“The above image shows a three-millimeter-wide droplet of heptane fuel burning in microgravity. The burning fuel (yellow) produces particles of soot (green) that ultimately spiral out from the flame zone in long, twisting streamers.”
Posts tagged NASA.
New View of the Great Nebula in Carina
“Eta Carinae is one of the most massive and brightest stars in the Milky Way. Compared to our own Sun, it is about 100 times as massive and a million times as bright. This famed variable hypergiant star (upper center) is surrounded by the Carina Nebula. In this composite image spanning the visible and infrared parts of the spectrum, areas that appear blue are not obscured by dust, while areas that appear red are hidden behind dark clouds of dust in visible light. A study combining X-ray and Infrared observations has revealed a new population of massive stars lurking in regions of the nebula that are highly obscured by dust. Adding these new massive stars to the known massive stars suggests that the Carina Nebula will produce twice as many supernova explosions as previously supposed.
Visible light in the blue part of the spectrum from the Digital Sky Survey is represented as blue, near infrared light with a wavelength of 2.2 microns from the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) is green, and infrared observations from the Infrared Array Camera on NASA’s Spitzer Space telescope at 3.6 microns is red”
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/M. Povich (Penn State Univ.)
Eyes in the Sky “These shape-shifting galaxies have taken on the form of a giant mask. The icy blue eyes are actually the cores of two merging galaxies, called NGC 2207 and IC 2163, and the mask is their spiral arms. The false-colored image consists of infrared data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope (red) and visible data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (blue/green). NGC 2207 and IC 2163 met and began a sort of gravitational tango about 40 million years ago. The two galaxies are tugging at each other, stimulating new stars to form. Eventually, this cosmic ball will come to an end, when the galaxies meld into one. The dancing duo is located 140 million light-years away in the Canis Major constellation. The infrared data from Spitzer highlight the galaxies’ dusty regions, while the visible data from Hubble indicates starlight. In the Hubble-only image (not pictured here), the dusty regions appear as dark lanes. The Hubble data correspond to light with wavelengths of .44 and .55 microns (blue and green, respectively). The Spitzer data represent light of 8 microns.” Image credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI/Vassar
The Triangulum Galaxy
“The Triangulum Galaxy is located nearly 3 million light years from Earth. And, in a study that pushes the limits of observations currently possible from Earth, a team of NASA and European scientists recorded the “fingerprints” of mystery molecules in the Triangulum Galaxy, as well as the Andromeda Galaxy.”
Venus Rising
“This hemispheric view of Venus was created using more than a decade of radar investigations culminating in the 1990-1994 Magellan mission, and is centered on the planet’s North Pole. The Magellan spacecraft imaged more than 98 percent of the planet Venus and a mosaic of the Magellan images (most with illumination from the west) forms the image base. Gaps in the Magellan coverage were filled with images from the Earth-based Arecibo radar in a region centered roughly on 0 degree latitude and longitude, and with a neutral tone elsewhere (primarily near the south pole). This composite image was processed to improve contrast and to emphasize small features, and was color-coded to represent elevation. Gaps in the elevation data from the Magellan radar altimeter were filled with altimetry from the Venera spacecraft and the Pioneer Venus missions.”
Tassili n’Ajjer National Park
“This image from 2000 was made from multiple observations by the Landsat 7 satellite, using a combination of infrared, near-infrared and visible light to better distinguish between the park’s various rock types. Sand appears in shades of yellow and tan. Granite rocks appear brick red. Blue areas are likely salts. As the patchwork of colors suggests, the geology of Tassili n’Ajjer is complex. The plateau is composed of sandstone around a mass of granite.”
Rho Ophiuchi
“The amazing variety of colors seen in this image represents different wavelengths of infrared light. The bright white nebula in the center of the image is glowing due to heating from nearby stars, resulting in what is called an emission nebula. The same is true for most of the multi-hued gas prevalent throughout the entire image, including the bluish, bow-shaped feature near the bottom right. The bright red area in the bottom right is light from the star in the center—Sigma Scorpii—that is reflected off of the dust surrounding it, creating what is called a reflection nebula. And the much darker areas scattered throughout the image are pockets of cool, dense gas that block out the background light, resulting in absorption (or ‘dark’) nebulae. WISE’s longer wavelength detectors can typically see through dark nebulae, but these are exceptionally opaque.
The bright pink objects just left of center are young stellar objects—baby stars just beginning to form. Many of them are still enveloped in their own tiny compact nebulae. In visible light, these baby stars are completely hidden in the dark nebula that surrounds them. Also seen in this image are some of the oldest stars in our Milky Way galaxy. The first cluster, M80, is on the far right edge of the image towards the top. The second, NGC 6144, is found close to the bottom edge near the center. They both appear as small densely compacted groups of blue stars. Globular clusters such as these typically harbor some of the oldest stars known, some as old as 13 billion years, born soon after the universe formed.”
Circles Of Life
Photograph courtesy NASA and NASA Earth Observatory
“Fields near the city of Perdizes, in the Minas Gerais state of Brazil, are seen in a 2011 astronaut photograph.”
Aurora Over Earth
Photograph courtesy NASA and NASA Earth Observatory
“During a geomagnetic storm, a neon green ribbon of aurora australis danced over Earth in this 2010 photograph taken by an astronaut on the International Space Station.”
Alaska’s Susitna Glacier
“Like rivers of liquid water, glaciers flow downhill, with tributaries joining to form larger rivers. But where water rushes, ice crawls. As a result, glaciers gather dust and dirt, and bear long-lasting evidence of past movements.
Alaska’s Susitna Glacier revealed some of its long, grinding journey when the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite passed overhead on Aug. 27, 2009. This satellite image combines infrared, red and green wavelengths to form a false-color image. Vegetation is red and the glacier’s surface is marbled with dirt-free blue ice and dirt-coated brown ice. Infusions of relatively clean ice push in from tributaries in the north. The glacier surface appears especially complex near the center of the image, where a tributary has pushed the ice in the main glacier slightly southward.
Susitna flows over a seismically active area. In fact, a 7.9-magnitude quake struck the region in November 2002, along a previously unknown fault. Geologists surmised that earthquakes had created the steep cliffs and slopes in the glacier surface, but in fact most of the jumble is the result of surges in tributary glaciers.
Glacier surges—typically short-lived events where a glacier moves many times its normal rate—can occur when melt water accumulates at the base and lubricates the flow. This water may be supplied by meltwater lakes that accumulate on top of the glacier; some are visible in the lower left corner of this image. The underlying bedrock can also contribute to glacier surges, with soft, easily deformed rock leading to more frequent surges.”
Image Credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science
