Explanation:
It was Halloween and the sky looked like a creature. Exactly which creature,
the astrophotographer was unsure (but possibly you can suggest one). Exactly
what caused the eerie apparition was sure: one of the best auroral displays in
recent memory. This spectacular aurora had an unusually high degree of detail.
Pictured above, the vivid green and purple auroral colors are caused by high
atmospheric oxygen and hydrogen reacting to a burst of incoming electrons.
Birch trees in Tromsø, Norway formed an also eerie foreground. Many other
photogenic auroras have been triggered by recent energetic flares on the Sun.
در تاریخ سیاره ی زمین ، گونه ی انسان دیر ، - بسیار دیر- پدید آمد؛ اما در همین زمان کوتاهی که بر روی زمین بوده است ، " دست آدمی" ، تغییرات ژرفی در هوا، در آب و خاک ، در دیگر موجودات زنده و در همه ی نظامی که بخش های گونه گون آن در پیوند بهم فشرده با یکدیگر ، بر هم کنش دارند و محیط زندگی او را می سازند، پدید آورده است . همه ی این ها در آخرین لحظه ی " زمان زمین شناسی " ، روی داده است .
۱۳۹۲ دی ۷, شنبه
Solar Eclipse from Uganda
Explanation:
The Sun's disk was totally eclipsed for a brief 20 seconds as the Moon's dark
umbral shadow raced across Pokwero in northwestern Uganda on November 3rd. So
this sharp telescopic view of totality in clear skies from the central African
locale was much sought after by eclipse watchers. In the inspiring celestial
scene the Moon just covers the overwhelmingly bright photosphere, the lower,
normally visible layer of the Sun's atmosphere. Extending beyond the
photosphere, the reddish hydrogen alpha glow of the solar chromosphere outlines
the lunar silhouette, fading into the Sun's tenuous, hot, outer atmosphere or
corona. Planet-sized prominences reaching beyond the limb of the active Sun
adorn the edges of the silhouette, including a cloud of glowing plasma
separated from the chromosphere near the 1 o'clock position.
In the shadow of Saturn
Explanation:
In the shadow of Saturn, unexpected wonders appear. The robotic Cassini
spacecraft now orbiting Saturn drifted in giant planet's shadow earlier this
year and looked back toward the eclipsed Sun. Cassini saw a unique and
celebrated view. First, the night side of Saturn is seen to be partly lit by
light reflected from its own majestic ring system. Next, Saturn's expansive
ring system appears as majestic as always even from this odd angle. Ring
particles, many glowing only as irregular crescents, slightly scatter sunlight
toward Cassini in this natural color image. Several moons and ring features are
also discernible. Appearing quite prominently is Saturn's E ring, the ring
created by the unusual ice-fountains of the moon Enceladus and the outermost
ring visible above. To the upper left, far in the distance, are the planets
Mars and Venus. To the lower right, however, is perhaps the most wondrous
spectacle of all: the almost invisible, nearly ignorable, pale blue dot of
Earth.
One Special Day in the Life of Planet Earth
The cameras on NASA's Cassini
spacecraft captured this rare look at Earth and its moon from Saturn orbit on
July 19, 2013. Taken while performing a large wide-angle mosaic of the entire
Saturn ring system, narrow-angle camera images were deliberately inserted into
the sequence in order to image Earth and its moon. This is the second time that
Cassini has imaged Earth from within Saturn's shadow, and only the third time
ever that our planet has been imaged from the outer solar system.
Earth is the blue point of light on
the left; the moon is fainter, white, and on the right. Both are seen here
through the faint, diffuse E ring of Saturn. Earth was brighter than the
estimated brightness used to calculate the narrow-angle camera exposure times.
Hence, information derived from the wide-angle camera images was used to
process this color composite.
Both Earth and the moon have been
increased in brightness for easy visibility; in addition, brightness of the
moon has been increased relative to Earth, and the brightness of the E ring has
been increased as well.
Images taken using red, green and blue
spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. (The
accompanying wide angle frame can be found at PIA17171.) The images were
obtained by the Cassini spacecraft cameras on July 19, 2013 at a distance of
approximately 898.414 million miles (1.445858 billion kilometers) from Earth.
Image scale on the Earth is 5,382 miles (8,662 kilometers) per pixel. The illuminated
areas of neither Earth nor the moon are resolved here. Consequently, the size
of each "dot" is the same size that a point of light of comparable
brightness would have in the narrow angle camera.
A close-up view of Earth and moon,
magnified by a factor of five is available at PIA17170.
