Milky Way Js

New view of the Pillars of Creation - infrared

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Top: Hubble’s infrared vision pierced the dusty heart of our Milky Way galaxy to reveal more than half a million stars at its core. At the very hub of our galaxy, this star cluster surrounds the Milky Way’s central supermassive black hole, which is about 4 million times the mass of our sun.

Credits: NASA, ESA, and Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA, Acknowledgment: T. Do, A.Ghez (UCLA), V. Bajaj (STScI)

Bottom: This annotated, infrared image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows the scale of the galactic core. The galaxy’s nucleus (marked) is home to a central, supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A-star.

Credits: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) Acknowledgment: T. Do, A.Ghez (UCLA),V. Bajaj (STScI)

Do telescopes actually take colorful photographs or are the pretty colorful photographs of galaxies that we know colored afterwards? If a human was floating through space, would space look colorful to them?

So some pictures are taken in different wavelengths to see different characteristics. (infrared wavelengths to see through thick gas and dust, xray wavelengths to see highly energized regions)

But, in the visible wavelengths you are seeing the colors. They’re just enhanced brighter than they might be.

For example, I took this picture of “the California Nebula” using a camera (Canon 60Da) attached to a telescope. This shows one exposure, and the background is red due to effects of the camera (which you subtract):

You take multiple exposures, combine them, subtract the background effects & adjust the color a little and get this…

Cargo transfer bags come in various sizes.  I actually fit into this one and as a joke, Thomas and Shane took me over to the Russian segment, zipped inside.  They told them there was a present inside and opened it up.  I popped out and gave them a good surprise!

Juno Arrives at Jupiter Today!

Today on the 4th of July, 2016 (barring any tragic occurrence with the engine firing) NASA’s Juno spacecraft will enter into orbit around Jupiter.

It’s been traveling since 2011 and carries thick shielding to protect its instruments from the dangerous fields of radiation surrounding the planet.

Juno’s not the first spacecraft to go to Jupiter, but it will be the closest. I like to imagine that Juno will look like a scene from Alien: Isolation where you get to look out the window and see that massive gas giant below you.

The goals of this mission are essentially thus: investigate the weather, atmosphere and magnetosphere on Jupiter.

Moving into a grander context, as answers start to come in and we learn more about Jupiter’s nature we hope to learn more about the questions we must be asking in order to investigate the formation of our very solar system on a deeper level.

Of course with any luck and a lot of hard work, we will be able to build a more harmonious theory of how a star system forms, and the things that go into the construct of a massive gas giant.

(Image credit: NASA and JPL)

North American Nebula js

 Solar filaments a.k.a. prominences – when observed at the solar limb (above), are long clouds of partially ionized plasma suspended above the Sun’s surface by strongly sheared magnetic structures, called filament channels, that can support the dense plasma against solar gravity. Filaments may form at various locations on the Sun, however, they are always found within preexisting filament channels above polarity inversion lines which separate areas of opposite magnetic polarity regions.

Credit: NASA/SDO/LMSAL

M8 // Lagoon Nebula (left of center) & M20 // The Trifid (bottom)