[via petapixel.com]
This amazing video by Spacecraft Films shows the July 16, 1969 launch of the Apollo 11 mission that landed the first humans on the moon. The camera was rolling at a whopping 500 frames per second, allowing the first 30 seconds of the launch to be slowed down into this 8-minute narrated video of pure awesomeness.
[via APOD]
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Who are these masked men? Technicians from Ball Aerospace and NASA at Marshall Space Flight Center’s X-ray and Cryogenic Facility, of course, testing primary mirror segments of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
Scheduled for launch in 2014, JWST will be optimized for the infrared exploration of the early Universe, utilizing a primary mirror 21.3 feet across, composed of 18 hexagonal segments. Here, a group of JWST mirror segments are being prepared for tests to assure they meet the exacting mission requirements.
[via sciencedaily.com]
ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory has revealed the chemical fingerprints of potential life-enabling organic molecules in the Orion Nebula, a nearby stellar nursery in our Milky Way galaxy. This detailed spectrum — obtained with the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared (HIFI), one of Herschel’s three innovative instruments — demonstrates the gold mine of information that Herschel-HIFI will provide on how organic molecules form in space.
Several German Institutes contributed essential parts to the HIFI instrument: the Universität zu Kölkn and the Max-Planck-Institute für Radioastronmie, Bonn, und für Sonnensystemforschung, Lindau.
[via APOD]
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This sharp, wide-field view features infrared light from the spiral Andromeda Galaxy (M31). Dust heated by Andromeda’s young stars is shown in yellow and red, while its older population of stars appears as a bluish haze.
The false-color skyscape is a mosaic of images from NASA’s new Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite. With over twice the diameter of our Milky Way, Andromeda is the largest galaxy in the local group. Andromeda’s own satellite galaxies M110 (below) and M32 (above) are also included in the combined fields.
[via APOD]
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Sometimes, the space shuttle launches at night. Pictured above, the space shuttle Endeavour lifted off in yesterday’s early morning hours from Launch Pad 39A in Kennedy Space Center, Florida, USA, bound for the International Space Station (ISS). A night launch, useful for reaching the space station easily during some times of the year, frequently creates vivid launch imagery.
The shuttle, as pictured above, is framed by an enormous but typical exhaust plume ejected as the shuttle’s powerful rockets began lifting the two million kilogram space bus into Earth orbit. Endeavour’s mission, labelled STS-130, includes the delivery of the Tranquility module to the space station.
[via gizmodo.com]
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Hubble has discovered a mysterious X-shaped object travelling at 11,000mph. NASA says that P/2010-A2 may be a comet, product of the collision between two asteroids. Or a Klingon Bird of Prey. Either way, UCLA investigator David Jewitt is excited:
“This is quite different from the smooth dust envelopes of normal comets. The filaments are made of dust and gravel, presumably recently thrown out of the nucleus. Some are swept back by radiation pressure from sunlight to create straight dust streaks. Embedded in the filaments are co-moving blobs of dust that likely originated from tiny unseen parent bodies.”
[via APOD]
Even from the top of a volcanic crater, this vista was unusual. For one reason, Mars was dazzlingly bright two weeks ago, when this picture was taken, as it was nearing its brightest time of the entire year.
Mars, on the far upper left, is the brightest object in the above picture. The brightness of the red planet peaked last week near when Mars reached opposition, the time when Earth and Mars are closest together in their orbits.
[via discovery.com]
Astronomers presenting at the American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting in Washington D.C. on Jan. 4, have reported the detection of the emission generated by a black hole as it devoured a white dwarf star in the elliptical galaxy NGC 1399.
This may not appear to be a huge deal to begin with — stars being eaten by supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies have been detected before — but it would appear that this particular white dwarf was ripped apart and then devoured by a mysterious “intermediate-mass” black hole.
[via APOD]
Intense and overwhelming, the direct glare of the Sun is blocked by the smooth occulting disk in this image from the sun-staring SOHO spacecraft.
Taken on January 3rd, an extreme ultraviolet image of the Sun to scale, is superimposed at the center of the disk. Beyond the disk’s outer boundary is a sungrazer comet, one of the brightest yet seen by SOHO.
The comet was discovered (movie link) by Australian amateur astronomer Alan Watson, while examining earlier images from another sun-watching spacecraft, STEREO-A. Based on their orbits, sungrazers are believed to belong to the Kreutz family of comets, created by successive break ups from a single large parent comet that passed very near the Sun in the twelfth century.
[via msnbc.com]
Workers align the space shuttle Discovery's thrusters in Orbiter Processing Facility Bay 3 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in December 2009. A small amount of cocaine was found in a restricted area of the facility on Wednesday, NASA said.
NASA has launched an extensive investigation to determine how a small amount of cocaine ended up in a space shuttle hangar at the agency’s Florida spaceport.
A bag containing a small amount of white powder residue that was later confirmed to be cocaine was discovered in the space shuttle Discovery’s hangar at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The hangar, known as the Orbiter Processing Facility, is a restricted zone for shuttle workers only.