How NASA Moves a Spacecraft: Europa Clipper Arrives in Its New Home | JPL

How NASA Moves a Spacecraft: Europa Clipper Arrives in Its New Home | JPL

This time-lapse video follows NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft as it moves into the storied High Bay 1 clean room from a smaller clean room at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. The multiday transport between rooms at the Lab’s Spacecraft Assembly Facility and the unwrapping and positioning of the spacecraft core required thorough planning and careful choreography. 

In this new location, engineers and technicians will complete assembly of the spacecraft in preparation for its launch to Jupiter’s moon Europa in October 2024. 

Scientists believe the ice-enveloped moon harbors a vast internal ocean that may have conditions suitable for supporting life. During nearly 50 flybys of Europa, the spacecraft’s suite of science instruments will gather data on the moon’s atmosphere, surface, and interior—information that scientists will use to gauge the depth and salinity of the ocean, the thickness of the ice crust, and potential plumes that may be venting subsurface water into space.

Managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California, JPL leads the development of the Europa Clipper mission in partnership with Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland.

For more information about Europa, visit: europa.nasa.gov

Download Europa Clipper Ocean World poster: go.nasa.gov/3Gsjzt5

Credit: NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)/Caltech

Duration: 46 seconds

Release Date: August 15, 2022

#NASA #Astronomy #Space #Science #Jupiter #Europa #Moon #Ocean #Astrobiology #Biosignatures #Habitability #Radiation #EuropaClipper #Spacecraft #SolarSystem #Exploration #APL #Marshall #MSFC #JPL #Pasadena #California #UnitedStates #STEM #Education #HD #Video

The Cometary Globule CG4: Wide-field View

The Cometary Globule CG4: Wide-field View | ESO

This wide-field image shows a rich region of the sky in the constellation of Puppis (The Poop Deck). At the center lies the strange cometary globule CG4. Other interesting objects are also seen, including several much more distant spiral galaxies. This color view was produced from images forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2.

Distance: 1,300 light years

Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO) and Digitized Sky Survey 2

Release Date: January 28, 2015

#NASA #ESO #Astronomy #Space #Science #Galaxies #Stars #Nebula #CometaryGlobule #CometaryGlobuleCG4 #Puppis #Constellation #MilkyWay #Galaxy #Cosmos #Universe #Telescope #VLT #LaSillaObservatory #Chile #Europe #STEM #Education

Panning over The Cometary Globule CG4

Panning over The Cometary Globule CG4 | ESO

The cometary globule CG4 glows menacingly, like the gaping mouth of a gigantic celestial creature, in this pan video based on an image from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope. What looks huge and bright in this image is actually a faint nebula and not easy to observe. The exact nature of CG4 remains a mystery.

Distance: 1,300 light years

Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)

Duration: 50 seconds

Release Date: February 9, 2015

#NASA #ESO #Astronomy #Space #Science #Stars #Nebula #CometaryGlobule #CometaryGlobuleCG4 #Puppis #Constellation #MilkyWay #Galaxy #Cosmos #Universe #Telescope #VLT #LaSillaObservatory #Chile #Europe #STEM #Education #HD #Video

Zooming in on Cometary Globule CG4 | ESO

Zooming in on Cometary Globule CG4 | ESO

This zoom video sequence goes from a wide view of the southern Milky Way deep into the constellation of Puppis close to the site of the Vela supernova remnant. The final view shows a new close-up view of the cometary globule CG4. It glows menacingly, like the gaping mouth of a gigantic celestial creature, in this this new image from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). What looks huge and bright in this image is actually a faint nebula and not easy to observe. The exact nature of CG4 remains a mystery.

Distance: 1,300 light years

Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)/J.Perez/Digitized Sky Survey 2/N. Risinger

Duration: 50 seconds

Release Date: February 9, 2015

#NASA #ESO #Astronomy #Space #Science #Stars #Nebula #CometaryGlobule #CometaryGlobuleCG4 #Puppis #Constellation #MilkyWay #Galaxy #Cosmos #Universe #Telescope #VLT #LaSillaObservatory #Chile #Europe #STEM #Education #HD #Video

The Cometary Globule CG4 | ESO

The Cometary Globule CG4 | ESO

Like the gaping mouth of a gigantic celestial creature, the cometary globule CG4 glows menacingly in this image from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). Although it looks huge and bright in this image, it is actually a faint nebula and not easy to observe. The exact nature of CG4 remains a mystery.

Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)

Release Date: January 28, 2015

#NASA #ESO #Astronomy #Space #Science #Stars #Nebula #CometaryGlobule #CometaryGlobuleCG4 #Puppis #Constellation #MilkyWay #Galaxy #Cosmos #Universe #Telescope #VLT #LaSillaObservatory #Chile #Europe #STEM #Education

ALMA Explores Debris Disc Around Fomalhaut Star: A New Solar System? | ESO

ALMA Explores Debris Disc Around Fomalhaut Star: A New Solar System? | ESO

Fomalhaut is one of the brightest stars in the sky. At roughly 25 light-years away the star lies especially close to us, and can be seen shining brightly in the constellation of Piscis Austrinus (The Southern Fish). This image from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) shows Fomalhaut (center) encircled by a ring of dusty debris. This was the first time a scene like this was captured at such a high resolution and sensitivity at millimeter wavelengths.

Fomalhaut’s disc comprises a mix of cosmic dust and gas from comets in the Fomalhaut system (exocomets), released as the exocomets graze past and smash into one another. This turbulent environment resembles an early period in our own Solar System known as the Late Heavy Bombardment, which occurred approximately four billions years ago. This era saw huge numbers of rocky objects hurtle into the inner Solar System and collide with the young terrestrial planets, including Earth, where they formed a myriad of impact craters—many of which remain visible today on the surfaces of planets such as Mercury and Mars.

Fomalhaut is known to be surrounded by several discs of debris—the one visible in this ALMA image is the outermost one. The ring is approximately 20 billion kilometers from the central star and about 2 billion kilometers wide. Such a relative narrow, eccentric disc can only be produced by the gravitational influence of planets in the system, like Jupiter’s gravitational influence on our asteroid belt. 

Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/L. Matrà/M. A. MacGregor

Release Date: May 22, 2017

#NASA #ESO #ALMA #Astronomy #Space #Science #Star #Ring #Fomalhaut #PiscisAustrinus #Constellation #MilkyWay #Galaxy #Cosmos #Universe #Telescope #Chile #Europe #STEM #Education

The Mysteries of Fomalhaut b | Hubble

The Mysteries of Fomalhaut b | Hubble

Data from the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope have revealed an expanding cloud of dust that was likely produced in a collision between two large bodies orbiting the bright nearby star Fomalhaut.

Credit:

Directed by: Bethany Downer and Nico Bartmann  

Editing: Nico Bartmann 

Web and technical support: Gurvan Bazin and Raquel Yumi Shida

Written by: Bethany Downer  

Footage and photos: ESA, NASA, Hubble, M. Kornmesser, P. Kalas, Digitized Sky Survey 2, A. Gáspár and G. Rieke (University of Arizona)

Duration: 1 minute, 36 seconds

Release Date: April 20, 2020

#NASA #ESA #Hubble #Astronomy #Space #Science #Star #Fomalhautb #Fomalhaut #PiscisAustrinus #Constellation #MilkyWay #Galaxy #Cosmos #Universe #SpaceTelescope #UnitedStates #GSFC #Europe #STEM #Education #HD #Video

Zooming in on Fomalhaut Star and its Dusty Disc | ESO

Zooming in on Fomalhaut Star and its Dusty Disc | ESO

This video sequence starts with a wide-field view of the sky around the star Fomalhaut in the constellation of Piscis Austrinus (The Southern Fish). Fomalhaut is the brightest star in the constellation and one of the brightest stars known to have an orbiting planet. It lies about 25 light-years from the Earth and is surrounded by a huge disc of dust. 

