the 2006 Nobel Prize in physics. The mission ushered cosmologists into a new era of precision measurements, paving the way for deeper exploration of the microwave background by NASA's ongoing WMAP mission and the European Space Agency's new Planck satellite. For more information, visit http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/cobe_20th.html. Image Credit: NASA |
| Date |
11/18/09 |
|
Amazing Andromeda Galaxy
PIA08787
Multiband Imaging Photometer
…
| Title |
Amazing Andromeda Galaxy |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
The many "personalities" of our great galactic neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy, are exposed in this new composite image from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer and the Spitzer Space Telescope. The wide, ultraviolet eyes of Galaxy Evolution Explorer reveal Andromeda's "fiery" nature -- hotter regions brimming with young and old stars. In contrast, Spitzer's super-sensitive infrared eyes show Andromeda's relatively "cool" side, which includes embryonic stars hidden in their dusty cocoons. Galaxy Evolution Explorer detected young, hot, high-mass stars, which are represented in blue, while populations of relatively older stars are shown as green dots. The bright yellow spot at the galaxy's center depicts a particularly dense population of old stars. Swaths of red in the galaxy's disk indicate areas where Spitzer found cool, dusty regions where stars are forming. These stars are still shrouded by the cosmic clouds of dust and gas that collapsed to form them. Together, Galaxy Evolution Explorer and Spitzer complete the picture of Andromeda's swirling spiral arms. Hints of pinkish purple depict regions where the galaxy's populations of hot, high-mass stars and cooler, dust-enshrouded stars co-exist. Located 2.5 million light-years away, the Andromeda is our largest nearby galactic neighbor. The galaxy's entire disk spans about 260,000 light-years, which means that a light beam would take 260,000 years to travel from one end of the galaxy to the other. By comparison, our Milky Way galaxy's disk is about 100,000 light-years across. This image is a false color composite comprised of data from Galaxy Evolution Explorer's far-ultraviolet detector (blue), near-ultraviolet detector (green), and Spitzer's multiband imaging photometer at 24 microns (red). |
|
Grace and Beauty
| Description |
Our robotic explorer Cassini regards the shadow-draped face of Saturn. |
| Full Description |
Our robotic explorer Cassini regards the shadow-draped face of Saturn. This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 14 degrees above the ringplane. In this viewing geometry all of the main rings, except for the B ring, appear transparent. The rings cast their mirror image onto the planet beyond. Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were acquired with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on June 9, 2007, at a distance of approximately 1.6 million kilometers (972,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 90 kilometers (56 miles) per pixel. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org . Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute |
| Date |
October 15, 2007 |
|
Dr. William H. Pickering
Dr. William H. Pickering ser
…
| Description |
Dr. William H. Pickering served as the fourth director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, from 1954 to 1976. The period during which he led JPL spanned the eras from JPL's creation of the first U.S. satellite, Explorer I, through the formation of NASA, the Ranger, Surveyor and Mariner missions of the 1960s and the Viking mission of the 1970s. |
|
Europa Astrobiology Lander
| title |
Europa Astrobiology Lander |
| description |
This Flagship class mission would build on the findings of the Europa Explorer Mission, and would perform astrobiology related exploration on the surface of Europa. |
|
The First Explorer
| Title |
The First Explorer |
| Explanation |
Fifty years ago (on January 31, 1958) the First Explorer [ http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/explorer/ ], was launched into Earth orbit [ http://www.redstone.army.mil/history/explorer/ welcome.html ] by the Army Ballistic Missile Agency. Inaugurating the era of space exploration for the United States, Explorer I [ http://history.nasa.gov/sputnik/expinfo.html ] was a thirty pound satellite that carried instruments to measure temperatures, and micrometeorite impacts, along with an experiment designed by James A. Van Allen [ http://history.nasa.gov/sputnik/vanallen.html ] to measure the density of electrons and ions in space. The measurements made by Van Allen's experiment led to an unexpected and startling discovery [ http://www.phy6.org/Education/wexp13.html ] -- an earth-encircling belt of high energy electrons and ions trapped in the magnetosphere [ http://www.phy6.org/Education/Intro.html ] now known as the Van Allen Radiation Belt [ http://www.phy6.org/Education/wradbelt.html ]. Explorer I ceased transmitting on February 28, 1958, but remained in orbit until March of 1970. Pioneering space scientist James Van Allen [ http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/features/ james_van_allen.html ] died on August 9th, 2006 at the age of 91. |
|
Explorer 1
| title |
Explorer 1 |
| description |
America joined the space race with the launch of this small, but important spacecraft. *Image Credit*: JPL |
|
Explorer XVII Satellite
| Title |
Explorer XVII Satellite |
| Full Description |
Weighing 405 lbs. (184 kg), this 35-inch (89-cm) pressurized stainless steel sphere measured the density, composition, pressure and temperature of Earth's atmosphere after its launch from Cape Canaveral on April 3, 1963. The mission was one of three that Goddard Space Flight Center specifically conducted to learn more about the atmosphere's physical properties?knowledge that they ultimately used for scientific and meteorological purposes. Explorer XVII carried two spectrometers, four vacuum pressure gauges and two electrostatic probes. Before it reached its intended orbit that ranged from 158 to 570 miles (254-917 km) above Earth, the satellite was spun up to about 90 rpm. |
| Date |
01/01/1963 |
| NASA Center |
Goddard Space Flight Center |
|
First Picture from Explorer
…
| Title |
First Picture from Explorer VI Satellite |
| Full Description |
This is the first crude picture obtained from Explorer VI Earth satellite launched August 7, 1959. It shows a sun-lighted area of the Central Pacific ocean and its cloud cover. The picture was made when the satellite was about 17,000 miles above the surface of the earth on August 14, 1959. At the time, the satellite was crossing Mexico. The signals were received at the South Point, Hawaii, tracking station. |
| Date |
08/14/1959 |
| NASA Center |
Headquarters |
|
GALEX 1st Light Near Ultravi
…
PIA04278
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
GALEX 1st Light Near Ultraviolet -50 |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This image was taken May 21 and 22 by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer. The image was made from data gathered by the two channels of the spacecraft camera during the mission's "first light" milestone. It shows about 50 celestial objects in the constellation Hercules. The reddish objects represent those detected by the camera's near ultraviolet channel over a 5-minute period, while bluish objects were detected over a 3-minute period by the camera's far ultraviolet channel. Deeper imaging may confirm the apparent existence in this field of galaxy pairs and triplets or individual star formation regions in single galaxies. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer's first light images are dedicated to the crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia. The Hercules region was directly above Columbia when it made its last contact with NASA Mission Control on February 1, over the skies of Texas. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer launched on April 28 on a mission to map the celestial sky in the ultraviolet and determine the history of star formation in the universe over the last 10 billion years. |
|
GALEX 1st Light Near Ultravi
…
PIA04279
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
GALEX 1st Light Near Ultraviolet |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This image was taken on May 21 and 22 by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer. The image was made from data gathered during the missions "first light" milestone, and shows celestial objects in the constellation Hercules. The objects shown represent those detected by the camera's near ultraviolet channel over a 5-minute period. The radial streaks at the edge of the image are due to stars reflecting from the near ultraviolet detector window. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer's first light images are dedicated to the crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia. The Hercules region was directly above Columbia when it made its last contact with NASA Mission Control on February 1, over the skies of Texas. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer launched on April 28 on a mission to map the celestial sky in the ultraviolet and determine the history of star formation in the universe over the last 10 billion years. |
|
GALEX 1st Light Compilation
PIA04282
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
GALEX 1st Light Compilation |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This compilation shows the constellation Hercules, as imaged on May 21 and 22 by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer. The images were captured by the two channels of the spacecraft camera during the mission's "first light" milestone. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer first light images are dedicated to the crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia. The Hercules region was directly above Columbia when it made its last contact with NASA Mission Control on February 1, over the skies of Texas. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer launched on April 28 on a mission to map the celestial sky in the ultraviolet and determine the history of star formation in the universe over the last 10 billion years. |
|
GALEX 1st Light Far Ultravio
…
PIA04280
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
GALEX 1st Light Far Ultraviolet |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This image was taken May 21 and 22 by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer. The image was made from data gathered by the far ultraviolet channel of the spacecraft camera during the mission's "first light" milestone. It shows about 400 celestial objects, appearing in blue, detected over a 3-minute, 20-second period in the constellation Hercules. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer's first light images are dedicated to the crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia. The Hercules region was directly above Columbia when it made its last contact with NASA Mission Control on February 1, over the skies of Texas. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer launched on April 28 on a mission to map the celestial sky in the ultraviolet and determine the history of star formation in the universe over the last 10 billion years. |
|
GALEX 1st Light Near and Far
…
PIA04281
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
GALEX 1st Light Near and Far Ultraviolet -100 |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer took this image on May 21 and 22. The image was made from data gathered by the two channels of the spacecraft camera during the mission's "first light" milestone. It shows about 100 celestial objects in the constellation Hercules. The reddish objects represent those detected by the camera's near ultraviolet channel over a 5-minute period, while bluish objects were detected over a 3-minute period by the camera's far ultraviolet channel. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer's first light images are dedicated to the crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia. The Hercules region was directly above Columbia when it made its last contact with NASA Mission Control on February 1, over the skies of Texas. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer launched on April 28 on a mission to map the celestial sky in the ultraviolet and determine the history of star formation in the universe over the last 10 billion years. |
|
Mira's Tail There All Along
PIA09961
Ultraviolet/Visible Camera
| Title |
Mira's Tail There All Along |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer discovered an exceptionally long comet-like tail of material trailing behind Mira -- a star that has been studied thoroughly for about 400 years. So, why had this tail gone unnoticed for so long? The answer is that nobody had scanned the extended region around Mira in ultraviolet light until now. As this composite demonstrates, the tail is only visible in ultraviolet light (top), and does not show up in visible light (bottom). Incidentally, Mira is much brighter in visible than ultraviolet light due to its low surface temperature of about 3,000 kelvin (about 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit). The Galaxy Evolution Explorer, one of NASA's Small Explorer class missions, is the first all-sky survey in ultraviolet light. It found Mira's tail by chance during a routine scan. Since the mission's launch more than four years ago, it has surveyed millions of galaxies and stars. Such vast collections of data often bring welcome surprises, such as Mira's unusual tail. The visible-light image is from the United Kingdom Schmidt Telescope in Australia, via the Digitized Sky Survey, a program affiliated with the Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md. |
|
Galaxy Centaurus A
PIA04624
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Galaxy Centaurus A |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This image of the active galaxy Centaurus A was taken by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer on June 7, 2003. The galaxy is located 30 million light-years from Earth and is seen edge on, with a prominent dust lane across the major axis. In this image the near ultraviolet emission is represented as green, and the far ultraviolet emission as blue. The galaxy exhibits jets of high energy particles, which were traced by the X-ray emission and measured by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. These X-ray emissions are seen as red in the image. Several regions of ultraviolet emission can be seen where the jets of high energy particles intersect with hydrogen clouds in the upper left corner of the image. The emission shown may be the result of recent star formation triggered by the compression of gas by the jet. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer mission is led by the California Institute of Technology, which is also responsible for the science operations and data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., a division of Caltech, manages the mission and built the science instrument. The mission was developed under NASA's Explorers Program, managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The mission's international partners include South Korea and France. |
|
Galaxy NGC 55
PIA04923
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Galaxy NGC 55 |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This image of the nearby edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 55 was taken by Galaxy Evolution Explorer on September 14, 2003, during 2 orbits. This galaxy lies 5.4 million light years from our Milky Way galaxy and is a member of the "local group" of galaxies that also includes the Andromeda galaxy (M31), the Magellanic clouds, and 40 other galaxies. The spiral disk of NGC 55 is inclined to our line of sight by approximately 80 degrees and so this galaxy looks cigar-shaped. This picture is a combination of Galaxy Evolution Explorer images taken with the far ultraviolet (colored blue) and near ultraviolet detectors, (colored red). The bright blue regions in this image are areas of active star formation detected in the ultraviolet by Galaxy Evolution Explorer. The red stars in this image are foreground stars in our own Milky Way galaxy. |
|
Galaxy NGC 300
PIA04924
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Galaxy NGC 300 |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This image of the nearby spiral galaxy NGC 300 was taken by Galaxy Evolution Explorer in a single orbit exposure of 27 minutes on October 10, 2003. NGC 300 lies 7 million light years from our Milky Way galaxy and is one of a group of galaxies in the constellation Sculptor. NGC 300 is often used as a prototype of a spiral galaxy because in optical images it displays flowing spiral arms and a bright central region of older (and thus redder) stars. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer image taken in ultraviolet light shows us that NGC 300 is an efficient star-forming galaxy. The bright blue regions in the Galaxy Evolution Explorer image reveal new stars forming all the way into the nucleus of NGC 300. |
|
Galaxy NGC 247
PIA04922
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Galaxy NGC 247 |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This image of the dwarf spiral galaxy NGC 247 was taken by Galaxy Evolution Explorer on October 13, 2003, in a single orbit exposure of 1600 seconds. The region that looks like a "hole" in the upper part of the galaxy is a location with a deficit of gas and therefore a lower star formation rate and ultraviolet brightness. Optical images of this galaxy show a bright star on the southern edge. This star is faint and red in the Galaxy Evolution Explorer ultraviolet image, revealing that it is a foreground star in our Milky Way galaxy. The string of background galaxies to the North-East (upper left) of NGC 247 is 355 million light years from our Milky Way galaxy whereas NGC 247 is a mere 9 million light years away. The faint blue light that can be seen in the Galaxy Evolution Explorer image of the upper two of these background galaxies may indicate that they are in the process of merging together. |
|
Jupiter-C Headline in Huntsv
…
| Name of Image |
Jupiter-C Headline in Huntsville Times |
| Date of Image |
1958-01-01 |
| Full Description |
In January 1958, a modified Redstone rocket lifted the first American satellite into orbit just 3 months after the the von Braun team received the go-ahead. This modified Redstone rocket was known as a Jupiter-C. Its satellite payload was called Explorer I. |
|
Explorer I Satellite
| Name of Image |
Explorer I Satellite |
| Date of Image |
1957-10-03 |
| Full Description |
America?s first scientific satellite, the Explorer I, carried the radiation detection experiment designed by Dr. James Van Allen and discovered the Van Allen Radiation Belt. It was launched aboard a modified redstone rocket known as the Jupiter C, developed by Dr. von Braun?s rocket team at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. The satellite launched on January 31, 1958, just 3 months after the the von Braun team received the go-ahead. |
|
Dr. von Braun Inside Blockho
…
| Name of Image |
Dr. von Braun Inside Blockhouse |
| Date of Image |
1958-03-01 |
| Full Description |
Dr. von Braun inside the blockhouse during the launch of the Jupiter C/Explorer III in March 1958. |
|
Teacher Kim Cantrell from th
…
| Photo Description |
Teacher Kim Cantrell from the Edwards Air Force Base Middle School, Edwards, Calif., participating in a live uplink at NASA Dryden as part of NASA's Explorer Schools program, asks the crew of the International Space Station a question. |
| Photo Date |
July 15, 2003 |
|
The First Explorer
| Title |
The First Explorer |
| Explanation |
Inaugurating the era of space exploration for the US, the First Explorer [ http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/explorer.html ], a thirty pound satellite, was launched [ http://www.redstone.army.mil/history/explorer/welcome.html ] into Earth orbit on January 31, 1958 by the Army Ballistic Missile Agency. Explorer I [ http://history.nasa.gov/sputnik/expinfo.html ] carried instruments to measure temperatures, micrometeorite impacts, and an experiment designed by James A. Van Allen [ http://history.nasa.gov/sputnik/vanallen.html ] to measure the density of electrons and ions in space. The measurements made by Van Allen's experiment led to an unexpected and startling discovery [ http://www.phy6.org/Education/wexp13.html ] -- an earth-encircling belt of high energy electrons and ions trapped in the magnetosphere [ http://www.phy6.org/Education/Intro.html ] now known as the Van Allen Radiation Belt [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Allen_radiation_belt ]. Explorer I ceased transmitting on February 28 of that year but remained in orbit until March of 1970. Pioneering astrophysicist James Van Allen [ http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/features/ james_van_allen.html ] died on August 9th at the age of 91. |
|
Launch, Jupiter-C, Explorer
…
| Name of Image |
Launch, Jupiter-C, Explorer 1 |
| Date of Image |
1958-01-31 |
| Full Description |
Launch of Jupiter-C/Explorer 1 at Cape Canaveral, Florida on January 31, 1958. After the Russian Sputnik 1 was launched in October 1957, the launching of an American satellite assumed much greater importance. After the Vanguard rocket exploded on the pad in December 1957, the ability to orbit a satellite became a matter of national prestige. On January 31, 1958, slightly more than four weeks after the launch of Sputnik.The ABMA (Army Ballistic Missile Agency) in Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, Alabama, in cooperation with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, launched a Jupiter from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The rocket consisted of a modified version of the Redstone rocket's first stage and two upper stages of clustered Baby Sergeant rockets developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and later designated as Juno boosters for space launches |
|
Explorer 24
| Title |
Explorer 24 |
| Description |
This satellite, Explorer 24, was a 12-foot-diameter inflatable sphere developed by an engineering team at Langley. It provided information on complex solar radiation/air-density relationships in the upper atmosphere." Explorer satellites were inflatable satellites--or satelloons, like Echo, and were developed as a follow-on program. They were intended as a vehicle to study the density of air in the upper atmosphere. Explorer 24 was launched in November 1964. Published in James R. Hansen, Spaceflight Revolution: NASA Langley Research Center From Sputnik to Apollo, NASA SP-4308, pp. 191-192. |
| Date |
10.16.1964 |
|
NASA TV's This Week @NASA, D
…
* The three crew members of
…
12/04/09
| Description |
* The three crew members of Expedition 21 made a safe landing in a Soyuz spacecraft after departing the International Space Station several hours earlier. * NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden presented Apollo 13 astronaut Fred Haise, Jr. with NASA's Ambassador of Exploration Award during a special ceremony in Biloxi, Mississippi, Haise√¢s hometown. * Thirty-seven years ago the Apollo 17 mission began with this early morning launch from the Kennedy Space Center. * NASA'S revolutionary Kepler space telescope has been honored by two leading magazines. Popular Science Magazine dubbed the planet-hunting telescope the 2009 Best of What's New Grand Award, and Popular Mechanics lauded its achievement with a 2009 Breakthrough Award. * NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer is on track to begin its mission this week. WISE is scheduled to lift off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California aboard a Delta II rocket. |
| Date |
12/04/09 |
|
Cartwheel Galaxy Makes Waves
| Title |
Cartwheel Galaxy Makes Waves |
| Description |
This false-color composite image shows the Cartwheel galaxy as seen by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer's Far Ultraviolet detector (blue), the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field and Planetary Camera-2 in B-band visible light (green), the Spitzer Space Telescope's Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) at 8 microns (red), and the Chandra X-ray Observatory's Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer-S array instrument (purple). Approximately 100 million years ago, a smaller galaxy plunged through the heart of Cartwheel galaxy, creating ripples of brief star formation. In this image, the first ripple appears as an ultraviolet-bright blue outer ring. The blue outer ring is so powerful in the GALEX observations that it indicates the Cartwheel is one of the most powerful UV-emitting galaxies in the nearby universe. The blue color reveals to astronomers that associations of stars 5 to 20 times as massive as our sun are forming in this region. The clumps of pink along the outer blue ring are regions where both X-rays and UV radiation are superimposed in the image. These X-ray point sources are very likely collections of binary star systems containing a blackhole (called Massive X-ray Binary Systems). The X-ray sources seem to cluster around optical/UV bright supermassive star clusters. The yellow-orange inner ring and nucleus at the center of the galaxy result from the combination of visible and infrared light, which is stronger towards the center. This region of the galaxy represents the second ripple, or ring wave, created in the collision, but has much less star for mation activity than the first (outer) ring wave. The wisps of red spread throughout the interior of the galaxy are organic molecules that have been illuminated by nearby low-level star formation. Meanwhile, the tints of green are less massive, older visible light stars. Although astronomers have not identified exactly which galaxy collided with the Cartwheel, two of three candidate galaxies can be seen in this image to the bottom left of the ring, one as a neon blob and the other as a green spiral. Previously, scientists believed the ring marked the outermost edge of the galaxy, but the latest GALEX observations detect a faint disk, not visible in this image, that extends to twice the diameter of the ring. |
|
Lillie Burney Elementary Sch
…
| Title |
Lillie Burney Elementary School |
| Description |
Mississippi Rep. Percy Watson (left) talks with first-graders Savannah Jones and Levi Meyers, and Astronaut Lee Morin on Sept. 8 during the NASA Explorer School kickoff event at the Lillie Burney Elementary School in Hattiesburg, Miss. NASA Explorer Schools help promote student achievement in mathematics and science through activities using the excitement of NASA research, discoveries and missions. |
| Date |
09.08.2006 |
|
The Rite of Spring
Of the countless equinoxes S
…
10/15/09
| Description |
Of the countless equinoxes Saturn has seen since the birth of the solar system, this one, captured in a mosaic of light and dark, is the first witnessed up close by an emissary from Earth Îÿ_Îÿ_Îÿ__€∆_ none other than our faithful robotic explorer, Cassini. Seen from our planet, the view of Saturn's rings during equinox is extremely foreshortened and limited. But in orbit around Saturn, Cassini had no such problems. From 20 degrees above the ring plane, Cassini's wide angle camera shot 75 exposures in succession for this mosaic showing Saturn, its rings and a few of its moons a day and a half after exact Saturn equinox, when the sun/s disk was exactly overhead at the planet's equator. The novel illumination geometry that accompanies equinox lowers the sun's angle to the ring plane, significantly darkens the rings, and causes out-of-plane structures to look anomalously bright and to cast shadows across the rings. These scenes are possible only during the few months before and after SaturnÎÿ_Îÿ_Îÿ__Îÿ__Îÿ_s equinox which occurs only once in about 15 Earth years. Also at equinox, the shadows of the planet's expansive rings are compressed into a single, narrow band cast onto the planet as seen in this mosaic. The images comprising the mosaic, taken over about eight hours, were extensively processed before being joined together. With no enhancement, the rings would be essentially invisible in this mosaic. To improve their visibility, the dark right half of the rings has been brightened relative to the brighter left half by a factor of three, and then the whole ring system has been brightened by a factor of 20 relative to the planet. So the dark half of the rings is 60 times brighter, and the bright half 20 times brighter, than they would have appeared if the entire system, planet included, could have been captured in a single image. The images were taken on Aug. 12, 2009, beginning about 1.25 days after exact equinox, using the red, green and blue spectral filters of the wide angle camera and were combined to create this natural color view. The images were obtained at a distance of approximately 526,000 miles from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 74 degrees. Image scale is 31 miles per pixel. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute |
| Date |
10/15/09 |
|
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. -
…
| Description |
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. --- At Launch Complex 17-A, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, workers begin placing the Delta rocket fairing around the Mars Odyssey spacecraft. NASA's latest explorer carries three scientific instruments to map the chemical and mineralogical makeup of Mars: a thermal-emission imaging system, a gamma ray spectrometer and a Martian radiation environment experiment. The imaging system will map the planet with high-resolution thermal images and give scientists an increased level of detail to help them understand how the mineralogy of the planet relates to the land forms. In addition, Odyssey will serve as a communications relay for U.S. and international landers arriving at Mars in 2003/2004. The Mars Odyssey is scheduled for launch April 7, 2001, at 11:02 a.m. EST. |
|
Brief History of the Univers
…
| Title |
Brief History of the Universe |
| Description |
