Archive for the ‘space’ Category

First American spacewalk.

Wednesday, June 4th, 2008

This amazing picture was taken on June 3, 1964 which is before I was born. The development of human society has been extraordinary these last few hundred years and to prove it where is one of many amazing pictures of great deeds.

Just before the time we were getting color TV we also had men’s walking in space.

The astronaut managed to walk in space with the help of a hand-held maneuvering oxygen-jet gun and an 8 meter tether. The gun held in his right hand ran out of fuel 3 minutes after he started the space walk making the astronaut use the tether to come back to the ship. The visor of his helmet is gold-plated to protect him from the unfiltered rays of the sun.

Hope you enjoy this fantastic picture.

men in space

Last shuttle launch

Monday, June 2nd, 2008

The pinnacle of our technology is present in our space exploration activities.

One of the most amazing things that we now easily do is to get into space and that’s why I selected this video of the latest launch of a shuttle.

This one is going to our space station to deliver a Japanese lab.

Just beautiful to see where we can reach when we put our efforts into somethig.

Good luck to the international space station and to all future the space trips.

Enjoy the video

Check out how your eyes can trick you

Sunday, May 25th, 2008

This amazing gravity hill is actually a simple phenomenon were your eyes make you think the car is going up while it’s going down. The trick it’s at the surroundings that make you think that the car is going up while it’s going down.

Well this is a living proof that what we see isn’t the reality but instead our perception of reality. Our senses trick us every day so don’t forget not to believe everything you perceive.

Have fun with the video

Car Climbing A Slope With Engines Off? - The funniest videos clips are here

Microsoft and Google launched their competition into space

Thursday, May 8th, 2008

Two of the most powerful companies in the world of the computers will take their competition into space as they develop their new programs that will allow internet users to travel around our known space from their homes thanks to the most advanced telescopes and satellites of the world like the Hubble and the Spitzer Infrared.

Microsoft is expected to launch this semester a new service called WorldWideTelescope which will allow Windows users to se 1,2 million galaxies and in a nearby future more than 2 billion.

In the other end we have Google that has already launched this August the service Sky which is similar to WorldWideTelescope but allows users to access the images directly from the internet without the need for any special program.

Microsoft has stated that the program is dedicated to Jim Gray, Microsoft Research member, who has deceased while sailing near San Francisco. Microsoft also says that the WorldWideTelescope will be free for educational and astronomic communities in the hope of inspiring people to explore and understand The Universe as they never did before.

Google Sky was borne almost like a hobby from the 20 per cent available time that Google give his workers to invest in self ideas like Gmail for example while the WorldWideTelescope has been developed by the leading engineers from Microsoft.

Both Google Sky and WorldWideTelescope will allow comments and say that a future cooperation might be possible.

My opinion is that both services will have a big success and add great value to the internet allowing users to expand their knowledge of space.

NASA’s GALEX spacecraft and its best pictures

Saturday, April 26th, 2008
GALEXImage via Wikipedia

On April 28th of 2003 the spacecraft GALEX, which means Galaxy Evolution Explorer, was sent into space with the mission of observing galaxies in ultraviolet light across 10 billion years of cosmic history through an incorporated telescope.

This mission which was originally planned to last only 29 months was extended and is still active making in the beginning of next week 5 years that it travels the space sending information back to Earth.

GALEX’s ultraviolet observations are telling the scientists how galaxies, the building block of our Universe, evolve and change.

GALEX observations are providing data for NASA’s investigators to find out when and how the stars that we see today were formed and which chemical elements are the galaxies made off.

Thanks to GALEX, which has already observed more than 100 million galaxies, investigators will have the first comprehensive map of the Universe of galaxies under construction, helping them understand how galaxies like our own Milky Way were formed.

In effect, GALEX acts like a time machine through which humans see the universe as it was a few billion years after its birth because it observes places so far away that the light reaching GALEX, even traveling at 299.792.458 meters per second is still the same as billions of years before.

Has you might imagine both the ultraviolet images from our galaxy and other galaxies are something amazing. If there are limits on were our sights can reach right now, we can say that some are being defined by GALEX.

Here you’ll find a collection of the best and most important images sent by GALEX .

NGC 300

(Above) This image from NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer shows the galaxy NGC 300, located about seven million light-years away in the constellation Sculptor. It is a classic spiral galaxy with open arms and vigorous star formation throughout.

