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Wow! You're correct! Pretending she is Captain Janeway
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NASA & World Space Exploration...News, Views, Photos & videos
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Last April 15, three years into its mission, the Mars Curiosity Rover finally sent photos of a Mars sunset. Unfortunately, there was one “problem”: they were in black and white. Not that there is anything wrong with black and white photography of course, but photographer Damia Bouic colorized the photos this week and the final results turned out to be glorious!
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What Would It Be Like to Live on Alien Planet Kepler-186f?
n recent years, NASA's Kepler space telescope and other observatories have discovered more than 1,800 extra-solar planets, with thousands of additional "candidate" planets awaiting confirmation. Current technology is nowhere near able to allow quick intergalactic travel, but if you somehow wound up on an Earth-size alien world, what would you (link)?
Last year, scientists announced the discovery of — the first Earth-size exoplanet found in its star's habitable zone, the region of space in a planetary system where liquid water (and, therefore, life) could exist.
"The star [Kepler-186] is about half the size and about half the mass of the sun, so it's dimmer than the sun," said NASA and SETI scientist Elisa Quintana, lead researcher of the group that discovered Kepler-186f. However, the exoplanet is only 32.5 million miles (52.4 million kilometers) from its star, whereas Earth is 93 million miles (150 million km) from the sun, she noted.
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n recent years, NASA's Kepler space telescope and other observatories have discovered more than 1,800 extra-solar planets, with thousands of additional "candidate" planets awaiting confirmation. Current technology is nowhere near able to allow quick intergalactic travel, but if you somehow wound up on an Earth-size alien world, what would you (link)?
Last year, scientists announced the discovery of — the first Earth-size exoplanet found in its star's habitable zone, the region of space in a planetary system where liquid water (and, therefore, life) could exist.
"The star [Kepler-186] is about half the size and about half the mass of the sun, so it's dimmer than the sun," said NASA and SETI scientist Elisa Quintana, lead researcher of the group that discovered Kepler-186f. However, the exoplanet is only 32.5 million miles (52.4 million kilometers) from its star, whereas Earth is 93 million miles (150 million km) from the sun, she noted.
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The galaxies — also known as NGC 4038 and NGC 4039 — are locked in a deadly embrace. Once normal, sedate spiral galaxies like the Milky Way, the pair have spent the past few hundred million years sparring with one another. This clash is so violent that stars have been ripped from their host galaxies to form a streaming arc between the two. In wide-field images of the pair the reason for their name becomes clear — far-flung stars and streamers of gas stretch out into space, creating long tidal tails reminiscent of antennae.
Picture: NASA/ESA/Hubble
Hubble has taken this stunning close-up shot of part of the Tarantula Nebula. This star-forming region of ionised hydrogen gas is in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy which neighbours the Milky Way. It is home to many extreme conditions including supernova remnants and the heaviest star ever found. The Tarantula Nebula is the most luminous nebula of its type in the local Universe.
Picture: NASA/ESA/Hubble
Undated file photo of Mars, as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. A close encounter of the Martian kind was due to occur Wednesday June 13 2001, and could trigger a flood of UFO reports. Mars was heading towards its closest approach to Earth in more than a dozen years. The planet will be approximately 42 million miles away close enough for the polar ice caps to be seen through a small telescope.
Picture: PA/NASA Planetary Photojournal
Star formation is one of the most important processes in shaping the Universe; it plays a pivotal role in the evolution of galaxies and it is also in the earliest stages of star formation that planetary systems first appear.Yet there is still much that astronomers don’t understand, such as how do the properties of stellar nurseries vary according to the composition and density of gas present, and what triggers star formation in the first place? The driving force behind star formation is particularly unclear for a type of galaxy called a flocculent spiral, such as NGC 2841 shown here, which features short spiral arms rather than prominent and well-defined galactic limbs.
Picture: NASA/ESA/Hubble
This new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows a beautiful spiral galaxy known as PGC 54493, located in the constellation of Serpens (The Serpent). This galaxy is part of a galaxy cluster that has been studied by astronomers exploring an intriguing phenomenon known as weak gravitational lensing.This effect, caused by the uneven distribution of matter (including dark matter) throughout the Universe, has been explored via surveys such as the Hubble Medium Deep Survey. Dark matter is one of the great mysteries in cosmology. It behaves very differently from ordinary matter as it does not emit or absorb light or other forms of electromagnetic energy — hence the term 'dark'.