This artist's timeline chronicles the history of the universe, from its explosive beginning to its mature, present-day state. Our universe began in a tremendous explosion known as the Big Bang about 13.7 billion years ago (left side of strip). Observations by NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer and Wilkinson Anisotropy Microwave Probe revealed microwave light from this very early epoch, about 400,000 years after the Big Bang, providing strong evidence that our universe did blast into existence. Results from the Cosmic Background Explorer were honored with the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physics. A period of darkness ensued, until about a few hundred million years later, when the first objects flooded the universe with light. This first light is believed to have been captured in data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The light detected by Spitzer would have originated as visible and ultraviolet light, then stretched, or redshifted, to lower-energy infrared wavelengths during its long voyage to reach us across expanding space. The light detected by the Cosmic Background Explorer and the Wilkinson Anisotropy Microwave Probe from our very young universe traveled farther to reach us, and stretched to even lower-energy microwave wavelengths. Astronomers do not know if the very first objects were either stars or quasars. The first stars, called Population III stars (our star is a Population I star), were much bigger and brighter than any in our nearby universe, with masses about 1,000 times that of our sun. These stars first grouped together into mini-galaxies. By about a few billion years after the Big Bang, the mini-galaxies had merged to form mature galaxies, including spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way. The first quasars ultimately became the centers of powerful galaxies that are more common in the distant universe. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured stunning pictures of earlier galaxies, as far back as ten billion light-years away. |
|
SEDS-II: Final Dynamic State
| Title |
SEDS-II: Final Dynamic State |
| Completed |
1994-10-19 |
|
SEDS-II: Slowest period of d
…
| Title |
SEDS-II: Slowest period of deployment |
| Completed |
1994-10-19 |
|
Celebrating Explorer I
| Name of Image |
Celebrating Explorer I |
| Date of Image |
1958-01-31 |
| Full Description |
Jet Propulsion Laboratory Director Dr. James Pickering, Dr. James van Allen of the State University of Iowa, and Army Ballistic missionile Agency Technical Director Dr. Wernher von Braun triumphantly display a model of the Explorer I, America's first satellite, shortly after the satellite's launch on January 31, 1958. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory packed and tested the payload, a radiation detection experiment designed by Dr. van Allen. Dr. von Braun's rocket team at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, developed the Juno I launch vehicle, a modified Jupiter-C. |
|
Venus Mobile Explorer
| title |
Venus Mobile Explorer |
| description |
This long-lived in-situ Flagship class mission would provide aerial mobility close to the surface (approximately 10 kilometers above the surface) using metallic bellows to tolerate the extreme environment of Venus, where the temperature reaches 460 degrees Celsius, and the pressure is up to 90 bars, and the super critical carbon dioxide atmosphere is highly corrosive. |
|
Ulysses Launch
| title |
Ulysses Launch |
| date |
10.06.1990 |
| description |
The Space Shuttle Discovery hurtles into space as sister ship Columbia looks on from Launch Pad 39A. Discovery lifted off from pad 39B at 7:47 a.m. EDT, Oct. 6. Columbia will be moved to the vacated pad 39B where it will undergo testing to pinpoint the source of a liquid hydrogen leak. Discovery is carrying a crew of five and the Ulysses solar explorer as it embarks on mission STS-41, a four-day flight. *Image Credit*: NASA |
|
Mars Science Laboratory
| title |
Mars Science Laboratory |
| description |
This artist's impression shows Mars Science Laboratory exploring the surface of Mars. The robotic explorer will be roving long-range, long-duration science laboratory that will be a major leap in surface measurements and pave the way for a future sample return mission. *Image Credit*: NASA |
|
ACD06-0113-014
Spaceward Bound Program in A
…
7/5/06
| Description |
Spaceward Bound Program in Atacama Desert, shown here is a realtime webcast from Yungay, Chile vis satellite involving NASA Scientists and seven NASA Explorer school teachers. Spaceward Bound Program in Atacama Desert, shown here is a realtime webcast from Yungay, Chile vis satellite involving NASA Scientists and seven NASA Explorer school teachers. On the Ames end we find the Girl Scouts Space cookines robotic team. The robot nicknamed Zoe is looking for life in extreme environments in preparation for what might be encounter on Mars. On the Ames end we find the Girl Csouts Space cookines robotic team. The robot nicknamed Zoe is looking for life in extreme environments in preparation for what might be encounter on Mars. see full text on the NASA-Ames News - Research # 04-91AR Center Director works with "SpaceCookie" sending commands to Zoe. |
| Date |
7/5/06 |
|
ACD06-0113-015
Spaceward Bound Program in A
…
6/27/06
| Description |
Spaceward Bound Program in Atacama Desert, shown here is a realtime webcast from Yungay, Chile vis satellite involving NASA Scientists and seven NASA Explorer school teachers. Spaceward Bound Program in Atacama Desert, shown here is a realtime webcast from Yungay, Chile vis satellite involving NASA Scientists and seven NASA Explorer school teachers. On the Ames end we find the Girl Scouts Space cookines robotic team. The robot nicknamed Zoe is looking for life in extreme environments in preparation for what might be encounter on Mars. On the Ames end we find the Girl Csouts Space cookines robotic team. The robot nicknamed Zoe is looking for life in extreme environments in preparation for what might be encounter on Mars. see full text on the NASA-Ames News - Research # 04-91AR Center Director works with "SpaceCookie" sending commands to Zoe. |
| Date |
6/27/06 |
|
The X-ray Timing Explorer
| Title |
The X-ray Timing Explorer |
| Explanation |
Launched Saturday [ http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/xte/xte_1st.html ] on a Delta rocket [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap951213.html ], the X-ray Timing Explorer [ http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/xte/xte2.html ] (XTE) will watch the sky for rapid changes in X-rays [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/lib/glossary.html#X-ray ]. XTE [ http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/xte/XTE.html ] carries three separate X-ray telescopes. The Proportional Counter Array [ http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/xte/PCA.html ] (PCA) and the High Energy X-ray Timing Experiment [ http://mamacass.ucsd.edu:8080/hexte/hexte.html ] (HEXTE) will provide the best timing information in the widest X-ray energy range yet available. They will observe stellar systems [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap950624.html ] that contain black holes [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap951127.html ], neutron stars [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap951122.html ], and white dwarfs [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap950910.html ] as well as study the X-ray properties of the centers of active galaxies [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap951205.html ]. XTE [ http://space.mit.edu/XTE/XTE.html ]'s All Sky Monitor [ http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/xte/ASM.html ] (ASM) will scan the sky every 90 minutes to find new X-ray transients and track the variability of old ones. XTE has a planned life time of two years. |
|
Stephan's Quintet and NGC 73
…
PIA04925
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Stephan's Quintet and NGC 7331 |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Click on image for notations Galaxy Evolution Explorer observation of Stephan's Quintet and the nearby galaxy NGC 7331. Blue represents far ultraviolet, and red near ultraviolet. Stephan's quintet is an interacting group of galaxies. Close inspection of the group (lower center-right) shows blue regions of recent star formation associated with streamers of gas (tidal tails) created by the interaction. NGC 7331 shows prominent star formation in spiral arms. |
|
Stephan's Quintet and NGC 73
…
PIA04925
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Stephan's Quintet and NGC 7331 |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Click on image for notations Galaxy Evolution Explorer observation of Stephan's Quintet and the nearby galaxy NGC 7331. Blue represents far ultraviolet, and red near ultraviolet. Stephan's quintet is an interacting group of galaxies. Close inspection of the group (lower center-right) shows blue regions of recent star formation associated with streamers of gas (tidal tails) created by the interaction. NGC 7331 shows prominent star formation in spiral arms. |
|
Thor/Able
| Name of Image |
Thor/Able |
| Date of Image |
1959-08-06 |
| Full Description |
The launch of Thor/Able 3 launch vehicle on August 6, 1959, from the Atlantic Missile Range. The payload was Explorer VI for meteorology study. |
|
Geomagnetic Tail Lab (GEOTAI
…
| Name of Image |
Geomagnetic Tail Lab (GEOTAIL) Diffuse Ultraviolet Experiment (DUVE) Processing |
| Date of Image |
1992-05-29 |
| Full Description |
At Launch Complex 17 Pad A, Kennedy Space Center (KSC) workers are installing the payload fairing around the Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE) mated to a Delta II rocket. The EUVE spacecraft is designed to study the extreme ultraviolet portion of the spectrum. |
|
Jupiter-C Assembly at ABMA
| Name of Image |
Jupiter-C Assembly at ABMA |
| Date of Image |
1958-01-31 |
| Full Description |
Jupiter-C Missile No. 27 assembly at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA), Redstone Arsenal, in Huntsville, Aalabama. The Jupiter-C was a modification of the Redstone Missile, and originally developed as a nose cone re-entry test vehicle for the Jupiter Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM). Jupiter-C successfully launched the first American Satellite, Explorer 1, in orbit on January 31, 1958. |
|
Ghostly Remnant of an Explos
…
PIA09219
Far-ultraviolet Detector
| Title |
Ghostly Remnant of an Explosive Past |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This enhanced image from the far-ultraviolet detector on NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer shows a ghostly shell of ionized gas around Z Camelopardalis, a binary, or double-star system featuring a collapsed, dead star known as a white dwarf, and a companion star. The image was processed to enhance the diffuse emissions from the shell. Z Cam is the bright object near the center of the image. Parts of the shell are seen as a lobe-like, light-blue feature below and to the right of Z Cam, and as two large, light blue, perpendicular lines on the left. The massive shell around Z Cam provides evidence of material ejected during and swept up by a powerful nova eruption, called a classical nova, which likely occurred a few thousand years ago. In exploding binary systems, one of the two stars steals material from the other until it builds up to a certain level, at that point, the system erupts in a giant inferno. In the case of Z Cam, the white dwarf is pilfering material from its sedate companion. There are two classes of exploding binary star systems, or cataclysmic variables: recurrent dwarf novae, which erupt in small, "hiccup-like" blasts episodically, and classical novae, which undergo huge explosions thousands of times more powerful than dwarf novae. Z Cam was the one of the first known recurrent dwarf novae. Yet the shell of ionized gas around Z Cam detected by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer can only be explained as the remnant of a full-blown classical nova explosion. The discovery of the shell provides the first evidence that some binary systems undergo both types of explosions. Previously, a link between the two types of novae had been predicted, but there was no evidence to support the theory. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer first began imaging Z Cam in 2003, this image was taken on Jan. 25, 2004. The type of emission found around Z Cam is most easily visible at far-ultraviolet wavelengths. Most of the background galaxies and stars have been eliminated by the image processing, although a few linger as white spots near the top. The light-blue streaky clump in the bottom right corner is created by ultraviolet light reflected by dust. It is uncertain if Z Cam is the source of the dust-scattered light. |
|
Ghostly Remnant of an Explos
…
PIA09219
Far-ultraviolet Detector
| Title |
Ghostly Remnant of an Explosive Past |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This enhanced image from the far-ultraviolet detector on NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer shows a ghostly shell of ionized gas around Z Camelopardalis, a binary, or double-star system featuring a collapsed, dead star known as a white dwarf, and a companion star. The image was processed to enhance the diffuse emissions from the shell. Z Cam is the bright object near the center of the image. Parts of the shell are seen as a lobe-like, light-blue feature below and to the right of Z Cam, and as two large, light blue, perpendicular lines on the left. The massive shell around Z Cam provides evidence of material ejected during and swept up by a powerful nova eruption, called a classical nova, which likely occurred a few thousand years ago. In exploding binary systems, one of the two stars steals material from the other until it builds up to a certain level, at that point, the system erupts in a giant inferno. In the case of Z Cam, the white dwarf is pilfering material from its sedate companion. There are two classes of exploding binary star systems, or cataclysmic variables: recurrent dwarf novae, which erupt in small, "hiccup-like" blasts episodically, and classical novae, which undergo huge explosions thousands of times more powerful than dwarf novae. Z Cam was the one of the first known recurrent dwarf novae. Yet the shell of ionized gas around Z Cam detected by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer can only be explained as the remnant of a full-blown classical nova explosion. The discovery of the shell provides the first evidence that some binary systems undergo both types of explosions. Previously, a link between the two types of novae had been predicted, but there was no evidence to support the theory. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer first began imaging Z Cam in 2003, this image was taken on Jan. 25, 2004. The type of emission found around Z Cam is most easily visible at far-ultraviolet wavelengths. Most of the background galaxies and stars have been eliminated by the image processing, although a few linger as white spots near the top. The light-blue streaky clump in the bottom right corner is created by ultraviolet light reflected by dust. It is uncertain if Z Cam is the source of the dust-scattered light. |
|
Ghostly Remnant of an Explos
…
PIA09219
Far-ultraviolet Detector
| Title |
Ghostly Remnant of an Explosive Past |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This enhanced image from the far-ultraviolet detector on NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer shows a ghostly shell of ionized gas around Z Camelopardalis, a binary, or double-star system featuring a collapsed, dead star known as a white dwarf, and a companion star. The image was processed to enhance the diffuse emissions from the shell. Z Cam is the bright object near the center of the image. Parts of the shell are seen as a lobe-like, light-blue feature below and to the right of Z Cam, and as two large, light blue, perpendicular lines on the left. The massive shell around Z Cam provides evidence of material ejected during and swept up by a powerful nova eruption, called a classical nova, which likely occurred a few thousand years ago. In exploding binary systems, one of the two stars steals material from the other until it builds up to a certain level, at that point, the system erupts in a giant inferno. In the case of Z Cam, the white dwarf is pilfering material from its sedate companion. There are two classes of exploding binary star systems, or cataclysmic variables: recurrent dwarf novae, which erupt in small, "hiccup-like" blasts episodically, and classical novae, which undergo huge explosions thousands of times more powerful than dwarf novae. Z Cam was the one of the first known recurrent dwarf novae. Yet the shell of ionized gas around Z Cam detected by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer can only be explained as the remnant of a full-blown classical nova explosion. The discovery of the shell provides the first evidence that some binary systems undergo both types of explosions. Previously, a link between the two types of novae had been predicted, but there was no evidence to support the theory. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer first began imaging Z Cam in 2003, this image was taken on Jan. 25, 2004. The type of emission found around Z Cam is most easily visible at far-ultraviolet wavelengths. Most of the background galaxies and stars have been eliminated by the image processing, although a few linger as white spots near the top. The light-blue streaky clump in the bottom right corner is created by ultraviolet light reflected by dust. It is uncertain if Z Cam is the source of the dust-scattered light. |
|
Ghostly Remnant of an Explos
…
PIA09219
Far-ultraviolet Detector
| Title |
Ghostly Remnant of an Explosive Past |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This enhanced image from the far-ultraviolet detector on NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer shows a ghostly shell of ionized gas around Z Camelopardalis, a binary, or double-star system featuring a collapsed, dead star known as a white dwarf, and a companion star. The image was processed to enhance the diffuse emissions from the shell. Z Cam is the bright object near the center of the image. Parts of the shell are seen as a lobe-like, light-blue feature below and to the right of Z Cam, and as two large, light blue, perpendicular lines on the left. The massive shell around Z Cam provides evidence of material ejected during and swept up by a powerful nova eruption, called a classical nova, which likely occurred a few thousand years ago. In exploding binary systems, one of the two stars steals material from the other until it builds up to a certain level, at that point, the system erupts in a giant inferno. In the case of Z Cam, the white dwarf is pilfering material from its sedate companion. There are two classes of exploding binary star systems, or cataclysmic variables: recurrent dwarf novae, which erupt in small, "hiccup-like" blasts episodically, and classical novae, which undergo huge explosions thousands of times more powerful than dwarf novae. Z Cam was the one of the first known recurrent dwarf novae. Yet the shell of ionized gas around Z Cam detected by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer can only be explained as the remnant of a full-blown classical nova explosion. The discovery of the shell provides the first evidence that some binary systems undergo both types of explosions. Previously, a link between the two types of novae had been predicted, but there was no evidence to support the theory. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer first began imaging Z Cam in 2003, this image was taken on Jan. 25, 2004. The type of emission found around Z Cam is most easily visible at far-ultraviolet wavelengths. Most of the background galaxies and stars have been eliminated by the image processing, although a few linger as white spots near the top. The light-blue streaky clump in the bottom right corner is created by ultraviolet light reflected by dust. It is uncertain if Z Cam is the source of the dust-scattered light. |
|
GALEX Ultraviolet Image of C
…
| Name |
GALEX Ultraviolet Image of Cartwheel Galaxy |
|
X-ray Light Curve for KS 173
…
| Name |
X-ray Light Curve for KS 1731-260 |
|
Surprise Ultraviolet Party i
…
PIA07251
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Surprise Ultraviolet Party in the Sky |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Galaxies aren't the only objects filling up the view of NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer. Since its launch in 2003, the space telescope -- originally designed to observe galaxies across the universe in ultraviolet light -- has discovered a festive sky blinking with flaring and erupting stars, as well as streaking asteroids, satellites and space debris. A group of six streaking objects -- the identities of which remain unknown -- can be seen here flying across the telescope's sight in this sped-up movie. The two brightest objects appear to perform a sharp turn then travel in the reverse direction. This illusion is most likely the result of the Galaxy Evolution Explorer overtaking the objects as it orbits around Earth. Careful inspection reveals four additional faint objects with the same timing and behavior. These faint objects are easiest to see during the retrograde portion of their paths. Three appear between the two bright sources, and one is above them, near the edge of the field of view. These bonus objects are being collected in to public catalogues for other astronomers to study. |
|
Explosions - Large and Small
PIA09221
| Title |
Explosions - Large and Small |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
"" Click on the image for full resolution animation (""Half Resolution) This animation shows an artist's concept of Z Camelopardalis (Z Cam), a stellar system featuring a collapsed, dead star, or white dwarf, and a companion star. The white dwarf, the bright white object within the disk on the left, sucks matter from its more sedate companion star, on the right. The stolen material forms a rotating disk of gas and dust around the white dwarf. After a certain amount of material accumulates, the star erupts in a huge nova explosion, known as a "classical nova." After that explosion, the star continues to flare up with smaller bursts, which is why Z Cam is known today as a recurrent dwarf Nova. The remnants of the classical nova explosion form a ghostly shell, which provides lingering evidence of the violent outburst. The animation ends with an image taken by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer on Jan. 25, 2004, when the star system was undergoing a period of relative calm. Astronomers divide exploding binary star systems into two classes -- recurrent dwarf novae, which erupt in smaller, "hiccup-like" blasts, and classical novae, which undergo huge explosions. A link between the two types of novae had been predicted, but the observations from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer bolster the theory that some binary systems undergo both types of explosions. |
|
Classic Galaxy with Glamour
PIA07828
Ultraviolet/Visible Camera
| Title |
Classic Galaxy with Glamour |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This color composite image of nearby NGC 300 combines the visible-light pictures from Carnegie Institution of Washington's 100-inch telescope at Las Campanas Observatory (colored red and yellow), with ultraviolet views from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer. Galaxy Evolution Explorer detectors image far ultraviolet light (colored blue). This composite image traces star formation in progress. Young hot blue stars dominate the outer spiral arms of the galaxy, while the older stars congregate in the nuclear regions which appear yellow-green. Gases heated by hot young stars and shocks due to winds from massive stars and supernova explosions appear in pink, as revealed by the visible-light image of the galaxy. Located nearly 7 million light years away, NGC 300 is a member of a nearby group of galaxies known as the Sculptor Group. It is a spiral galaxy like our own Milky Way. |
|
Black Hole Grabs Starry Snac
…
PIA01884
| Title |
Black Hole Grabs Starry Snack |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Poster Version This artist's concept shows a supermassive black hole at the center of a remote galaxy digesting the remnants of a star. NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer had a "ringside" seat for this feeding frenzy, using its ultraviolet eyes to study the process from beginning to end. The artist's concept chronicles the star being ripped apart and swallowed by the cosmic beast over time. First, the intact sun-like star (left) ventures too close to the black hole, and its own self-gravity is overwhelmed by the black hole's gravity. The star then stretches apart (middle yellow blob) and eventually breaks into stellar crumbs, some of which swirl into the black hole (cloudy ring at right). This doomed material heats up and radiates light, including ultraviolet light, before disappearing forever into the black hole. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer was able to watch this process unfold by observing changes in ultraviolet light. The area around the black hole appears warped because the gravity of the black hole acts like a lens, twisting and distorting light. |
|
Black Hole Grabs Starry Snac
…
PIA01884
| Title |
Black Hole Grabs Starry Snack |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Poster Version This artist's concept shows a supermassive black hole at the center of a remote galaxy digesting the remnants of a star. NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer had a "ringside" seat for this feeding frenzy, using its ultraviolet eyes to study the process from beginning to end. The artist's concept chronicles the star being ripped apart and swallowed by the cosmic beast over time. First, the intact sun-like star (left) ventures too close to the black hole, and its own self-gravity is overwhelmed by the black hole's gravity. The star then stretches apart (middle yellow blob) and eventually breaks into stellar crumbs, some of which swirl into the black hole (cloudy ring at right). This doomed material heats up and radiates light, including ultraviolet light, before disappearing forever into the black hole. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer was able to watch this process unfold by observing changes in ultraviolet light. The area around the black hole appears warped because the gravity of the black hole acts like a lens, twisting and distorting light. |
|
Galaxy UGC10445
PIA04623
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Galaxy UGC10445 |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This ultraviolet color image of the galaxy UGC10445 was taken by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer on June 7 and June 14, 2003. UGC10445 is a spiral galaxy located 40 million light-years from Earth. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer mission is led by the California Institute of Technology, which is also responsible for the science operations and data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., a division of Caltech, manages the mission and built the science instrument. The mission was developed under NASA's Explorers Program, managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The mission's international partners include South Korea and France. |
|
Galaxy NGC5962
PIA04635
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Galaxy NGC5962 |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer took this ultraviolet color image of the galaxy NGC5962 on June 7, 2003. This spiral galaxy is located 90 million light-years from Earth. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer mission is led by the California Institute of Technology, which is also responsible for the science operations and data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., a division of Caltech, manages the mission and built the science instrument. The mission was developed under NASA's Explorers Program, managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The mission's international partners include South Korea and France. |
|
Galaxy Messier 51
PIA04628
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Galaxy Messier 51 |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer took this image of the spiral galaxy Messier 51 on June 19 and 20, 2003. Messier 51 is located 27 million light-years from Earth. Due to a lack of star formation, the companion galaxy in the top of the picture is barely visible as a near ultraviolet object. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer mission is led by the California Institute of Technology, which is also responsible for the science operations and data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., a division of Caltech, manages the mission and built the science instrument. The mission was developed under NASA's Explorers Program, managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The mission's international partners include South Korea and France. |
|
Galaxy Messier 83
PIA04629
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Galaxy Messier 83 |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This image of the spiral galaxy Messier 83 was taken by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer on June 7, 2003. Located 15 million light years from Earth and known as the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy, Messier 83 displays significant amounts of ultraviolet emissions far from the optically bright portion of the galaxy. It is also known to have an extended hydrogen disc that appears to radiate a faint ultraviolet emission. The red stars in the foreground of the image are Milky Way stars. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer mission is led by the California Institute of Technology, which is also responsible for the science operations and data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., a division of Caltech, manages the mission and built the science instrument. The mission was developed under NASA's Explorers Program, managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The mission's international partners include South Korea and France. |
|
Groth Deep Image
PIA04625
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Groth Deep Image |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This ultraviolet color blowup of the Groth Deep Image was taken by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer on June 22 and June 23, 2003. Many hundreds of galaxies are detected in this portion of the image. NASA astronomers believe the faint red galaxies are 6 billion light years away. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer mission is led by the California Institute of Technology, which is also responsible for the science operations and data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., a division of Caltech, manages the mission and built the science instrument. The mission was developed under NASA's Explorers Program, managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The mission's international partners include South Korea and France. |
