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Typhoon Lan Nears Japan | NASA Aqua Earth Satellite
Less than a week after Typhoon Khanun charted a zigzagging course toward southern Japan, the country was preparing for yet another major storm—Typhoon Lan. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired the image at 1:30 p.m. local time (04:30 Universal Time) on August 14, 2023. Around that time, winds were sustained at about 160 kilometers (100 miles) per hour—the equivalent of a category-2 storm on the Saffir-Simpson wind scale.
Forecasts called for Typhoon Lan to reach Japan on August 15, 2023, and then move toward the cities of Osaka and Kyoto. In addition to heavy rain and high winds, the Japan Meteorological Agency warned of floods, storm surge, and landslides. Airlines and railways cancelled services ahead of the storm.
Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory image by Wanmei Liang, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview
Perseid Meteor Shower over Sequoia National Forest in California
Astrophotographer Preston Dyches: "Had this lovely view of the northeastern sky from a spot in the southernmost part of Sequoia National Forest, near Piute Peak. With nearly 50 meteors in this composite view, I feel like it was a good haul. :-)"
"Lighting here is all ambient. Foreground is three 30-second exposures, stacked to reduce noise. Sky is a stack of ten 15-second exposures. Meteors were composited as individual layers and rotated into their correct position with respect to the Perseids radiant, which is just left of center."
Sequoia National Forest is located in the southern Sierra Nevada mountains of California. The U.S. National Forest is named for the majestic Giant Sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) trees which populate 38 distinct groves within the boundaries of the forest.
Expedition 69 Space Station Crew Answers Oklahoma Student Questions | NASA
Aboard the International Space Station, Expedition 69 Flight Engineers Frank Rubio and Steve Bowen of NASA answered questions about life and work on the orbiting laboratory during an in-flight event Aug. 14, 2023, with students attending Kingfisher High School in Kingfisher, Oklahoma.
Rubio and Bowen are in the midst of a science mission living and working aboard the microgravity laboratory to advance scientific knowledge and demonstrate new technologies. Such research benefits people on Earth and lays the groundwork for future human exploration through the agency’s Artemis missions, which will send astronauts to the Moon to prepare for future expeditions to Mars.
Station Commander: Sergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos (Russia)
Roscosmos (Russia): Flight Engineers Dmitri Petelin & Andrey Fedyaev
Flight Engineer Sultan Alneyadi of the United Arab Emirates (UAE)
NASA: Flight Engineers Frank Rubio, Stephen Bowen, Warren Hoburg
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.
The Merope Nebula: NGC 1435 (infrared view) | NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope
The Merope Nebula (also known as Tempel's Nebula and NGC 1435) is a diffuse reflection nebula in the Pleiades star cluster, surrounding the 4th magnitude star Merope. The nebula surrounds the star Merope (23 Tauri), after which it gets its name. Merope is a blue-white subgiant 630 times more luminous than our Sun. It is also more than four times larger and has a mass about 4.5 times solar. It lies at an approximate distance of 360 light years (110 parsecs) from Earth. It was discovered on October 19, 1859 by the German astronomer Wilhelm Tempel.
The Spitzer Space Telescope (formerly SIRTF, the Space Infrared Telescope Facility) was launched by a Delta rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida on August 25, 2003. Consisting of a 0.85-meter telescope and three cryogenically-cooled science instruments, Spitzer was the largest infrared space telescope before the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was launched in December 2021. The telescope was named in honor of American astronomer, Lyman Spitzer, who had promoted the concept of space telescopes in the 1940s. The retired Spitzer was the first observatory to provide high-resolution images of the near- and mid-infrared Universe. Webb, by virtue of its significantly larger primary mirror and improved detectors, allows us to see the infrared sky with improved clarity (better spatial resolution), enabling even more discoveries.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, managed the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate (SMD). Science operations were conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech. Spacecraft operations were based at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, Littleton, Colorado. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at Caltech/IPAC. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
The Merope Nebula (also known as Tempel's Nebula and NGC 1435) is a diffuse reflection nebula in the Pleiades star cluster, surrounding the 4th magnitude star Merope. The nebula surrounds the star Merope (23 Tauri), after which it gets its name. Merope is a blue-white subgiant 630 times more luminous than our Sun. It is also more than four times larger and has a mass about 4.5 times solar. It lies at an approximate distance of 360 light years (110 parsecs) from Earth. It was discovered on October 19, 1859 by the German astronomer Wilhelm Tempel.
