Picture Of The Day!

“What in the world is that?” That’s a natural reaction when you first see this Hubble Space Telescope image of LL Pegasi. The extremely dim spiral pattern is real, and its regularity suggests a periodic origin for the nebula’s shape.

The spiral is thought to arise because LL Pegasi is a binary system, with a star that is losing material and a companion star orbiting it. The companion’s gravitational influence helps sculpt the nebula. The spacing between layers in the spiral reflects the 800-year orbital period of the binary.

Credit: ESA/NASA & R. Sahai.

ALT TEXT: At center left, a faint spiral structure with wide bands has a dark, dusty center. To its right, a bright white star displays four prominent diffraction spikes. A handful of smaller, more distant background galaxies are also scatted throughout the image.

Sharpening Our View of Climate Change with the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem Satellite

As our planet warms, Earth’s ocean and atmosphere are changing.

Climate change has a lot of impact on the ocean, from sea level rise to marine heat waves to a loss of biodiversity. Meanwhile, greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide continue to warm our atmosphere.

NASA’s upcoming satellite, PACE, is soon to be on the case!

Set to launch on Feb. 6, 2024, the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission will help us better understand the complex systems driving the global changes that come with a warming climate.

Earth’s ocean is becoming greener due to climate change. PACE will see the ocean in more hues than ever before.

While a single phytoplankton typically can’t be seen with the naked eye, communities of trillions of phytoplankton, called blooms, can be seen from space. Blooms often take on a greenish tinge due to the pigments that phytoplankton (similar to plants on land) use to make energy through photosynthesis.

In a 2023 study, scientists found that portions of the ocean had turned greener because there were more chlorophyll-carrying phytoplankton. PACE has a hyperspectral sensor, the Ocean Color Instrument (OCI), that will be able to discern subtle shifts in hue. This will allow scientists to monitor changes in phytoplankton communities and ocean health overall due to climate change.

Phytoplankton play a key role in helping the ocean absorb carbon from the atmosphere. PACE will identify different phytoplankton species from space.

With PACE, scientists will be able to tell what phytoplankton communities are present – from space! Before, this could only be done by analyzing a sample of seawater.

Telling “who’s who” in a phytoplankton bloom is key because different phytoplankton play vastly different roles in aquatic ecosystems. They can fuel the food chain and draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to photosynthesize. Some phytoplankton populations capture carbon as they die and sink to the deep ocean; others release the gas back into the atmosphere as they decay near the surface.

Studying these teeny tiny critters from space will help scientists learn how and where phytoplankton are affected by climate change, and how changes in these communities may affect other creatures and ocean ecosystems.

Climate models are one of our most powerful tools to understand how Earth is changing. PACE data will improve the data these models rely on.

The PACE mission will offer important insights on airborne particles of sea salt, smoke, human-made pollutants, and dust – collectively called aerosols – by observing how they interact with light.

With two instruments called polarimeters, SPEXone and HARP2, PACE will allow scientists to measure the size, composition, and abundance of these microscopic particles in our atmosphere. This information is crucial to figuring out how climate and air quality are changing.

PACE data will help scientists answer key climate questions, like how aerosols affect cloud formation or how ice clouds and liquid clouds differ.

It will also enable scientists to examine one of the trickiest components of climate change to model: how clouds and aerosols interact. Once PACE is operational, scientists can replace the estimates currently used to fill data gaps in climate models with measurements from the new satellite.

With a view of the whole planet every two days, PACE will track both microscopic organisms in the ocean and microscopic particles in the atmosphere. PACE’s unique view will help us learn more about the ways climate change is impacting our planet’s ocean and atmosphere.

Stay up to date on the NASA PACE blog, and make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of sPACE!

Today's word of the day is "earthshine" which is when the Earth reflects the Sun's light so that it makes the dark side of the moon glow! Super cool.