|
Messier 101
PIA04631
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Messier 101 |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer took this near ultraviolet image of Messier 101 on June 20, 2003. Messier 101 is a large spiral galaxy located 20 million light-years from Earth. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer mission is led by the California Institute of Technology, which is also responsible for the science operations and data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., a division of Caltech, manages the mission and built the science instrument. The mission was developed under NASA's Explorers Program, managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The mission's international partners include South Korea and France. |
|
Groth Deep Locations Image
PIA04626
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Groth Deep Locations Image |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer photographed this ultraviolet color blowup of the Groth Deep Image on June 22 and June 23, 2003. Hundreds of galaxies are detected in this portion of the image, and the faint red galaxies are believed to be 6 billion light years away. The white boxes show the location of these distant galaxies, of which more than a 100 can be detected in this image. NASA astronomers expect to detect 10,000 such galaxies after extrapolating to the full image at a deeper exposure level. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer mission is led by the California Institute of Technology, which is also responsible for the science operations and data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., a division of Caltech, manages the mission and built the science instrument. The mission was developed under NASA's Explorers Program, managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The mission's international partners include South Korea and France. |
|
Galaxy M101
PIA04630
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Galaxy M101 |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This three-color image of galaxy M101 was taken by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer on June 20, 2003. The far ultraviolet emissions are shown in blue, the near ultraviolet emissions are green, and the red emissions, which were taken from NASA's Digital Sky Survey, represent visible light. This image combines short, medium, and long "exposure" pictures to best display the evolution of star formation in a spiral galaxy. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer mission is led by the California Institute of Technology, which is also responsible for the science operations and data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., a division of Caltech, manages the mission and built the science instrument. The mission was developed under NASA's Explorers Program, managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The mission's international partners include South Korea and France. |
|
Galaxy NGC5398
PIA04633
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Galaxy NGC5398 |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This is an ultraviolet color image of the galaxy NGC5398 taken by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer on June 7, 2003. NGC5398 is a barred spiral galaxy located 60 million light-years from Earth. The star formation is concentrated in the two bright regions of the image. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer mission is led by the California Institute of Technology, which is also responsible for the science operations and data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., a division of Caltech, manages the mission and built the science instrument. The mission was developed under NASA's Explorers Program, managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The mission's international partners include South Korea and France. |
|
Galaxy NGC5474
PIA04634
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Galaxy NGC5474 |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer took this ultraviolet color image of the galaxy NGC5474 on June 7, 2003. NGC5474 is located 20 million light-years from Earth and is within a group of galaxies dominated by the Messier 101 galaxy. Star formation in this galaxy shows some evidence of a disturbed spiral pattern, which may have been induced by tidal interactions with Messier 101. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer mission is led by the California Institute of Technology, which is also responsible for the science operations and data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., a division of Caltech, manages the mission and built the science instrument. The mission was developed under NASA's Explorers Program, managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The mission's international partners include South Korea and France. |
|
Messier 101 Single Orbit Exp
…
PIA04632
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Messier 101 Single Orbit Exposure |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This single orbit exposure, ultraviolet color image of Messier 101 was taken by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer on June 20, 2003. Messier 101 is a large spiral galaxy located 20 million light-years from Earth. This image is a short and medium "exposure" picture of the evolution of star formation in a spiral galaxy. The far ultraviolet emission detects the younger stars as concentrated in tight spiral arms, while the near ultraviolet emission, which traces stars living for more than 100 million years, displays the movement of the spiral pattern over a 100 million year period. The red stars in the foreground of the image are Milky Way stars. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer mission is led by the California Institute of Technology, which is also responsible for the science operations and data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., a division of Caltech, manages the mission and built the science instrument. The mission was developed under NASA's Explorers Program, managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The mission's international partners include South Korea and France. |
|
Deep Imaging Survey
PIA04627
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Deep Imaging Survey |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This is the first Deep Imaging Survey image taken by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer. On June 22 and 23, 2003, the spacecraft obtained this near ultraviolet image of the Groth region by adding multiple orbits for a total exposure time of 14,000 seconds. Tens of thousands of objects can be identified in this picture. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer mission is led by the California Institute of Technology, which is also responsible for the science operations and data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., a division of Caltech, manages the mission and built the science instrument. The mission was developed under NASA's Explorers Program, managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The mission's international partners include South Korea and France. |
|
M81 Galaxy is Pretty in Pink
PIA09579
GALEX Telescope, Infrared Ar
…
| Title |
M81 Galaxy is Pretty in Pink |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
The perfectly picturesque spiral galaxy known as Messier 81, or M81, looks sharp in this new composite from NASA's Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes and NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer. M81 is a "grand design" spiral galaxy, which means its elegant arms curl all the way down into its center. It is located about 12 million light-years away in the Ursa Major constellation and is one of the brightest galaxies that can be seen from Earth through telescopes. The colors in this picture represent a trio of light wavelengths: blue is ultraviolet light captured by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, yellowish white is visible light seen by Hubble, and red is infrared light detected by Spitzer. The blue areas show the hottest, youngest stars, while the reddish-pink denotes lanes of dust that line the spiral arms. The orange center is made up of older stars. |
|
Andromeda Galaxy
PIA04921
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Andromeda Galaxy |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This image is a Galaxy Evolution Explorer observation of the large galaxy in Andromeda, Messier 31. The Andromeda galaxy is the most massive in the local group of galaxies that includes our Milky Way. Andromeda is the nearest large galaxy to our own. The image is a mosaic of 10 separate Galaxy Evolution Explorer images taken in September, 2003. The color image (with near ultraviolet shown by red and far ultraviolet shown by blue) shows blue regions of young, hot, high mass stars tracing out the spiral arms where star formation is occurring, and the central orange-white "bulge" of old, cooler stars formed long ago. The star forming arms of Messier 31 are unusual in being quite circular rather than the usual spiral shape. Several companion galaxies can also be seen. These include Messier 32, a dwarf elliptical galaxy directly below the central bulge and just outside the spiral arms, and Messier 110 (M110), which is above and to the right of the center. M110 has an unusual far ultraviolet bright core in an otherwise "red", old star halo. Many other regions of star formation can be seen far outside the main body of the galaxy. |
|
Andromeda Galaxy
PIA04921
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Andromeda Galaxy |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This image is a Galaxy Evolution Explorer observation of the large galaxy in Andromeda, Messier 31. The Andromeda galaxy is the most massive in the local group of galaxies that includes our Milky Way. Andromeda is the nearest large galaxy to our own. The image is a mosaic of 10 separate Galaxy Evolution Explorer images taken in September, 2003. The color image (with near ultraviolet shown by red and far ultraviolet shown by blue) shows blue regions of young, hot, high mass stars tracing out the spiral arms where star formation is occurring, and the central orange-white "bulge" of old, cooler stars formed long ago. The star forming arms of Messier 31 are unusual in being quite circular rather than the usual spiral shape. Several companion galaxies can also be seen. These include Messier 32, a dwarf elliptical galaxy directly below the central bulge and just outside the spiral arms, and Messier 110 (M110), which is above and to the right of the center. M110 has an unusual far ultraviolet bright core in an otherwise "red", old star halo. Many other regions of star formation can be seen far outside the main body of the galaxy. |
|
Andromeda Galaxy
PIA04921
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Andromeda Galaxy |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This image is a Galaxy Evolution Explorer observation of the large galaxy in Andromeda, Messier 31. The Andromeda galaxy is the most massive in the local group of galaxies that includes our Milky Way. Andromeda is the nearest large galaxy to our own. The image is a mosaic of 10 separate Galaxy Evolution Explorer images taken in September, 2003. The color image (with near ultraviolet shown by red and far ultraviolet shown by blue) shows blue regions of young, hot, high mass stars tracing out the spiral arms where star formation is occurring, and the central orange-white "bulge" of old, cooler stars formed long ago. The star forming arms of Messier 31 are unusual in being quite circular rather than the usual spiral shape. Several companion galaxies can also be seen. These include Messier 32, a dwarf elliptical galaxy directly below the central bulge and just outside the spiral arms, and Messier 110 (M110), which is above and to the right of the center. M110 has an unusual far ultraviolet bright core in an otherwise "red", old star halo. Many other regions of star formation can be seen far outside the main body of the galaxy. |
|
Globular Cluster Messier 2 i
…
PIA04926
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Globular Cluster Messier 2 in Aquarius |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This image of the Globular cluster Messier 2 (M2) was taken by Galaxy Evolution Explorer on August 20, 2003. This image is a small section of a single All Sky Imaging Survey exposure of only 129 seconds in the constellation Aquarius. This picture is a combination of Galaxy Evolution Explorer images taken with the far ultraviolet (colored blue) and near ultraviolet detectors (colored red). Globular clusters are gravitationally bound systems of hundreds of thousands of stars that orbit in the halos of galaxies. The globular clusters in out Milky Way galaxy contain some of the oldest stars known. M2 lies 33,000 light years from our Sun with stars distributed in a spherical system with a radius of approximately 100 light years. |
|
Big Black Holes Mean Bad New
…
PIA08697
| Title |
Big Black Holes Mean Bad News for Stars (diagram) |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Poster Version Suppression of Star Formation from Supermassive Black Holes This diagram illustrates research from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer showing that black holes -- once they reach a critical size -- can put the brakes on new star formation in elliptical galaxies. In this graph, galaxies and their supermassive black holes are indicated by the drawings (the black circle at the center of each galaxy represents the black hole). The relative masses of the galaxies and their black holes are reflected in the sizes of the drawings. Blue indicates that the galaxy has new stars, while red means the galaxy does not have any detectable new stars. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer observed the following trend: the biggest galaxies and black holes (shown in upper right corner) are more likely to have no observable star formation (red) than the smaller galaxies with smaller black holes. This is evidence that black holes can create environments unsuitable for stellar birth. The white line in the diagram illustrates that, for any galaxy no matter what the mass, its black hole must reach a critical size before it can shut down star formation. |
|
Big Black Holes Mean Bad New
…
PIA08697
| Title |
Big Black Holes Mean Bad News for Stars (diagram) |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Poster Version Suppression of Star Formation from Supermassive Black Holes This diagram illustrates research from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer showing that black holes -- once they reach a critical size -- can put the brakes on new star formation in elliptical galaxies. In this graph, galaxies and their supermassive black holes are indicated by the drawings (the black circle at the center of each galaxy represents the black hole). The relative masses of the galaxies and their black holes are reflected in the sizes of the drawings. Blue indicates that the galaxy has new stars, while red means the galaxy does not have any detectable new stars. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer observed the following trend: the biggest galaxies and black holes (shown in upper right corner) are more likely to have no observable star formation (red) than the smaller galaxies with smaller black holes. This is evidence that black holes can create environments unsuitable for stellar birth. The white line in the diagram illustrates that, for any galaxy no matter what the mass, its black hole must reach a critical size before it can shut down star formation. |
|
Ellen Weaver, Biologist
| Title |
Ellen Weaver, Biologist |
| Full Description |
Ellen Weaver, an associate professor of biology from California State University is shown developing instrumentation to be used in satellites for ocean monitoring. In the early 1970s, NASA researchers and ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau formed a team to study productivity of the sea. The team devised a sensor system to monitor ocean temperatures and chlorophyll levels by aircraft. This sensor was used in the satellite communication and weather equipment provided by NASA to assist in the accuracy of satellite observation. |
| Date |
2/8/1973 |
| NASA Center |
Headquarters |
|
Project Red Socks
| title |
Project Red Socks |
| date |
10.01.1957 |
| description |
Project RED SOCKS was to be "the world's first useful moon rocket," proposed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology in October 1957. These artist's renditions show the configuration of motors and a diagram of the moon orbit. RED SOCKS was to respond to the Sputnik launch challenge with a significant technological advance over the Soviet Union instead of merely matching them with another earth-orbiting satellite. The objectives of the project were to "1) get photos, 2) refine space guidance techniques, and 3) impress the world" with a series of nine rocket flights to the moon. The second of the nine flights was to take pictures of the back of the moon. The necessary technology had already been developed for earlier projects, such as the Re-entry Test Vehicle and the Microlock radio ground tracking system. Project RED SOCKS received no support in Washington. In December 1957, JPL and the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) were instead asked to orbit an Earth satellite. Explorer 1 was launched 81 days later, on January 29, 1958. A modified RED SOCKS plan was carried out in the Pioneer 4 project in March 1959. *Image Credit*: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory |
|
5-Panel version of Chandra,
…
| Name |
5-Panel version of Chandra, GALEX, Spitzer & Hubble Images |
|
COBE's View of the Milky Way
| Title |
COBE's View of the Milky Way |
| Full Description |
From its orbit around Earth, the Goddard Space Flight Center's Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) captured this edge-on view of our Milky Way galaxy in infrared light, a form of radiation that humans cannot see but can feel in the form of heat, as part of its mission to test the "Big Bang" theory of the creation of the universe. The theory, first proposed in 1927 by Belgian cosmologist Georges Lematre, holds that the universe began as an incredibly dense "primeval atom" that exploded with tremendous force, unleashing matter and space at the speeds of light. NASA set out to prove the theory with the help of COBE. In addition to proving the Big Bang, the satellite discovered that the cosmic background radiation had indeed been produced in the Big Bang just as scientists originally speculated. The satellite's data even discovered the primordial temperature and density fluctuations that eventually gave rise to the Milky Way and other large-scale objects found in space today. |
| Date |
01/01/1990 |
| NASA Center |
Goddard Space Flight Center |
|
SAMPEX - A Synoptic View of
…
| Title |
SAMPEX - A Synoptic View of Earth's Electron Radiation Belts: North Pole Energetic Fluxes from PET |
| Abstract |
The Solar Anomalous and Magnetospheric Particle Explorer, SAMPEX, measures fluxes of energetic particles from the sun, the Earth's magnetosphere, and cosmic ray sources over a broad range of energies. The four instruments aboard SAMPEX are the Low-Energy Ion Analyzer (LEICA), The Heavy Ion Large Telescope (HILT), The Mass Spectrometer Telescope (MAST), and the Proton-Electron Telescope (PET). |
| Completed |
1995-01-01 |
|
Interstellar Boundry Explore
…
| Title |
Interstellar Boundry Explorer (IBEX) |
| Abstract |
These animations show IBEX and it's two imagers specialized to detect neutral atoms from the solar system's outer boundaries and galactic medium. |
| Completed |
2007-12-10 |
|
Interstellar Boundry Explore
…
| Title |
Interstellar Boundry Explorer (IBEX) |
| Abstract |
These animations show IBEX and it's two imagers specialized to detect neutral atoms from the solar system's outer boundaries and galactic medium. |
| Completed |
2007-12-10 |
|
SAMPEX - A Synoptic View of
…
| Title |
SAMPEX - A Synoptic View of Earth's Electron Radiation Belts: North Pole Energetic Fluxes from HILT |
| Abstract |
The Solar Anomalous and Magnetospheric Particle Explorer, SAMPEX, measures fluxes of energetic particles from the sun, the Earth's magnetosphere, and cosmic ray sources over a broad range of energies. The four instruments aboard SAMPEX are the Low-Energy Ion Analyzer (LEICA), The Heavy Ion Large Telescope (HILT), The Mass Spectrometer Telescope (MAST), and the Proton-Electron Telescope (PET). |
| Completed |
1995-01-01 |
|
SAMPEX - A Synoptic View of
…
| Title |
SAMPEX - A Synoptic View of Earth's Electron Radiation Belts: South Pole Energetic Fluxes from PET |
| Abstract |
The Solar Anomalous and Magnetospheric Particle Explorer, SAMPEX, measures fluxes of energetic particles from the sun, the Earth's magnetosphere, and cosmic ray sources over a broad range of energies. The four instruments aboard SAMPEX are the Low-Energy Ion Analyzer (LEICA), The Heavy Ion Large Telescope (HILT), The Mass Spectrometer Telescope (MAST), and the Proton-Electron Telescope (PET). |
| Completed |
1995-01-01 |
|
SAMPEX - A Synoptic View of
…
| Title |
SAMPEX - A Synoptic View of Earth's Electron Radiation Belts: South Pole Energetic Fluxes from HILT |
| Abstract |
The Solar Anomalous and Magnetospheric Particle Explorer, SAMPEX, measures fluxes of energetic particles from the sun, the Earth's magnetosphere, and cosmic ray sources over a broad range of energies. The four instruments aboard SAMPEX are the Low-Energy Ion Analyzer (LEICA), The Heavy Ion Large Telescope (HILT), The Mass Spectrometer Telescope (MAST), and the Proton-Electron Telescope (PET). |
| Completed |
1995-01-01 |
|
SEDS-I: Subsatellite in moti
…
| Title |
SEDS-I: Subsatellite in motion (30 frames/second) |
| Completed |
1994-04-01 |
|
SEDS-I: Subsatellite in moti
…
| Title |
SEDS-I: Subsatellite in motion (6 frames/second) |
| Completed |
1994-04-01 |
|
ACD06-0113-001
Spaceward Bound Program in A
…
7/5/06
| Description |
Spaceward Bound Program in Atacama Desert, shown here is a realtime webcast from Yungay, Chile vis satellite involving NASA Scientists and seven NASA Explorer school teachers. On the Ames end we find the Girl Scouts Space cookines robotic team. The robot nicknamed Zoe is looking for life in extreme environments in preparation for what might be encounter on Mars. see full text on the NASA-Ames News - Research # 04-91AR |
| Date |
7/5/06 |
|
ACD06-0113-002
Spaceward Bound Program in A
…
7/5/06
| Description |
Spaceward Bound Program in Atacama Desert, shown here is a realtime webcast from Yungay, Chile vis satellite involving NASA Scientists and seven NASA Explorer school teachers. On the Ames end we find the Girl Scouts Space cookines robotic team. The robot nicknamed Zoe is looking for life in extreme environments in preparation for what might be encounter on Mars. see full text on the NASA-Ames News - Research # 04-91AR |
| Date |
7/5/06 |
|
ACD06-0113-005
Spaceward Bound Program in A
…
7/5/06
| Description |
Spaceward Bound Program in Atacama Desert, shown here is a realtime webcast from Yungay, Chile vis satellite involving NASA Scientists and seven NASA Explorer school teachers. On the Ames end we find the Girl Scouts Space cookines robotic team. The robot nicknamed Zoe is looking for life in extreme environments in preparation for what might be encounter on Mars. see full text on the NASA-Ames News - Research # 04-91AR |
| Date |
7/5/06 |
|
ACD06-0113-007
Spaceward Bound Program in A
…
7/5/06
| Description |
Spaceward Bound Program in Atacama Desert, shown here is a realtime webcast from Yungay, Chile vis satellite involving NASA Scientists and seven NASA Explorer school teachers. On the Ames end we find the Girl Scouts Space cookines robotic team. The robot nicknamed Zoe is looking for life in extreme environments in preparation for what might be encounter on Mars. see full text on the NASA-Ames News - Research # 04-91AR |
| Date |
7/5/06 |
|
ACD06-0113-009
SSpaceward Bound Program in
…
7/5/06
| Description |
SSpaceward Bound Program in Atacama Desert, shown here is a realtime webcast from Yungay, Chile vis satellite involving NASA Scientists and seven NASA Explorer school teachers. On the Ames end we find the Girl Scouts Space cookines robotic team. The robot nicknamed Zoe is looking for life in extreme environments in preparation for what might be encounter on Mars. see full text on the NASA-Ames News - Research # 04-91AR |
| Date |
7/5/06 |
|
ACD06-0113-010
Spaceward Bound Program in A
…
7/5/06
| Description |
Spaceward Bound Program in Atacama Desert, shown here is a realtime webcast from Yungay, Chile vis satellite involving NASA Scientists and seven NASA Explorer school teachers. On the Ames end we find the Girl Scouts Space cookines robotic team. The robot nicknamed Zoe is looking for life in extreme environments in preparation for what might be encounter on Mars. see full text on the NASA-Ames News - Research # 04-91AR |
| Date |
7/5/06 |
|
ACD06-0113-011
Spaceward Bound Program in A
…
7/5/06
| Description |
Spaceward Bound Program in Atacama Desert, shown here is a realtime webcast from Yungay, Chile vis satellite involving NASA Scientists and seven NASA Explorer school teachers. On the Ames end we find the Girl Scouts Space cookines robotic team. The robot nicknamed Zoe is looking for life in extreme environments in preparation for what might be encounter on Mars. see full text on the NASA-Ames News - Research # 04-91AR |
| Date |
7/5/06 |
|
Galaxy Evolution Explorer Sp
…
PIA09653
Far-ultraviolet Detector, Ne
…
| Title |
Galaxy Evolution Explorer Spies Band of Stars |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
The Galaxy Evolution Explorer's ultraviolet eyes have captured a globular star cluster, called NGC 362, in our own Milky Way galaxy. In this new image, the cluster appears next to stars from a more distant neighboring galaxy, known as the Small Magellanic Cloud. Globular clusters are densely packed bunches of old stars scattered in galaxies throughout the universe. NGC 362, located 30,000 light-years away, can be spotted as the dense collection of mostly yellow-tinted stars surrounding a large white-yellow spot toward the top-right of this image. The white spot is actually the core of the cluster, which is made up of stars so closely packed together that the Galaxy Evolution Explorer cannot see them individually. The light blue dots surrounding the cluster core are called extreme horizontal branch stars. These stars used to be very similar to our sun and are nearing the end of their lives. They are very hot, with temperatures reaching up to about four times that of the surface of our sun (25,000 Kelvin or 45,500 degrees Fahrenheit). A star like our sun spends most of its life fusing hydrogen atoms in its core into helium. When the star runs out of hydrogen in its core, its outer envelope will expand. The star then becomes a red giant, which burns hydrogen in a shell surrounding its inner core. Throughout its life as a red giant, the star loses a lot of mass, then begins to burn helium at its core. Some stars will have lost so much mass at the end of this process, up to 85 percent of their envelopes, that most of the envelope is gone. What is left is a very hot ultraviolet-bright core, or extreme horizontal branch star. Blue dots scattered throughout the image are hot, young stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way located approximately 200,000 light-years away. The stars in this galaxy are much brighter intrinsically than extreme horizontal branch stars, but they appear just as bright because they are farther away. The blue stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud are only about a few tens of millions of years old, much younger than the approximately 10-million-year-old stars in NGC 362. Because NGC 362 sits on the northern edge of the Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy, the blue stars are denser toward the south, or bottom, of the image. Some of the yellow spots in this image are stars in the Milky Way galaxy that are along this line of sight. Astronomers believe that some of the other spots, particularly those closer to NGC 362, might actually be a relatively ultraviolet-dim family of stars called "blue stragglers." These stars are formed from collisions or close encounters between two closely orbiting stars in a globular cluster. This image is a false-color composite, where light detected by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer's far-ultraviolet detector is colored blue, and light from the telescope's near-ultraviolet detector is red. |
|
Older Galaxy Pair Has Surpri
…
| Title |
Older Galaxy Pair Has Surprisingly Youthful Glow |
| Description |
A pair of interacting galaxies might be experiencing the galactic equivalent of a mid-life crisis. For some reason, the pair, called Arp 82, didn't make their stars early on as is typical of most galaxies. Instead, they got a second wind later in life -- about 2 billion years ago -- and started pumping out waves of new stars as if they were young again. Arp 82 is an interacting pair of galaxies with a strong bridge and a long tail. NGC 2535 is the big galaxy and NGC 2536 is its smaller companion. The disk of the main galaxy looks like an eye, with a bright "pupil" in the center and oval-shaped "eyelids." Dramatic "beads on a string" features are visible as chains of evenly spaced star-formation complexes along the eyelids. These are presumably the result of large-scale gaseous shocks from a grazing encounter. The colors of this galaxy indicate that the observed stars are young to intermediate in age, around 2 million to 2 billion years old, much less than the age of the universe (13.7 billion years). The puzzle is: why didn't Arp 82 form many stars earlier, like most galaxies of that mass range? Scientifically, it is an oddball and provides a relatively nearby lab for studying the age of intermediate-mass galaxies. This picture is a composite captured by Spitzer's infrared array camera with light at wavelength 8 microns shown in red, NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer combined 1530 and 2310 Angstroms shown in blue, and the Southeastern Association for Research in Astronomy Observatory light at 6940 Angstroms shown in green. |
|
Artist's concept of Galaxy E
…
| Title |
Artist's concept of Galaxy Evolution Explorer |
| Description |
Artist's concept of Galaxy Evolution Explorer |
| Date |
12.21.2002 |
|
A New Class of X-ray Star?
