Earth And The Space

Some facts for you all:

- The Earth gets 100 tons heavier everyday due to falling space dust.

- It would take more than 150 years to drive a car to the sun.

- Astronauts get taller when they are in space.

- One pinhead of the sun's energy is enough to kill a person at distance of 160 km.

- The light hitting the earth right now is 30 thousand years old. Light spent most of this time passing through the dense atoms that make the sun and just 8 minutes to reach us once it had left the Sun!

3d Moon, Picture By Jeffrey Ambroziak

Thanks to a new 3-D map of the moon, earthbound viewers can see its landscape with a clarity that only Apollo’s astronauts have previously enjoyed.

“NASA put out some amazing digital elevation data of the moon late last year, but nobody had released it in true 3-D. So I decided I would,” said Jeffrey Ambroziak, the map’s creator.

Ambroziak recently launched a Kickstarter project to fund the printing of a full-resolution, two-sided “National Geographic-style” 3-D moon map. The image above is a section of that full map. (No 3-D glasses? Follow Wired’s How-To Wiki article on creating a custom pair, which in a pinch can be done with just a CD jewel box and some markers.)


Traditional 3-D images create the illusion of depth by tricking your brain into merging two slightly different images. Red-blue anaglyphs that superimpose separate images use this technique, as do 3-D movies that alternate perspective in every second frame.

Ambroziak doesn’t consider these kinds of images to be truly 3-D, as viewers must look at them from a specific distance and angle. Glancing from the sides, or walking toward or away from the image, distorts or destroys the illusion.

“If you watch Avatar in 3-D and move toward the screen, it becomes so distorted you can’t watch it. With maps, a single perspective doesn’t cut it. You want to stick your nose right up there,” said Ambroziak.

Frustrated by these limitations, Ambroziak and his father, Russell Ambroziak, developed an algorithm to give 3-D maps a broader perspective. The trick works by both altering the brightness of pixels and stretching or compressing them, based on where they’re supposed to appear relative to a predetermined perspective.

In 1999 they filed a patent for their creation, called the Ambroziak Infinite Perspective Projection (or AIPP). At the time, however, there wasn’t enough data to make a moon map.

“Twelve years ago, when I invented the format, I was scratching the bottom of the barrel to get any data at all. Now there’s so much free data out there just waiting to be transformed,” said Ambroziak, who used NASA’s latest Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera data to create the new map.

The map allows for 3-D viewing from nearly any angle or distance. The moon map, along with his 3-D maps of Antarctica and Mars, have been displayed at the Underline art gallery in Manhattan. They’ve also captured the interest of the U.S. military, which could use such maps to train pilots over realistic terrain.

If enough people are interested in the full version of his new lunar map, which covers about 8 percent of the moon’s surface, he’ll look into crafting the remaining 92 percent of NASA’s lunar elevation data into 3-D maps.

“Until recently I’ve resisted licensing [AIPP],” he said. “But I loved the idea of using Kickstarter to gauge people’s interest. We’ll have to see what happens.”

Image: This AIPP image is a 1000-by-666-pixel section of the full-resolution 3-D map, which will be a 5398-by-7000-pixel graphic. The perspective is set about 10,500 feet above the bottom of the Heinsius crater, a three-crater formation just below center. The topological elevation tops out at 3,940 feet on piles of ejected rock at the lip of Capuanus crater at top left. (Jeffrey Ambroziak)

Galaxy

NGC 4414, a typical spiral galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices, is about 55,000 light-years in diameter and approximately 60 million light-years away from Earth.

A galaxy is a massive, gravitationally bound system that consists of stars and stellar remnants, an interstellar medium of gas and dust, and an important but poorly understood component tentatively dubbed dark matter. The word galaxy is derived from the Greek galaxias (γαλαξίας), literally "milky", a reference to the Milky Way galaxy. Examples of galaxies range from dwarfs with as few as ten million (107) stars to giants with a hundred trillion (1014) stars, each orbiting their galaxy's own center of mass.

The Antennae Galaxies are undergoing a collision that will result in their eventual merger.

