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The Rosette Nebula in Monoceros | Palomar Observatory
The Rosette star formation region is located about 5,000 light years from Earth in the Monoceros region of the Milky Way Galaxy. The Rosette Nebula (also known as Caldwell 49) is an H II region near one end of a giant molecular cloud that is about 65 light years in size.
Palomar Observatory is an astronomical research observatory in San Diego County, California, United States, in the Palomar Mountain Range. It is owned and operated by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center managed for NASA by Caltech.
Astrophotographer Carlos Di Nallo: "Shown [here] is an eye-catching aurora I observed near Nesjahverfi, Iceland on October 13, 2023. These colorful curtains, a result of a geomagnetic storm on October 12, dominated the northern horizon for several hours. Note that the curtain pattern is formed by parallel rays that are more or less oriented with the direction of the geomagnetic field lines."
The Colors of the Aurora (U.S. National Park Service)
Earth Aurora, Atmospheric Glow & Stars | International Space Station
An aurora and an atmospheric glow crown Earth's horizon beneath a starry sky in this photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited 262 miles above the Canadian province of Quebec.
Station Commander: Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency (Denmark)
Roscosmos (Russia): Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub, Konstantin Borisov
JAXA: Flight Engineer Satoshi Furukawa (Japan)
NASA: Jasmin Moghbeli, Loral O'Hara (USA)
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.
Learn more about the important research being operated on Station:
The near Full Moon is pictured just above Earth's atmosphere in this photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited 262 miles above the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Japan.
Station Commander: Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency (Denmark)
Roscosmos (Russia): Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub, Konstantin Borisov
JAXA: Flight Engineer Satoshi Furukawa (Japan)
NASA: Jasmin Moghbeli, Loral O'Hara (USA)
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.
Learn more about the important research being operated on Station:
Narrated Tour of NASA Fermi Space Telescope's 14-Year Gamma-Ray Time-Lapse
The cosmos comes alive in an all-sky time-lapse video made from 14 years of data acquired by NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Our Sun, occasionally flaring into prominence, serenely traces a path though the sky against the backdrop of high-energy sources within our galaxy and beyond.
Gamma rays are the highest-energy form of light. This video shows the intensity of gamma rays with energies above 200 million electron volts (MeV) detected by Fermi’s Large Area Telescope (LAT) between August 2008 and August 2022. For comparison, visible light has energies between 2 and 3 electron volts. Brighter colors mark the locations of more intense gamma-ray sources.
The video presents the sky in two different views. The rectangular view shows the entire sky with the center of our galaxy in the middle. This highlights the central plane of the Milky Way, which glows in gamma rays produced from cosmic rays striking interstellar gas and starlight. It is also flecked with many other sources, including neutron stars and supernova remnants. Above and below this central band, we are looking out of our galaxy and into the wider universe, peppered with bright, rapidly changing sources.
Most of these are actually distant galaxies, and they are better seen in a different view centered on our galaxy’s north and south poles. Each of these galaxies, called blazars, hosts a central black hole with a mass of a million or more Suns. Somehow, the black holes produce extremely fast-moving jets of matter, and with blazars we’re looking almost directly down one of these jets, a view that enhances their brightness and variability.
Many of these galaxies are extremely far away. For example, the light from a blazar known as 4C +21.35 has been traveling for 4.6 billion years, which means that a flare up we see today actually occurred as our Sun and solar system were beginning to form. Other bright blazars are more than twice as distant, and together provide striking snapshots of black hole activity throughout cosmic time.
Not seen in the time-lapse are many short-duration events that Fermi studies, such as gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful cosmic explosions. This is a result of processing data across several days to sharpen the images.
Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) and NASA/DOE/LAT Collaboration
Producer: Scott Wiessinger (Rothe Ares Joint Venture)
Science writer: Francis Reddy (University of Maryland College Park)
Visualizer: Seth Digel (SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)
Flares happen when the powerful magnetic fields in and around the sun reconnect. They are usually associated with active regions, often seen as sun spots, where the magnetic fields are strongest. Flares are classified according to their strength. The smallest ones are B-class, followed by C, M and X, the largest. Similar to the Richter scale for earthquakes, each letter represents a ten-fold increase in energy output. So an X is 10 times an M and 100 times a C. Within each letter class, there is a finer scale from 1 to 9. C-class flares are too weak to noticeably affect Earth. M-class flares can cause brief radio blackouts at the poles and minor radiation storms that might endanger astronauts. Although X is the last letter, there are flares more than 10 times the power of an X1, so X-class flares can go higher than 9.