| Title |
A New Class of X-ray Star? |
| General Information |
What is an American Astronomical Society Meeting release? A major news announcement issued at an American Astronomical Society meeting, the premier astronomy conference. Teaming up space telescopes to make simultaneous ultraviolet and X-ray observations, astronomers may have solved a 20-year-old mystery and possibly discovered a new class of X-ray star. The unlikely suspect is a second-magnitude star 600 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cassiopeia. It turns out that the mild-mannered-looking star is ejecting 100-million-degree flares into space ? 10 times hotter than typical flares ejected from our Sun. The findings are based on observations by the Hubble telescope and the Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer. Read more: * Release Text [ http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/1998/07/text/ ] |
|
Large Face on Spiral Galaxy
…
PIA07904
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Large Face on Spiral Galaxy NGC 3344 |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Ultraviolet image of the large face on spiral galaxy NGC 3344. The inner spiral arms are wrapped so tightly that they are difficult to distinguish. |
|
Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 136
…
PIA07901
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1365 |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Ultraviolet image of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365, which is a member of the Fornax Cluster of Galaxies. |
|
Anatomy of a Shooting Star
PIA09959
Ultraviolet/Visible Camera
| Title |
Anatomy of a Shooting Star |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Annotated Version A close-up view of a star racing through space faster than a speeding bullet can be seen in this image from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer. The star, called Mira (pronounced My-rah), is traveling at 130 kilometers per second, or 291,000 miles per hour. As it hurls along, it sheds material that will be recycled into new stars, planets and possibly even life. In this image, Mira is moving from left to right. It is visible as the pinkish dot in the bulb shape at right. The yellow dot below is a foreground star. Mira is traveling so fast that it's creating a bow shock, or build-up of gas, in front of it, as can be seen here at right. Like a boat traveling through water, a bow shock forms ahead of the star in the direction of its motion. Gas in the bow shock is heated and then mixes with the cool hydrogen gas in the wind that is blowing off Mira. This heated hydrogen gas then flows around behind the star, forming a wake. Why is the wake of material glowing? When the hydrogen gas is heated, it transitions into a higher-energy state, which then loses energy by emitting ultraviolet light - a process called fluorescence. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer has special instruments that can detect this ultraviolet light. A similar fluorescence process is responsible for the Northern Lights -- a glowing, green aurora that can be seen from northern latitudes. However, in that case nitrogen and oxygen gas are fluorescing with visible light. Streams and a loop of material can also be seen coming off Mira. Astronomers are still investigating what these streams are, but they suspect that they are denser parts of Mira's wind perhaps flowing out of the star's poles. This image consists of data captured by both the far- and near-ultraviolet detectors on the Galaxy Evolution Explorer between November 18 and December 15, 2006. It has a total exposure time of about 3 hours. |
|
Anatomy of a Shooting Star
PIA09959
Ultraviolet/Visible Camera
| Title |
Anatomy of a Shooting Star |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Annotated Version A close-up view of a star racing through space faster than a speeding bullet can be seen in this image from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer. The star, called Mira (pronounced My-rah), is traveling at 130 kilometers per second, or 291,000 miles per hour. As it hurls along, it sheds material that will be recycled into new stars, planets and possibly even life. In this image, Mira is moving from left to right. It is visible as the pinkish dot in the bulb shape at right. The yellow dot below is a foreground star. Mira is traveling so fast that it's creating a bow shock, or build-up of gas, in front of it, as can be seen here at right. Like a boat traveling through water, a bow shock forms ahead of the star in the direction of its motion. Gas in the bow shock is heated and then mixes with the cool hydrogen gas in the wind that is blowing off Mira. This heated hydrogen gas then flows around behind the star, forming a wake. Why is the wake of material glowing? When the hydrogen gas is heated, it transitions into a higher-energy state, which then loses energy by emitting ultraviolet light - a process called fluorescence. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer has special instruments that can detect this ultraviolet light. A similar fluorescence process is responsible for the Northern Lights -- a glowing, green aurora that can be seen from northern latitudes. However, in that case nitrogen and oxygen gas are fluorescing with visible light. Streams and a loop of material can also be seen coming off Mira. Astronomers are still investigating what these streams are, but they suspect that they are denser parts of Mira's wind perhaps flowing out of the star's poles. This image consists of data captured by both the far- and near-ultraviolet detectors on the Galaxy Evolution Explorer between November 18 and December 15, 2006. It has a total exposure time of about 3 hours. |
|
A Stellar Ripple
PIA03296
Chandra X-ray Telescope, GAL
…
| Title |
A Stellar Ripple |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This false-color composite image shows the Cartwheel galaxy as seen by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer's far ultraviolet detector (blue), the Hubble Space Telescope's wide field and planetary camera 2 in B-band visible light (green), the Spitzer Space Telescope's infrared array camera at 8 microns (red), and the Chandra X-ray Observatory's advanced CCD imaging spectrometer-S array instrument (purple). Approximately 100 million years ago, a smaller galaxy plunged through the heart of Cartwheel galaxy, creating ripples of brief star formation. In this image, the first ripple appears as an ultraviolet-bright blue outer ring. The blue outer ring is so powerful in the Galaxy Evolution Explorer observations that it indicates the Cartwheel is one of the most powerful UV-emitting galaxies in the nearby universe. The blue color reveals to astronomers that associations of stars 5 to 20 times as massive as our sun are forming in this region. The clumps of pink along the outer blue ring are regions where both X-rays and ultraviolet radiation are superimposed in the image. These X-ray point sources are very likely collections of binary star systems containing a blackhole (called massive X-ray binary systems). The X-ray sources seem to cluster around optical/ultraviolet-bright supermassive star clusters. The yellow-orange inner ring and nucleus at the center of the galaxy result from the combination of visible and infrared light, which is stronger towards the center. This region of the galaxy represents the second ripple, or ring wave, created in the collision, but has much less star formation activity than the first (outer) ring wave. The wisps of red spread throughout the interior of the galaxy are organic molecules that have been illuminated by nearby low-level star formation. Meanwhile, the tints of green are less massive, older visible-light stars. Although astronomers have not identified exactly which galaxy collided with the Cartwheel, two of three candidate galaxies can be seen in this image to the bottom left of the ring, one as a neon blob and the other as a green spiral. Previously, scientists believed the ring marked the outermost edge of the galaxy, but the latest GALEX observations detect a faint disk, not visible in this image, that extends to twice the diameter of the ring. |
|
Triple Scoop from Galaxy Hun
…
PIA08646
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Triple Scoop from Galaxy Hunter |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
"Silver Dollar Galaxy: NGC 253 (figure 1)" Located 10 million light-years away in the southern constellation Sculptor, the Silver Dollar galaxy, or NGC 253, is one of the brightest spiral galaxies in the night sky. In this edge-on view from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer, the wisps of blue represent relatively dustless areas of the galaxy that are actively forming stars. Areas of the galaxy with a soft golden glow indicate regions where the far-ultraviolet is heavily obscured by dust particles. "Gravitational Dance: NGC 1512 and NGC 1510 (figure 2)" In this image, the wide ultraviolet eyes of NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer show spiral galaxy NGC 1512 sitting slightly northwest of elliptical galaxy NGC 1510. The two galaxies are currently separated by a mere 68,000 light-years, leading many astronomers to suspect that a close encounter is currently in progress. The overlapping of two tightly wound spiral arm segments makes up the light blue inner ring of NGC 1512. Meanwhile, the galaxy's outer spiral arm is being distorted by strong gravitational interactions with NGC 1510. "Galaxy Trio: NGC 5566, NGC 5560, and NGC 5569 (figure 3)" NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer shows a triplet of galaxies in the Virgo cluster: NGC 5560 (top galaxy), NGC 5566 (middle galaxy), and NGC 5569 (bottom galaxy). The inner ring in NGC 5566 is formed by two nearly overlapping bright arms, which themselves spring from the ends of a central bar. The bar is not visible in ultraviolet because it consists of older stars or low mass stars that do not emit energy at ultraviolet wavelengths. The outer disk of NGC 5566 appears warped, and the disk of NGC 5560 is clearly disturbed. Unlike its galactic neighbors, the disk of NGC 5569 does not appear to have been distorted by any passing galaxies. |
|
Triple Scoop from Galaxy Hun
…
PIA08646
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Triple Scoop from Galaxy Hunter |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
"Silver Dollar Galaxy: NGC 253 (figure 1)" Located 10 million light-years away in the southern constellation Sculptor, the Silver Dollar galaxy, or NGC 253, is one of the brightest spiral galaxies in the night sky. In this edge-on view from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer, the wisps of blue represent relatively dustless areas of the galaxy that are actively forming stars. Areas of the galaxy with a soft golden glow indicate regions where the far-ultraviolet is heavily obscured by dust particles. "Gravitational Dance: NGC 1512 and NGC 1510 (figure 2)" In this image, the wide ultraviolet eyes of NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer show spiral galaxy NGC 1512 sitting slightly northwest of elliptical galaxy NGC 1510. The two galaxies are currently separated by a mere 68,000 light-years, leading many astronomers to suspect that a close encounter is currently in progress. The overlapping of two tightly wound spiral arm segments makes up the light blue inner ring of NGC 1512. Meanwhile, the galaxy's outer spiral arm is being distorted by strong gravitational interactions with NGC 1510. "Galaxy Trio: NGC 5566, NGC 5560, and NGC 5569 (figure 3)" NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer shows a triplet of galaxies in the Virgo cluster: NGC 5560 (top galaxy), NGC 5566 (middle galaxy), and NGC 5569 (bottom galaxy). The inner ring in NGC 5566 is formed by two nearly overlapping bright arms, which themselves spring from the ends of a central bar. The bar is not visible in ultraviolet because it consists of older stars or low mass stars that do not emit energy at ultraviolet wavelengths. The outer disk of NGC 5566 appears warped, and the disk of NGC 5560 is clearly disturbed. Unlike its galactic neighbors, the disk of NGC 5569 does not appear to have been distorted by any passing galaxies. |
|
Triple Scoop from Galaxy Hun
…
PIA08646
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Triple Scoop from Galaxy Hunter |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
"Silver Dollar Galaxy: NGC 253 (figure 1)" Located 10 million light-years away in the southern constellation Sculptor, the Silver Dollar galaxy, or NGC 253, is one of the brightest spiral galaxies in the night sky. In this edge-on view from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer, the wisps of blue represent relatively dustless areas of the galaxy that are actively forming stars. Areas of the galaxy with a soft golden glow indicate regions where the far-ultraviolet is heavily obscured by dust particles. "Gravitational Dance: NGC 1512 and NGC 1510 (figure 2)" In this image, the wide ultraviolet eyes of NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer show spiral galaxy NGC 1512 sitting slightly northwest of elliptical galaxy NGC 1510. The two galaxies are currently separated by a mere 68,000 light-years, leading many astronomers to suspect that a close encounter is currently in progress. The overlapping of two tightly wound spiral arm segments makes up the light blue inner ring of NGC 1512. Meanwhile, the galaxy's outer spiral arm is being distorted by strong gravitational interactions with NGC 1510. "Galaxy Trio: NGC 5566, NGC 5560, and NGC 5569 (figure 3)" NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer shows a triplet of galaxies in the Virgo cluster: NGC 5560 (top galaxy), NGC 5566 (middle galaxy), and NGC 5569 (bottom galaxy). The inner ring in NGC 5566 is formed by two nearly overlapping bright arms, which themselves spring from the ends of a central bar. The bar is not visible in ultraviolet because it consists of older stars or low mass stars that do not emit energy at ultraviolet wavelengths. The outer disk of NGC 5566 appears warped, and the disk of NGC 5560 is clearly disturbed. Unlike its galactic neighbors, the disk of NGC 5569 does not appear to have been distorted by any passing galaxies. |
|
Triple Scoop from Galaxy Hun
…
PIA08646
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Triple Scoop from Galaxy Hunter |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
"Silver Dollar Galaxy: NGC 253 (figure 1)" Located 10 million light-years away in the southern constellation Sculptor, the Silver Dollar galaxy, or NGC 253, is one of the brightest spiral galaxies in the night sky. In this edge-on view from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer, the wisps of blue represent relatively dustless areas of the galaxy that are actively forming stars. Areas of the galaxy with a soft golden glow indicate regions where the far-ultraviolet is heavily obscured by dust particles. "Gravitational Dance: NGC 1512 and NGC 1510 (figure 2)" In this image, the wide ultraviolet eyes of NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer show spiral galaxy NGC 1512 sitting slightly northwest of elliptical galaxy NGC 1510. The two galaxies are currently separated by a mere 68,000 light-years, leading many astronomers to suspect that a close encounter is currently in progress. The overlapping of two tightly wound spiral arm segments makes up the light blue inner ring of NGC 1512. Meanwhile, the galaxy's outer spiral arm is being distorted by strong gravitational interactions with NGC 1510. "Galaxy Trio: NGC 5566, NGC 5560, and NGC 5569 (figure 3)" NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer shows a triplet of galaxies in the Virgo cluster: NGC 5560 (top galaxy), NGC 5566 (middle galaxy), and NGC 5569 (bottom galaxy). The inner ring in NGC 5566 is formed by two nearly overlapping bright arms, which themselves spring from the ends of a central bar. The bar is not visible in ultraviolet because it consists of older stars or low mass stars that do not emit energy at ultraviolet wavelengths. The outer disk of NGC 5566 appears warped, and the disk of NGC 5560 is clearly disturbed. Unlike its galactic neighbors, the disk of NGC 5569 does not appear to have been distorted by any passing galaxies. |
|
The International Ultraviole
…
| Title |
The International Ultraviolet Explorer |
| Explanation |
The International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) [ http://iuewww.gsfc.nasa.gov/iue/iue_homepage.html ] was launched by a NASA Delta rocket [ http://www.ksc.nasa.gov/elv/DELTA/delta.htm ] in 1978 to provide a space telescope for ultraviolet astronomy. A collaborative project among NASA, ESA [ http://www.esrin.esa.it/ ] and the British SRC (now PPARC) agencies, IUE's estimated lifetime was 3 to 5 years. Amazingly, 17 years and 8 months later, it continues to operate, having made over 100,000 observations [ http://iuewww.gsfc.nasa.gov/ops/pr_images.html ] of comets, planets, stars, novae, supernovae, galaxies, and quasars. The IUE [ http://iuewww.gsfc.nasa.gov/ops/mission.html ] story is a truly remarkable but little known success story which will continue. To reduce costs, on September 30, 1995, the IUE team at GSFC will turn over its science operations to the ESA ground station in Villafranca, Spain [ http://www.vilspa.esa.es/ ] where the ESA/PPARC teams will continue to make astronomical observations. |
|
An Extreme UltraViolet View
…
| Title |
An Extreme UltraViolet View of the Comet |
| Explanation |
As the Sun floods Comet Hyakutake with ultraviolet light [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap960326.html ] gases in the coma scatter the radiation and fluoresce making the comet a bright source in the ultraviolet sky. The above image [ http://alcatraz.cea.berkeley.edu/~science/html/ sci_whatsnew_comet.html ] made using data from NASA's Extreme UltraViolet Explorer (EUVE) [ http://www.cea.berkeley.edu/HomePage.html ] satellite, represents the intensity of the comet in this invisible high energy band in false color. The image is about 3/4 of a degree high and 2 degress wide and offers insights [ http://sdp1.cea.berkeley.edu:80/Education/ ] to the composition of this visitor from the distant solar system that can be obtained from the highest energy bands of the ultraviolet spectrum [ http://www.cea.berkeley.edu/Education/new_nelli/summary.html ]. The International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap950929.html ] satellite has also examined ultraviolet light from the comet [ http://www.vilspa.esa.es/iue/hyakutake.html ] and now reports [ http://www.eso.org/educnpubrelns/ comet-hyakutake-summary-mar28-rw.html ] the detection of many bands of molecular emission particularly those due to molecular carbon (C2), carbon monoxide (CO) and caron dioxide (C02) ions as well as indications of a rapid increase in the production of water (H20). |
|
Space Pioneer Nancy Roman
| title |
Space Pioneer Nancy Roman |
| date |
01.01.1962 |
| description |
Dr. Nancy Roman, one of the nations top scientists in the space program, is shown with a model of the Orbiting Solar Observatory (OSO). Roman received her PhD in astronomy from the University of Chicago in 1949. In 1959, Dr. Roman joined NASA and in 1960 served as Chief of the Astronomy and Relativity Programs in the Office of Space Science. She was very influential in creating satellites such as the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). She retired from NASA in 1979, but continued working as a contractor at the Goddard Space Flight Center. Throughout her career, Dr. Roman was a spokesperson and advocate of women in the sciences. *Image Credit*: NASA |
|
COBE's View of the Milky Way
| title |
COBE's View of the Milky Way |
| date |
01.01.1990 |
| description |
From its orbit around Earth, the Goddard Space Flight Center's Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) captured this edge-on view of our Milky Way galaxy in infrared light, a form of radiation that humans cannot see but can feel in the form of heat, as part of its mission to test the "Big Bang" theory of the creation of the universe. The theory, first proposed in 1927 by Belgian cosmologist Georges Lematre, holds that the universe began as an incredibly dense "primeval atom" that exploded with tremendous force, unleashing matter and space at the speeds of light. NASA set out to prove the theory with the help of COBE. In addition to proving the Big Bang, the satellite discovered that the cosmic background radiation had indeed been produced in the Big Bang just as scientists originally speculated. The satellite's data even discovered the primordial temperature and density fluctuations that eventually gave rise to the Milky Way and other large-scale objects found in space today. *Image Credit*: NASA |
|
Nanorover
| title |
Nanorover |
| description |
This prototype Nanorover is only 20 cm (8 inches) long. One possible use for this type of miniature explorer is to send back information from the surface of an asteroid to an orbiting spacecraft. The rover's camera can be focused to take panoramic shots as well as microscopic images. Solar cells will be placed on all sides of the rover so that even if it flips over on an asteroid's low-gravity surface, the rover will always have enough power to activate motors that will allow it to right itself. Wheel struts will allow the rover to position its chassis such that the camera can be pointed straight down at the surface or straight up at the sky. For more information: http://robotics.jpl.nasa.gov/tasks/nrover/homepage.html *Image Credit*: NASA |
|
Juno II
| Name of Image |
Juno II |
| Date of Image |
1959-08-14 |
| Full Description |
The Juno II launch vehicle, shown here, was a modified Jupiter Intermediate-Range Ballistic missionile, developed by Dr. Wernher von Braun and the rocket team at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. Between December 1958 and April 1961, the Juno II launched space probes Pioneer III and IV, as well as Explorer satellites VII, VIII and XI. |
|
APOLLO 14 EVA View
| Title |
APOLLO 14 EVA View |
| Full Description |
Astronaut Edgar D. Mitchell, lunar module pilot, photographed this sweeping view showing fellow Moon-explorer astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr., mission commander, and the Apollo 14 Lunar Module (LM). A small cluster of rocks and a few prints made by the lunar overshoes of Mitchell are in the foreground. Mitchell was standing in the boulder field, located just north by northwest of the LM, when he took this picture during the second Apollo 14 extravehicular activity (EVA-2), on February 6, 1971. While astronaut Stuart A. Roosa, command module pilot, remained with the Command and Service Modules (CSM) in lunar orbit, Shepard and Mitchell descended in the LM to explore the Moon. |
| Date |
02/06/1971 |
| NASA Center |
Johnson Space Center |
|
Dr. Nancy Roman
| Title |
Dr. Nancy Roman |
| Full Description |
Dr. Nancy Roman, one of the nations top scientists in the space program, is shown with a model of the Orbiting Solar Observatory (OSO). Dr. Nancy Roman received her PhD in astronomy from the University of Chicago in 1949. In 1959, Dr. Roman joined NASA and in 1960 served as Chief of the Astronomy and Relativity Programs in the Office of Space Science. She was very influential in creating satellites such as the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). She retired from NASA in 1979, but continued working as a contractor at the Goddard Space Flight Center. Throughout her career, Dr. Roman was a spokesperson and advocate of women in the sciences. |
| Date |
UNKNOWN |
| NASA Center |
Headquarters |
|
Dynamic Test Chamber
| Title |
Dynamic Test Chamber |
| Full Description |
NASA's International Sun-Earth Explorer C (ISEE C) was undergoing testing and evaluation inside Goddard's dynamic test chamber when this photo was taken. Working inside a dynamic test chamber, Goddard engineers wear protective "clean room" clothing to prevent microscopic dust particles from damaging the sophisticated instrumentation. NASA launched the 16-sided polyhedron, which weighed 1,032 lbs. (469 kg.), from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on August 12, 1978. From its halo orbit 932,000 miles (1.5 million km.) from Earth, the satellite monitored the characteristics of solar phenomena about one hour before its companion satellites-ISEE-A and ISEE-B-observed the same phenomena from a much closer near-Earth orbit. The correlated measurements supported the work of 117 scientific investigators who were trying to get a better understanding of how the Sun controls Earth's near-space environment. The scientists represented 35 universities in 10 nations |
| Date |
11/06/1976 |
| NASA Center |
Goddard Space Flight Center |
|
Multiwavelength M81
| Title |
Multiwavelength M81 |
| Description |
This beautiful galaxy is tilted at an oblique angle on to our line of sight, giving a "birds-eye view" of the spiral structure. The galaxy is similar to our Milky Way, but our favorable view provides a better picture of the typical architecture of spiral galaxies. M81 may be undergoing a surge of star formation along the spiral arms due to a close encounter it may have had with its nearby spiral galaxy NGC 3077 and a nearby starburst galaxy (M82) about 300 million years ago. M81 is one of the brightest galaxies that can be seen from the Earth. It is high in the northern sky in the circumpolar constellation Ursa Major, the Great Bear. At an apparent magnitude of 6.8 it is just at the limit of naked-eye visibility. The galaxy's angular size is about the same as that of the Full Moon. This image combines data from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) missions. The GALEX ultraviolet data were from the far-UV portion of the spectrum (135 to 175 nanometers). The Spitzer infrared data were taken with the IRAC 4 detector (8 microns). The Hubble data were taken at the blue portion of the spectrum. |
|
Redstone Missile
| Name of Image |
Redstone Missile |
| Date of Image |
2004-04-15 |
| Full Description |
The image depicts Redstone missile being erected. The Redstone ballistic missile was a high-accuracy, liquid-propelled, surface-to-surface missile developed by Army Ballistic Missile Agency, Redstone Arsenal, in Huntsville, Alabama, under the direction of Dr. von Braun. The Redstone engine was a modified and improved version of the Air Force's Navaho cruise missile engine of the late forties. The A-series, as this would be known, utilized a cylindrical combustion chamber as compared with the bulky, spherical V-2 chamber. By 1951, the Army was moving rapidly toward the design of the Redstone missile, and the production was begun in 1952. Redstone rockets became the "reliable workhorse" for America's early space program. As an example of the versatility, Redstone was utilized in the booster for Explorer 1, the first American satellite, with no major changes to the engine or missile |
|
Redstone Missile on Launch P
…
| Name of Image |
Redstone Missile on Launch Pad |
| Date of Image |
1958-05-15 |
| Full Description |
Redstone missile No. 1002 on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, on May 16, 1958. The Redstone ballistic missile was a high-accuracy, liquid-propelled, surface-to-surface missile developed by the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, Redstone Arsenal, in Huntsville, Alabama, under the direction of Dr. von Braun. The Redstone engine was a modified and improved version of the Air Force's Navaho cruise missile engine of the late forties. The A-series, as this would be known, utilized a cylindrical combustion chamber as compared with the bulky, spherical V-2 chamber. By 1951, the Army was moving rapidly toward the design of the Redstone missile, and production was begun in 1952. Redstone rockets became the "reliable workhorse" for America's early space program. As an example of the versatility, Redstone was utilized in the booster for Explorer 1, the first American satellite, with no major changes to the engine or missile |
|
Engine for Redstone Rocket
| Name of Image |
Engine for Redstone Rocket |
| Date of Image |
2004-04-15 |
| Full Description |
This photograph is of the engine for the Redstone rocket. The Redstone ballistic missile was a high-accuracy, liquid-propelled, surface-to-surface missile developed by the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, Redstone Arsenal, in Huntsville, Alabama, under the direction of Dr. von Braun. The Redstone engine was a modified and improved version of the Air Force's Navaho cruise missile engine of the late forties. The A-series, as this would be known, utilized a cylindrical combustion chamber as compared with the bulky, spherical V-2 chamber. By 1951, the Army was moving rapidly toward the design of the Redstone missile, and the production was begun in 1952. Redstone rockets became the "reliable workhorse" for America's early space program. As an example of its versatility, the Redstone was utilized in the booster for Explorer 1, the first American satellite, with no major changes to the engine or missile. |
|
Look at my Arms!
