Studying Hurricane Beryl from Space
#NASA #ImageOfTheDay NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick captured this image of Hurricane Beryl in the Caribbean on July 1, 2024, while aboard the International Space Station, and posted it to X. The Category 4 hurricane had winds of about 130 mph (215 kph).
Cassini Sees Saturn
#NASA #ImageOfTheDay Saturn and its rings completely fill the field of view of Cassini's narrow angle camera in this natural color image taken on March 27, 2004. This was the last single "eyeful" of Saturn and its rings achievable with the narrow angle camera on approach to the planet.
The Maze is Afoot
#NASA #ImageOfTheDay This labyrinth – with a silhouette of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes at its center – is used as a calibration target for the cameras and laser that are part of SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals), one of the instruments aboard NASA's Perseverance Mars rover. The image was captured by the Autofocus and Context Imager on SHERLOC on May 11, 2024, the 1,147th day, or sol, of the mission, as the rover team sought to confirm it had successfully addressed an issue with a stuck lens cover.
Hubble Captures Infant Stars Transforming a Nebula
#NASA #ImageOfTheDay Named RCW 7, the nebula is located just over 5300 light-years from Earth in the constellation Puppis. Nebulae are areas of space that are rich in the raw material needed to form new stars. Under the influence of gravity, parts of these molecular clouds collapse until they coalesce into protostars, surrounded by spinning discs of leftover gas and dust. In the case of RCW 7, the protostars forming here are particularly massive, giving off strongly ionising radiation and fierce stellar winds that have transformed it into what is known as a H II region. The ultraviolet radiation from the massive protostars excites the hydrogen, causing it to emit light and giving this nebula its soft pinkish glow. Here Hubble is studying a particular massive protostellar binary named IRAS 07299-1651, still in its glowing cocoon of gas in the curling clouds towards the top of the nebula. To expose this star and its siblings, this image was captured using the Wide Field Camera 3 in near-infrared light. The massive protostars here are brightest in ultraviolet light, but they emit plenty of infrared light which can pass through much of the gas and dust around them and be seen by Hubble.
https://www.nasa.gov/image-detail/a-transformation-in-progress/
NOAA’s GOES-U Satellite Launches
#NASA #ImageOfTheDay A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket carrying the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration GOES-U (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite U) lifts off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday, June 25, 2024. The GOES-U satellite is the final satellite in the GOES-R series, which serves a critical role in providing continuous coverage of the Western Hemisphere, including monitoring tropical systems in the eastern Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
Human Factors Researcher Garrett Sadler
#NASA #ImageOfTheDay "You know, there's the whole impostor syndrome thing, and I didn’t feel like I was qualified to be here because I didn't have some sort of traditional path or because my educational background looks different than that of most of my colleagues. But I'm now at a place where I've come to understand that's true for everyone." – Garrett Sadler, Human Factors Researcher, NASA’s Ames Research Center
https://www.nasa.gov/image-detail/enviromental-portrait-of-research-ast-human-machine-systems-gar/
On the GOES
#NASA #ImageOfTheDay Crews transport NOAA’s (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-U) from the Astrotech Space Operations facility to the SpaceX hangar at Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida beginning on Friday, June 14, 2024, with the operation finishing early Saturday, June 15, 2024. The fourth and final weather-observing and environmental monitoring satellite in NOAA’s GOES-R Series will assist meteorologists in providing advanced weather forecasting and warning capabilities. The two-hour window for liftoff opens 5:16 p.m. EDT Tuesday, June 25, aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
HuskyWorks During Rover Testing
#NASA #ImageOfTheDay “HuskyWorks,” a team from Michigan Technological University’s Planetary Surface Technology Development Lab, tests the excavation tools of a robot on a concrete slab, held by a gravity-offloading crane on June 12 at NASA’s Break the Ice Lunar Challenge at Alabama A&M’s Agribition Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Led by Professor Paul van Susante, the team aimed to mimic the conditions of the lunar South Pole, winning an invitation to use the thermal vacuum chambers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center to continue robotic testing.
https://www.nasa.gov/image-detail/huskyworks-during-rover-testing/
NASA's Hubble Celebrates 21st Anniversary with "Rose" of Galaxies
#NASA #ImageOfTheDay To celebrate the 21st anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope's deployment into space, astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., pointed Hubble's eye at an especially photogenic pair of interacting galaxies called Arp 273. The larger of the spiral galaxies, known as UGC 1810, has a disk that is distorted into a rose-like shape by the gravitational tidal pull of the companion galaxy below it, known as UGC 1813. This image is a composite of Hubble Wide Field Camera 3 data taken on December 17, 2010, with three separate filters that allow a broad range of wavelengths covering the ultraviolet, blue, and red portions of the spectrum.
https://www.nasa.gov/image-detail/gsfc-20171208-archive-e001885orig/
Celebrating Juneteenth
#NASA #ImageOfTheDay This image of Galveston was taken on Nov. 23, 2022, from the International Space Station as it orbited 224 miles above Earth. While President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, word that enslaved people were free did not reach Galveston until well into 1865. When Union troops arrived that year to share the news, spontaneous celebrations broke out in African American churches, homes, and other gathering places. As years passed, the picnics, barbecues, parades, and other celebrations that sprang up to commemorate June 19th became more formalized as freed men and women purchased land, or “emancipation grounds,” to hold annual Juneteenth celebrations.