Image Technical Details
Optics: Phillips 24-inch RCOS Telescope
Camera: SBIG STL11000
Image Credit & Copyright: Adam Block/Mount Lemmon SkyCenter/University of Arizona
How to Safely View an Annular Eclipse | NASA Goddard
On Oct. 14, 2023, an annular solar eclipse will cross North, Central, and South America. Visible in parts of the United States, Mexico, and many countries in South and Central America, millions of people in the Western Hemisphere can experience this eclipse.
Eclipses are a wonderful experience, but it is important to carefully follow safety procedures. During an annular eclipse, there is no period of totality when the Moon completely blocks the Sun. Therefore, it is never safe to look directly at the annular eclipse without proper eye protection specially designed for solar viewing. Do not use standard binoculars or telescopes to watch a solar eclipse without safe solar filters attached to the front of the device. Regular sunglasses are NOT safe for attempting to look directly at the Sun.
NASA's Artemis III Crewed Moon Mission Rocket Upper Stage Rolls to Space Coast
A key piece of hardware for NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the agency’s Artemis III Moon Mission is on its way to the Space Coast in Florida. The journey for the interim cryogenic propulsion stage (ICPS) began in Decatur, Alabama, where crews with United Launch Alliance first boxed it for shipment July 29, 2023, then loaded it onto ULA’s “RocketShip” barge July 31.
On the Artemis III Mission, NASA will land the first woman and the first person of color on the surface of the Moon, paving the way for a long-term lunar presence and serving as a steppingstone on the way to Mars.
The barge will ferry the SLS flight hardware down the Mississippi River, into the Gulf of Mexico, then around the Florida peninsula to Cape Canaveral. Once it arrives at ULA’s facility in Florida near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, the ICPS will undergo final testing and checkouts ahead of the crewed Artemis III mission. The ICPS is the in-space propulsion stage of the SLS rocket, giving NASA’s Orion spacecraft and Artemis astronauts inside it the big push they need to journey all the way to the Moon for a lunar landing. The ICPS for Artemis III is the last of its kind as missions beginning with Artemis IV will use the SLS B1B configuration that includes the more powerful Exploration Upper Stage.
Watch this video to learn more about the preparations for its waterway journey.
A Gentle Giant: Spiral Galaxy NGC 289 in Sculptor | Victor Blanco Telescope
In the constellation Sculptor lies this large extended spiral galaxy called NGC 289. Despite being around 75 million light-years away, the light of NGC 289 is stunningly captured here by the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the 4-meter Víctor M. Blanco Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), a Program of the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab. The galaxy’s bluish arms reach through the expanse of space over 100,000 light-years, larger than the size of our own Milky Way. It is classified as a Type II Seyfert galaxy with its ripe collections of star formation and bright core, but it is also relatively faint.
Studies have found that the galaxy contains large amounts of dark matter, which is a common feature of all galaxies with a low surface brightness. Dark matter is yet to be directly observed, which led the US Department of Energy to build the DECam in order to study the nature of dark matter. Since the conclusion of its survey, DECam has been available to other scientists for use, such as for this image of NGC 289.
Credit: Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO)/NOIRLab/U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)/National Science Foundation (NSF)/Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA)
Image Processing: T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF’s NOIRLab), J. Miller (Gemini Observatory/NSF’s NOIRLab), & M. Zamani (NSF’s NOIRLab)
A Clear View of Galaxy Cluster 2MASX J05101744-4519179 in Pictor | Hubble
The truly massive galaxy cluster 2MASX J05101744-4519179 basks in the center of this image from the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope. This distant galaxy cluster is a cosmic leviathan that is highly luminous at X-ray wavelengths. Observing galaxy clusters like 2MASX J05101744-4519179 can advance our understanding of the evolution and interactions of dark and luminous matter in galaxy clusters, and also reveals powerful gravitational ‘telescopes’ that magnify distant objects through gravitational lensing. The cluster 2MASX J05101744-4519179 is located in the constellation Pictor, around 2.6 billion light-years from Earth.