Image credit: Abhijit Juvekar

2023 December 29

Shakespeare in Space Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

Explanation: In 1986, Voyager 2 became the only spacecraft to explore ice giant planet Uranus close up. Still, this newly released image from the NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) on the James Webb Space Telescope offers a detailed look at the distant world. The tilted outer planet rotates on its axis once in about 17 hours. Its north pole is presently pointed near our line of sight, offering direct views of its northern hemisphere and a faint but extensive system of rings. Of the giant planet’s 27 known moons, 14 are annotated in the image. The brighter ones show hints of Webb’s characteristic diffraction spikes. And though these worlds of the outer Solar System were unknown in Shakespearean times, all but two of the 27 Uranian moons are named for characters in the English Bard’s plays.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap231229.html

Comet Nishimura Credit: Peter Kennett

Wed. Oct. 30: We'll be closed tonight due to clouds. We'll try again next week!

Webb + Hubble > peanut butter + chocolate? We think so!

In this image of galaxy cluster MACS0416, the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes have united to create one of the most colorful views of the universe ever taken. Their combination of visible and infrared light yields vivid colors that give clues to the distances of galaxies (blue = close, red = far).

Looking at the combined data, scientists have spotted a sprinkling of sources that vary over time, including highly magnified supernovas and even individual stars billions of light-years away.

Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, J. Diego (Instituto de Fisica de Cantabria, Spain), J. D’Silva (U. Western Australia), A. Koekemoer (STScI), J. Summers & R. Windhorst (ASU), and H. Yan (U. Missouri).

ALT TEXT: A field of galaxies on the black background of space. In the middle, stretching from left to right, is a collection of dozens of yellowish spiral and elliptical galaxies that form a foreground galaxy cluster. They form a rough, flat line along the center. Among them are distorted linear features, which mostly appear to follow invisible concentric circles curving around the center of the image. The linear features are created when the light of a background galaxy is bent and magnified through gravitational lensing. At center left, a particularly prominent example stretches vertically about three times the length of a nearby galaxy. A variety of brightly colored, red and blue galaxies of various shapes are scattered across the image, making it feel densely populated. Near the center are two tiny galaxies compared to the galaxy cluster: a very red edge-on spiral and a very blue face-on spiral, which provide a striking color contrast.

Handy direct image addresses:

Wow - was also an APOD!

www.spacetelescope.org

Young stars sculpt gas with powerful outflows

Young stars sculpt gas with powerful outflows

Did a reverse image search on the 2nd one to find the original original source. I found some book covers, but eventually this esahubble.org press release revealed itself as at least an official source of the original image from Nov. 2005! It's NGC 346 (the star cluster) and a gorgeous backdrop of gas in the Small Magellanic Cloud.

Bing

universe - Bing

Intelligent search from Bing makes it easier to quickly find what you’re looking for and rewards you.

Bing

universe - Bing

Intelligent search from Bing makes it easier to quickly find what you’re looking for and rewards you.

Sources for banner and profile picture

The Dragon's Egg Nebula, NGC 6164 // Daniel Stern

Solar Eclipse Event, Monday April 8th!

Next Monday, a solar eclipse will be visible from Bridgewater! Looking at an eclipse without proper eye protection can permanently damage your eyesight, but the observatory has prepared various ways to observe the eclipse safely. Our event and resources will be open to the public.

On Friday, April 5th, we'll have safe eclipse glasses/viewers available for pickup from 10:00 am - 7:30 pm while supplies last. They'll be located at the counter in the central lobby on the 1st floor of the Dana Mohler-Faria (DMF) Science and Mathematics Center. Each person may take up to 3 glasses/viewers. Be careful with these. If they're scratched or punctured, they are not safe.

On Monday, April 8th, weather allowing:

Starting at 9:00 am, we'll have safe eclipse glasses/viewers available for pickup while supplies last. These will be located at the counter in the central lobby on the 1st floor of the DMF Science and Mathematics Center, at several tables surrounding that building, and up on the 5th floor. (There will be additional locations meant for BSU Students only).

From 2:00 pm - 4:45 pm, we'll have projections of the Sun at several tables surrounding the DMF Science and Mathematics Center.

From 2:00 pm - 4:45 pm, we'll have solar telescopes on the 5th floor observing patios also in the DMF Science and Mathematics Center.

On Monday, April 8th, rain or shine:

From 2:00 pm - 4:45 pm, we'll stream video of the eclipse from the path of totality in the auditorium and central lobby on the 1st floor of the DMF Science and Math Center.

Parking will be available in the West Campus Lot behind the DMF Science and Mathematics Center. If that lot fills, you can park at the parking garage on East Campus.