PIA03541
Ultraviolet/Visible Camera
| Title |
Look at my Arms! |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This image shows the hidden spiral arms that were discovered around the galaxy called NGC 4625 (top) by the ultraviolet eyes of NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer. An armless companion galaxy called NGC 4618 is pictured below. Though the lengthy spiral arms are nearly invisible when viewed in optical light, they glow brightly in ultraviolet. This is because they are bustling with hot, newborn stars that radiate primarily ultraviolet light. The youthful arms are also very long, stretching out to a distance four times the size of the galaxy's core. They are part of the largest ultraviolet galactic disk discovered so far. Located 31 million light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici, NGC 4625 is the closest galaxy ever seen with such a young halo of arms. It is slightly smaller than our Milky Way, both in size and mass. However, the fact that this galaxy's disk is forming stars very actively suggests that it might evolve into a more massive and mature galaxy resembling our own. Astronomers do not know why NGC 4618 lacks arms but speculate that it may have triggered the development of arms in NGC 4625. |
|
Fires of Galactic Youth (Art
…
PIA07144
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Fires of Galactic Youth (Artist Animation) |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Figure 1 This artist's animation shows a typical young galaxy, teeming with hot, newborn stars and exploding supernovas. The supernovas are seen as white flashes of light. NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer spotted three-dozen young galaxies like the one shown here in our corner of the universe. It was able to see them with the help of its highly sensitive ultraviolet detectors. Because newborn stars radiate ultraviolet light, young galaxies light up brilliantly when viewed in ultraviolet wavelengths. The findings came as a surprise, because astronomers had thought that the universe's "birth-rate" had declined, and that massive galaxies were no longer forming. |
|
Fires of Galactic Youth (Art
…
PIA07144
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Fires of Galactic Youth (Artist Animation) |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Figure 1 This artist's animation shows a typical young galaxy, teeming with hot, newborn stars and exploding supernovas. The supernovas are seen as white flashes of light. NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer spotted three-dozen young galaxies like the one shown here in our corner of the universe. It was able to see them with the help of its highly sensitive ultraviolet detectors. Because newborn stars radiate ultraviolet light, young galaxies light up brilliantly when viewed in ultraviolet wavelengths. The findings came as a surprise, because astronomers had thought that the universe's "birth-rate" had declined, and that massive galaxies were no longer forming. |
|
It's Not a Bird or a Plane
PIA07250
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
It's Not a Bird or a Plane |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Galaxies aren't the only objects filling up the view of NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer. Since its launch in 2003, the space telescope -- originally designed to observe galaxies across the universe in ultraviolet light -- has discovered a festive sky blinking with flaring and erupting stars, as well as streaking asteroids, satellites and space debris. One such streaking object -- possibly an Earth-orbiting satellite -- can be seen here flying across the telescope's sight in this sped-up movie. This probable satellite appears during the last 5 minutes of a 13.5-minute observation. It looks elongated because each picture frame containing the moving object is 19 seconds long. Faint ghost images on either side of the source are detector artifacts caused by the object's extreme brightness. These bonus objects are being collected in to public catalogues for other astronomers to study. |
|
New Galaxy Quest Readies for
…
PIA04264
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
New Galaxy Quest Readies for Launch |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
In the Multi-Payload Processing Facility, workers check the deployment of the cover of the telescope on the GALEX satellite. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) is an orbiting space telescope that will observe galaxies in ultraviolet light across 10 billion years of cosmic history. Led by the California Institute of Technology, GALEX will conduct several first-of-a-kind sky surveys, including an extra-galactic (beyond our galaxy) ultraviolet all-sky survey. During its 29-month mission GALEX will produce the first comprehensive map of a Universe of galaxies under construction, bringing more understanding of how galaxies like the Milky Way were formed. GALEX is due to be launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station March 25 via a Pegasus rocket. |
|
Anatomy of a Triangulum
PIA03033
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Anatomy of a Triangulum |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
M33, the Triangulum Galaxy, is a perennial favorite of amateur and professional astronomers alike, due to its orientation and relative proximity to us. It is the second nearest spiral galaxy to our Milky Way (after M31, the Andromeda Galaxy) and a prominent member of the "local group" of galaxies. From our Milky Way perspective, M33's stellar disk appears at moderate inclination, allowing us to see its internal structure clearly, whereas M31 is oriented nearly edge-on. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer imaged M33 as it appears in ultraviolet wavelengths. Ultraviolet imaging primarily traces emission from the atmospheres of hot stars, most of which formed in the past few hundred million years. These data provide a reference point as to the internal composition of a typical star-forming galaxy and will help scientists understand the origin of ultraviolet emission in more distant galaxies. These observations of M33 allow astronomers to compare the population of young, massive stars with other components of the galaxy, such as interstellar dust and gas, on the scale of individual giant molecular clouds. The clouds contain the raw material from which stars form. This presents direct insight into the star formation process as it occurs throughout an entire spiral galaxy and constitutes a unique resource for broader studies of galaxy evolution. |
|
Stephan's Quintet and NGC 73
…
PIA04925
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Stephan's Quintet and NGC 7331 |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Click on image for notations Galaxy Evolution Explorer observation of Stephan's Quintet and the nearby galaxy NGC 7331. Blue represents far ultraviolet, and red near ultraviolet. Stephan's quintet is an interacting group of galaxies. Close inspection of the group (lower center-right) shows blue regions of recent star formation associated with streamers of gas (tidal tails) created by the interaction. NGC 7331 shows prominent star formation in spiral arms. |
|
Baby Galaxies in the Adult U
…
PIA07142
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Baby Galaxies in the Adult Universe |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Figure 1 This artist's conception illustrates the decline in our universe's "birth-rate" over time. When the universe was young, massive galaxies were forming regularly, like baby bees in a bustling hive. In time, the universe bore fewer and fewer "offspring," and newborn galaxies (white circles) matured into older ones more like our own Milky Way (spirals). Previously, astronomers thought that the universe had ceased to give rise to massive, young galaxies, but findings from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer suggest that may not be the case. Surveying thousands of nearby galaxies with its highly sensitive ultraviolet eyes, the telescope spotted three dozen that greatly resemble youthful galaxies from billions of years ago. In this illustration, those galaxies are represented as white circles on the right, or "today" side of the timeline. The discovery not only suggests that our universe may still be alive with youth, but also offers astronomers their first close-up look at what appear to be baby galaxies. Prior to the new result, astronomers had to peer about 11 billion light-years into the distant universe to see newborn galaxies. The newfound galaxies are only about 2 to 4 billion light-years away. |
|
Baby Galaxies in the Adult U
…
PIA07142
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Baby Galaxies in the Adult Universe |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Figure 1 This artist's conception illustrates the decline in our universe's "birth-rate" over time. When the universe was young, massive galaxies were forming regularly, like baby bees in a bustling hive. In time, the universe bore fewer and fewer "offspring," and newborn galaxies (white circles) matured into older ones more like our own Milky Way (spirals). Previously, astronomers thought that the universe had ceased to give rise to massive, young galaxies, but findings from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer suggest that may not be the case. Surveying thousands of nearby galaxies with its highly sensitive ultraviolet eyes, the telescope spotted three dozen that greatly resemble youthful galaxies from billions of years ago. In this illustration, those galaxies are represented as white circles on the right, or "today" side of the timeline. The discovery not only suggests that our universe may still be alive with youth, but also offers astronomers their first close-up look at what appear to be baby galaxies. Prior to the new result, astronomers had to peer about 11 billion light-years into the distant universe to see newborn galaxies. The newfound galaxies are only about 2 to 4 billion light-years away. |
|
An Unwelcome Place for New S
…
PIA08696
| Title |
An Unwelcome Place for New Stars (artist concept) |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Poster Version Suppression of Star Formation from Supermassive Black Holes This artist's concept depicts a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy. NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer found evidence that black holes -- once they grow to a critical size -- stifle the formation of new stars in elliptical galaxies. Black holes are thought to do this by heating up and blasting away the gas that fuels star formation. The blue color here represents radiation pouring out from material very close to the black hole. The grayish structure surrounding the black hole, called a torus, is made up of gas and dust. Beyond the torus, only the old red-colored stars that make up the galaxy can be seen. There are no new stars in the galaxy. |
|
An Unwelcome Place for New S
…
PIA08696
| Title |
An Unwelcome Place for New Stars (artist concept) |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Poster Version Suppression of Star Formation from Supermassive Black Holes This artist's concept depicts a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy. NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer found evidence that black holes -- once they grow to a critical size -- stifle the formation of new stars in elliptical galaxies. Black holes are thought to do this by heating up and blasting away the gas that fuels star formation. The blue color here represents radiation pouring out from material very close to the black hole. The grayish structure surrounding the black hole, called a torus, is made up of gas and dust. Beyond the torus, only the old red-colored stars that make up the galaxy can be seen. There are no new stars in the galaxy. |
|
STScI Astrophysicist Shares
…
| Title |
STScI Astrophysicist Shares 2006 Gruber Cosmology Prize |
|
SAMPEX - Yohkoh: Solar Modif
…
| Title |
SAMPEX - Yohkoh: Solar Modification of Relativistic Electrons in the Earth's Radiation Belts |
| Abstract |
The Solar Anomalous and Magnetospheric Particle Explorer, SAMPEX, measures fluxes of energetic particles from the sun, the Earth's magnetosphere, and cosmic ray sources over a broad range of energies. The four instruments aboard SAMPEX are the Low-Energy Ion Analyzer (LEICA), The Heavy Ion Large Telescope (HILT), The Mass Spectrometer Telescope (MAST), and the Proton-Electron Telescope (PET). The Soft X-ray Telescope on the Yohkoh satellite takes daily full-disk soft X-ray images of the Sun. Comparing datasets from the two satellites allows correlation of electron fluxes in the Earth's radiation belts with solar output. |
| Completed |
1995-11-07 |
|
ACD06-0113-006
Spaceward Bound Program in A
…
7/5/06
| Description |
Spaceward Bound Program in Atacama Desert, shown here is a realtime webcast from Yungay, Chile vis satellite involving NASA Scientists and seven NASA Explorer school teachers. On the Ames end we find the Girl Scouts Space cookines robotic team. The robot nicknamed Zoe is looking for life in extreme environments in preparation for what might be encounter on Mars. (back row l-r) Yvonne Clearwater, Ames Education Division, Donald James, Ames Education Division Chief, Pete Worden, Ames Center Director, Angela Diaz, Ames Director of Strategic Communications) see full text on the NASA-Ames News - Research # 04-91AR |
| Date |
7/5/06 |
|
SEDS-II: Before and After De
…
| Title |
SEDS-II: Before and After Deployment |
| Completed |
1994-10-19 |
|
SEDS-II: First 120 Minutes
| Title |
SEDS-II: First 120 Minutes |
| Completed |
1994-10-19 |
|
SEDS-II: End of Deployment
| Title |
SEDS-II: End of Deployment |
| Completed |
1994-10-19 |
|
'Dora'& Kids at Day of Play
| Title |
'Dora'& Kids at Day of Play |
| Description |
From left, Cobie Smith, 5, and Tatume Smith, also 5, have their picture taken with 'Dora the Explorer.' The children were participants in Nickelodeon's Worldwide Day of Play celebration at Stennis Space Center (SSC) on Oct. 1. The Worldwide Day of Play is sponsored annually by Nickelodeon television network to encourage children to be physically active. Approximately 150 children participated in the event at SSC. |
| Date |
10.05.2005 |
|
Explorer 1
| Title |
Explorer 1 |
| Description |
America's First Satellite America joined the space race with the launch of this small, but important spacecraft. |
| Date |
07.01.2003 |
|
Labeled line drawing of Mage
…
| Title |
Labeled line drawing of Magellan spacecraft |
| Description |
Labeled line drawing identifies Magellan spacecraft components including forward equipment module, star scanner, propulsion module, rocket engine module, thermal control louvers, solar panel drive and cable wrap, solar panel, bus, altimeter antenna, low-gain antenna, and high gain antenna. Magellan, named for the 16th century Portuguese explorer, will be deployed from the payload bay (PLB) of Atlantis, Orbiter Vehicle (OV) 104, during mission STS-30. |
| Date |
04.27.1988 |
|
Scene of Multiple Explosions
PIA09220
Far-ultraviolet Detector, Ne
…
| Title |
Scene of Multiple Explosions |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This composite image shows Z Camelopardalis, or Z Cam, a double-star system featuring a collapsed, dead star, called a white dwarf, and a companion star, as well as a ghostly shell around the system. The massive shell provides evidence of lingering material ejected during and swept up by a powerful classical nova explosion that occurred probably a few thousand years ago. The image combines data gathered from the far-ultraviolet and near-ultraviolet detectors on NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer on Jan. 25, 2004. The orbiting observatory first began imaging Z Cam in 2003. Z Cam is the largest white object in the image, located near the center. Parts of the shell are seen as a lobe-like, wispy, yellowish feature below and to the right of Z Cam, and as two large, whitish, perpendicular lines on the left. Z Cam was one of the first known recurrent dwarf nova, meaning it erupts in a series of small, "hiccup-like" blasts, unlike classical novae, which undergo a massive explosion. That's why the huge shell around Z Cam caught the eye of astronomer Dr. Mark Seibert of Carnegie Institution of Washington in Pasadena, Calif. - it could only be explained as the remnant of a full-blown classical nova explosion. This finding provides the first evidence that some binary systems undergo both types of explosions. Previously, a link between the two types of novae had been predicted, but there was no evidence to support the theory. The faint bluish streak in the bottom right corner of the image is ultraviolet light reflected by dust that may or may not be related to Z Cam. Numerous foreground and background stars and galaxies are visible as yellow and white spots. The yellow objects are strong near-ultraviolet emitters, blue features have strong far-ultraviolet emission, and white objects have nearly equal amounts of near-ultraviolet and far-ultraviolet emission. |
|
Scene of Multiple Explosions
PIA09220
Far-ultraviolet Detector, Ne
…
| Title |
Scene of Multiple Explosions |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This composite image shows Z Camelopardalis, or Z Cam, a double-star system featuring a collapsed, dead star, called a white dwarf, and a companion star, as well as a ghostly shell around the system. The massive shell provides evidence of lingering material ejected during and swept up by a powerful classical nova explosion that occurred probably a few thousand years ago. The image combines data gathered from the far-ultraviolet and near-ultraviolet detectors on NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer on Jan. 25, 2004. The orbiting observatory first began imaging Z Cam in 2003. Z Cam is the largest white object in the image, located near the center. Parts of the shell are seen as a lobe-like, wispy, yellowish feature below and to the right of Z Cam, and as two large, whitish, perpendicular lines on the left. Z Cam was one of the first known recurrent dwarf nova, meaning it erupts in a series of small, "hiccup-like" blasts, unlike classical novae, which undergo a massive explosion. That's why the huge shell around Z Cam caught the eye of astronomer Dr. Mark Seibert of Carnegie Institution of Washington in Pasadena, Calif. - it could only be explained as the remnant of a full-blown classical nova explosion. This finding provides the first evidence that some binary systems undergo both types of explosions. Previously, a link between the two types of novae had been predicted, but there was no evidence to support the theory. The faint bluish streak in the bottom right corner of the image is ultraviolet light reflected by dust that may or may not be related to Z Cam. Numerous foreground and background stars and galaxies are visible as yellow and white spots. The yellow objects are strong near-ultraviolet emitters, blue features have strong far-ultraviolet emission, and white objects have nearly equal amounts of near-ultraviolet and far-ultraviolet emission. |
|
Scene of Multiple Explosions
PIA09220
Far-ultraviolet Detector, Ne
…
| Title |
Scene of Multiple Explosions |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This composite image shows Z Camelopardalis, or Z Cam, a double-star system featuring a collapsed, dead star, called a white dwarf, and a companion star, as well as a ghostly shell around the system. The massive shell provides evidence of lingering material ejected during and swept up by a powerful classical nova explosion that occurred probably a few thousand years ago. The image combines data gathered from the far-ultraviolet and near-ultraviolet detectors on NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer on Jan. 25, 2004. The orbiting observatory first began imaging Z Cam in 2003. Z Cam is the largest white object in the image, located near the center. Parts of the shell are seen as a lobe-like, wispy, yellowish feature below and to the right of Z Cam, and as two large, whitish, perpendicular lines on the left. Z Cam was one of the first known recurrent dwarf nova, meaning it erupts in a series of small, "hiccup-like" blasts, unlike classical novae, which undergo a massive explosion. That's why the huge shell around Z Cam caught the eye of astronomer Dr. Mark Seibert of Carnegie Institution of Washington in Pasadena, Calif. - it could only be explained as the remnant of a full-blown classical nova explosion. This finding provides the first evidence that some binary systems undergo both types of explosions. Previously, a link between the two types of novae had been predicted, but there was no evidence to support the theory. The faint bluish streak in the bottom right corner of the image is ultraviolet light reflected by dust that may or may not be related to Z Cam. Numerous foreground and background stars and galaxies are visible as yellow and white spots. The yellow objects are strong near-ultraviolet emitters, blue features have strong far-ultraviolet emission, and white objects have nearly equal amounts of near-ultraviolet and far-ultraviolet emission. |
|
Hello to Arms
PIA03536
Ultraviolet/Visible Camera
| Title |
Hello to Arms |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This image highlights the hidden spiral arms (blue) that were discovered around the nearby galaxy NGC 4625 by the ultraviolet eyes of NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer. The image is composed of ultraviolet and visible-light data, from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer and the California Institute of Technology's Digitized Sky Survey, respectively. Near-ultraviolet light is colored green, far-ultraviolet light is colored blue, and optical light is colored red. As the image demonstrates, the lengthy spiral arms are nearly invisible when viewed in optical light while bright in ultraviolet. This is because they are bustling with hot, newborn stars that radiate primarily ultraviolet light. The youthful arms are also very long, stretching out to a distance four times the size of the galaxy's core. They are part of the largest ultraviolet galactic disk discovered so far. Located 31 million light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici, NGC 4625 is the closest galaxy ever seen with such a young halo of arms. It is slightly smaller than our Milky Way, both in size and mass. However, the fact that this galaxy's disk is forming stars very actively suggests that it might evolve into a more massive and mature galaxy resembling our own. The armless companion galaxy seen below NGC 4625 is called NGC 4618. Astronomers do not know why it lacks arms but speculate that it may have triggered the development of arms in NGC 4625. |
|
A Real Shooting Star
PIA09960
Ultraviolet/Visible Camera
| Title |
A Real Shooting Star |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
"" Click on the image for movie of A Real Shooting Star This artist's animation illustrates a star flying through our galaxy at supersonic speeds, leaving a 13-light-year-long trail of glowing material in its wake. The star, named Mira (pronounced my-rah) after the latin word for "wonderful," sheds material that will be recycled into new stars, planets and possibly even life. NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer discovered the long trail of material behind Mira during its survey of the entire sky in ultraviolet light. The animation begins by showing a close-up of Mira -- a red-giant star near the end of its life. Red giants are red in color and extremely bloated, for example, if a red giant were to replace our sun, it would engulf everything out to the orbit of Mars. They constantly blow off gas and dust in the form of stellar winds, supplying the galaxy with molecules, such as oxygen and carbon, that will make their way into new solar systems. Our sun will mature into a red giant in about 5 billion years. As the animation pulls out, we can see the enormous trail of material deposited behind Mira as it hurls along between the stars. Like a boat traveling through water, a bow shock, or build up of gas, forms ahead of the star in the direction of its motion. Gas in the bow shock is heated and then mixes with the cool hydrogen gas in the wind that is blowing off Mira. This heated hydrogen gas then flows around behind the star, forming a turbulent wake. Why does the trailing hydrogen gas glow in ultraviolet light? When it is heated, it transitions into a higher-energy state, which then loses energy by emitting ultraviolet light - a process known as fluorescence. Finally, the artist's rendering gives way to the actual ultraviolet image taken by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer Mira is located 350 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cetus, otherwise known as the whale. Coincidentally, Mira and its "whale of a tail" can be found in the tail of the whale constellation. |
|
Galactic Halos of Hydrogen
PIA03540
Ultraviolet/Visible Camera
| Title |
Galactic Halos of Hydrogen |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This image shows two companion galaxies, NGC 4625 (top) and NGC 4618 (bottom), and their surrounding cocoons of cool hydrogen gas (purple). The huge set of spiral arms on NGC 4625 (blue) was discovered by the ultraviolet eyes of NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer. Though these arms are nearly invisible when viewed in optical light, they glow brightly in ultraviolet. This is because they are bustling with hot, newborn stars that radiate primarily ultraviolet light. The vibrant spiral arms are also quite lengthy, stretching out to a distance four times the size of the galaxy's core. They are part of the largest ultraviolet galactic disk discovered so far. Astronomers do not know why NGC 4625 grew arms while NGC 4618 did not. The purple nebulosity shown here illustrates that hydrogen gas - an ingredient of star formation - is diffusely distributed around both galaxies. This means that other unknown factors led to the development of the arms of NGC 4625. Located 31 million light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici, NGC 4625 is the closest galaxy ever seen with such a young halo of arms. It is slightly smaller than our Milky Way, both in size and mass. However, the fact that this galaxy's disk is forming stars very actively suggests that it might evolve into a more massive and mature galaxy resembling our own. The image is composed of ultraviolet, visible-light and radio data, from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, the California Institute of Technology's Digitized Sky Survey, and the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope, the Netherlands, respectively. Near-ultraviolet light is colored green, far-ultraviolet light is colored blue, and optical light is colored red. Radio emissions are colored purple. |
|
Dwarf Star Erupts in Giant F
…
PIA07249
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Dwarf Star Erupts in Giant Flare |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This movie taken by NASA'S Galaxy Evolution Explorer shows one of the largest flares, or star eruptions, ever recorded at ultraviolet wavelengths. The star, called GJ 3685A, just happened to be in the Galaxy Evolution Explorer's field of view while the telescope was busy observing galaxies. As the movie demonstrates, the seemingly serene star suddenly exploded once, then even more intensely a second time, pouring out in total about one million times more energy than a typical flare from our Sun. The second blast of light constituted an increase in brightness by a factor of at least 10,000. Flares are huge explosions of energy stemming from a single location on a star's surface. They are caused by the brief destruction of a star's magnetic fields. Many types of stars experience them, though old, small, rapidly rotating "red dwarfs" like GJ 3685A tend to flare more frequently and dramatically. These stars, called flare stars, can experience powerful eruptions as often as every few hours. Younger stars, in general, also erupt more often. One of the reasons astronomers study flare stars is to gain a better picture and history of flare events taking place on the Sun. A preliminary analysis of the GJ 3685A flare shows that the mechanisms underlying stellar eruptions may be more complex than previously believed. Evidence for the two most popular flare theories was found. Though this movie has been sped up (the actual flare lasted about 20 minutes), time-resolved data exist for each one-hundredth of a second. These observations were taken at 2 p.m. Pacific time, April 24, 2004. In the still image, the time sequence starts in the upper left panel, continues in the upper right, then moves to the lower left and ends in the lower right. The circular and linear features that appear below and to the right of GJ 3685A during the flare event are detector artifacts caused by the extreme brightness of the flare. |