The final view of this video shows a new Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) image of the disc (orange) and the new results from ALMA have given astronomers a major breakthrough in understanding a nearby planetary system and provided valuable clues about how such systems form and evolve. 

Note that ALMA has so far only observed a part of the ring. The underlying blue picture shows an earlier picture obtained by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

Credit: ALMA - European Southern Observatory/National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ)/ National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)

Visible light image: NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope A. Fujii/Digitized Sky Survey 2

Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin (ESA/Hubble)

Duration: 56 seconds

Release Date: April 12, 2012

#NASA #ESO #ESA #Hubble #ALMA #Astronomy #Space #Science #Star #Fomalhaut #PiscisAustrinus #Constellation #MilkyWay #Galaxy #Cosmos #Universe #Telescope #Chile #Europe #STEM #Education #HD #Video

The Star Fomalhaut: Wide-field View

The Star Fomalhaut: Wide-field View

This wide-field view shows the sky around the bright star Fomalhaut in the constellation of Piscis Austrinus (The Southern Fish). This picture was created from photographs forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. Fomalhaut lies about 25 light-years from the Earth and is surrounded by a huge disc of dust.

Credit: NASA, European Space Agency (ESA), and the Digitized Sky Survey 2

Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin (ESA/Hubble)

Release Date: April 12, 2012

#NASA #ESO #ESA #Hubble #Astronomy #Space #Science #Star #Fomalhaut #PiscisAustrinus #Constellation #MilkyWay #Galaxy #Cosmos #Universe #Telescope #Chile #Europe #STEM #Education

Globular Cluster NGC 6540 | Hubble

Globular Cluster NGC 6540 | Hubble

This scintillating image showcases the globular cluster NGC 6540 in the constellation Sagittarius, which was captured by the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys. These two instruments have slightly different fields of view—which determines how large an area of sky each instrument captures. This composite image shows the star-studded area of sky that was captured in both instruments’ field of view. 

NGC 6540 is a globular cluster, a stable, tightly bound multitude of stars. The populations of these clusters can range from tens of thousands to millions of stars, all of which are trapped in a closely-packed group by their mutual gravitational attraction.

Distance: about 17,000 light years

The brightest stars in this image are adorned with prominent cross-shaped patterns of light known as diffraction spikes. These astronomical embellishments are a type of imaging artefact, meaning that they are caused by the structure of Hubble rather than the stars themselves. The path taken by the starlight as it enters the telescope is slightly disturbed by its internal structure, causing bright objects to be surrounded by spikes of light.

Hubble peered into the heart of NGC 6540 to help astronomers measure the ages, shapes, and structures of globular clusters towards the center of the Milky Way. The gas and dust shrouding the center of our galaxy block some of the light from these clusters, as well as subtly changing the colors of their stars. Globular clusters contain insights into the earliest history of the Milky Way, and so studying them can help astronomers understand how our galaxy has evolved.

Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)/Hubble & NASA, R. Cohen

Release Date: August 15, 2022

#NASA #ESA #Astronomy #Space #Hubble #Nebula #Stars #NGC6540 #GlobularCluster #StarCluster #Sagittarius #Constellation #MilkyWay #Galaxy #Cosmos #Universe #SpaceTelescope #GSFC #STScI #UnitedStates #Europe #STEM #Education

The Medusa Nebula: Wide-field view | ESO

The Medusa Nebula: Wide-field view | ESO

This wide-field view shows the sky around the large but faint planetary nebula known as the Medusa Nebula. The full extent of the object can be seen, as well as many faint stars and, far beyond them, numerous distant galaxies.This picture was created from images forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2.

Distance: 1,500 light years

Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)/Digitized Sky Survey 2

Release Date: May 20, 2015

#NASA #ESO #Astronomy #Space #Science #Stars #Abell21 #Sharpless2274 #Nebula #MedusaNebula #Gemini #Constellation #MilkyWay #Galaxy #Cosmos #Universe #Telescope #VLT #LaSillaObservatory #Chile #Europe #STEM #Education

Close-up Pan of The Medusa Nebula | ESO

Close-up Pan of The Medusa Nebula | ESO

This close-up pan video shows the most detailed image ever taken of the Medusa Nebula (also known Abell 21 and Sharpless 2-274). It was captured using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. As the star at the heart of this nebula made its final transition into retirement, it shed its outer layers into space, forming this colorful cloud. The image foreshadows the final fate of the Sun, which will eventually also become an object of this kind.

