Latest Posts by mona-roza0 - Page 4

 Mahin Fayaz

dominik schröder

Large photos

Even on mobile devices your photos take on a tall layout instead of being squished. Perfectly pixel friendly.

I’m learning the viola in school:’) such excite

Star Wars aquatic planets

Brilliant Spacescapes by  Conner Jai Bentley

By artist Danil Rusanov.

Lunar Vibes; The Moon.

Credit: Joel Tonyan

A picture of the crescent Earth as it rises above the lunar horizon. The image was taken from the Apollo 17 spacecraft during the final lunar landing mission in the Apollo program (x).

Voyager 1 colour-enhanced image of Saturn taken on October 18, 1980, 25 days before closest approach.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

desert by Dmitriy Kuzin

An image of Pluto with the Sun behind it, taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft minutes after its closest approach on 14 July, 2015 (x).

There's an unidentified object in a strange orbit past Neptune, and no one can explain it

The outer Solar System just got even weirder.

Scientists have discovered a mysterious object located on the outskirts of the Solar System, and while we don’t know much about it yet, what we do know doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Nicknamed Niku, it appears to be a trans-Neptunian object, which means it’s a minor planet that exists past Neptune. But that’s where things start to get a little strange.

While there are lots of minor planets that we know about – ie. objects smaller than planets that aren’t comets – and scientists are finding more all the time, Niku doesn’t behave like the rest of them.

For starters, Niku orbits the Sun on a plane that’s tilted 110 degrees to the plane of the Solar System – the flat orbital disk in which the planets move around the Sun. It’s currently above the plane and rising higher, but it will eventually start lowering as it orbits back around.

Weirder still, while nearly all the objects in our Solar System orbit the Sun in the same direction – called the prograde direction – Niku bucks the trend, with a retrograde (or backwards) orbit of the Sun.

It’s not the first time a trans-Neptunian object has been discovered with a retrograde orbit, but when you combine it with Niku’s orbital tilt, it becomes clear that there’s something very unusual about this minor planet.

“It suggests that there’s more going on in the outer Solar System than we’re fully aware of,” astrophysicist Matthew Holman from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics explained to Shannon Hall at New Scientist.

Continue Reading.

A Logarithmic Map of the Entire Known Universe. Logarithmic scale conception of the observable universe with the Solar System at the center, inner and outer planets, Kuiper belt, Oort cloud, Alpha Centauri, Perseus Arm, Milky Way galaxy, Andromeda galaxy, nearby galaxies, Cosmic Web, Cosmic microwave radiation and Big Bang’s invisible plasma on the edge.

This*

Solar System: Things to Know This Week

Our solar system is huge, let us break it down for you. Here are a few things you should know this week: 

1. Closeup of a King

For the first time since it entered orbit around Jupiter in July, our Juno spacecraft has flown close to the king of planets—this time with its eyes wide open. During the long, initial orbit, Juno mission managers spent time checking out the spacecraft “from stem to stern,” but the science instruments were turned off as a precaution. During this latest pass, Juno’s camera and other instruments were collecting data the whole time. Initial reports show that all went well, and the team has released a new close-up view that Juno captured of Jupiter’s north polar region. We can expect to see more close-up pictures of Jupiter and other data this week.

+Check in with Juno

2. Getting Ready to Rocket

Our OSIRIS-REx mission leaves Earth next week, the first leg of a journey that will take it out to an asteroid called Bennu. The mission will map the asteroid, study its properties in detail, then collect a physical sample to send back home to Earth. The ambitious endeavor is slated to start off on Sept. 8.

+See what it takes to prep for a deep space launch

3. New Moon Rising

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has already mapped the entire surface of Earth’s moon in brilliant detail, but the mission isn’t over yet. Lunar explorers still have questions, and LRO is poised to help answer them.

+See what’s next for the mission

4. A Mock-Eclipse Now

We don’t have to wait until next year to see the moon cross in front of the sun. From its vantage point in deep space, our Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) sometimes sees just that. Such an event is expected on Sept. 1.

+See the latest sun pictures from SDO

5. Jupiter’s Cousins

Our galaxy is home to a bewildering variety of Jupiter-like worlds: hot ones, cold ones, giant versions of our own giant, pint-sized pretenders only half as big around. Astronomers say that in our galaxy alone, a billion or more such Jupiter-like worlds could be orbiting stars other than our sun. And we can use them to gain a better understanding of our solar system and our galactic environment, including the prospects for finding life.

Want to learn more? Read our full list of the 10 things to know this week about the solar system HERE. 

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

Ethereal views of Jupiter’s north and south pole

NASA’s Juno spacecraft has sent back images providing never-before-seen perspective on Jupiter’s north (1st image) and south pole (2nd image). The JunoCam instrument acquired the views on August 27, 2016.

According to NASA, the download of 6 MB of data collected during the 6-hour transit, from above Jupiter’s north pole to below its south pole, took 1.5 days. While analysis of this first data collection is ongoing, some unique discoveries have already made themselves visible.

“First glimpse of Jupiter’s north pole, and it looks like nothing we have seen or imagined before,” said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “It’s bluer in color up there than other parts of the planet, and there are a lot of storms. There is no sign of the latitudinal bands or zone and belts that we are used to – this image is hardly recognizable as Jupiter. We’re seeing signs that the clouds have shadows, possibly indicating that the clouds are at a higher altitude than other features.”

The down under is full of rotating storms of various sizes, similar to giant versions of terrestrial hurricanes, as well. You probably remember this image from the Cassini spacecraft, which observed most of the polar region as it flew past Jupiter on its way to Saturn in 2000. However, the south pole has never been seen from this viewpoint.

What’s more from this treasure trove of news is that along with JunoCam, all eight of Juno’s science instruments were collecting data. The Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM), supplied by the Italian Space Agency, acquired some remarkable images of Jupiter at its north and south polar regions in infrared wavelengths. Here’s the southern aurora:

“These first infrared views of Jupiter’s north and south poles are revealing warm and hot spots that have never been seen before. No other instruments, both from Earth or space, have been able to see the southern aurora. Now, with JIRAM, we see that it appears to be very bright and well-structured. The high level of detail in the images will tell us more about the aurora’s morphology and dynamics,” said Alberto Adriani, JIRAM co-investigator from Istituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali, Rome.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS Original articles: 1, 2