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Tour of the Moon | NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
Happy International Moon Day!
Take a virtual tour of the Moon in high resolution, thanks to data provided by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft. As the visualization moves around the near side, far side, north and south poles, we highlight interesting features, sites, and information gathered on the lunar terrain. Since its launch in June 2009, the LRO mission has given scientists the largest volume of data ever collected by a planetary science mission at NASA. LRO has made a 3-D map of the Moon's surface at 100-meter resolution and 98.2% coverage (excluding polar areas in deep shadow), including 0.5-meter resolution images of Apollo landing sites.
Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/David Ladd & Ernie Wright/Scientific Visualization Studio
Music Provided By Killer Tracks: "Never Looking Back" - Frederick Wiedmann. "Flying over Turmoil" - Benjamin Krause & Scott Goodman.
Ernie Wright (USRA): Lead Visualizer – Scientific Visualization Studio
David Ladd (USRA): Lead Producer, Editor, Narrator
Supernova Remnant E0102: A New Dimension to an Old Explosion | NASA Chandra
Summary: E0102 is the debris of a very massive star that exploded in the neighboring galaxy known as the Small Magellanic Cloud. NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory first looked at this object nearly ten years ago, just months after the telescope was launched. Analysis of new Chandra data gives information on the geometry of the supernova explosion. The best model based on the data is that the ejecta is shaped like a cylinder that we see end-on.
This image of the debris of an exploded star—known as supernova remnant 1E 0102.2-7219, or "E0102" for short—features data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. E0102 is located about 190,000 light years away in the Small Magellanic Cloud, one of the nearest galaxies to the Milky Way. It was created when a star that was much more massive than the Sun exploded, an event that would have been visible from the Southern Hemisphere of the Earth over 1000 years ago.
Chandra first observed E0102 shortly after its launch in 1999. New X-ray data have now been used to create this spectacular image and help celebrate the ten-year anniversary of Chandra's launch on July 23, 1999. In this latest image of E0102, the lowest-energy X-rays are colored orange, the intermediate range of X-rays is cyan, and the highest-energy X-rays Chandra detected are blue. An optical image from the Hubble Space Telescope (in red, green and blue) shows additional structure in the remnant and also reveals foreground stars in the field.
The Chandra image shows the outer blast wave produced by the supernova (blue), and an inner ring of cooler (red-orange) material. This inner ring is probably expanding ejecta from the explosion that is being heated by a shock wave traveling backwards into the ejecta. A massive star (not visible in this image) is illuminating the green cloud of gas and dust to the lower right of the image. This star may have similar properties to the one that exploded to form E0102.
Analysis of the Chandra spectrum gives astronomers new information about the geometry of the remnant, with implications for the nature of the explosion. The spectrum - which precisely separates X-rays of different energies - shows some material is moving away from Earth and some is moving toward us. When the material is moving away, its light is shifted toward the red end of the spectrum due to the so-called Doppler effect. Alternatively, when material is moving toward us, the light is bluer because of the same effect.
A clear separation was detected between the red-shifted and blue-shifted light, leading astronomers to think that the appearance of E0102 is best explained by a model in which the ejecta is shaped like a cylinder that is being viewed almost exactly end-on (see animation above). The smaller red and blue cylinders represent faster moving material closer to the cylinder axis.
This model suggests that the explosion that created the E0102 remnant may itself have been strongly asymmetric, consistent with the rapid kicks given to neutron stars after supernova explosions. Another possibility is that the star exploded into a disk of material formed when material was shed from the equator of the pre-supernova red giant star. Such asymmetries have been observed in winds from lower mass red giants that form planetary nebulas.
Credit: X-ray (NASA/CXC/MIT/D.Dewey et al. & NASA/CXC/SAO/J.DePasquale); Optical (NASA/STScI)
The supernova remnant known as E0102 was one of the targets that NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory first observed after its launch in 1999. Now, some ten years later, new X-ray data from Chandra have been used to produce this spectacular image. E0102 is located about 190 thousand light-years away in the Small Magellanic Cloud, which is one of the nearest galaxies to the Milky Way. It was created when a star that was much more massive than the sun, exploded, an event that would have been visible from the southern hemisphere on Earth over one thousand years ago.
The information captured in this new image, which includes optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope, reveals new clues about the geometry of the remnant. This in turn helps astronomers better understand the details of the explosion that created the remnant we see today.