The most powerful flare on record was in 2003, during the last solar maximum. It was so powerful that it overloaded the sensors measuring it. They cut-out at X28. A powerful X-class flare like that can create long lasting radiation storms, which can harm satellites and even give airline passengers, flying near the poles, small radiation doses. X flares also have the potential to create global transmission problems and world-wide blackouts.
The Sun Emits X5.0 Class Solar Flare | NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory
The Sun emitted a X5.0 class solar flare on December 31, 2023, peaking at 21:55 UTC. Solar flares are sudden explosions of energy in the Sun’s atmosphere that can release a lot of radiation into space. X-class denotes the most intense flares, while the number provides more information about its strength.
As the International Space Station orbited over the southern Indian Ocean, an astronaut looked eastward and captured this photo of the Sun rising above Earth’s horizon.
This edge-on photo of Earth’s limb reveals several atmospheric layers. The lowest layer, known as the troposphere, appears orange and red as these wavelengths of light are scattered by particles of dust, smoke, and smog. Directly above the troposphere is the stratosphere. This blue layer is usually cloud-free and extends as much as 50 kilometers (30 miles) above Earth’s surface. The region directly above the stratosphere is known as the mesosphere.
The Sun—the focal point in this image—is front and center in NASA’s Heliophysics Big Year. This “big year” celebration began with the annular solar eclipse in October 2023 and continues with a total solar eclipse in April 2024. It concludes with the Parker Solar Probe’s closest approach to the Sun in December 2024.
The total solar eclipse in April 2024 will pass over Mexico, the United States, and Canada. In addition to putting on an impressive show, the eclipse offers research opportunities including the chance for scientists to study the Sun’s effect on Earth’s ionosphere. This is the region spanning from about 80–600 kilometers (50–400 miles) above Earth’s surface, overlapping with the top of the atmosphere and the beginning of space. It is where the space station and other satellites in low Earth orbit hang out, and where radio and GPS signals bounce around.
During a solar eclipse, astronauts on the space station can sometimes see the Moon’s shadow passing over Earth. Views of sunrises are much more common with astronauts witnessing as many as 16 sunrises every 24 hours.
Astronaut photograph ISS070-E-1178 was acquired on September 29, 2023, with a Nikon D5 digital camera using a focal length of 170 millimeters. The image was provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit at Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by a member of the Expedition 70 crew. It has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast, and lens artifacts have been removed.
Image Credit: NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth
What's Up for January 2024 | Skywatching Tips from NASA | JPL
Here are examples of skywatching highlights for January 2024. The year 2024 kicks off with the Quadrantid meteors, and great Moon-planet pairings. Plus, did you know the stars shift in the sky by four minutes each day?
The Quadrantids peak during early-January each year and are considered to be one of the best annual meteor showers.
Near-Earth Asteroids Found to Date | Planetary Defense January 2024 | NASA 360
What do we know about the asteroids and comets in Earth's neighborhood? Planetary defense—including finding, tracking, and characterizing these near-Earth objects—is part of our mission. Here is what we have discovered so far.
India Successfully Launches X-ray Astronomy Satellite: XPoSat | ISRO
For the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) PSLV-C58 mission, a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) in the “DL” configuration (PSLV-DL/2PSOM-XL+ S139) launched the X-ray Polarimeter Satellite (XPoSat), from the First Launch Pad (FLP) of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC-SHAR) in Sriharikota, India, on January 1, 2024, at 03:40 UTC (09:10 IST). XPoSat is ISRO’s first dedicated scientific satellite to carry out research in space-based polarization measurements of X-ray emissions from celestial sources.
The 469-kilogram satellite carries two instruments to conduct X-ray polarimetry measurements. Astronomers plan to use the data collected by XPoSat to study neutron stars, black holes and supernovae.