|
The Universe's First Firewor
…
PIA09100
Infrared Array Camera (IRAC)
| Title |
The Universe's First Fireworks |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This is an image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope of stars and galaxies in the Ursa Major constellation. This infrared image covers a region of space so large that light would take up to 100 million years to travel across it. Figure 1 is the same image after stars, galaxies and other sources were masked out. The remaining background light is from a period of time when the universe was less than one billion years old, and most likely originated from the universe's very first groups of objects -- either huge stars or voracious black holes. Darker shades in the image on the left correspond to dimmer parts of the background glow, while yellow and white show the brightest light. "Brief History of the Universe" In figure 2, the artist's timeline chronicles the history of the universe, from its explosive beginning to its mature, present-day state. Our universe began in a tremendous explosion known as the Big Bang about 13.7 billion years ago (left side of strip). Observations by NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer and Wilkinson Anisotropy Microwave Probe revealed microwave light from this very early epoch, about 400,000 years after the Big Bang, providing strong evidence that our universe did blast into existence. Results from the Cosmic Background Explorer were honored with the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physics. A period of darkness ensued, until about a few hundred million years later, when the first objects flooded the universe with light. This first light is believed to have been captured in data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The light detected by Spitzer would have originated as visible and ultraviolet light, then stretched, or redshifted, to lower-energy infrared wavelengths during its long voyage to reach us across expanding space. The light detected by the Cosmic Background Explorer and the Wilkinson Anisotropy Microwave Probe from our very young universe traveled farther to reach us, and stretched to even lower-energy microwave wavelengths. Astronomers do not know if the very first objects were either stars or quasars. The first stars, called Population III stars (our star is a Population I star), were much bigger and brighter than any in our nearby universe, with masses about 1,000 times that of our sun. These stars first grouped together into mini-galaxies. By about a few billion years after the Big Bang, the mini-galaxies had merged to form mature galaxies, including spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way. The first quasars ultimately became the centers of powerful galaxies that are more common in the distant universe. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured stunning pictures of earlier galaxies, as far back as ten billion light-years away. |
|
The Universe's First Firewor
…
PIA09100
Infrared Array Camera (IRAC)
| Title |
The Universe's First Fireworks |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This is an image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope of stars and galaxies in the Ursa Major constellation. This infrared image covers a region of space so large that light would take up to 100 million years to travel across it. Figure 1 is the same image after stars, galaxies and other sources were masked out. The remaining background light is from a period of time when the universe was less than one billion years old, and most likely originated from the universe's very first groups of objects -- either huge stars or voracious black holes. Darker shades in the image on the left correspond to dimmer parts of the background glow, while yellow and white show the brightest light. "Brief History of the Universe" In figure 2, the artist's timeline chronicles the history of the universe, from its explosive beginning to its mature, present-day state. Our universe began in a tremendous explosion known as the Big Bang about 13.7 billion years ago (left side of strip). Observations by NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer and Wilkinson Anisotropy Microwave Probe revealed microwave light from this very early epoch, about 400,000 years after the Big Bang, providing strong evidence that our universe did blast into existence. Results from the Cosmic Background Explorer were honored with the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physics. A period of darkness ensued, until about a few hundred million years later, when the first objects flooded the universe with light. This first light is believed to have been captured in data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The light detected by Spitzer would have originated as visible and ultraviolet light, then stretched, or redshifted, to lower-energy infrared wavelengths during its long voyage to reach us across expanding space. The light detected by the Cosmic Background Explorer and the Wilkinson Anisotropy Microwave Probe from our very young universe traveled farther to reach us, and stretched to even lower-energy microwave wavelengths. Astronomers do not know if the very first objects were either stars or quasars. The first stars, called Population III stars (our star is a Population I star), were much bigger and brighter than any in our nearby universe, with masses about 1,000 times that of our sun. These stars first grouped together into mini-galaxies. By about a few billion years after the Big Bang, the mini-galaxies had merged to form mature galaxies, including spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way. The first quasars ultimately became the centers of powerful galaxies that are more common in the distant universe. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured stunning pictures of earlier galaxies, as far back as ten billion light-years away. |
|
The Universe's First Firewor
…
PIA09100
Infrared Array Camera (IRAC)
| Title |
The Universe's First Fireworks |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This is an image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope of stars and galaxies in the Ursa Major constellation. This infrared image covers a region of space so large that light would take up to 100 million years to travel across it. Figure 1 is the same image after stars, galaxies and other sources were masked out. The remaining background light is from a period of time when the universe was less than one billion years old, and most likely originated from the universe's very first groups of objects -- either huge stars or voracious black holes. Darker shades in the image on the left correspond to dimmer parts of the background glow, while yellow and white show the brightest light. "Brief History of the Universe" In figure 2, the artist's timeline chronicles the history of the universe, from its explosive beginning to its mature, present-day state. Our universe began in a tremendous explosion known as the Big Bang about 13.7 billion years ago (left side of strip). Observations by NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer and Wilkinson Anisotropy Microwave Probe revealed microwave light from this very early epoch, about 400,000 years after the Big Bang, providing strong evidence that our universe did blast into existence. Results from the Cosmic Background Explorer were honored with the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physics. A period of darkness ensued, until about a few hundred million years later, when the first objects flooded the universe with light. This first light is believed to have been captured in data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The light detected by Spitzer would have originated as visible and ultraviolet light, then stretched, or redshifted, to lower-energy infrared wavelengths during its long voyage to reach us across expanding space. The light detected by the Cosmic Background Explorer and the Wilkinson Anisotropy Microwave Probe from our very young universe traveled farther to reach us, and stretched to even lower-energy microwave wavelengths. Astronomers do not know if the very first objects were either stars or quasars. The first stars, called Population III stars (our star is a Population I star), were much bigger and brighter than any in our nearby universe, with masses about 1,000 times that of our sun. These stars first grouped together into mini-galaxies. By about a few billion years after the Big Bang, the mini-galaxies had merged to form mature galaxies, including spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way. The first quasars ultimately became the centers of powerful galaxies that are more common in the distant universe. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured stunning pictures of earlier galaxies, as far back as ten billion light-years away. |
|
The Universe's First Firewor
…
PIA09100
Infrared Array Camera (IRAC)
| Title |
The Universe's First Fireworks |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
This is an image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope of stars and galaxies in the Ursa Major constellation. This infrared image covers a region of space so large that light would take up to 100 million years to travel across it. Figure 1 is the same image after stars, galaxies and other sources were masked out. The remaining background light is from a period of time when the universe was less than one billion years old, and most likely originated from the universe's very first groups of objects -- either huge stars or voracious black holes. Darker shades in the image on the left correspond to dimmer parts of the background glow, while yellow and white show the brightest light. "Brief History of the Universe" In figure 2, the artist's timeline chronicles the history of the universe, from its explosive beginning to its mature, present-day state. Our universe began in a tremendous explosion known as the Big Bang about 13.7 billion years ago (left side of strip). Observations by NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer and Wilkinson Anisotropy Microwave Probe revealed microwave light from this very early epoch, about 400,000 years after the Big Bang, providing strong evidence that our universe did blast into existence. Results from the Cosmic Background Explorer were honored with the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physics. A period of darkness ensued, until about a few hundred million years later, when the first objects flooded the universe with light. This first light is believed to have been captured in data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The light detected by Spitzer would have originated as visible and ultraviolet light, then stretched, or redshifted, to lower-energy infrared wavelengths during its long voyage to reach us across expanding space. The light detected by the Cosmic Background Explorer and the Wilkinson Anisotropy Microwave Probe from our very young universe traveled farther to reach us, and stretched to even lower-energy microwave wavelengths. Astronomers do not know if the very first objects were either stars or quasars. The first stars, called Population III stars (our star is a Population I star), were much bigger and brighter than any in our nearby universe, with masses about 1,000 times that of our sun. These stars first grouped together into mini-galaxies. By about a few billion years after the Big Bang, the mini-galaxies had merged to form mature galaxies, including spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way. The first quasars ultimately became the centers of powerful galaxies that are more common in the distant universe. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured stunning pictures of earlier galaxies, as far back as ten billion light-years away. |
|
Explosions - Large and Small
PIA09221
| Title |
Explosions - Large and Small |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
"" Click on the image for full resolution animation (""Half Resolution) This animation shows an artist's concept of Z Camelopardalis (Z Cam), a stellar system featuring a collapsed, dead star, or white dwarf, and a companion star. The white dwarf, the bright white object within the disk on the left, sucks matter from its more sedate companion star, on the right. The stolen material forms a rotating disk of gas and dust around the white dwarf. After a certain amount of material accumulates, the star erupts in a huge nova explosion, known as a "classical nova." After that explosion, the star continues to flare up with smaller bursts, which is why Z Cam is known today as a recurrent dwarf Nova. The remnants of the classical nova explosion form a ghostly shell, which provides lingering evidence of the violent outburst. The animation ends with an image taken by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer on Jan. 25, 2004, when the star system was undergoing a period of relative calm. Astronomers divide exploding binary star systems into two classes -- recurrent dwarf novae, which erupt in smaller, "hiccup-like" blasts, and classical novae, which undergo huge explosions. A link between the two types of novae had been predicted, but the observations from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer bolster the theory that some binary systems undergo both types of explosions. |
|
The X-Ray Sky
| Title |
The X-Ray Sky |
| Explanation |
What if you could see X-rays [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/lib/glossary.html#X-ray ]? If you could, the night sky [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/htmltest/jbonnell/www/multiw_sky.html ] would be a strange and unfamiliar place. X-rays are about 1,000 times more energetic than visible light photons and are produced in violent and high temperature astrophysical environments. Instead of the familiar steady stars, the sky would seem to be filled with exotic binary star systems [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap951226.html ] composed of white dwarfs [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap950910.html ], neutron stars [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap951122.html ], and black holes [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap951127.html ], along with flare stars, X-ray bursters, pulsars [ http://pulsar.princeton.edu/rpr.shtml ], supernova remnants [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap951203.html ] and active galaxies [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap951022.html ]. This X-ray image of the entire sky was constructed with Skyview [ http://skyview.gsfc.nasa.gov ], using data from the first High Energy Astronomy Observatory (HEAO 1) [ http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/heao1/ heao1a2_gifbrowser.html ], and plotted in a coordinate system centered on the galactic center with the north galactic pole at the top. Sources near the galactic center are seen to dominate in this false color map which shows regions of highest X-ray intensity in yellow. Astronomers' ability to observe the sky at X-ray energies will be greatly enhanced by the recently launched X-ray Timing Explorer (XTE [ http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ xte/xte_1st.html ]) satellite. |
|
In the Center of the Keyhole
…
| Title |
In the Center of the Keyhole Nebula |
| Explanation |
Stars, like people, do not always go gentle into that good night [ http://social.chass.ncsu.edu/~flowers/Thomas.htm ]. The above Keyhole Nebula [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap960404.html ] results from dying star Eta Carinae [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap970712.html ]'s violently casting off dust [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap961119.html ] and gas during its final centuries. Eta Carinae [ http://www.seds.org/messier/xtra/ngc/etacar.html ] is many times more massive than our own Sun [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap960916.html ], and should eventually undergo a tremendous supernova [ http://www.gnacademy.org:8001/uu-gna/text/astro/stars/supernova.html ] explosion. Eta Carinae emits much light in colors outside the human visible range. This past week, X-ray [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/lib/glossary.html#X-ray ] emission from Eta Carinae was verified by the orbiting Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer [ http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/xte/XTE.html ] to be periodic, peaking every 85.1 days [ http://lheawww.gsfc.nasa.gov/users/corcoran/eta_car/eta_car_xte.html ]. This, along with a previously hypothesized 5.52 year period [ http://www1.elsevier.nl/journals/newast/jnl/articles/S1384107697000080/ ], indicates that the dying star might be part of a multiple star system. |
|
Evidence for Frame Dragging
…
| Title |
Evidence for Frame Dragging Black Holes |
| Explanation |
Gravity can do more than floor you. According to recent measurements [ ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/pressrel/1997/97-258.txt ] of a star system thought to contain a black hole [ http://wonka.physics.ncsu.edu/~blondin/Blackhole/title.html ], it can spin you too. This effect, called frame-dragging [ http://www.enews.com/magazines/discover/magtxt/9703-1.html ], is most prominent near massive, fast spinning objects. Now, a team led by W. Cui [ mailto:cui@space.mit.edu ] (MIT [ http://web.mit.edu/physics/www/physics.html ]) has used the orbiting Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer [ http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/xte/learning_center/ ] to search for it near a system thought to contain a black hole [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap970516.html ]. Cui's team claim that matter in this system gets caught up and spun around the black hole [ http://physics7.berkeley.edu/BHfaq.html ] at just the rate expected [ http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?1997ApJ%2E%2E%2E475%2E%2E%2E57B&db_key=AST&nosetcookie=1 ] from frame-dragging. Such discoveries help scientists better understand gravity [ http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/NumRel/NumRelHome.html ] itself. |
|
X-Ray Pulsar
| Title |
X-Ray Pulsar |
| Explanation |
This dramatic artist's vision shows a city-sized neutron star [ http://astro.uchicago.edu/home/web/miller/nstar.html ] centered in a disk of hot plasma drawn from its enfeebled red companion star. Ravenously accreting material [ http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/dictionary.html ] from the disk, the neutron star spins faster and faster [ http://universe.gsfc.nasa.gov/videos/millisecond.html ] emitting powerful particle beams and pulses of X-rays [ http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/xte/learning_center/ ASM/welcome.html ] as it rotates 400 times a second. Could such a bizarre and inhospitable star system really exist in our Universe [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap980302.html ]? Based on data from the orbiting Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer [ http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/xte/learning_center/ ] (RXTE) satellite, research teams have recently announced a discovery [ http://universe.gsfc.nasa.gov/new/news/1998/98-129.html ] which fits this exotic scenario well - a "millisecond" X-ray pulsar. The newly detected celestial X-ray beacon [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap980211.html ] has the unassuming catalog designation of SAX J1808.4-3658 and is located a comforting 12,000 light years away in the constellation Sagittarius [ http://www.astro.wisc.edu/~dolan/constellations/ constellations/Sagittarius.html ]. Its X-ray pulses offer evidence of rapid, accretion powered [ http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l2/ cool_binary_fact.html ] rotation and provide a much sought after connection between known types of radio and X-ray pulsars [ http://astrosun.tn.cornell.edu/courses/astro201/pulsar.htm ] and the evolution [ http://astrosun.tn.cornell.edu/courses/astro201/pulsar_graph.htm ] and ultimate demise of binary star systems [ http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/features/movies/binaries.html ]. |
|
Face on Barred and Ringed Sp
…
PIA07909
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Face on Barred and Ringed Spiral Galaxy NGC 3351 |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Ultraviolet image (left) and visual image (right) of the face on barred and ringed spiral galaxy NGC 3351 (M95). The morphological appearance of a galaxy can change dramatically between visual and ultraviolet wavelengths. In the case of M95, the nucleus and bar dominate the visual image. In the ultraviolet, the bar is not even visible and the ring and spiral arms dominate. |
|
A Barred Spiral Galaxy, and
…
PIA07900
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
A Barred Spiral Galaxy, and the Small Elliptical Companion Galaxy NGC 1097A |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Ultraviolet image of the interacting pair NGC 1097, a barred spiral galaxy, and the small elliptical companion galaxy NGC 1097A. |
|
Southern Pinwheel" Galaxy M8
…
PIA07903
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Southern Pinwheel" Galaxy M83 |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
GALEX ultraviolet images suggest the M83 has unusual pockets of star formation separated by large distances from the spiral arms in the main disk of the galaxy. |
|
Virgo Galaxy Cluster
PIA07906
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Virgo Galaxy Cluster |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Ultraviolet image of a small area of the Virgo Cluster of galaxies. |
|
Irregular Dwarf Galaxy IC 16
…
PIA07911
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Irregular Dwarf Galaxy IC 1613 |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Ultraviolet image (left) and visual image (right) of the irregular dwarf galaxy IC 1613. Low surface brightness galaxies, such as IC 1613, are more easily detected in the ultraviolet because of the low background levels compared to visual wavelengths. |
|
Planetary Nebula NGC 7293 al
…
PIA07902
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Planetary Nebula NGC 7293 also Known as the Helix Nebula |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Ultraviolet image of the planetary nebula NGC 7293 also known as the Helix Nebula. It is the nearest example of what happens to a star, like our own Sun, as it approaches the end of its life when it runs out of fuel, expels gas outward and evolves into a much hotter, smaller and denser white dwarf star. |
|
NGC 5128 (Centaurus-A)
PIA07912
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
NGC 5128 (Centaurus-A) |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Ultraviolet image of NGC 5128 (Centaurus-A). This unusual galaxy is believed to be the result of a collision of two normal galaxies. The blue regions toward the top are thought to be areas of star formation induced by powerful jets originating from a central black hole. |
|
Barred Ring Galaxy NGC 1291
PIA07910
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Barred Ring Galaxy NGC 1291 |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Ultraviolet image (left) and visual image (right) of the barred ring galaxy NGC 1291. The visual image is dominated by the inner disk and bar. The ultraviolet image is dominated by the low surface brightness outer arms. |
|
Globular Cluster NGC 1851 in
…
PIA07908
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Globular Cluster NGC 1851 in the Southern Constellation Columba |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Ultraviolet image of the globular cluster NGC 1851 in the southern constellation Columba. |
|
Diverse Group of Galaxy Type
…
PIA07907
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Diverse Group of Galaxy Types, NGC 3190 Field |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Ultraviolet image of a diverse group of galaxy types. NGC 3190 is a dusty edge on spiral galaxy. NGC 3187 is highly distorted. The two are separated by only 35 kilo-parsecs (about half the diameter of our own Milky Way galaxy). A ring, elliptical, and other irregular galaxies are also present. |
|
| General Description |
Exploration Imagery |
|
| General Description |
Exploration Imagery |
|
New Galaxy Quest Readies for
…
| Title |
New Galaxy Quest Readies for Launch |
| Description |
In the Multi-Payload Processing Facility, workers check the deployment of the cover of the telescope on the GALEX satellite. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) is an orbiting space telescope that will observe galaxies in ultraviolet light across 10 billion years of cosmic history. Led by the California Institute of Technology, GALEX will conduct several first-of-a-kind sky surveys, including an extra-galactic (beyond our galaxy) ultraviolet all-sky survey. During its 29-month mission GALEX will produce the first comprehensive map of a Universe of galaxies under construction, bringing more understanding of how galaxies like the Milky Way were formed. GALEX is due to be launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station March 25 via a Pegasus rocket. |
| Date |
03.19.2003 |
|
JWST Project Scientist Wins
…
| Title |
JWST Project Scientist Wins Nobel Prize for Physics |
| General Information |
What is a News Nugget? News Nuggets are bulletins from the world of astronomy. John C. Mather, a senior astrophysicist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and senior project scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), has won the 2006 Nobel Physics Prize. Mather shares the prize with George F. Smoot, a professor of physics at the University of California at Berkeley, for work that helped solidify the Big Bang theory for the origin of the universe. Mather and Smoot were members of a science team that used NASA?s Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite to measure the diffuse microwave background radiation, which is considered a relic of the Big Bang. |
|
STS-30 Mission Insignia
| Name of Image |
STS-30 Mission Insignia |
| Date of Image |
1989-03-08 |
| Full Description |
The STS-30 patch depicts the joining of NASA's manned and unmanned space programs. The sun and inner planets of our solar system are shown with the curve connecting Earth and Venus symbolizing the shuttle orbit, the spacecraft trajectory toward Venus, and its subsequent orbit around our sister planet. A Spanish caravel similar to the ship on the official Magellan program logo commemorates the 16th century explorer's journey and his legacy of adventure and discovery. Seven stars on the patch honor the crew of Challenger. The five-star cluster in the shape of the constellation Cassiopeia represent the five STS-30 crewmembers - Astronauts David Walker, Ronald Grabe, Norman Thagard, Mary Cleave and Mark Lee - who collectively designed the patch. |
|
Deep-Sea Submarine "Ben Fran
…
| Name of Image |
Deep-Sea Submarine "Ben Franklin |
| Date of Image |
1969-07-01 |
| Full Description |
