Tag: satellite

The Nearby Milky Way in Cold Dust

Posted by Nexus – 23/03/2010

[via APOD]

What shapes the remarkable dust tapestry of the nearby Milky Way Galaxy? No one knows for sure. The intricate structures, shown above, were resolved in new detail recently in a wide region of the sky imaged in far infrared light by the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite.

The above image is a digital fusion of three infrared colors: two taken at high resolution by Planck, while the other is an older image taken by the now defunct IRAS satellite. At these colors, the sky is dominated by the faint glow of very cold gas within only 500 light years of Earth.

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WISE Infrared Andromeda

Posted by Nexus – 20/02/2010

[via APOD]

Click image for full-size picture (2048x1354)

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.

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The Astronaut Who Captured a Satellite

Posted by Nexus – 12/01/2010

[via antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov]

In 1984, high above the Earth’s surface, an astronaut captured a satellite. It was the second satellite captured that mission.

Pictured above, astronaut Dale A. Gardner flies free using the Manned Maneuvering Unit and begins to attach a control device dubbed the Stinger to the rotating Westar 6 satellite. Communications satellite Westar 6 had suffered a rocket malfunction that left it unable to reach its intended high geosynchronous orbit.

Both the previously caught Palapa B-2 satellite and the Westar 6 satellite were guided into the cargo bay of the Space Shuttle Discovery and returned to Earth. Westar 6 was subsequently refurbished and sold.

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