Credit: X-ray (NASA/CXC/MIT/D.Dewey et al. & NASA/CXC/SAO/J.DePasquale); Optical (NASA/STScI))
This European Space Agency (ESA) video zooms into an expanding, gaseous corpse—a supernova remnant—known as 1E 0102.2-7219. It is the remnant of a star that exploded long ago in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way located roughly 200,000 light-years away.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Banovetz and D. Milisavljevic (Purdue University), Digitized Sky Survey 2, Risinger
Music: Stellardrone - "The Night Sky in Motion."
Credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
The supernova remnant (SNR), known as "E0102" for short, is the greenish-blue shell of debris just below the center of the Hubble image. Its name is derived from its cataloged placement (or coordinates) in the celestial sphere. More formally known as 1E0102.2-7219, it is located almost 50 light-years (15 parsecs) away from of the edge of the massive star-forming region, N 76, also known as Henize 1956 in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). This delicate structure glowing a multitude of lavenders and peach hues, resides in the upper right of the image.
The composition and thus, the coloring, of the diffuse remnant in comparison to its star-forming neighbor is due to the presence of very large quantities of oxygen compared to hydrogen. E0102 is a member of the oxygen-rich class of SNRs showing strong oxygen and other more metal-like abundances in its optical and X-ray spectra, and an absence of hydrogen and helium. N 76 in contrast is made up primarily of glowing hydrogen emission.
One explanation for the abundance of oxygen in the SNR is that the parent star was very large and old, and had blown away most its hydrogen as stellar wind before it exploded. It is surmised that the progenitor star that caused the supernova explosion may have been a Wolf-Rayet. These stars, which can be upward of 20 times the mass of the sun and tens of thousands times more luminous, are famous for having a strong stellar wind throughout their lifetime. This stellar wind carried off material from the outer-most shells of the star (the hydrogen and helium shells), leaving the next most abundant element, oxygen, as a visible signature after the star exploded as a supernova.
Determined to be only about 2000 years old, E0102 is relatively young on astronomical scales and is just beginning its interactions with the nearby interstellar medium. Young supernova remnants like E0102 allow astronomers to examine material from the cores of massive stars directly. This in turn gives insight on how stars form, their composition, and the chemical enrichment of the surrounding area. As well, young remnants are a great learning tool to better understand the physics of supernova explosions.
E0102 was observed in 2003 with the Hubble Advanced Camera for Surveys. Four filters that isolate light from blue, visible, and infrared wavelengths and hydrogen emission were combined with oxygen emission images of the SNR taken with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 in 1995.
The Small Magellanic Cloud is a nearby dwarf galaxy to our own Milky Way. It is visible in the Southern Hemisphere, in the direction of the constellation Tucana, and lies roughly 210,000 light-years (65,000 parsecs) distant.
Credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Roscosmos Flight Engineers: Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov (Russia)
NASA Flight Engineers: Kjell Lindgren, Bob Hines, Jessica Watkins (USA)
European Space Agency (ESA) Flight Engineer: Samantha Cristoforetti (Italy)
An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada. The ISS has been the most politically complex space exploration program ever undertaken.
Credit: European Space Agency Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti
A moonrise with Venus visible as seen by European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti aboard the International Space Station for her Minerva Mission.
Roscosmos Flight Engineers: Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov (Russia)
NASA Flight Engineers: Kjell Lindgren, Bob Hines, Jessica Watkins (USA)
European Space Agency (ESA) Flight Engineer: Samantha Cristoforetti (Italy)
An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada. The ISS has been the most politically complex space exploration program ever undertaken.
Credit: European Space Agency Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti
The NASA/European Space Agency (ESA) Hubble Space Telescope has been at the cutting edge of research into what happens to stars like our Sun at the ends of their lives. One stage that stars pass through as they run out of nuclear fuel is the preplanetary, or protoplanetary nebula. This Hubble image of the Egg Nebula shows one of the best views to date of this brief but dramatic phase in a star’s life.
The preplanetary nebula phase is a short period in the cycle of stellar evolution—over a few thousand years, the hot remains of the star in the center of the nebula heat it up, excite the gas, and make it glow as a planetary nebula. The short lifespan of preplanetary nebulae means there are relatively few of them in existence at any one time. Moreover, they are very dim, requiring powerful telescopes to be seen. This combination of rarity and faintness means they were only discovered comparatively recently. The Egg Nebula, the first to be discovered, was first spotted less than 40 years ago, and many aspects of this class of object remain shrouded in mystery.