The deep-sea submarine "Ben Franklin" is being docked in the harbor. Named for American patriot and inventor Ben Franklin, who discovered the Gulf Steam, the 50-foot Ben Franklin was built between 1966 and 1968 in Switzerland for deep-ocean explorer Jacques Piccard and the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation. The submersible made a famous 30-day drift dive off the East Coast of the United States and Canada in 1969 mapping the Gulf Stream's currents and sea life. It also made space exploration history by studying the behavior of aquanauts in a sealed, self-contained, self-sufficient capsule for NASA. On July 14, 1969, the Ben Franklin was towed to the high-velocity center of the Stream off the coast of Palm Beach, Florida. With a NASA observer on board, the sub descended to 1,000 feet off of Riviera Beach, Florida and drifted 1,400 miles north with the current for more than four weeks, reemerging near Maine. During the course of the dive, NASA conducted exhaustive analyses of virtually every aspect of onboard life. They measured sleep quality and patterns, sense of humor and behavioral shifts, physical reflexes, and the effect of a long-term routine on the crew. The submarine's record-shattering dive influenced the design of Apollo and Skylab missions and continued to guide NASA scientists as they devised future marned space-flight missions. |
|
Mira Soars Through the Sky
PIA09958
Ultraviolet/Visible Camera
| Title |
Mira Soars Through the Sky |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
New ultraviolet images from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer shows a speeding star that is leaving an enormous trail of "seeds" for new solar systems. The star, named Mira (pronounced my-rah) after the latin word for "wonderful," is shedding material that will be recycled into new stars, planets and possibly even life as it hurls through our galaxy. In figure 1, the upper panel shows Mira's full, comet-like tail as seen only in shorter, or "far" ultraviolet wavelengths, while the lower panel is a combined view showing both far and longer, or "near" ultraviolet wavelengths. The close-up picture at bottom gives a better look at Mira itself, which appears as a pinkish dot, and is moving from left to right in this view. Shed material appears in light blue. The dots in the picture are stars and distant galaxies. The large blue dot on the left side of the upper panel, and the large yellow dot in the lower panel, are both stars that are closer to us than Mira. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer discovered the strange tail during part of its routine survey of the entire sky at ultraviolet wavelengths. When astronomers first saw the picture, they were shocked because Mira has been studied for over 400 years yet nothing like this has ever been documented before. Mira's comet-like tail stretches a startling 13 light-years across the sky. For comparison, the nearest star to our sun, Proxima Centauri, is only about 4 light-years away. Mira's tail also tells a tale of its history -- the material making it up has been slowly blown off over time, with the oldest material at the end of the tail being released about 30,000 years ago (figure 2). Mira is a highly evolved, "red giant" star near the end of its life. Technically, it is called an asymptotic giant branch star. It is red in color and bloated, for example, if a red giant were to replace our sun, it would engulf everything out to the orbit of Mars. Our sun will mature into a red giant in about 5 billion years. Like other red giants, Mira will lose a large fraction of its mass in the form of gas and dust. In fact, Mira ejects the equivalent of the Earth's mass every 10 years. It has released enough material over the past 30,000 years to seed at least 3,000 Earth-sized planets or 9 Jupiter-sized ones. While most stars travel along together around the disk of our Milky Way, Mira is charging through it. Because Mira is not moving with the "pack," it is moving much faster relative to the ambient gas in our section of the Milky Way. It is zipping along at 130 kilometers per second, or 291,000 miles per hour, relative to this gas. Mira's breakneck speed together with its outflow of material are responsible for its unique glowing tail. Images from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer show a large build-up of gas, or bow shock, in front of the star, similar to water piling up in front of a speeding boat. Scientists now know that hot gas in this bow shock mixes with the cooler, hydrogen gas being shed from Mira,, causing it to heat up as it swirls back into a turbulent wake. As the hydrogen gas loses energy, it fluoresces with ultraviolet light, which the Galaxy Evolution Explorer can detect. Mira, also known as Mira A, is not alone in its travels through space. It has a distant companion star called Mira B that is thought to be the burnt-out, dead core of a star, called a white dwarf. Mira A and B circle around each other slowly, making one orbit about every 500 years. Astronomers believe that Mira B has no effect on Mira's tail. Mira is also what's called a pulsating variable star. It dims and brightens by a factor of 1,500 every 332 days, and will become bright enough to see with the naked eye in mid-November 2007. Because it was the first variable star with a regular period ever discovered, other stars of this type are often referred to as "Miras." Mira is located 350 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cetus, otherwise known as the whale. Coincidentally, Mira and its "whale of a tail" can be found in the tail of the whale constellation. These images were between November 18 and December 15, 2006. |
|
Mira Soars Through the Sky
PIA09958
Ultraviolet/Visible Camera
| Title |
Mira Soars Through the Sky |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
New ultraviolet images from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer shows a speeding star that is leaving an enormous trail of "seeds" for new solar systems. The star, named Mira (pronounced my-rah) after the latin word for "wonderful," is shedding material that will be recycled into new stars, planets and possibly even life as it hurls through our galaxy. In figure 1, the upper panel shows Mira's full, comet-like tail as seen only in shorter, or "far" ultraviolet wavelengths, while the lower panel is a combined view showing both far and longer, or "near" ultraviolet wavelengths. The close-up picture at bottom gives a better look at Mira itself, which appears as a pinkish dot, and is moving from left to right in this view. Shed material appears in light blue. The dots in the picture are stars and distant galaxies. The large blue dot on the left side of the upper panel, and the large yellow dot in the lower panel, are both stars that are closer to us than Mira. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer discovered the strange tail during part of its routine survey of the entire sky at ultraviolet wavelengths. When astronomers first saw the picture, they were shocked because Mira has been studied for over 400 years yet nothing like this has ever been documented before. Mira's comet-like tail stretches a startling 13 light-years across the sky. For comparison, the nearest star to our sun, Proxima Centauri, is only about 4 light-years away. Mira's tail also tells a tale of its history -- the material making it up has been slowly blown off over time, with the oldest material at the end of the tail being released about 30,000 years ago (figure 2). Mira is a highly evolved, "red giant" star near the end of its life. Technically, it is called an asymptotic giant branch star. It is red in color and bloated, for example, if a red giant were to replace our sun, it would engulf everything out to the orbit of Mars. Our sun will mature into a red giant in about 5 billion years. Like other red giants, Mira will lose a large fraction of its mass in the form of gas and dust. In fact, Mira ejects the equivalent of the Earth's mass every 10 years. It has released enough material over the past 30,000 years to seed at least 3,000 Earth-sized planets or 9 Jupiter-sized ones. While most stars travel along together around the disk of our Milky Way, Mira is charging through it. Because Mira is not moving with the "pack," it is moving much faster relative to the ambient gas in our section of the Milky Way. It is zipping along at 130 kilometers per second, or 291,000 miles per hour, relative to this gas. Mira's breakneck speed together with its outflow of material are responsible for its unique glowing tail. Images from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer show a large build-up of gas, or bow shock, in front of the star, similar to water piling up in front of a speeding boat. Scientists now know that hot gas in this bow shock mixes with the cooler, hydrogen gas being shed from Mira,, causing it to heat up as it swirls back into a turbulent wake. As the hydrogen gas loses energy, it fluoresces with ultraviolet light, which the Galaxy Evolution Explorer can detect. Mira, also known as Mira A, is not alone in its travels through space. It has a distant companion star called Mira B that is thought to be the burnt-out, dead core of a star, called a white dwarf. Mira A and B circle around each other slowly, making one orbit about every 500 years. Astronomers believe that Mira B has no effect on Mira's tail. Mira is also what's called a pulsating variable star. It dims and brightens by a factor of 1,500 every 332 days, and will become bright enough to see with the naked eye in mid-November 2007. Because it was the first variable star with a regular period ever discovered, other stars of this type are often referred to as "Miras." Mira is located 350 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cetus, otherwise known as the whale. Coincidentally, Mira and its "whale of a tail" can be found in the tail of the whale constellation. These images were between November 18 and December 15, 2006. |
|
Mira Soars Through the Sky
PIA09958
Ultraviolet/Visible Camera
| Title |
Mira Soars Through the Sky |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
New ultraviolet images from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer shows a speeding star that is leaving an enormous trail of "seeds" for new solar systems. The star, named Mira (pronounced my-rah) after the latin word for "wonderful," is shedding material that will be recycled into new stars, planets and possibly even life as it hurls through our galaxy. In figure 1, the upper panel shows Mira's full, comet-like tail as seen only in shorter, or "far" ultraviolet wavelengths, while the lower panel is a combined view showing both far and longer, or "near" ultraviolet wavelengths. The close-up picture at bottom gives a better look at Mira itself, which appears as a pinkish dot, and is moving from left to right in this view. Shed material appears in light blue. The dots in the picture are stars and distant galaxies. The large blue dot on the left side of the upper panel, and the large yellow dot in the lower panel, are both stars that are closer to us than Mira. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer discovered the strange tail during part of its routine survey of the entire sky at ultraviolet wavelengths. When astronomers first saw the picture, they were shocked because Mira has been studied for over 400 years yet nothing like this has ever been documented before. Mira's comet-like tail stretches a startling 13 light-years across the sky. For comparison, the nearest star to our sun, Proxima Centauri, is only about 4 light-years away. Mira's tail also tells a tale of its history -- the material making it up has been slowly blown off over time, with the oldest material at the end of the tail being released about 30,000 years ago (figure 2). Mira is a highly evolved, "red giant" star near the end of its life. Technically, it is called an asymptotic giant branch star. It is red in color and bloated, for example, if a red giant were to replace our sun, it would engulf everything out to the orbit of Mars. Our sun will mature into a red giant in about 5 billion years. Like other red giants, Mira will lose a large fraction of its mass in the form of gas and dust. In fact, Mira ejects the equivalent of the Earth's mass every 10 years. It has released enough material over the past 30,000 years to seed at least 3,000 Earth-sized planets or 9 Jupiter-sized ones. While most stars travel along together around the disk of our Milky Way, Mira is charging through it. Because Mira is not moving with the "pack," it is moving much faster relative to the ambient gas in our section of the Milky Way. It is zipping along at 130 kilometers per second, or 291,000 miles per hour, relative to this gas. Mira's breakneck speed together with its outflow of material are responsible for its unique glowing tail. Images from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer show a large build-up of gas, or bow shock, in front of the star, similar to water piling up in front of a speeding boat. Scientists now know that hot gas in this bow shock mixes with the cooler, hydrogen gas being shed from Mira,, causing it to heat up as it swirls back into a turbulent wake. As the hydrogen gas loses energy, it fluoresces with ultraviolet light, which the Galaxy Evolution Explorer can detect. Mira, also known as Mira A, is not alone in its travels through space. It has a distant companion star called Mira B that is thought to be the burnt-out, dead core of a star, called a white dwarf. Mira A and B circle around each other slowly, making one orbit about every 500 years. Astronomers believe that Mira B has no effect on Mira's tail. Mira is also what's called a pulsating variable star. It dims and brightens by a factor of 1,500 every 332 days, and will become bright enough to see with the naked eye in mid-November 2007. Because it was the first variable star with a regular period ever discovered, other stars of this type are often referred to as "Miras." Mira is located 350 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cetus, otherwise known as the whale. Coincidentally, Mira and its "whale of a tail" can be found in the tail of the whale constellation. These images were between November 18 and December 15, 2006. |
|
A World Explorer
| Title |
A World Explorer |
| Explanation |
Ferdinand Magellan [ http://www.nortel.com/english/magellan/ferdinand/MagellanBio.html ] was a world explorer. Many consider him the greatest navigator of Europe's 16th century age of sea going exploration and credit his expedition with the first circumnavigation of planet Earth. NASA's Venus probe, the aptly named Magellan spacecraft [ http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/magellan.html ] shown above in an artist's conception, provided a global view of the poorly known surface of Venus [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap950822.html ] - just as Magellan's expedition provided the beginnings of a global perspective of the Earth. Ferdinand Magellan's expedition of 5 ships and 265 men left Spain in 1519 in search of a western route to the Spice Islands of Indonesia. [ http://eduserv.rug.ac.be/~mbagus/ina.html ] In 1522 one ship and 17 men returned. NASA launched the Magellan probe on May 4, 1989. Placed in a polar orbit, Magellan's many circumnavigations resulted in a detailed radar mapping of 98% of the Venusian surface. [ http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/mgnlpsc.html ] As pictured, the radar mapper's antenna resembles a large inverted bowl. Power for the radar was produced by the wing like solar panels. In October of 1994, the Magellan probe entered the Venusian atmosphere and ground controllers lost contact [ http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/mgn_rip.txt ] with the spacecraft. Tomorrow's picture: Two Tails of Comet West |
|
Explanation: The Lunar Orbit
…
| Title |
Explanation: The Lunar Orbiter 1 spacecraft [ http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/database/www-nmc?66-073A ] was launched in 1966 to map the lunar surface [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/lib/moon.html ] in preparation for [ http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/lunartimeline.html ] the Apollo moon landings [ http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/apollo.html ]. NASA's plucky robotic explorer performed its job well and pioneered this classic view of the Earth [ http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/imgcat/html/object_page/lo1_h102_123.html ] poised above the lunar horizon. The first humans to directly witness a similar [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap951117.html ] scene were the Apollo 8 astronauts [ http://www.nasm.edu/APOLLO/AS08/Apollo8_fact.html]. As they orbited the Moon in December of 1968 they also recorded Earth rise in a photograph [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap951225.html ] that was to become one of the most famous images in history - a moving portrait of our world from deep space. |
|
A Cosmic Snowball
| Title |
A Cosmic Snowball |
| Explanation |
Like cosmic snowballs, fluffy comet-like objects [ ftp://pao.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/pao/releases/1997/97-59.htm ] the size of houses and composed mostly of water-ice, may be pummeling planet Earth 5 to 30 times a minute. This controversial theory was originally proposed in 1986 by Dr. Louis Frank (U. Iowa) based on data from NASA's Dynamics Explorer 1 [ http://blanc.physics.uiowa.edu/www/desai/ ]. It is further supported by recently reported findings from the one year old POLAR spacecraft [ ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/presskit/1996/POLAR_Press_Kit.txt ]. Representing a previously unknown class of Solar System objects, these proposed small, icy comets disintegrate in the upper atmosphere at altitudes of 600 to 15,000 miles and so do not pose an impact threat [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap960604.html ] to the Earth's surface or even to spacecraft in low Earth orbit [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap961224.html ]. On breaking up, however, they produce a fleeting trail of clouds of water vapor. Traces of these transient, extremely high altitude clouds [ http://pao.gsfc.nasa.gov/gsfc/newsroom/flash/flash.htm ] can be detected by down looking spacecraft designed to monitor the near-Earth environment. The suspected trail of one such cosmic snowball vaporizing over the Atlantic Ocean and Western Europe at an altitude of 5,000 to 15,000 miles is seen above. It was recorded in a 54 second exposure by POLAR's Visible Imaging System [ http://www-pi.physics.uiowa.edu/www/vis/ ] in September of 1996. A map has been added as a background for location reference. If continuous over the history of the Earth's formation, this relatively gentle cosmic snow shower would have been a major source of water for Earth's present life-nurturing oceans [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap960806.html ] and possibly even a source of simple organic compounds. |
|
Hubble Photographs Grand Des
…
| Title |
Hubble Photographs Grand Design Spiral Galaxy M81 |
| General Information |
What is Hubble Heritage? A monthly showcase of new and archival Hubble images. Go to the Heritage site. What is an American Astronomical Society Meeting release? A major news announcement issued at an American Astronomical Society meeting, the premier astronomy conference. The sharpest image ever taken of the large "grand design" spiral galaxy M81 is being released today at the American Astronomical Society Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii. A spiral-shaped system of stars, dust, and gas clouds, the galaxy's arms wind all the way down into the nucleus. Though the galaxy is located 11.6 million light-years away, the Hubble Space Telescope's view is so sharp that it can resolve individual stars, along with open star clusters, globular star clusters, and even glowing regions of fluorescent gas. The Hubble data was taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys in 2004 through 2006. This color composite was assembled from images taken in blue, visible, and infrared light. |
|
The Earth Also Rises
| Title |
The Earth Also Rises |
| Explanation |
The Lunar Orbiter 1 spacecraft [ http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/database/www-nmc?66-073A ] was launched in 1966 to map the lunar surface [ http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/main.html ] in preparation for [ http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/lunartimeline.html ] the Apollo moon landings [ http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/ap11ann/introduction.htm ]. NASA's plucky robotic explorer performed its job well and pioneered this classic view of the Earth [ http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/imgcat/html/object_page/lo1_h102_123.html ] poised above the lunar horizon. The first humans to directly witness a similar [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000115.html ] scene were the Apollo 8 astronauts [ http://www.ksc.nasa.gov/history/apollo/ apollo-8/apollo-8.html ]. As they orbited the Moon in December of 1968 they also recorded Earth rise in a photograph [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap951225.html ] that was to become one of the most famous images in history - a moving portrait of our world from deep space. |
|
Magellanic Morning
| Title |
Magellanic Morning |
| Explanation |
This early morning skyscape [ http://www.schursastrophotography.com/10dastro/ aus06/lmcsmctwilight.html ] recorded near Winton, Queensland, Australia, looks toward the southeast. Low clouds are seen in silhouette against the first hints of sunlight, while two famous cosmic clouds, the Clouds of Magellan [ http://www.exn.ca/Stories/2000/01/31/58.asp ], also hover in the brightening sky. The Small [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050617.html ] Magellanic Cloud (SMC, upper right), and the Large [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060510.html ] Magellanic Cloud (LMC) are prominent wonders of the southern sky, named for the 16th century Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Magellan ]. They are small, irregular galaxies in their own right, satellites of [ http://www.astro.uu.se/~ns/mwsat.html ] our much larger, spiral Milky Way galaxy. The SMC is about 210,000 light-years and the LMC about 180,000 light-years away. At lower left, bright star Canopus [ http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/~kaler/sow/canopus.html ] (Alpha Carinae), denizen of the Milky Way, is a mere 310 light-years distant. |
|
A Radar Image of Planet Eart
…
| Title |
A Radar Image of Planet Earth |
| Explanation |
This image of Mt. Rainier, Washington USA, planet Earth [ http://volcano.und.nodak.edu/vwdocs/volc_images/img_rainier.html ], was produced by the Spaceborne Radar Laboratory [ http://southport.jpl.nasa.gov/desc/SIRCdesc.html ] which flew on the Space Shuttle Endeavour [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap950807.html ] in 1994. Radar, short for RAdio Detection And Ranging, is a technique which coordinates the operation of a radio transmitter and receiver to measure the direction, strength, and timing of radio echos from the surface of distant objects. An actual image of an object can be constructed by recording and analyzing many echos. One advantage of using radar imaging in planetary studies is that images can be made regardless of cloud cover or lighting conditions. During the early 90s, NASA's Magellan spacecraft [ http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/magellan.html ] was able to use radar imaging to produce similar high resolution maps of the surface of Venus [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap950822.html ]. For more information about the picture click here [ http://southport.jpl.nasa.gov/pio/volcanos/captions/srl2-rainier_cap.html ]. Tomorrow's picture: A World Explorer |
|
A Leonid Bolide Over Kansas
| Title |
A Leonid Bolide Over Kansas |
| Explanation |
The 1998 Leonid Meteor Shower [ http://astrobiology.arc.nasa.gov/leonid/ ] featured many bright events. Extremely bright meteors, known as bolides or fireballs [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap960226.html ], can briefly glow brighter than the full moon [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap950903.html ]. Pictured above [ http://www.icstars.com/HTML/Leo98/leo1.htm ] is a Leonid bolide [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap981123.html ] caught during a five-minute, wide-angle exposure. The bolide was so bright it lit up the surrounding area, making otherwise dark trees visible. Also visible are at least three other meteors, numerous bright stars, and the constellation Orion [ http://www.astro.wisc.edu/~dolan/constellations/constellations/Orion.html ]. This meteor shower is called the Leonids [ http://www-space.arc.nasa.gov/~leonid/1998.html ] because most of the meteors move out from the constellation Leo [ http://www.astro.wisc.edu/~dolan/constellations/constellations/Leo.html ]. At this location near the Powell Observatory [ http://server2.greatlakes.k12.mi.us/explorer/desc/783750828-447DED81.html ] in Kansas, over 200 meteors [ http://www.seds.org/nineplanets/nineplanets/meteorites.html ] per hour were reported. |
|
Art concept of Magellan spac
…
| Title |
Art concept of Magellan spacecraft deployment from OV-104 during STS-30 |
| Description |
In this artist concept, Magellan spacecraft mounted on inertial upper stage (IUS) drifts away from Atlantis, Orbiter Vehicle (OV) 104, just after deployment during mission STS-30. Magellan, named after the 16th century Portuguese explorer, is shown with solar panels stowed. View provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) with alternate number P33264. |
| Date Taken |
1988-11-02 |
|
STS-41 Discovery, OV-103, Ul
…
| Title |
STS-41 Discovery, OV-103, Ulysses payload processing |
| Description |
STS-41 Discovery, Orbiter Vehicle (OV) 103, Ulysses solar polar explorer payload preflight checkout and testing is conducted in Hangar AO at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station prior to its move to Kennedy Space Center (KSC). |
| Date Taken |
1990-08-30 |
|
Hubble Provides the First Im
…
| Title |
Hubble Provides the First Images of Saturn's Aurorae |
|
Astronomers Discover an Infr
…
| Title |
Astronomers Discover an Infrared Background Glow in the Universe |
|
Magnetic Fields Weave Rings
…
| Title |
Magnetic Fields Weave Rings Around Stars |
|
New View of Primordial Heliu
…
| Title |
New View of Primordial Helium Traces the Structure of Early Universe |
|
Build Your Own Space Scrapbo
…
| Title |
Build Your Own Space Scrapbook |
| General Information |
What is an American Astronomical Society Meeting release? A major news announcement issued at an American Astronomical Society meeting, the premier astronomy conference. Back to top [ #top ] |
|
Hubble Observes the Supernov
…
| Title |
Hubble Observes the Supernova in the Whirlpool Galaxy |
|
Galaxy Mission Completes Fou
…
PIA09337
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