Image Description: A cluster of elliptical galaxies, visible as a crowd of oval shapes, each glowing around a bright core. The elliptical galaxy that appears largest by far is in the center, with the other largest galaxies close to it. They are surrounded by a variety of more distant stars and galaxies, in many shapes and sizes but all much smaller, on a dark background.
Two of Hubble’s instruments joined forces to create this image: Wide Field Camera 3 and the Advanced Camera for Surveys. Both are third-generation instruments that offer superb image quality and high sensitivity to astronomers studying a range of scientific questions. Both instruments provide images of wide areas of the night sky, but view slightly different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. WFC3 spans the spectrum from the ultraviolet through to visible light and the near-infrared. In contrast to the wide panchromatic coverage of WFC3, ACS was optimized for visible-light observations.
Getting the best from Hubble requires instruments to use built-in corrective optics to account for the effects of the primary mirror's aberration. During the construction of Hubble, a faulty instrument caused the primary mirror to be very precisely ground to slightly the wrong shape by only 0.0002 mm. A corrective instrument called COSTAR was developed to account for this tiny discrepancy, and later instruments like WFC3 and ACS were built with their own corrective optics.
Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)/Hubble & NASA, H. Ebeling
Esto es lo que necesitas saber sobre moléculas orgánicas | NASA en Español
Las moléculas orgánicas, los componentes básicos de la vida, se encuentran en todo el universo, incluyendo planetas, lunas y asteroides de nuestro propio sistema solar.
Pero, ¿qué significa realmente “orgánico”? Esto es lo que necesitas saber sobre las moléculas orgánicas:
The Perseids, which peak during mid-August, are considered the best meteor shower of the year. With very fast and bright meteors, Perseids frequently leave long "wakes" of light and color behind them as they streak through Earth's atmosphere. The Perseids are one of the most plentiful showers (50-100 meteors seen per hour) and occur with warm summer nighttime weather, allowing sky watchers to easily view them.
Perseids are also known for their fireballs. Fireballs are larger explosions of light and color that are brighter and can persist longer than an average meteor streak. This is due to the fact that fireballs originate from larger particles of cometary material.
New Expedition 68 Crew Photos: Summer 2023 | International Space Station
Russian Cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev (Station Commander) and NASA astronaut Woody Hoburg play chess
Astronauts Sultan Alneyadi (United Arab Emirates) and Woody Hoburg
Astronaut Sultan Alneyadi (United Arab Emirates) harvests leaves from thale cress plants
Astronaut Frank Rubio services stem cell samples
NASA astronaut & flight engineer Stephen Bowen wears personal protective equipment (PPE) shortly after entering the Northrop Grumman Cygnus space freighter.
NASA astronaut Stephen Bowen installs NanoRacks CubeSat deployer
Astronaut Frank Rubio performing a surface avatar session
NASA astronaut Woody Hoburg poses for a portrait in front of Cygnus hatch
Station Commander: Sergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos (Russia)
Roscosmos (Russia): Flight Engineers Dmitri Petelin & Andrey Fedyaev
Flight Engineer Sultan Alneyadi of the United Arab Emirates (UAE)
NASA: Flight Engineers Frank Rubio, Stephen Bowen, Warren Hoburg
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.
Reflection Nebula vdB 4 in Cassiopeia | Schulman Telescope
Blue reflection nebula van den Bergh (vdB) 4, also cataloged as LBN 604, is located in the constellation Cassiopeia. vdB 4 is associated with the very young open star cluster NGC 225 which is often called the Sailboat Cluster.