Galaxies contain varying amounts of star systems, star clusters and types of interstellar clouds. In between these objects is a sparse interstellar medium of gas, dust, and cosmic rays. Dark matter appears to account for around 90% of the mass of most galaxies. Observational data suggests that supermassive black holes may exist at the center of many, if not all, galaxies. They are thought to be the primary driver of active galactic nuclei found at the core of some galaxies. The Milky Way galaxy appears to harbor at least one such object.

The Whirlpool Galaxy (on left), an example of an unbarred spiral galaxy.

Galaxies have been historically categorized according to their apparent shape; usually referred to as their visual morphology. A common form is the elliptical galaxy, which has an ellipse-shaped light profile. Spiral galaxies are disk-shaped with dusty, curving arms. Those with irregular or unusual shapes are known as irregular galaxies and typically originate from disruption by the gravitational pull of neighboring galaxies. Such interactions between nearby galaxies, which may ultimately result in a merging, sometimes induce significantly increased incidents of star formation leading to starburst galaxies. Smaller galaxies lacking a coherent structure are referred to as irregular galaxies.

Hoag's Object, an example of a ring galaxy

There are probably more than 170 billion (1.7 × 1011) galaxies in the observable universe. Most are 1,000 to 100,000 parsecs in diameter and usually separated by distances on the order of millions of parsecs (or megaparsecs). Intergalactic space (the space between galaxies) is filled with a tenuous gas of an average density less than one atom per cubic meter. The majority of galaxies are organized into a hierarchy of associations known as groups and clusters, which, in turn usually form larger superclusters. At the largest scale, these associations are generally arranged into sheets and filaments, which are surrounded by immense voids.

 NGC 1300, an example of a barred spiral galaxy.

Spiral galaxies consist of a rotating disk of stars and interstellar medium, along with a central bulge of generally older stars. Extending outward from the bulge are relatively bright arms. In the Hubble classification scheme, spiral galaxies are listed as type S, followed by a letter (a, b, or c) that indicates the degree of tightness of the spiral arms and the size of the central bulge. An Sa galaxy has tightly wound, poorly defined arms and possesses a relatively large core region. At the other extreme, an Sc galaxy has open, well-defined arms and a small core region. A galaxy with poorly defined arms is sometimes referred to as a flocculent spiral galaxy; in contrast to the grand design spiral galaxy that has prominent and well-defined spiral arms.

In spiral galaxies, the spiral arms do have the shape of approximate logarithmic spirals, a pattern that can be theoretically shown to result from a disturbance in a uniformly rotating mass of stars. Like the stars, the spiral arms rotate around the center, but they do so with constant angular velocity. The spiral arms are thought to be areas of high-density matter, or "density waves". As stars move through an arm, the space velocity of each stellar system is modified by the gravitational force of the higher density. (The velocity returns to normal after the stars depart on the other side of the arm.) This effect is akin to a "wave" of slowdowns moving along a highway full of moving cars. The arms are visible because the high density facilitates star formation, and therefore they harbor many bright and young stars.

Galactic Center of the Milky Way 

The word galaxy derives from the Greek term for our own galaxy, galaxias (γαλαξίας), or kyklos galaktikos, meaning "milky circle" for its appearance in the sky. In Greek mythology, Zeus places his son born by a mortal woman, the infant Heracles, on Hera's breast while she is asleep so that the baby will drink her divine milk and will thus become immortal. Hera wakes up while breastfeeding and then realizes she is nursing an unknown baby: she pushes the baby away and a jet of her milk sprays the night sky, producing the faint band of light known as the Milky Way.

In the astronomical literature, the capitalized word 'Galaxy' is used to refer to our galaxy, the Milky Way, to distinguish it from the billions of other galaxies. The term Milky Way first appeared in the English language in a story by Chaucer.

"See yonder, lo, the Galaxyë
 Which men clepeth the Milky Wey,
 For hit is whyt."
—Geoffrey Chaucer. The House of Fame, c. 1380.