Blue represents ultraviolet light captured by the telescope’s long-wavelength detector. Green shows ultraviolet light from the short-wavelength detector, and red shows red visible light from the Las Campanas Observatory, Chile.

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Mira

(Above) A close-up view of a star racing through space faster than a speeding bullet can be seen in this image from NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer. The star, called Mira (pronounced My-rah), is traveling at 130 kilometers per second, or 291,000 miles per hour. As it hurls along, it sheds material that will be recycled into new stars, planets and possibly even life.

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M81 spiral galaxy

(Above) A close-up view of a star racing through space faster than a speeding bullet can be seen in this image from NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer. The star, called Mira (pronounced My-rah), is traveling at 130 kilometers per second, or 291,000 miles per hour. As it hurls along, it sheds material that will be recycled into new stars, planets and possibly even life.

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NASA’s SOHO spacecraft and its best pictures

Wednesday, April 9th, 2008
NASA sealImage via Wikipedia

On 2 of December, 1995 a spacecraft called SOHO (Solar & Heliospheric Observatory) was launched into space with the mission of studying the internal structure of the Sun, it’s extensive outer atmosphere and the origin of the solar wind which is a stream of ionized gas that blows continuously outward through the Solar System.

This project is the result of a combination of strength between the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA. ESA was responsible for the production of the space craft and its instruments while NASA was responsible for the launch and is now responsible for mission operations because NASA keeps track of the spacecraft through large radio dishes spread around the world which form NASA’s Deep Space Network.

Trough subtle waves that come from the interior of the Sun and that show up at its surface in the form of small ripples which are extremely difficult to be observed in detail from Earth, scientist expect to get more information about the core of the Sun. These details about the hidden core of the Sun will shed light to questions related to its formation, 4.6 billion years ago.

These subtle waves called g modes are thought to occur when churning gas bellow the solar surface sinks deeper into the star and collides with denser material originating ripples that propagate through the Sun’s interior up to its surface. When these waves reach the surface of the Sun they only measure a few meters and last some hours since it takes between two and seven hours to rise and fall just once.

Since 1995 that most of data retrieved by SOHO helped a lot of investigations and answered some questions about space.

One of the most important questions that this project expects to answer is the speed of the rotation of the Sun’s core which will reveal a lot of information about how our solar system was formed, because it represents the hub of rotation for the interstellar cloud that eventually formed the Sun and all the planets.

Now that you know the general information about this amazing machine that has been traveling the space for over 11 years and 5 months I’m sure that you’re going to like to check out the best pictures sent by SOHO.

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(Above: the Sun)An EIT 304Å image captures a pair of curving erupting prominences on 28 June 2000 — Prominences are huge clouds of relatively cool dense plasma suspended in the Sun’s hot, thin corona. At times, they can erupt, escaping the Sun’s atmosphere. Emission in this spectral line shows the upper chromosphere at a temperature of about 60,000 degrees K. Every feature in the image traces magnetic field structure. The hottest areas appear almost white, while the darker red areas indicate cooler temperatures.

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(Above: the Sun)Blasting CME
This LASCO C2 image, taken 8 January 2002, shows a widely spreading coronal mass ejection (CME) as it blasts more than a billion tons of matter out into space at millions of kilometers per hour. The C2 image was turned 90 degrees so that the blast seems to be pointing down. An EIT 304 Angstrom image from a different day was enlarged and superimposed on the C2 image so that it filled the occulting disk for effect.

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(Above)SWAN observed a huge cloud of hydrogen, 70 times the size of the Sun, that surrounded Comet Hale-Bopp when it neared the Sun. Ultra violet light, charted by SWAN in 1997, revealed a cloud 100 million kilometres w ide and diminishing in intensity outwards (contour lines). The cloud was generat ed by a comet nucleus perhaps only about 40 kilometres in diameter. The yellow c ircle (lower right) gives the size of the Sun. Solar rays broke up water vapor r eleased from the comet by the Sun’s warmth. The resulting hydrogen atoms shone by ultraviolet light invisible from the Earth’s surface.

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(Above: the Sun)This composite image combines EIT images from three wavelengths (171Å, 195Å and 284Å) into one that reveals solar features unique to each wavelength. Since the EIT images come to us from the spacecraft in black and white, they are color coded for easy identification. For this image, the nearly simultaneous images from May 1998 were each given a color code (red, yellow and blue) and merged into one.