Distance: ~2,000 light years
Image Details
Optics: Schulman 32-inch RCOS Telescope
Camera: SBIG STX16803
Image Credit & Copyright: Adam Block/Mount Lemmon SkyCenter/University of Arizona
Lake Balkhash in Kazakhstan | International Space Station
Lake Balkhash, one of the largest in Central Asia, spans roughly 6,500 square miles (17,000 square kilometers) in southeastern Kazakhstan. The western part of the lake holds fresh water whereas the eastern side of the basin is salty. The International Space Station soared 261 miles above as this image was taken.
Station Commander: Sergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos (Russia)
Roscosmos (Russia): Flight Engineers Dmitri Petelin & Andrey Fedyaev
Flight Engineer Sultan Alneyadi of the United Arab Emirates (UAE)
NASA: Flight Engineers Frank Rubio, Stephen Bowen, Warren Hoburg
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.
How to Become a Star: Dark Nebula Barnard 68—"The Ink Spot" | ESO
How do stars like our Sun come into being? This photograph shows an unusual sky field in the Milky Way band. It is centered on one of the classical, dark globules, known as Barnard 68 (B68) after the American astronomer, Edward E. Barnard (1857 - 1923), who included it in a list of such objects, published in 1919. It appears as a compact, opaque and rather sharply defined object against a rich, background star field. Even on this image that registers many faint stars in the area, not a single foreground star is observed. This is a clear sign that this globule must be relatively nearby. Interstellar clouds consist of gas and dust, including many molecules, some of which contain carbon atoms (i.e. organic). For a long time considered to be "holes in the sky", molecular clouds are now known to be among the coolest objects in the Universe (the temperature is approx. 10 K, or -263 °C). Moreover, and most importantly, they are nurseries of stars and planets.
Distance: ~500 light years
It still remains a mystery how a dark cloud like Barnard 68 at some moment begins to contract and subsequently transforms itself into hydrogen-burning stars. However, deep images of these clouds, such as this one obtained by FORS1 on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) ANTU, may provide important clues. This small cloud seems to be in its very earliest phase of collapse. It has a diameter of only 7 light-months (approx. 0.2 pc) and it is located at a distance of about 500 light-years (160 pc) towards the southern constellation Ophiuchus (The Serpent-holder). This three-color composite was reproduced from one blue (B), one green-yellow (V) and one near-infrared (I) exposure that were obtained with VLT ANTU and FORS1. The field measures 6.8x6.8 arcmin 2. The image consists of 2048x2048 pixels, each measuring 0.20 arcsec. North is up and East is to the left.
The Snake Nebula in Ophiuchus | Kitt Peak National Observatory
What slithers here? The Snake Nebula is a small S-shaped dust lane that snakes out in front of the Milky Way star clouds from the north-north-west edge of the bowl of the Pipe Nebula (the name for the rump and hind legs of the Dark Horse Nebula). The very dark spot to the lower left of the Snake is Barnard 68 (the Ink Spot). Also known as Barnard 72, the Snake Nebula is a series of dark absorption clouds, about 5 light-years across, made up of molecular gas and interstellar dust. Interstellar dust grains—composed predominantly of carbon—absorb visible starlight and reradiate much of it in the infrared. This absorption causes stars behind the clouds to be obscured from view, hence the appearance of starless voids on the sky. Molecular clouds like the Snake Nebula are places where new stars are likely to form. The Snake Nebula, lies about 650 light-years away in the constellation of Ophiuchus (the Serpent Bearer), 1.5° north-northeast of Theta Ophiuchi. It is part of the much larger Dark Horse Nebula and spans the angular width of a full moon.
Barnard 72 (B72) is one of the 182 dark nebulae cataloged in the early 20th century by the American astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard. Unlike bright emission nebulae and star clusters, Barnard’s nebulae are interstellar dark clouds of obscuring gas and dust. Their shapes are visible in cosmic silhouette only because they lie in the foreground along the line of sight to rich star fields and glowing stellar nurseries near the plane of our Galaxy. Many of Barnard’s dark nebulae are themselves likely sites of future star formation.
This image was taken as part of Advanced Observing Program (AOP) program at Kitt Peak Visitor Center during 2014.
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