Astronomy

Atlas V launch carrying NASA satellite.
Pictures I took less than an hour ago. What a night time space rocket looks like from Florida USA.



www.floridatoday.com/article/20140123/SPACE/301230036/Tonight-s-Atlas-V-launch-closes-engineer-s-career

excellent pics aforestfan

nice one aforestfan excellent pictures for patience

Spacecraft take aim at nearby supernova


The Cigar Galaxy (M82) after Supernova 2014J (circled)
Swift's UVOT captured the new supernova (circled) in three exposures taken January 22, 2014. Mid-ultraviolet light is shown in blue, near-UV light in green, and visible light in red. Thick dust in M82 scatters much of the highest-energy light, which is why the supernova appears yellowish here. The image is 17 arcminutes across, or slightly more than half the apparent diameter of a full moon.
NASA/Swift/P. Brown, TAMU

The blast, designated SN 2014J, occurred in the Cigar Galaxy (M82) and lies only about 12 million light-years away.

An exceptionally close stellar explosion discovered January 21 has become the focus of observatories around and above the globe, including several NASA spacecraft. The blast, designated SN 2014J, occurred in the Cigar Galaxy (M82) and lies only about 12 million light-years away. This makes it the nearest optical supernova in two decades and potentially the closest type Ia supernova to occur during the life of currently operating space missions.

To make the most of the event, astronomers have planned observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, and Swift mission.

As befits its mon!ker, Swift was the first to take a look. On January 22, just a day after the explosion was discovered, Swift’s Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope (UVOT) captured the supernova and its host galaxy.

Remarkably, SN 2014J can be seen on images taken up to a week before anyone noticed its presence. It was only when Steve Fossey and his students at the University of London Observatory imaged the galaxy during a brief workshop that the supernova came to light.

“Finding and publicizing new supernova discoveries is often the weak link in obtaining rapid observations, but once we know about it, Swift frequently can observe a new object within hours,” said Neil Gehrels from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Although the explosion is unusually close, the supernova’s light is attenuated by thick dust clouds in its galaxy, which may slightly reduce its apparent peak brightness.

“Interstellar dust preferentially scatters blue light, which is why Swift’s UVOT sees SN 2014J brightly in visible and near-ultraviolet light but barely at all at mid-ultraviolet wavelengths,” said Peter Brown from Texas A&M University.

However, this super-close supernova provides astronomers with an important opportunity to study how interstellar dust affects its light. As a class, type Ia supernovae explode with remarkably similar intrinsic brightness, a property that makes them useful “standard candles” — some say “standard bombs” — for exploring the distant universe.

Brown notes that X-rays have never been conclusively observed from a type Ia supernova, so a detection by Swift’s X-ray Telescope, Chandra, or NuSTAR would be significant, as would a Fermi detection of high-energy gamma rays.

A type Ia supernova represents the total destruction of a white dwarf star by one of two possible scenarios. In one, the white dwarf orbits a normal star, pulls a stream of matter from it, and gains mass until it reaches a critical threshold and explodes. In the other, the blast arises when two white dwarfs in a binary system eventually spiral inward and collide.

Either way, the explosion produces a superheated shell of plasma that expands outward into space at tens of millions of miles per hour. Short-lived radioactive elements formed during the blast keep the shell hot as it expands. The interplay between the shell’s size, transparency, and radioactive heating determines when the supernova reaches peak brightness. Astronomers expect SN 2014J to continue brightening into the first week of February, by which time it may be visible through binoculars.

M82 is located in the constellation Ursa Major and is a popular target for small telescopes. It is undergoing a powerful episode of star formation that makes it many times brighter than our Milky Way Galaxy and accounts for its unusual and photogenic appearance.

www.astronomy.com/news/2014/01/spacecraft-take-aim-at-nearby-supernova

Hubble's Double Take






In this new Hubble image two objects are clearly visible, shining brightly. When they were first discovered in 1979, they were thought to be separate objects — however, astronomers soon realized that these twins are a little too identical! They are close together, lie at the same distance from us, and have surprisingly similar properties. The reason they are so similar is not some bizarre coincidence; they are in fact the same object.

These cosmic doppelgangers make up a double quasar known as QSO 0957+561, also known as the "Twin Quasar," which lies just under 14 billion light-years from Earth. Quasars are the intensely powerful centers of distant galaxies. So, why are we seeing this quasar twice?

Some 4 billion light-years from Earth — and directly in our line of sight — is the huge galaxy YGKOW G1. This galaxy was the first ever observed gravitational lens, an object with a mass so great that it can bend the light from objects lying behind it. This phenomenon not only allows us to see objects that would otherwise be too remote, in cases like this it also allows us to see them twice over.

Along with the cluster of galaxies in which it resides, YGKOW G1 exerts an enormous gravitational force. This doesn't just affect the galaxy's shape, the stars that it forms, and the objects around it — it affects the very space it sits in, warping and bending the environment and producing bizarre effects, such as this quasar double image.

The first detection of gravitational lensing meant more than just the discovery of an impressive optical illusion allowing telescopes like Hubble to effectively see behind an intervening galaxy. It was evidence for Einstein's theory of general relativity. This theory had identified gravitational lensing as one of its only observable effects, but until the observation of these quasar "twins," no such lensing had been observed since the idea was first mooted in 1936.

Image Credit: NASA/ESA

www.nasa.gov/content/hubbles-double-take/#.UulVN_tDIWk

nice pic eduardo

Round and Round

Just as Saturn's famous hexagonal shaped jet stream encircles the planet's north pole, the rings encircle the planet, as seen from Cassini's position high above. Around and around everything goes!

This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 43 degrees above the ringplane. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Nov. 23, 2013 using a spectral filter that preferentially admits wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 752 nanometers.

The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.6 million miles (2.5 million kilometers) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 97 degrees. Image scale is 93 miles (150 kilometers) per pixel.

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.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit: saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and www.nasa.gov/cassini.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute


www.nasa.gov/content/round-and-round/#.Uu_YevtDIWk