At the center of this image, and hidden in a thick cloud of dust, is the nebula’s central star. While we cannot see the star directly, four searchlight beams of light coming from it shine out through the nebula. It is thought that ring-shaped holes in the thick cocoon of dust, carved by jets coming from the star, let the beams of light emerge through the otherwise opaque cloud. The precise mechanism by which stellar jets produce these holes is not known for certain, but one possible explanation is that a binary star system, rather than a single star, exists at the centre of the nebula.
The onion-like layered structure of the more diffuse cloud surrounding the central cocoon is caused by periodic bursts of material being ejected from the dying star. The bursts typically occur every few hundred years.
The distance to the Egg Nebula is only known very approximately, the best guess placing it at around 3000 light-years from Earth. This in turn means that astronomers do not have any accurate figures for the size of the nebula (it may be larger and further away, or smaller but nearer).
This image is produced from exposures in visible and infrared light from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3.
NGC 3603: Extreme Star Cluster Bursts to Life | Hubble
Hubblecast 09: The NASA/European Space Agency (ESA) Hubble Space Telescope has captured a spectacular image of NGC 3603, a giant nebula hosting one of the most prominent massive young clusters in the Milky Way. This is a splendid location for continued studies of stellar birth in star forming regions.
Zoom into Colorful Star Cluster NGC 3603 in Carina | Hubble
[No audio] NGC 3603 is a nebula situated in the Carina–Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way around 20,000 light-years away from the Solar System. It is a massive H II region containing a very compact open cluster HD 97950.
Starburst Cluster in Carina: Celestial Fireworks | Hubble
Like a 4th of July fireworks display, a young, glittering collection of stars looks like an aerial burst. The cluster is surrounded by clouds of interstellar gas and dust—the raw material for new star formation. The nebula, located 20,000 light-years away in the constellation Carina, contains a central cluster of huge, hot stars, called NGC 3603.
This environment is not as peaceful as it looks. Ultraviolet radiation and violent stellar winds have blown out an enormous cavity in the gas and dust enveloping the cluster, providing an unobstructed view of the cluster.
Most of the stars in the cluster were born around the same time but differ in size, mass, temperature, and color. The course of a star's life is determined by its mass, so a cluster of a given age will contain stars in various stages of their lives, giving an opportunity for detailed analyses of stellar life cycles. NGC 3603 also contains some of the most massive stars known. These huge stars live fast and die young, burning through their hydrogen fuel quickly and ultimately ending their lives in supernova explosions.
Star clusters like NGC 3603 provide important clues to understanding the origin of massive star formation in the early, distant Universe. Astronomers also use massive clusters to study distant starbursts that occur when galaxies collide, igniting a flurry of star formation. The proximity of NGC 3603 makes it an excellent lab for studying such distant and momentous events.
This Hubble Space Telescope image was captured in August 2009 and December 2009 with the Wide Field Camera 3 in both visible and infrared light, which trace the glow of sulfur, hydrogen, and iron.
Credits:
NASA, ESA, R. O'Connell (University of Virginia), F. Paresce (National Institute for Astrophysics, Bologna, Italy), E. Young (Universities Space Research Association/Ames Research Center), the WFC3 Science Oversight Committee, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is a true technological marvel. The largest and most complex space telescope ever built, Webb is able to gather light that has been traveling for 13.5 billion years, almost since the beginning of the universe. In effect, Webb is a time machine, allowing us to peer at the first galaxies to form after the Big Bang. Because it gathers infrared light, sees right through the giant clouds of dust that block the view of most other telescopes. Webb is 100 times more powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope. Most notably, with its 21-foot-wide (6.5-meter-wide) set of segmented mirrors, Webb is powerful enough to search for water vapor in the atmospheres of planets orbiting other stars. It will open a new window on these exoplanets, observing them in wavelengths of light at which they have never been seen before and helping us gain new insights about their nature. Webb will help us understand how galaxies evolve over billions of years into grand spirals, like our own Milky Way, search for signs of habitability on distant planets, and penetrate into the hearts of dust-shrouded stellar nurseries. The observatory launched from South America on Christmas Day 2021.
The magnificent reflection nebula NGC 2023 lies nearly 1500 light-years from Earth. It is located within the constellation of Orion (The Hunter), in a prestigious area of the sky close to the well-known Flame and Horsehead Nebulae. The entire structure of NGC 2023 is vast, at four light-years across. This NASA/European Space Agency (ESA) Hubble Space Telescope picture just takes in the southern part, with the subtle shades of color closely resembling those of a sunset on Earth.