NGC 5866, an example of a lenticular galaxy

A lenticular galaxy is a type of galaxy which is intermediate between an elliptical galaxy and a spiral galaxy in galaxy morphological classification schemes. Lenticular galaxies are disk galaxies (like spiral galaxies) which have used up or lost most of their interstellar matter and therefore have very little ongoing star formation. They may, however, retain significant dust in their disks. As a result, they consist mainly of aging stars (like elliptical galaxies). Because of their ill-defined spiral arms, if they are inclined face-on it is often difficult to distinguish between them and elliptical galaxies. Despite the morphological differences, lenticular and elliptical galaxies share common properties like spectral features, scaling relations and both can be considered as early type galaxies which are passively evolving, at least in the local universe.

Sun Bursts

Sun bursts are sudden releases of energy from the sun's atmosphere, known as the corona. Although the bursts are not visible to the naked eye, they represent tremendous amounts of power, and they can have an impact on Earth and more distant planets as the energy travels through the solar system. During periods of increased solar activity, sun bursts can become severe enough to disable satellites and other equipment, as humans have learned to their chagrin.

Changes in the sun's level of activity are caused by the sun's rotation. Like other bodies in space, the sun moves, and as it does, it creates a solar cycle which is caused by rotational forces along the surface of the sun. Sun bursts typically start with sunspots, dark areas which appear on the sun when the cooler inner core of the sun is temporarily exposed by the shifting corona. When sunspots start to spread, it can signal an expected increase in solar activity.

Solar flares, another type of sun burst, occur when the corona releases huge amounts of energy in the fraction of a second, causing a bright spot to appear. Solar flares often occur around sunspots, although they also occur inside the corona, where they cannot be confirmed with visual observations. A big solar flare can release enough energy to interfere with communications on Earth, as the electromagnetic energy from the sun interacts with Earth-bound communications systems and satellites.

In a radical form of sun burst called a coronal mass ejection (CME), the sun pushes out huge flares of plasma. These plasma flares can push against the Earth's atmosphere, causing especially bright, prolonged, and brilliant auroras, and they also increase radiation levels in space substantially. CMEs are one of the reasons that space travel is potentially very dangerous, as the increased radiation level could pose a risk to living organisms in spacecraft.

Scientists can use the ebb and flow of sun bursts to track the sun's cycles, and to gather more information about how the sun works. The activities observed in the sun are also known to occur in other stars, even though researchers cannot usually see them in action because of the great distances involved. Understanding patterns of sun bursts is important to the business community as well as the scientific community, because sun bursts can interrupt satellite launches, the flight of spacecraft, and many other human activities, sometimes with devastating effects.

For more articles about sun and sky click here. Also, check out how big our sun is.

Moon Above North Pole

A scene you will probably never get to see in person.

This is the sunset at the North Pole with a Moon at its closest point.

Blinding Saturn

Blinding Saturn

March 1, 2007

Surely one of the most gorgeous sights the solar system has to offer, Saturn sits enveloped by the full splendor of its stately rings. Taking in the rings in their entirety was the focus of this particular imaging sequence. Therefore, the camera exposure times were just right to capture the dark-side of its rings, but longer than that required to properly expose the globe of sunlit Saturn. Consequently, the sunlit half of the planet is overexposed.

Between the blinding light of day and the dark of night, there is a strip of twilight on the globe where colorful details in the atmosphere can be seen. Bright clouds dot the bluish-grey northern polar region here. In the south, the planet's night side glows golden in reflected light from the rings' sunlit face.

Saturn's shadow stretches completely across the rings in this view, taken on Jan. 19, 2007, in contrast to what Cassini saw when it arrived in 2004 (see Frigid Ringworld).

The view is a mosaic of 36 images -- that is, 12 separate sets of red, green and blue images -- taken over the course of about 2.5 hours, as Cassini scanned across the entire main ring system.
This view looks toward the unlit side of the rings from about 40 degrees above the ring plane.
The images in this natural-color view were obtained with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera at a distance of approximately 1.23 million kilometers (764,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 70 kilometers (44 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

We Are Small And Insignificant

Now, THIS is really fascinating. It's rather dazzling to see it presented this way.