Galaxy Mission Completes Four Star-Studded Years in Space |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer is celebrating its fourth year in space with some of M81's "hottest" stars. In a new ultraviolet image, the magnificent M81 spiral galaxy is shown at the center. The orbiting observatory spies the galaxy's "sizzling young starlets" as wisps of bluish-white swirling around a central golden glow. The tints of gold at M81's center come from a "senior citizen" population of smoldering stars. "This is a spectacular view of M81," says Dr. John Huchra, of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass. "When we proposed to observe this galaxy with GALEX we hoped to see globular clusters, open clusters, and young stars...this view is everything that we were hoping for." The image is one of thousands gathered so far by GALEX, which launched April 28, 2003. This mission uses ultraviolet wavelengths to measure the history of star formation 80 percent of the way back to the Big Bang. The large fluffy bluish-white material to the left of M81 is a neighboring galaxy called Holmberg IX. This galaxy is practically invisible to the naked human eye. However, it is illuminated brilliantly in GALEX's wide ultraviolet eyes. Its ultraviolet colors show that it is actively forming young stars. The bluish-white fuzz in the space surrounding M81 and Holmberg IX is new star formation triggered by gravitational interactions between the two galaxies. Huchra notes that the active star formation in Holmberg IX is a surprise, and says that more research needs to be done in light of the new findings from GALEX. "Some astronomers suspect that the galaxy Holmberg IX is the result of a galactic interaction between M81 and another neighboring galaxy M82," says Huchra. "This particular galaxy is especially important because there are a lot of galaxies like Holmberg IX around our Milky Way galaxy. By understanding how Holmberg IX came to be, we hope to understand how all the little galaxies surrounding the Milky Way developed.""Four years after GALEX's launch, the spacecraft is performing magnificently. The mission results have been simply amazing as it helps us to unlock the secrets of galaxies, the building blocks of our universe," says Kerry Erickson, GALEX project manager. M81 and Holberg IX are located approximately 12 million light-years away in the northern constellation Ursa Major. In addition to leading the GALEX observations of M81, Huchra and his team also took observations of the region with NASA's Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes. By combining all these views of M81, Huchra hopes to gain a better understanding about how M81 has developed into the spiral galaxy we see today. The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., leads the Galaxy Evolution Explorer mission and is responsible for science operations and data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, also in Pasadena, manages the mission and built the science instrument. The mission was developed under NASA's Explorers Program, managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Researchers from South Korea and France collaborated on this mission. |
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Art concept of Magellan spac
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| Title |
Art concept of Magellan spacecraft in cruise configuration |
| Description |
Magellan spacecraft cruise configuration is illustrated in this artist concept. With solar panels deployed and having jettisoned the inertial upper stage (IUS), Magellan approaches the sun which it will orbit approximately 1.6 times before encountering Venus. Magellan, named after the 16th century Portuguese explorer, will orbit Venus about once every three hours, acquiring radar data for 37 minutes of each orbit when it is closest to the surface. Using an advanced instrument called a synthetic aperture radar (SAR), it will map more than 90 per cent of the surface with resolution ten times better than the best from prior spacecraft. Magellan is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Martin Marietta Aerospace is developing the spacecraft and Hughes Aircraft Company, the advanced imaging radar. Magellan will be deployed from payload bay (PLB) of Atlantis, Orbiter Vehicle (OV) 104, during the STS-30 mission. |
| Date |
04.27.1988 |
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Artist concept of Magellan s
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| Title |
Artist concept of Magellan spacecraft in elliptical orbit around Venus |
| Description |
Magellan spacecraft is shown in elliptical orbit around Venus, collecting data (radar mapping), and then transmitting data back to Earth in this artist concept. When the spacecraft orbit is close to Venus the synthetic aperature radar (SAR) will image a swath between 9 and 15 nautical miles (10 and 17 statute miles) (highlighted in image), beginning at or near the north pole and continuing to the southern hemisphere. Subsequent swaths will slightly overlap and, during its primary mission, the spacecraft will map most of the planet. When the spacecraft moves into the part of its elliptical orbit farthest from Venus, the spacecraft high-gain antenna will be turned toward Earth and will send the data collected during the imaging to Earth. Magellan, named after the 16th century Portuguese explorer, will orbit Venus about once every three hours, acquiring radar data for 37 minutes of each orbit. Magellan is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Martin Marietta is developing the sp |
| Date |
09.21.1988 |
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Artist concept of Magellan s
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| Title |
Artist concept of Magellan spacecraft orbiting Venus |
| Description |
Magellan spacecraft orbits Venus in this artist concept. The continued quest for detailed topographic measurements of Venus will again be undertaken in April 1989 by Magellan, named after the 16th century Portuguese explorer. Magellan will orbit Venus about once every three hours, acquiring radar data for 37 minutes of each orbit when it is closest to the surface. Using an advanced instrument called a synthetic aperature radar (SAR), it will map more than 90 per cent of the surface with resolution ten times better than the best prior spacecraft. Magellan is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Martin Marietta is developing the spacecraft and Hughes Aircraft Company, the advanced imaging radar. Magellan will be deployed from the payload bay (PLB) of Atlantis, Orbiter Vehicle (OV) 104, during mission STS-30. |
| Date |
04.27.1988 |
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GLOBE Hydrology Workshop SEI
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| Title |
GLOBE Hydrology Workshop SEIP program |
| Description |
Matt Krigbaum (left), a teacher at Mitchell Elementary in Ann Arbor, Mich., pours water from the Pearl River into a turbidity tube to measure the river's light penetration. Krigbaum, along with Lois Williams, principal at Elizabeth Courville Elementary in Detroit, Mich., and Carolyn Martin and Arlene Wittmer, teachers at Elizabeth Courville Elementary, conducted the experiment during a GLOBE (Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment) hydrology workshop. GLOBE is a worldwide, hands-on science education program in which teachers can become certified to implement the program at their schools after taking hydrology, land cover/biology, atmosphere/climate and soil protocol workshops. Twelve teachers from across the country attended the recent weeklong GLOBE training at SSC, offered through its Educator Resource Center and the NASA Explorer Schools program. All workshops are free and offer continuing education units. |
| Date |
06.30.2005 |
|
Visual aid titled "The Magel
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| Title |
Visual aid titled "The Magellan Mission to Venus |
| Description |
Visual aid titled "The Magellan Mission to Venus" describes data that will be collected and science objectives. Images and brightness temperatures will be obtained for 70-90% of the surface, with a radar resolution of 360 meters or better. The global gravity field model will be refined by combining Magellan and Pioneer-Venus doppler data. Altimetry data will be used to measure the topography of 70-90% of the surface with a vertical accuracy of 120-360 meters. Science objectives include: to improve the knowledge of the geological history of Venus by analysis of the surface morphology and electrical properties and the processes that control them, and to improve the knowledge of the geophysics of Venus, principally its density distribution and dynamics. Magellan, named for the 16th century Portuguese explorer, will be deployed from the payload bay (PLB) of Atlantis, Orbiter Vehicle (OV) 104, during mission STS-30. |
| Date |
04.27.1988 |
|
GALEX Distributes Local Gala
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PIA03295
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
GALEX Distributes Local Galactic Treasures at AAS |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
GALEX Poster From sparkling blue rings to dazzling golden disks, Galaxy Evolution Explorer (Galex) scientists are handing out a collection of their finest galactic treasures at the January 2006 American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington, D.C. Mined from the mission's Survey of Nearby Galaxies data, these cosmic gems were collected with the telescope's sensitive ultraviolet instruments. The gallery of galaxies has been made into a poster for meeting attendees visiting the mission's booth. Organized from far-ultraviolet to near-ultraviolet bright galaxies, this poster encapsulates the heart of the mission to study how galaxies and star formation rates have changed over the past 10 billion years. Events in space take millions or billions of years to unfold, which means that astronomers can't watch individual galaxies and stars age over time. Luckily, because the physics of light travel dictates that the farther away an object is from Earth, the longer it takes for its light to travel to us, the universe can be thought of as a time machine. By building telescopes sensitive enough to capture objects that are 10 billion light-years away, astronomers can essentially see an object the way it looked 10 billion years ago. Galex astronomers are using this phenomenon to their advantage by taking snapshots of different galaxies at various distances in space. By comparing portraits of numerous objects at various times in the universe's history, the team can begin to piece together the life cycle of stars and galaxies. For the poster, Galex scientists organized 196 different nearby galaxies in bins of increasing ultraviolet color. By placing the various snapshots side by side, astronomers can see how galaxies age differently. When viewed in ultraviolet, active star-forming regions in galaxies can be seen as glittering blue structures, while a soft, golden glow indicates the presence of older stars. The 196 galaxies represented in the poster were selected from more than 1,000 galaxies in the "Ultraviolet Atlas of Nearby Galaxies." So far, the Galex mission has surveyed more than 100 million galaxies. |
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GALEX Distributes Local Gala
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PIA03295
GALEX Telescope
| Title |
GALEX Distributes Local Galactic Treasures at AAS |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
GALEX Poster From sparkling blue rings to dazzling golden disks, Galaxy Evolution Explorer (Galex) scientists are handing out a collection of their finest galactic treasures at the January 2006 American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington, D.C. Mined from the mission's Survey of Nearby Galaxies data, these cosmic gems were collected with the telescope's sensitive ultraviolet instruments. The gallery of galaxies has been made into a poster for meeting attendees visiting the mission's booth. Organized from far-ultraviolet to near-ultraviolet bright galaxies, this poster encapsulates the heart of the mission to study how galaxies and star formation rates have changed over the past 10 billion years. Events in space take millions or billions of years to unfold, which means that astronomers can't watch individual galaxies and stars age over time. Luckily, because the physics of light travel dictates that the farther away an object is from Earth, the longer it takes for its light to travel to us, the universe can be thought of as a time machine. By building telescopes sensitive enough to capture objects that are 10 billion light-years away, astronomers can essentially see an object the way it looked 10 billion years ago. Galex astronomers are using this phenomenon to their advantage by taking snapshots of different galaxies at various distances in space. By comparing portraits of numerous objects at various times in the universe's history, the team can begin to piece together the life cycle of stars and galaxies. For the poster, Galex scientists organized 196 different nearby galaxies in bins of increasing ultraviolet color. By placing the various snapshots side by side, astronomers can see how galaxies age differently. When viewed in ultraviolet, active star-forming regions in galaxies can be seen as glittering blue structures, while a soft, golden glow indicates the presence of older stars. The 196 galaxies represented in the poster were selected from more than 1,000 galaxies in the "Ultraviolet Atlas of Nearby Galaxies." So far, the Galex mission has surveyed more than 100 million galaxies. |
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Older Galaxy Pair Has Surpri
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PIA09106
Infrared Array Camera (IRAC)
| Title |
Older Galaxy Pair Has Surprisingly Youthful Glow |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Poster Version A pair of interacting galaxies might be experiencing the galactic equivalent of a mid-life crisis. For some reason, the pair, called Arp 82, didn't make their stars early on as is typical of most galaxies. Instead, they got a second wind later in life -- about 2 billion years ago -- and started pumping out waves of new stars as if they were young again. Arp 82 is an interacting pair of galaxies with a strong bridge and a long tail. NGC 2535 is the big galaxy and NGC 2536 is its smaller companion. The disk of the main galaxy looks like an eye, with a bright "pupil" in the center and oval-shaped "eyelids." Dramatic "beads on a string" features are visible as chains of evenly spaced star-formation complexes along the eyelids. These are presumably the result of large-scale gaseous shocks from a grazing encounter. The colors of this galaxy indicate that the observed stars are young to intermediate in age, around 2 million to 2 billion years old, much less than the age of the universe (13.7 billion years). The puzzle is: why didn't Arp 82 form many stars earlier, like most galaxies of that mass range? Scientifically, it is an oddball and provides a relatively nearby lab for studying the age of intermediate-mass galaxies. This picture is a composite captured by Spitzer's infrared array camera with light at wavelength 8 microns shown in red, NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer combined 1530 and 2310 Angstroms shown in blue, and the Southeastern Association for Research in Astronomy Observatory light at 6940 Angstroms shown in green. |
|
Older Galaxy Pair Has Surpri
…
PIA09106
Infrared Array Camera (IRAC)
| Title |
Older Galaxy Pair Has Surprisingly Youthful Glow |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Poster Version A pair of interacting galaxies might be experiencing the galactic equivalent of a mid-life crisis. For some reason, the pair, called Arp 82, didn't make their stars early on as is typical of most galaxies. Instead, they got a second wind later in life -- about 2 billion years ago -- and started pumping out waves of new stars as if they were young again. Arp 82 is an interacting pair of galaxies with a strong bridge and a long tail. NGC 2535 is the big galaxy and NGC 2536 is its smaller companion. The disk of the main galaxy looks like an eye, with a bright "pupil" in the center and oval-shaped "eyelids." Dramatic "beads on a string" features are visible as chains of evenly spaced star-formation complexes along the eyelids. These are presumably the result of large-scale gaseous shocks from a grazing encounter. The colors of this galaxy indicate that the observed stars are young to intermediate in age, around 2 million to 2 billion years old, much less than the age of the universe (13.7 billion years). The puzzle is: why didn't Arp 82 form many stars earlier, like most galaxies of that mass range? Scientifically, it is an oddball and provides a relatively nearby lab for studying the age of intermediate-mass galaxies. This picture is a composite captured by Spitzer's infrared array camera with light at wavelength 8 microns shown in red, NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer combined 1530 and 2310 Angstroms shown in blue, and the Southeastern Association for Research in Astronomy Observatory light at 6940 Angstroms shown in green. |
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| Photo Description |
James Ross Island captured by NASA photographer James Ross(no relation), from NASA's DC-8 aircraft during an AirSAR 2004 mission over the Antarctic Peninsula. James Ross Island, named for 19th century British polar explorer Sir James Clark Ross, is located at the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. The island is about 1500 m high and 40-60 km wide. In recent decades, the area has experienced significant atmospheric warming (about 2 degrees C since 1950), which has triggered a vast and spectacular retreat of its floating ice shelves, glacier reduction, a decrease in permanent snow cover and a lengthening of the melt season. AirSAR 2004 is a three-week expedition in Central and South America by an international team of scientists that is using an all-weather imaging tool, called the Airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (AirSAR), located onboard NASA's DC-8 airborne laboratory. Scientists from many parts of the world are combining ground research with NASA's AirSAR technology to improve and expand on the quality of research they are able to conduct. These photos are from the DC-8 aircraft while flying an AirSAR mission over Antarctica. The Antarctic Peninsula is more similar to Alaska and Patagonia than to the rest of the Antarctic continent. It is drained by fast glaciers, receives abundant precipitation, and melts significantly in the summer months. This region is being studied by NASA using a DC-8 equipped with the Airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar developed by scientists from NASA?s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. AirSAR will provide a baseline model and unprecedented mapping of the region. This data will make it possible to determine whether the warming trend is slowing, continuing or accelerating. AirSAR will also provide reliable information on ice shelf thickness to measure the contribution of the glaciers to sea level. |
| Project Description |
AirSAR collects multi-frequency and multi-polarization radar data for a variety of science applications. It also acquires data in interferometric modes, providing topographic information (cross-track mode) or ocean current information (along-track interferometry). This March 2004 deployment was planned to: * Study the extent and distribution of archeological Mayan civilization (using foliage-penetrating radar) * Study the glaciers of Patagonia and the Antarctic peninsula * Investigate new techniques for the measurement of the forest structure of dense tropical forests * Fill in the largest "void" in the SRTM-derived map of South American topography * Collect additional data for various research initiatives During the deployment data is collected over Central and South America and Antarctica. During the approximately 100 flight hours, AirSAR is acquiring polarimetric and/or interferometric data along a 20,000 km track, or about 200,000 sq. km of data over 40 sites for 30 scientists. AirSAR will collect data related to the following NASA Code YS science programs: * Cryospheric Science * Land Cover/Land Use Change * Natural Hazards * Physical Oceanography * Terrestrial Ecology * Hydrology NASA used a DC-8 aircraft as a flying science laboratory. The platform aircraft, was based at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif., collected data for many experiments in support of scientific projects serving the world scientific community. Included in this community were NASA, federal, state, academic and foreign investigators. Data gathered by the DC-8 at flight altitude and by remote sensing has been used for scientific studies in archeology, ecology, geography, hydrology, meteorology, oceanography, volcanology, atmospheric chemistry, soil science and biology. |
| Photo Date |
March 16, 2004 |
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The Tail of a Wonderful Star
| Title |
The Tail of a Wonderful Star |
| Explanation |
To seventeenth century [ http://www.seds.org/~spider/spider/Vars/Add/ var-dis.html ] astronomers, Omicron Ceti or Mira was known [ http://www.aavso.org/vstar/vsots/mirahistory.shtml ] as a wonderful star, a star whose brightness could change dramatically in the course of about 11 months. Mira is [ http://www.seds.org/~spider/spider/Vars/mira.html ] now seen as the archetype of an entire class of long-period variable stars. Surprisingly, modern astronomers have only recently discovered another striking characteristic of Mira -- an enormous comet-like tail nearly 13 light-years long. The discovery [ http://www.galex.caltech.edu/MEDIA/2007-04/ ] was made using ultraviolet image data from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX [ http://www.galex.caltech.edu/ ]) satellite. Billions of years ago Mira was likely similar to our Sun, but has now become a swollen [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060722.html ] red giant star, its outer layers of material blowing off into interstellar space. Fluorescing in ultraviolet light, the cast off material trails behind the giant star as it [ http://www.galex.caltech.edu/MEDIA/2007-04/images.html#fig5 ] plows through the surrounding interstellar medium at 130 kilometers per "second". The amount of material in Mira's tail is estimated to be equivalent to 3,000 times the mass of planet Earth. About 400 light-years away toward the constellation Cetus, Mira is presently too faint to be seen by the unaided eye, but will become visible again [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070221.html ] in mid-November. |
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Inside Victoria Crater on Ma
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| Title |
Inside Victoria Crater on Mars |
| Explanation |
NASA's Opportunity rover is now inside Victoria Crater [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070904.html ] on Mars [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars ]. Last week the robot rolled [ http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/newsroom/pressreleases/20070913a.html ] about 20 meters into the largest crater any Martian rover [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Rovers ] has yet encountered, the crater next to which Opportunity has been perched for months. Currently, the rolling explorer is situated in Duck Bay alcove [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061002.html ], peering across at the internal crater wall dubbed Cape St. Vincent [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070703.html ]. The above wide-angle view [ http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA09928 ] is from Opportunity's front hazard-identification camera. Over the next few weeks, Opportunity [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070204.html ] is scheduled to explore this telling alien indentation, searching for clues to the ancient past of Mars before the huge impact that created Victoria Crater [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061009.html ] ever took place. |
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The Andromeda Galaxy from GA
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| Title |
The Andromeda Galaxy from GALEX |
| Explanation |
Why does the Andromeda Galaxy have a giant ring? Viewed in ultraviolet light [ http://imagers.gsfc.nasa.gov/ems/uv.html ], the closest major galaxy to our Milky Way Galaxy [ http://www.seds.org/messier/more/mw.html ] looks more like a ring galaxy [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020909.html ] than a spiral [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap030911.html ]. The ring is highlighted beautifully in this newly released image mosaic of Andromeda [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap021021.html ] (M31) taken by the GALaxy Evolution Explorer [ http://www.galex.caltech.edu/ABOUT/about.html ] (GALEX), a satellite launched into Earth orbit in April. In the above image [ http://www.galex.caltech.edu/popups/gallery-M31.html ], ultraviolet colors have been digitally shifted to the visual. Young blue stars [ http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=1964ApJS....9...65V ] dominate the image, indicating the star forming ring [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010612.html ] as well as other star forming regions even further from the galactic center [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000121.html ]. The origin of the huge 150,000-light year [ http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/cosmic_distance.html ] ring is unknown but likely related to gravitational interactions [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020506.html ] with small satellite galaxies [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap021202.html ] that orbit near the galactic giant. M31 [ http://www.seds.org/messier/m/m031.html ] lies about three million light-years distant and is bright enough to be seen without binoculars toward the constellation [ http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellations ] of Andromeda [ http://www.astronomical.org/constellations/and.html ]. |
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Venus On The Horizon
| Title |
Venus On The Horizon |
| Explanation |
The month of October [ http://www.skypub.com/whatsup/oct97sky.html ] features a sky full of planets, including Venus as the brilliant evening star. Besides the sun and moon, Venus is the brightest object [ http://www.seds.org/billa/nineplanets/venus.html ] visible in Earth's sky. This month, Venus appears in early evening near the red planet Mars [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap970528.html ] and Mars' red giant rival Antares [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap970922.html ] above the southwestern horizon. Because it is closer to the sun than Earth, Venus never strays far from the sun in its apparent position [ http://quasar.as.utexas.edu/courses/ast309/misc/DresdenCodex.html ] and is seen during the year as either a bright morning or evening star [ http://rowlf.cc.wwu.edu:8080/~skywise/legends.html#Evening Star ]. This beautiful sunset imaged from low earth orbit by the Atlantis space shuttle [ http://www.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/resources/orbiters/atlantis.html ] crew in May 1989 also reveals the planet Venus blazing above Earth's horizon. It is a fitting image [ http://images.jsc.nasa.gov/images/pao/STS30/10063311.htm ] for this mission and crew [ http://www.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/sts-30/sts-30-press-kit.txt ]. It was recorded following the successful release of the robot Venus-explorer Magellan [ http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/magellan.html ], the first planetary probe to be deployed from a space shuttle. |
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![Explanation: The Lunar Orbiter 1 spacecraft [ http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/database/www-nmc?66-073A ] was launched in 1966 to map the lunar surface [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/lib/moon.html ] in preparation for [ http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/lunartimeline.html ] the Apollo moon landings [ http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/apollo.html ]. NASA's plucky robotic explorer performed its job well and pioneered this classic view of the Earth [ http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/imgcat/html/object_page/lo1_h102_123.html ] poised above the lunar horizon. The first humans to directly witness a similar [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap951117.html ] scene were the Apollo 8 astronauts [ http://www.nasm.edu/APOLLO/AS08/Apollo8_fact.html]. As they orbited the Moon in December of 1968 they also recorded Earth rise in a photograph [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap951225.html ] that was to become one of the most famous images in history - a moving portrait of our world from deep space.](http://mm04.nasaimages.org/MediaManager/srvr?mediafile=/Size1/NVA2-4-NA/8078/earthrise_lo1.jpg&userid=1&username=admin&resolution=1&servertype=JVA&cid=4&iid=NVA2&vcid=NA&usergroup=NASA_Astronomy_Picture_of_the_Day_Collecti-4-Admin&profileid=16)