The first image of Earth captured from
the outer solar system was taken by NASA's Voyager 1 in 1990 and famously
titled "Pale Blue Dot" (PIA00452). Sixteen years later, in 2006,
Cassini imaged the Earth in the stunning and unique mosaic of Saturn called
"In Saturn's Shadow-The Pale Blue Dot" (PIA08329). And, seven years
further along, Cassini did it again in a coordinated event that became the
first time that Earth's inhabitants knew in advance that they were being imaged
from nearly a billion miles (nearly 1.5 billion kilometers) away. It was the
also the first time that Cassini's highest-resolution camera was employed so
that the Earth and its moon could be captured as two distinct targets.
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.
What's that below the Milky Way?
Explanation: What's that below the Milky Way? First, across the top of the above image, lies the faint band that is our planet's sideways view of the central disk of our home Milky Way Galaxy. The Milky Way band can be seen most clear nights from just about anywhere on Earth with a dark sky. What lies beneath is, by comparison, is a much less common sight. It is the striking peak of Castildetierra, a rock formation located in Bardenas Reales, a natural badlands in northeast Spain. Standing 50 meters tall, the rock spire includes clay and sandstone left over from thousands of years of erosion by wind and water. The astrophotographer waited months for the sky to appear just right -- and then took the 14 exposures that compose the above image in a single night.
the Great Comet of 2007
Explanation: Comet McNaught, the Great Comet of 2007, grew a spectacularly long and filamentary tail. The magnificent tail spread across the sky and was visible for several days to Southern Hemisphere observers just after sunset. The amazing tail showed its greatest extent on long-duration, wide-angle camera exposures. During some times, just the tail itself estimated to attain a peak brightness of magnitude -5 (minus five), was caught by the comet's discoverer in the above image just after sunset in January 2007 from Siding Spring Observatory in Australia. Comet McNaught, the brightest comet in decades, then faded as it moved further into southern skies and away from the Sun and Earth. Within the next two weeks of 2013, rapidly brightening Comet ISON might sprout a tail that rivals even Comet McNaught
۱۳۹۲ دی ۵, پنجشنبه
Aurora and unusual Clouds Over Iceland
Explanation:
What's happening in the sky? On this cold winter night in Iceland, quite a lot.
First, in the foreground, lies the largest glacier in Iceland: Vatnajokull. On
the far left, bright green auroras appear to emanate from the glacier as if it
was a volcano. Aurora light is reflected by the foreground lake Jökulsárlón. On
the far right is a long and unusual lenticular cloud tinged with green light
emitted from another aurora well behind it. Just above this lenticular cloud
are unusual iridescent lenticular clouds displaying a broad spectral range of
colors. Far beyond the lenticular is the setting Moon, while far beyond even
the Moon are setting stars.
The above image was captured in late March of 2012.
The Flash Spectrum of the Sun
Explanation:
In a flash, the visible spectrum of the Sun changed from absorption to emission
on November 3rd, during the brief total phase of a solar eclipse. That fleeting
moment is captured by telephoto lens and diffraction grating in this well-timed
image from clearing skies over Gabon in equatorial Africa. With overwhelming
light from the Sun's disk blocked by the Moon, the normally dominant absorption
spectrum of the solar photosphere is hidden. What remains, spread by the
diffraction grating into the spectrum of colors to the right of the eclipsed
Sun, are individual eclipse images at each wavelength of light emitted by atoms
along the thin arc of the solar chromosphere. The brightest images, or
strongest chromospheric emission lines, are due to Hydrogen atoms that produce
the red hydrogen alpha emission at the far right and blue hydrogen beta
emission to the left. In between, the bright yellow emission image is caused by
atoms of Helium, an element only first discovered in the flash spectrum of the
Sun.
The Jets of NGC1097
Explanation:
Enigmatic spiral galaxy NGC 1097 shines in southern skies, about 45 million
light-years away in the chemical constellation Fornax. Its blue spiral arms are
mottled with pinkish star forming regions in this colorful galaxy portrait.
They seem to have wrapped around a small companion galaxy below and left of
center, about 40,000 light-years from the spiral's luminous core. That's not NGC
1097's most peculiar feature, though. The very deep exposure hints of faint,
mysterious jets, most easily seen to extend well beyond the bluish arms toward
the lower right. In fact, four faint jets are ultimately recognized in optical
images of NGC 1097. The jets trace an X centered on the galaxy's nucleus, but
probably don't originate there. Instead, they could be fossil star streams,
trails left over from the capture and disruption of a much smaller galaxy in
the large spiral's ancient past. A Seyfert galaxy, NGC 1097's nucleus also
harbors a supermassive black hole.
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