The highlight of 2024 for ISRO, though, will be a series of test flights for its Gaganyaan human spaceflight program. The agency conducted the first such test in October, launching an uncrewed capsule on a suborbital flight to test its launch abort system.
“2024 is going to be the year of Gaganyaan,” S. Somanath, chairman of ISRO, said after the launch, starting with additional abort tests. “This year we are expecting two more such test flights of the test vehicle, followed by the unmanned mission.” This would be an orbital test of the Gaganyaan spacecraft without a crew on board.
Such a schedule implies the first crewed Gaganyaan flight for India would take place no earlier than 2025.
A silhouetted Joshua tree against a night sky landscape featuring our Milky Way galaxy. Joshua Tree National Park is an American national park in southeastern California, east of San Bernardino and Los Angeles and north of Palm Springs. It is named after the Joshua trees (Yucca brevifolia) native to the Mojave Desert.
Light pollution is a growing environmental problem that threatens to erase the night sky before its time. A recent study revealed that perhaps two-thirds of the world's population can no longer look upwards at night and see the Milky Way—a hazy swath of stars that on warm summer nights spans the sky from horizon to horizon.
The Milky Way is dimming, not because the end of the Universe is near, but rather as a result of light pollution: the inadvertent illumination of the atmosphere from street lights, outdoor advertising, homes, schools, airports and other sources. Every night billions of bulbs send their energy skyward where microscopic bits of matter—air molecules, airborne dust, and water vapor droplets—reflect much of the wasted light back to Earth.
Meteor over Paranal Observatory in Chile: Starting the New Year with a Bang
Happy New Year from the European Southern Observatory (ESO)! Firework displays are used to mark the beginning of the New Year all over the world, so we thought we would bring you our own, space-themed display to kick things off in 2024. This is a time-lapse video of the night sky above ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) on Cerro Paranal, Chile. Look closely, and you will catch a glimpse of an extraterrestrial firework, otherwise known as a meteor.
Meteors are objects from outer space that burn up as they enter Earth's atmosphere at high speeds. Often called “shooting stars” or “fireballs”, they create dazzling displays as they crash through our gaseous atmosphere, heating up as a result of friction with the air. In this sped-up time-lapse, captured in June last year, the meteor left behind a trail of smoke that slowly dispersed in the atmosphere. There are estimates that about 44 tons of meteoric material fall into Earth’s atmosphere each day—six times the amount of fireworks used in the famed Sydney Harbor display on New Year’s Eve.
The year 2023 marked a significant milestone for the Very Large Telescope (VLT), our flagship facility celebrated its 25th birthday. Comprising four 8.2-meter Unit Telescopes, two of which are visible in the showcased video, and four 1.8-meter Auxiliary Telescopes, one of which is in the foreground, the VLT remains a sharp eye on the sky.
What is in store for 2024? Expect more groundbreaking discoveries and some exciting upgrades on the horizon. As the VLT continues to push the boundaries of astronomical exploitation, 2024 will likely be brimming with cosmic revelations and advancements.
First Sunrise & Workday of 2024 on China's Tiangong Space Station
Happy New Year! Shenzhou-17 is the sixth crew of three astronauts on a mission to the China Space Station (CSS) and the youngest crew ever. Shenzhou-17 is also the twelfth crewed and seventeenth flight overall of China's Shenzhou spaceflight program. Astronaut Hongbo Tang, commander of the Shenzhou-17 mission, was part of the first batch of Chinese astronauts launched into orbit aboard the Shenzhou-12 mission to China's space station in June 2021. He is the first to visit China's space station twice.
The three members of the Shenzhou-17 crew have stayed in orbit for over 60 days. They have successfully completed assigned tasks, including moving equipment out of the space station for space experiments, managing equipment and facilities, and maintaining experimental facilities for long-term scientific research.
The three Shenzhou-17 astronauts are expected to spend about six months on China's Tiangong Space Station. The Shenzhou-17 crew launched to the station on October 26, 2023. Shenzhou-17 is the sixth spaceflight to the station.
Shenzhou-17 Crew:
Hongbo Tang (Commander)
Shengjie Tang (Mission Specialist)
Xinlin Jiang (Mission Specialist)
Video Credit: China Manned Space Agency/China National Space Administration (CNSA)/CNSA Watcher
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