Picture: NASA/ESA/Hubble
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To celebrate its 24th year in orbit, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has released this beautiful new image of part of NGC 2174, also known as the Monkey Head Nebula.NGC 2174 lies about 6400 light-years away in the constellation of Orion (The Hunter). Hubble previously viewed this part of the sky back in 2011 — the colourful region is filled with young stars embedded within bright wisps of cosmic gas and dust.This portion of the Monkey Head Nebula was imaged in the infrared using Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3.
Picture: NASA/ESA/Hubble
This dramatic image offers a peek inside a cavern of roiling dust and gas where thousands of stars are forming. The image, taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, represents the sharpest view ever taken of this region, called the Orion Nebula. More than 3,000 stars of various sizes appear in this image. Some of them have never been seen in visible light. These stars reside in a dramatic dust-and-gas landscape of plateaus, mountains, and valleys that are reminiscent of the Grand Canyon.The Orion Nebula is a picture book of star formation, from the massive, young stars that are shaping the nebula to the pillars of dense gas that may be the homes of budding stars. The bright central region is the home of the four heftiest stars in the nebula. The stars are called the Trapezium because they are arranged in a trapezoid pattern. Ultraviolet light unleashed by these stars is carving a cavity in the nebula and disrupting the growth of hundreds of smaller stars.
Picture: NASA/ESA/Hubble
NGC 7714 is a spiral galaxy 100 million light-years from Earth — a relatively close neighbour in cosmic terms.The galaxy has witnessed some violent and dramatic events in its recent past. Tell-tale signs of this brutality can be seen in NGC 7714's strangely shaped arms, and in the smoky golden haze that stretches out from the galactic centre — caused by an ongoing merger with its smaller galactic companion NGC 7715, which is out of the frame of this image.
Picture: NASA/ESA/Hubble
This image shows an evaporating non-solar system planet. That was the first time that an atmosphere of dense hydrogen, warm and large, has been noticed around a non-solar system planet.
Picture: EPA/NASA/ESA/Hubble
Like dust bunnies that lurk in corners and under beds, surprisingly complex loops and blobs of cosmic dust lie hidden in the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 1316. This image made from data obtained with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope reveals the dust lanes and star clusters of this giant galaxy that give evidence that it was formed from a past merger of two gas-rich galaxies.
Picture: NASA/ESA/Hubble
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This image shows NGC 121, a globular cluster in the constellation of Tucana (The Toucan). Globular clusters are big balls of old stars that orbit the centres of their galaxies like satellites — the Milky Way, for example, has around 150.NGC 121 belongs to one of our neighbouring galaxies, the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). It was discovered in 1835 by English astronomer John Herschel, and in recent years it has been studied in detail by astronomers wishing to learn more about how stars form and evolve.
Picture: NASA/ESA/Hubble
The brightly glowing plumes seen in this image are reminiscent of an underwater scene, with turquoise-tinted currents and nebulous strands reaching out into the surroundings.However, this is no ocean. This image actually shows part of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a small nearby galaxy that orbits our galaxy, the Milky Way, and appears as a blurred blob in our skies. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has peeked many times into this galaxy, releasing stunning images of the whirling clouds of gas and sparkling stars.This image shows part of the Tarantula Nebula's outskirts. This famously beautiful nebula, located within the LMC, is a frequent target for Hubble.
Picture: NASA/ESA/Hubble
This Hubble image, captured and released to celebrate the telescope’s 23rd year in orbit, shows part of the sky in the constellation of Orion (The Hunter). Rising like a giant seahorse from turbulent waves of dust and gas is the Horsehead Nebula, otherwise known as Barnard 33.This image shows the region in infrared light, which has longer wavelengths than visible light and can pierce through the dusty material that usually obscures the nebula’s inner regions. The result is a rather ethereal and fragile-looking structure, made of delicate folds of gas — very different to the nebula’s appearance in visible light.
Picture: NASA/ESA/Hubble
A handout photo released on December 18, 2012 by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope celebrates the holiday season with a striking image of the planetary nebula NGC 5198. The intricate structure of the stellar eruption looks like a giant and brightly coloured ribbon in space
Picture: AFP/NASA/ESA/Hubble
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See Mystery Spots on Dwarf Planet Ceres Shine in New Video
The dwarf planet Ceres' puzzling bright spots are starting to come into focus.