I certainly thought this was enlightening. Beyond our sun ... It's a big universe.

Antares is the 15th brightest star in the sky. It is more than 1000 light years away.

Now how big are you?

And, how big are the things that will upset you today?

Or, for that matter, the things that are important?

KEEP LIFE IN PERSPECTIVE!

Earth At Night

Picture of Earth from NASA's satelite. Beautiful. View it full size for details.

Mt. Everest From Space

This picture of Mt. Everest was taken from the space station, posted on the NASA website.

Ultra Deep Field

Astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute today unveiled the deepest portrait of the visible universe ever achieved by humankind. Called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF), the million-second-long exposure reveals the first galaxies to emerge from the so-called "dark ages," the time shortly after the big bang when the first stars reheated the cold, dark universe. The new image should offer new insights into what types of objects reheated the universe long ago.

Top 10 Amazing Hubble Photos

Named after the trailblazing astronomer Edwin P. Hubble (1889-1953), the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is a large, space-based observatory which has revolutionized astronomy by providing unprecedented deep and clear views of the Universe, ranging from our own solar system to extremely remote fledgling galaxies forming not long after the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago. Launched in 1990 and greatly extended in its scientific powers through new instrumentation installed during four servicing missions with the Space Shuttle, the Hubble, in its sixteen years of operations, has validated Lyman Spitzer Jr.'s (1914-1997) original concept of a diversely instrumented observatory orbiting far above the distorting effects of the Earth’s atmosphere and returning data of unique scientific value.
Hubble's coverage of light of different colors (its "spectral range") extends from the ultraviolet, through the visible (to which our eyes are sensitive), and into the near-infrared. Hubble's primary mirror is 2.4 meters (94.5 inches) in diameter. Hubble is not large by ground-based standards but it achieves heroically in space. Hubble orbits Earth every 97 minutes, 575 kilometers (360 miles) above the Earth's surface.

And here are some of the Hubble's most beautiful photos. Be sure to click on them for full size view and you can also save and use them as wallpapers.

Deep space

Hubble’s view of supernova explosion Cassiopeia A

Eye-catching celestial helix

Giant mosaic of the Crab Nebula made of Hubble images

Hubble's view of the Antennae galaxies

Jupiter's moon Io casts a shadow as it transits Jupiter

Whirlpool Galaxy M51

Largest Hubble galaxy

Symphony of colours in the Tarantula

M31, site of the 'blue light' discovery

Photo: ESA

Spectacular Photo of Shuttle, Space Station And The Sun

It looks like a speck of dust on the surface of the sun. But this spectacular picture shows the space shuttle Atlantis alongside the International Space Station silhouetted as they orbit the earth. Amazing photo.

What looks like a small speck on the photo above, when you take a closer look below, you suddenly see the space shuttle and space center.

The image was taken in Normandy by French astrophotographer Thierry Legault. He used a digital camera attached to a £5,000 specially kitted-out telescope.

The shuttle, which returned last week from a 12-day mission, and the space station can be seen in orbit 250 miles above the earth while the sun is 93 million miles away.

Comets

The image of Hale-Bopp to the left was taken by Phil Langill using the 16" telescope.

Comets are small, fragile, irregularly shaped bodies composed of a mixture of dust grains and frozen gases and are probably left over from the formation of the Solar System. They have highly elliptical orbits that bring them very close to the Sun and swing them deeply into space, often beyond the orbit of Pluto. Comet structures are diverse and very dynamic, but they all develop a surrounding cloud of diffuse material, called a coma, that usually grows in size and brightness as the comet approaches the Sun. Usually a small, bright nucleus (less than 10 km in diameter) is visible in the middle of the coma. The coma and the nucleus together constitute the head of the comet.
As comets approach the Sun they develop enormous tails of luminous material that extend for millions of kilometers from the head, away from the Sun. When far from the Sun, the nucleus is very cold and its material is frozen solid within the nucleus. In this state comets are sometimes referred to as a "dirty iceberg" or "dirty snowball," since over half of their material is ice. When a comet approaches within a few Astronomical Units (AU) of the Sun, the surface of the nucleus begins to warm, and volatiles evaporate. The evaporated molecules boil off and carry small solid particles with them, forming the comet's coma of gas and dust.
When the nucleus is frozen, it can be seen only by reflected sunlight. However, when a coma develops, dust reflects still more sunlight, and gas in the coma absorbs ultraviolet radiation and begins to fluoresce. At about 5 AU from the Sun, fluorescence usually becomes more intense than reflected light.

