The International Space Station. Credit: NASA
Friday, February 28, 2014
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Monday, February 24, 2014
Sunday, February 23, 2014
GALAXY SHOCK
Roguish runaway stars can have a big impact on their surroundings as they plunge through the Milky Way galaxy. Their high-speed encounters shock the galaxy, creating arcs, as seen in this newly released image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. In this case, the speedster star is known as Kappa Cassiopeiae, or HD 2905 to astronomers. It is a massive, hot supergiant moving at around 2.5 million mph relative to its neighbors (1,100 kilometers per second). But what really makes the star stand out in this image is the surrounding, streaky red glow of material in its path. Such structures are called bow shocks, and they can often be seen in front of the fastest, most massive stars in the galaxy. Bow shocks form where the magnetic fields and wind of particles flowing off a star collide with the diffuse, and usually invisible, gas and dust that fill the space between stars. How these shocks light up tells astronomers about the conditions around the star and in space. Slow-moving stars like our sun have bow shocks that are nearly invisible at all wavelengths of light, but fast stars like Kappa Cassiopeiae create shocks that can be seen by Spitzer’s infrared detectors. Image Credit-NASA-JPL-Caltech
Friday, February 21, 2014
Thursday, February 20, 2014
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Monday, February 17, 2014
Saturday, February 15, 2014
Friday, February 14, 2014
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Monday, February 10, 2014
Saturday, February 8, 2014
Friday, February 7, 2014
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Monday, February 3, 2014
Sunday, February 2, 2014
SDO SEES PARTIAL SOLAR ECLIPSE
On Jan. 30, 2014, beginning at 8:31 a.m EST, the moon moved between NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, and the sun, giving the observatory a view of a partial solar eclipse from space. Such a lunar transit happens two to three times each year. This one lasted two and one half hours, which is the longest ever recorded. When the next one will occur is as of yet unknown due to planned adjustments in SDO's orbit. > Read more Image Credit: NASA/SDO
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