NASA's Dawn spacecraft has obtained the best views yet of the mysterious features, capturing them from a distance of just 8,400 miles (13,600 kilometers) in a series of images that mission team members combined to make a .
The new photos, which Dawn took on May 3 and May 4, have a resolution of 0.8 miles (1.3 km) per pixel. They reveal that the two brightest spots are actually made up of numerous small patches, though just what the features are remains a mystery, NASA officials said.
"Dawn scientists can now conclude that the intense brightness of these spots is due to the reflection of sunlight by highly reflective material on the surface, possibly ice," Dawn principal investigator Christopher Russell of the University of California, Los Angeles, .
The $466 million Dawn mission launched in September 2007. From July 2011 through September 2012, Dawn orbited the protoplanet Vesta, which, like , lies in the main asteroid belt, located between Mars and Jupiter.
Dawn arrived at the 590-mile-wide (950 km) Ceres on March 6, in the process becoming the first spacecraft ever to orbit a dwarf planet, as well as the first to circle two objects beyond the Earth-moon system.
The probe just departed its first science orbit at Ceres; on Saturday (May 9), Dawn fired up its ion engine and began spiraling down to its second science orbit, which will take the spacecraft within 2,700 miles (4,400 km) of Ceres' surface.
Dawn is expected to get there by June 6. (Ion engines are extremely efficient, but very low-thrust.) The probe will then begin a comprehensive mapping campaign that should reveal key insights about Ceres' geological history. That could include whether or not the dwarf planet is still geologically active, a possibility hinted at by a recent Hubble Space Telescope observation of apparent water-vapor plumes emanating from Ceres.
Dawn will eventually descend to two even closer-in orbits, studying Ceres from a distance of just 900 miles (1,450 km) and 230 miles (370 km) over the course of its time at the dwarf planet before wrapping up its mission in June 2016.
(Just as a comparison the earth’s moon is 1,700 km in radius)
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The dwarf planet Ceres' puzzling bright spots are starting to come into focus.
NASA's Dawn spacecraft has obtained the best views yet of the mysterious features, capturing them from a distance of just 8,400 miles (13,600 kilometers) in a series of images that mission team members combined to make a .
The new photos, which Dawn took on May 3 and May 4, have a resolution of 0.8 miles (1.3 km) per pixel. They reveal that the two brightest spots are actually made up of numerous small patches, though just what the features are remains a mystery, NASA officials said.
"Dawn scientists can now conclude that the intense brightness of these spots is due to the reflection of sunlight by highly reflective material on the surface, possibly ice," Dawn principal investigator Christopher Russell of the University of California, Los Angeles, .
The $466 million Dawn mission launched in September 2007. From July 2011 through September 2012, Dawn orbited the protoplanet Vesta, which, like , lies in the main asteroid belt, located between Mars and Jupiter.
Dawn arrived at the 590-mile-wide (950 km) Ceres on March 6, in the process becoming the first spacecraft ever to orbit a dwarf planet, as well as the first to circle two objects beyond the Earth-moon system.
The probe just departed its first science orbit at Ceres; on Saturday (May 9), Dawn fired up its ion engine and began spiraling down to its second science orbit, which will take the spacecraft within 2,700 miles (4,400 km) of Ceres' surface.
Dawn is expected to get there by June 6. (Ion engines are extremely efficient, but very low-thrust.) The probe will then begin a comprehensive mapping campaign that should reveal key insights about Ceres' geological history. That could include whether or not the dwarf planet is still geologically active, a possibility hinted at by a recent Hubble Space Telescope observation of apparent water-vapor plumes emanating from Ceres.
Dawn will eventually descend to two even closer-in orbits, studying Ceres from a distance of just 900 miles (1,450 km) and 230 miles (370 km) over the course of its time at the dwarf planet before wrapping up its mission in June 2016.
(Just as a comparison the earth’s moon is 1,700 km in radius)
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Europe from space
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An early morning sunrise over the Grand Canyon seen from the International Space Station. The ISS station completes a trip around the globe in about 92 minutes, allowing the crew to experience 16 sunrises and sunsets each day. Nasa astronaut Terry Virts took this photograph.
Picture: EPA/Nasa/Terry Virts
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South America
Eastern Europe
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Eastern Europe
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