Calling All Geology And Space Lovers!

Hurry! You Can Catch a Ride to Jupiter with NASA

Well, at least your name can.  

One of the planet Jupiter’s largest and most intriguing moons is called Europa. Evidence hints that beneath its icy shell, Europa hides an ocean of liquid water – more water than all of Earth’s oceans combined. In 2024, our Europa Clipper robotic spacecraft sets sail to take a closer look…and when it launches, your name can physically be aboard! Here’s how: 

NASA’s Message in a Bottle campaign invites people around the world to sign their names to a poem written by the U.S. Poet Laureate, Ada Limón. The poem connects the two water worlds — Earth, yearning to reach out and understand what makes a world habitable, and Europa, waiting with secrets yet to be explored.

The poem will be engraved on Europa Clipper, along with participants' names that will be physically etched onto microchips mounted on the spacecraft. Together, the poem and names will travel 1.8 billion miles to the Jupiter system.

Signing up is easy! Just go to this site to sign your name to the poem and get on board. You can send your name en español, too. Envía tu nombre aquí.

The Europa Clipper launch window opens in October 2024, but don’t wait – everyone’s names need to be received this year so they can be loaded onto the spacecraft in time. Sign up by Dec. 31, 2023.

We hope you’ll be riding along with us! Follow the mission at europa.nasa.gov.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

Uranus and some of its moons on October 20, 2023 // Louis Fico

I think the moons in this image could be Titania, Umbriel, Ariel, and Oberon, tho which points of light they are is hard to say

Many things in space stay the same for a human lifetime, but not the Bat Shadow. Hubble pictures taken 404 days apart show it “flapping” as the shadow changes position. It’s the result of a saddle-shaped disk: https://bit.ly/3Y5qu7W

We'll be open tonight, Wed. 4/30, 8:30 - 9:45 pm!

We sure have been experiencing this around here. Not only has it affected temperatures, but the percentage of time the sky is cloudy. Our observatory takes images and hosts events less often in part because of the conditions of our sky.

So many people do not understand the relationship between climate change and cold weather.

Planet Venus as seen by the Japanese spacecraft Akatsuki built by Institute of Space & Astronautical Science/Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

We're not yet sure about tonight's weather - it depends on whether these clouds move north or south. Check back in a few hours!

2023 September 18

The Red Sprite and the Tree Credit & Copyright: Maxime Villaeys

Explanation: The sprite and tree could hardly be more different. To start, the red sprite is an unusual form of lightning, while the tree is a common plant. The sprite is far away – high in Earth’s atmosphere, while the tree is nearby – only about a football field away. The sprite is fast – electrons streaming up and down at near light’s speed, while the tree is slow – wood anchored to the ground. The sprite is bright – lighting up the sky, while the tree is dim – shining mostly by reflected light. The sprite was fleeting – lasting only a small fraction of a second, while the tree is durable – living now for many years. Both however, when captured together, appear oddly similar in this featured composite image captured early this month in France as a thunderstorm passed over mountains of the Atlantic Pyrenees.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap230918.html

The NGC 70 Group // Michael Legary

What is casting dark shadows across 36,000 light-years of space in this Hubble Space Telescope image?

The mysterious dark rays appearing to emanate from galaxy IC 5063 have intrigued astronomers, and there are a few different ideas about what is causing them. They could be like the shadows of clouds when light from the setting Sun pierces through them.

Astronomers have traced the rays back to the galaxy’s core, the location of an active supermassive black hole. One idea suggests that the shadows are being cast into space by an inner tube-shaped ring, or torus, of dusty material surrounding the black hole.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and W.P. Maksym (CfA).

ALT TEXT: Rust-colored view of space, with a bright, narrow purple region at the center, a galaxy. Background stars and galaxies are scattered sparsely—this is a dusty rather than starry scene. To the upper left of the bright central region are dark dust lanes. Opposite these to the lower right, one dark area extends from the central bright region and splits into two dark rays. Similar dark rays can be seen to the top left, behind the dust lanes. The edges of the entire image are dark, fading from the colored center.