NGC 2023 surrounds a massive young B-type star. These stars are large, bright and blue-white in color, and have a high surface temperature, being several times hotter than the Sun. The energy emitted from NGC2023’s B-type star illuminates the nebula, resulting in its high surface brightness—good news for astronomers who wish to study it. The star itself lies outside the field of view, at the upper left, and its brilliant light is scattered by Hubble’s optical system, creating the bright flare across the left side of the picture, which is not a real feature of the nebula.
Stars are forming from the material comprising NGC 2023. This Hubble image captures the billowing waves of gas, 5000 times denser than the interstellar medium. The unusual greenish clumps are thought to be Herbig–Haro objects. These peculiar features of star-forming regions are created when gas ejected at hundreds of kilometers per second from newly formed stars impacts the surrounding material. These shockwaves cause the gas to glow and result in the strange shapes seen here. Herbig–Haro objects typically only last for a few thousand years, which is the blink of eye in astronomical terms.
This picture was created from multiple images taken with the Wide Field Camera of Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. Exposures through a blue filter (F475W) are colored blue, exposures through a yellow filter (F625W) are coloured green and images through a near-infrared filter (F850LP) are shown as red. The total exposure times per filter are 800 s, 800 s and 1200 s, respectively, and the field of view spans 3.2 arcminutes.
Mars: The One in (False) Color [HiRISE] | NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
This video uses the central enhanced color (red-green-blue) swath. The swath is just under 1 km across and allows us to view the landscape in greater detail than we can in black and white.
High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE)
This observation targets a highly textured bedrock surface in northeastern Tyrrhena Terra. Due to this location of this material at the junction of incised valley networks, the presence of massive layering at Context Camera resolution, and the high apparent erosional susceptibility of these materials, this location has a high probability of being a sedimentary deposit. This observation will be used to characterize this deposit.
This is a non-narrated clip with ambient sound. This image is less than 1 km (under 1 mi) across and is 261 km (162 mi) above the surface. For full images including scale bars, visit the source link.
Video Credit: UAHiRISE/Lunar & Planetary Laboratory (LPL)/University of Arizona
Measuring How Fast Giant Black Holes Spin | NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory
Summary: Astronomers used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to determine the spin of the black hole in H1821+643, making it the most massive one to have an accurate measurement of this fundamental property.
Astronomers have made a record-breaking measurement of a black hole's spin, one of two fundamental properties of black holes. NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory shows this black hole is spinning slower than most of its smaller cousins.
This is the most massive black hole with an accurate spin measurement and gives hints about how some of the Universe's biggest black holes grow.
Supermassive black holes contain millions or even billions of times more mass than the Sun. Astronomers think that nearly every large galaxy has a supermassive black hole at their center. While the existence of supermassive black holes is not in dispute, scientists are still working to understand how they grow and evolve. One critical piece of information is how fast the black holes are spinning.
Every black hole can be defined by just two numbers: its spin and its mass. While that sounds fairly simple, figuring those values out for most black holes has proved to be incredibly difficult.
For this result, researchers observed X-rays that bounced off a disk of material swirling around the black hole in a quasar known as H1821+643. Located in a cluster of galaxies about 3.4 billion light-years from Earth, H1821+643 contains an actively growing black hole containing between about three and 30 billion solar masses, making it one of the most massive known. By contrast the supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy weighs about four million suns.
The strong gravitational forces near the black hole alter the intensity of X-rays at different energies. The larger the alteration the closer the inner edge of the disk must be to the point of no return of the black hole, known as the event horizon. Because a spinning black hole drags space around with it and allows matter to orbit closer to it than is possible for a non-spinning one, the X-ray data can show how fast the black hole is spinning.
The scientists found that the black hole in H1821+643 is spinning about half as quickly as most black holes weighing between about a million and ten million suns. The million-dollar question is: why?
The answer may lie in how these supermassive black holes grow and evolve. This relatively slow spin supports the idea that the most massive black holes like H1821+643 undergo most of their growth by merging with other black holes, or by gas being pulled inwards in random directions when their large disks are disrupted.
While there is much more work to be done, this result signifies an exciting step forward in scientists' attempt to uncover how the most massive black holes in the universe grow.
Credit: NASA/Chandra X-ray Center (CXC)/Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA)
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