Distance: 1,500 light years

Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)

Duration: 50 seconds

Release Date: May 20, 2015

#NASA #ESO #Astronomy #Space #Science #Stars #Abell21 #Sharpless2274 #Nebula #MedusaNebula #Gemini #Constellation #MilkyWay #Galaxy #Cosmos #Universe #Telescope #VLT #LaSillaObservatory #Chile #Europe #STEM #Education #HD #Video

Zooming in on The Medusa Nebula | ESO

Zooming in on The Medusa Nebula | ESO

This video zoom takes you from a wide view of the sky deep into the constellation of Gemini (The Twins). There we see a strange object—the Medusa Nebula. As the star at the heart of this nebula made its final transition into retirement, it shed its outer layers into space, forming this colorful cloud. The image foreshadows the final fate of the Sun, which will eventually also become an object of this kind. The final very detailed image was captured using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile.

Distance: 1,500 light years

Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)/Digitized Sky Survey 2/N. Risinger 

Duration: 50 seconds

Release Date: May 20, 2015

#NASA #ESO #Astronomy #Space #Science #Stars #Abell21 #Sharpless2274 #Nebula #MedusaNebula #Gemini #Constellation #MilkyWay #Galaxy #Cosmos #Universe #Telescope #VLT #LaSillaObservatory #Chile #Europe #STEM #Education #HD #Video

The Medusa Nebula | ESO

The Medusa Nebula | ESO

The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile has captured a detailed image of the Medusa Nebula (also known Abell 21 and Sharpless 2-274). As the star at the heart of this nebula made its final transition into retirement, it shed its outer layers into space, forming this colorful cloud. The image foreshadows the final fate of the Sun, which will eventually also become an object of this kind.

Distance: 1,500 light years

Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)

Release Date: May 20, 2015

#NASA #ESO #Astronomy #Space #Science #Stars #Abell21 #Sharpless2274 #Nebula #MedusaNebula #Gemini #Constellation #MilkyWay #Galaxy #Cosmos #Universe #Telescope #VLT #LaSillaObservatory #Chile #Europe #STEM #Education

Panning across Star Cluster NGC 3766 | ESO

Panning across Star Cluster NGC 3766 | ESO

This pan video gives a close-up look at a spectacular group of young stars—the open star cluster NGC 3766 in the constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur). 

Distance: 7,000 light years

Very careful observations of these stars by a group from the Geneva Observatory using the Swiss 1.2-meter Leonhard Euler Telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile have shown that 36 of the stars are members of a new and unknown class of variable star.

Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)

Duration: 56 seconds

Release Date: June 2013

#NASA #ESO #Astronomy #Space #Science #Star #StarCluster #NGC3766 #Centaurus #Constellation #MilkyWay #Galaxy #Cosmos #Universe #Telescope #LaSillaObservatory #Chile #Europe #STEM #Education #HD #Video

Zooming in on Star Cluster NGC 3766 | ESO

Zooming in on Star Cluster NGC 3766 | ESO

This zoom video starts with a wide view of the Milky Way and ends with a close-up look at a spectacular group of young stars—the open star cluster NGC 3766 in the constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur). 

Distance: 7,000 light years

Very careful observations of these stars by a group from the Geneva Observatory using the Swiss 1.2-meter Leonhard Euler Telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile have shown that 36 of the stars are members of a new and unknown class of variable star.

Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)/Nick Risinger/Hiro

Duration: 56 seconds

Release Date: 2013

#NASA #ESO #Astronomy #Space #Science #Star #StarCluster #NGC3766 #Centaurus #Constellation #MilkyWay #Galaxy #Cosmos #Universe #Telescope #LaSillaObservatory #Chile #Europe #STEM #Education #HD #Video