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Smallest known Black Hole discovered by NASA scientists

Saturday, April 5th, 2008
NASA sealImage from Wikipedia

Has you might imagine there are several sizes of black holes and this one besides being the smallest ever found still digests everything around him because of the huge gravitational force that even draws light into it.
The previous record holder would weight 6.3 Suns which isn’t much when we know black holes weighting up to billions times the weight of our Sun.
NASA scientists Nikolai Shaposhnikov and Lev Titarchuk identified this black hole which is the smallest (15 miles across) and the lightest known black hole in the universe weighting only 3.8 of our suns.
This discovery was made with the help of NASA’s Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer satellite that was launched in late 1995.
This flyweight XTE J1650 which exists outside our star system was formed in the center of a dying star when she ran out of fuel and collapsed due to its own gravity into a black hole. As well as being the smallest known black hole scientist also think that it must be very close of being the smallest possible size for a black hole because if after the star collapses the result is less than 3 times the weight of our sun, instead of becoming a black hole it becomes a called neutron star.
Amazing how this powerful and fearful phenomenon of the universe only measures 15 miles that is the size of a city.

illustration of a black hole

Photo above: The lowest-mass known black hole belongs to a binary system named XTE J1650-500. The black hole has about 3.8 times the mass of our sun, and is orbited by a companion star, as depicted in this illustration. Credit: NASA/CXC/A. Hobar

NASA\'s Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer satellite

The measurement of the black hole’s mass is due to high-precision timing observations made by NASA’s Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer satellite, shown here prior to launch. Credit: NASA

Messenger is alive and shooting (check the best photos!)

Monday, March 31st, 2008
NASA insignia (meatball)Image from Wikipedia

The spacecraft sent to space by NASA is doing the job quite well scientist say.

Nasa sent Messenger to investigate mercury which is the smallest and densest planet in our solar system. Beside having the oldest surface and being the closest to the sun, Mercury also has the largest daily temperature variations in his surface.

This spacecraft took almost two decades to be developed and was designed with the ability to go under extreme heat conditions which are the ones encountered in Mercury’s orbit.

Take a look at the new findings of Mercury, they are amazing!

The findings I’m posting are a compilation of the best images taken by NASA’s spacecraft Mercury until today. Hope you enjoy!

Amazing photo of Mercury in color:

Mercury in color

Photo of Mercury horizon taken by Messenger on the first flyby:

Mercury Horizon

Messenger first image after the closest flyby:

closest shot

Photo of ridges and cliffs on Mercury surface:

Photo of the 130 miles in diameter crater called Matisse:

Matisse crater

Photo of Mercury North Pole:

North pole

Photo of the previously unseen side:

previous unseen side of Mercury

Organic materials detected by Cassini at Saturn’s Enceladus Moon

Sunday, March 30th, 2008

During a close fly by on March 12 Cassini spacecraft detected an unusual amount of heat, water vapor and organic chemicals.

Cassini also detected Geysers which means that there must be liquid water not far bellow the surface of the moon and matter coming from inside the moon that resembles to the matter found in comets.

The matter coming from inside the moon is important because it can explain many questions about the formation of the Saturn system.

Scientist had no idea that Enceladus was so active and hot. The combination of heat, water and organic chemicals makes a soup were life can flourish.

For sure that this moon will be under the close observation by our scientists because of all the questions it can answer.

 

Hundreds of salt deposits might bring proof of life at mars

Monday, March 24th, 2008

Mikki Osterloo of the University of Hawai and co-workers found small depressions that appear to be filled with salt deposits. These deposits seem to be like the ones we have on Earth when the water evaporates which increases the probability that there was liquid water in Mars. Two hundred salt deposits smaller than 10 square miles (26 square kilometers) and 3.8 billions years old were found on Mars.

This is an extremely significant discovery because it increases considerably the probability of Mars having water in the past. Also, salt is an excellent preservative of organic material which means that if there was life or precursors of life in Mars it should be preserved in the salt. Proving that there was life on Mars is an objective that the scientists pursue for a long time, and now that these salt deposits were discovered the answer might be closer to be unveiled.

 

Image courtesy Mikki M. Osterloo

A false-color image taken by the Mars Odyssey Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) shows chloride minerals (blue) in the Terra Sirenum region of Mars

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