Earlier this month, the Sun exhibited one of the longer filaments on record. Visible as the bright curving streak around the image center, the snaking filament’s full extent was estimated to be over half of the Sun’s radius — more than 350,000 kilometers long. A filament is composed of hot gas held aloft by the […]
On Sept. 12, 1962, President Kennedy speaks before a crowd of 35,000 people at Rice University in Houston. via NASA https://ift.tt/7YIs2TW
What are those red filaments in the sky? They are a rarely seen form of lightning confirmed only about 35 years ago: red sprites. Research has shown that following a powerful positive cloud-to-ground lightning strike, red sprites may start as 100-meter balls of ionized air that shoot down from about 80-km high at 10 percent […]
How does your favorite planet spin? Does it spin rapidly around a nearly vertical axis, or horizontally, or backwards? The featured video animates NASA images of all eight planets in our Solar System to show them spinning side-by-side for an easy comparison. In the time-lapse video, a day on Earth — one Earth rotation — […]
This 180 degree panoramic night skyscape captures our Milky Way Galaxy as it arcs above the horizon on a winter’s night in August. Near midnight, the galactic center is close to the zenith with the clear waters of Lake Traful, Neuquen, Argentina, South America, planet Earth below. Zodiacal light, dust reflected sunlight along the Solar […]
This nighttime photograph from the International Space Station (ISS) as it orbited 261 miles above looks across the Mediterranean Sea from north Africa to southern Europe. via NASA https://ift.tt/oRVGYef
Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were launched in 1977 on a grand tour of the outer planets of the Solar System. They have become the longest operating and most distant spacecraft from Earth. Both have traveled beyond the heliosphere, the realm defined by the influence of the solar wind and the Sun’s magnetic field. On […]
via NASA https://ift.tt/9pXYwgf
Fans of our fair planet might recognize the outlines of these cosmic clouds. On the left, bright emission outlined by dark, obscuring dust lanes seems to trace a continental shape, lending the popular name North America Nebula to the emission region cataloged as NGC 7000. To the right, just off the North America Nebula’s east […]
The Voyager mission was designed to take advantage of a rare geometric arrangement of the outer planets in the late 1970s and the 1980s which allowed for a four-planet tour for a minimum of propellant and trip time. via NASA https://ift.tt/EUdcST2