https://www.nasa.gov/image-detail/gmt327_21_31_1096_ceo-galapagos-bahamas-mexico-texas/
Management and Program Analyst Mallory Carbon
#NASA #ImageOfTheDay “I feel that my larger purpose at NASA, which I've felt since I came on as an intern, is to leave NASA a better place than I found it." — Mallory Carbon, Management and Program Analyst, NASA Headquarters
Hubble Captures a Cosmic Fossil
#NASA #ImageOfTheDay This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the globular cluster NGC 2005. It’s not an unusual globular cluster in and of itself, but it is a peculiarity when compared to its surroundings. NGC 2005 is located about 750 light-years from the heart of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), which is the Milky Way’s largest satellite galaxy some 162,000 light-years from Earth.
Sea Ice Swirls
#NASA #ImageOfTheDay Floating fragments of sea ice spun into intricate patterns as ocean currents carried them south along Greenland’s east coast in spring 2024. The MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured a moment of this dizzying journey on June 4, 2024.
https://www.nasa.gov/image-detail/greenlandiceswirls-tmo-20240604-lrg/
A Solitary Sight
#NASA #ImageOfTheDay The waning gibbous Moon is pictured above Earth from the International Space Station as it soared into an orbital nighttime 260 miles above the Atlantic Ocean near the northeast coast of South America on Sept. 30, 2023.
Celebrating Pride at NASA’s Ames Research Center
#NASA #ImageOfTheDay The Intersex Progress Pride flag flies beneath the American flag on the center pole with the California state and NASA flag at either side. The Intersex Progress Pride flag flies for the first time at any NASA center in front of the Ames Administration Building, N200, to commemorate Pride Month.
https://www.nasa.gov/image-detail/intersex-progress-pride-flag-at-ames/
“Earthrise” by NASA Astronaut Bill Anders
#NASA #ImageOfTheDay The rising Earth is about five degrees above the lunar horizon in this telephoto view taken from the Apollo 8 spacecraft near 110 degrees east longitude. Astronaut Bill Anders took the photo on the morning of Dec. 24, 1968. The South Pole is in the white area near the left end of the terminator. North and South America are under the clouds.
What Are You Looking At?
#NASA #ImageOfTheDay A Florida redbelly turtle casts a suspicious look as he is being photographed on the grounds of NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The redbelly turtle inhabits ponds, lakes, sloughs, marshes and mangrove-bordered creeks, in a range that encompasses Florida from the southern tip north to the Apalachicola area of the panhandle. Active year-round, it is often seen basking on logs or floating mats of vegetation. Adults prefer a diet of aquatic plants. The Center shares a boundary with the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, which encompasses 92,000 acres that are a habitat for more than 331 species of birds, 31 mammals, 117 fishes, and 65 amphibians and reptiles. The marshes and open water of the refuge provide wintering areas for 23 species of migratory waterfowl, as well as a year-round home for great blue herons, great egrets, wood storks, cormorants, brown pelicans and other species of marsh and shore birds, as well as a variety of insects.
Starliner to the Stars
#NASA #ImageOfTheDay A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket with Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft aboard launches from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Wednesday, June 5, 2024, in Florida. NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test is the first launch with astronauts of the Boeing CFT-100 spacecraft and United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket to the International Space Station as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program. The flight test, which launched at 10:52 a.m. EDT, serves as an end-to-end demonstration of Boeing’s crew transportation system and will carry NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to and from the orbiting laboratory. Photo Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky)
https://www.nasa.gov/image-detail/nasas-boeing-crew-flight-test-launch-2/
Hurricane Season Begins
#NASA #ImageOfTheDay An external high-definition camera on the International Space Station captured this image of Hurricane Idalia at 11:35 a.m. Eastern Time on Aug. 29, 2023. Idalia was a category 1 storm over the Gulf of Mexico with sustained winds of 140 kilometers (85 miles) per hour, according to the National Hurricane Center. June 1 marks the beginning of the 2024 hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean.
Webb Spots a Starburst
#NASA #ImageOfTheDay Featured in this new image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope is the dwarf galaxy NGC 4449. This galaxy, also known as Caldwell 21, resides roughly 12.5 million light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici. NGC 4449 has been forming stars for several billion years, but it is currently experiencing a period of star formation at a much higher rate than in the past. Such unusually explosive and intense star formation activity is called a starburst and for that reason NGC 4449 is known as a starburst galaxy. Starbursts usually occur in the central regions of galaxies, but NGC 4449 displays more widespread star formation activity, and the very youngest stars are observed both in the nucleus and in streams surrounding the galaxy. It's likely that the current widespread starburst was triggered by interaction or merging with a smaller companion; indeed, astronomers think NGC 4449's star formation has been influenced by interactions with several of its neighbors.
https://www.nasa.gov/image-detail/fireworks-of-stellar-starbursts/