The image of Hyakutake to the left was taken by Phil Langill using the 16" telescope.

Moon

Click on this beautiful photo to see it full size

The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It has no formal English name other than "the Moon", although in English it is occasionally called Luna (Latin for moon), or Selene (Greek for moon), to distinguish it from the generic term "moon" (natural satellites of other planets are also called moons). Its symbol is a crescent. The terms lunar, selene/seleno-, and -cynthion (from the Lunar deities Selene and Cynthia) refer to the Moon (aposelene, selenocentric, pericynthion, etc.).
The average distance from the Moon to the Earth is 384,403 kilometres (238,857 mi). The Moon's diameter is 3,476 kilometres (2,160 mi). Reflected sunlight from the Moon's surface reaches Earth in 1.3 seconds (at the speed of light). The Moon is the Solar System's fifth largest moon and is the second most massive moon.
The first man-made object to land on the Moon was Luna 2 in 1959; the first photographs of the otherwise occluded far side of the Moon were made by Luna 3 in the same year, and the first people to land on the Moon came aboard Apollo 11 in 1969. It is the only celestial body other than the Earth upon which humans have set foot.

For full size click here!

Ash Cloud from Mount Ubinas, Peru

Mount Ubinas, Peru

Subduction of the Nazca tectonic plate along the western coast of South America forms the high Peruvian Andes. The subduction (movement of one plate beneath another) also produces magma, feeding a chain of historically active volcanoes along the western front of the mountains. The most active of these volcanoes in Peru is Ubinas. A typical, steep-sided stratovolcano comprised primarily of layers of silica-rich lava flows, it has a summit elevation of 5,672 meters (18,609 feet). At 1.4 kilometers (0.87 miles) across, the volcano’s caldera gives it a truncated profile. Hardened lava flows from past eruptions linger on the volcano’s flanks.

This oblique image (looking at an angle) from the International Space Station (ISS) captures an ash cloud first observed on satellite imagery at 11:00 GMT on August 14, 2006. An ISS astronaut took this picture one hour and 45 minutes later. The ash cloud caused the Buenos Aires Volcanic Ash Advisory Center to issue an aviation hazard warning. Minor to moderately explosive eruptions of ash and pumice characterize modern activity at Ubinas. Pumice and ash blanket the volcanic cone and surrounding area, giving this image an overall gray appearance. Shadowing of the western flank of Ubinas throws several lava flows into sharp relief, and highlights the steep slopes at the flow fronts—common characteristics of thick, slow-moving lavas. The most recent major eruption of Ubinas occurred in 1969, although its historical record of activity extends back to the 16th century.

Astronaut photograph ISS013-E-66488 was acquired August 14, 2006, with a Kodak 760C digital camera using an 800 mm lens, and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations experiment and the Image Science & Analysis Group, Johnson Space Center. The image in this article has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast. Lens artifacts have also been removed. The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth.

Space

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space."

Douglas Adams

Iceland through satellite

Satellite imagery consists of photographs of Earth or other planets made from artificial satellites. The first satellite photographs of Earth were made April 1, 1960 by the weather satellite TIROS-1. In the early 21st century satellite imagery became widely available when affordable, easy to use software with access to satellite imagery databases became offered by several companies and organizations. In 2005 the Australian company Astrovision (ASX: HZG) announced plans to launch the first ever commercial Geostationary satellite in the Asia-Pacific. It will provide true color, real-time live satellite feeds, with down to 250 metres resolution over the entire Asia-Pacific region, from India to Hawaii and Japan to Australia. They intend to provide this content to users of 3G mobile phones, over Pay TV as a weather channel, and to corporate and government users.