Happy 4th Of July… From Space!

DYK the bright clusters and nebulae of planet Earth's night sky are often named for flowers or insects? 

Though its wingspan covers over 3 light-years, NGC 6302: The Butterfly Nebula is no exception! With an estimated surface temperature of about 250,000 degrees C, the dying central star of this particular planetary nebula has become exceptionally hot, shining brightly in ultraviolet light but hidden from direct view by a dense torus of dust. This sharp close-up was recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2009. The Hubble image data is reprocessed here, showing off the remarkable details of the complex planetary nebula.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble, HLA; Reprocessing & Copyright: Robert Eder

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Studying Sediments in Space

An International Space Station investigation called BCAT-CS studies dynamic forces between sediment particles that cluster together.

For the study, scientists sent mixtures of quartz and clay particles to the space station and subjected them to various levels of simulated gravity.

Conducting the experiment in microgravity makes it possible to separate out different forces that act on sediments and look at the function of each.

Sediment systems of quartz and clay occur many places on Earth, including rivers, lakes, and oceans, and affect many activities, from deep-sea hydrocarbon drilling to carbon sequestration.

Understanding how sediments behave has a range of applications on Earth, including predicting and mitigating erosion, improving water treatment, modeling the carbon cycle, sequestering contaminants and more accurately finding deep sea oil reservoirs.

It also may provide insight for future studies of the geology of new and unexplored planets.

Follow @ISS_RESEARCH to learn more.

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Go Behind the Scenes of Science in Space

Gravity rules everything on Earth, from how our bodies develop to what our research can reveal, but what happens when we go 250 miles up to the International Space Station?

Get ready to go behind the scenes of what it takes to get science to space, and meet the people who make it happen.

Introducing Season 4 of NASA Explorers: Microgravity. Floating isn’t just fun. Microgravity could open the door to discovery.

You’ve seen things floating in space, but why does that happen and how does it affect science being conducted aboard the International Space Station?

Microgravity makes the International Space Station the perfect place to perform research that is changing the lives of people on Earth, and preparing us to go deeper into space. This season on our series NASA Explorers, we are following science into low-Earth orbit and seeing what it takes to do research aboard the space station.

Follow NASA Explorers on Facebook to catch new episodes of season 4 every Wednesday! 

Did the training ever get so hard that you would regret getting into this?

No because the end goal is space!

Say hello to spiral galaxy NGC 7331👋

Happy National Twin Day! 

The majestic spiral galaxy NGC 7331 is almost like a long lost twin to our very own Milky Way. In this close-up, the galaxy’s magnificent spiral arms feature dark, obscuring dust lanes, bright bluish clusters of massive young stars and the telltale reddish glow of active star-forming regions. The yellowish central region harbors populations of older, cooler stars. Like in the Milky Way, a supermassive black hole lies at the galaxy’s core.

Our Hubble Space Telescope took this image while observing a supernova explosion — the fiery death of a massive star — within NGC 7331. Astronomers noted that the supernova, called SN 2014C, experienced a dramatic, hasty transformation that involved a significant upsurge in hydrogen content. This observation provided a rare chance to gain insight into the final stages of massive stars.

NGC 7331 was discovered in 1784 by famed astronomer William Herschel, who discovered the planet Uranus. It was originally classified as a nebula, which is an interstellar cloud of gas and dust, because no one knew that other galaxies existed until the 20th century. It turns out that NGC 7331 and the Milky Way are among billions and billions of galaxies in the universe!

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"A classic that I never get tired of: the orange solar panel in front of the blue–white background and the curvature of Earth" wrote astronaut Thomas Pesquet (@thom_astro) of the European Space Agency from aboard the International Space Station. 

The space station serves as the world's leading laboratory for conducting cutting-edge microgravity research, and is the primary platform for technology development and testing in space to enable human and robotic exploration of destinations beyond low-Earth orbit, including Mars. 

Credit: NASA/ESA

Peering deep into the core of the Crab Nebula, this close-up image reveals the beating heart of one of the most historic and intensively studied remnants of a supernova, an exploding star. The inner region sends out clock-like pulses of radiation and tsunamis of charged particles embedded in magnetic fields.

The neutron star at the very center of the Crab Nebula has about the same mass as the sun but compressed into an incredibly dense sphere that is only a few miles across. Spinning 30 times a second, the neutron star shoots out detectable beams of energy that make it look like it's pulsating.

The Hubble Space Telescope snapshot is centered on the region around the neutron star (the rightmost of the two bright stars near the center of this image) and the expanding, tattered, filamentary debris surrounding it. Hubble's sharp view captures the intricate details of glowing gas, shown in red, that forms a swirling medley of cavities and filaments. Inside this shell is a ghostly blue glow that is radiation given off by electrons spiraling at nearly the speed of light in the powerful magnetic field around the crushed stellar core.

Read more about this image HERE. 

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What’s Up in December 2020 – Skywatching Tips from NASA!

Catch the Geminids meteor shower as the peak coincides with darker skies during a new Moon. Plus, Jupiter and Saturn appear closer than in decades, and the winter solstice arrives. Check this out for when and where to observe! Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

Are we able to take a picture of it

Yup and I hope you share your photos with us on the NASA Eclipse Flicker page! https://www.flickr.com/groups/nasa-eclipse2017/ You can find out about how to safely take photos of the eclipse at https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/five-tips-from-nasa-for-photographing-the-total-solar-eclipse-on-aug-21 Good luck! 

The Sun Just Released the Most Powerful Flare of this Solar Cycle

The Sun released two significant solar flares on Sept. 6, including one that clocked in as the most powerful flare of the current solar cycle.

The solar cycle is the approximately 11-year-cycle during which the Sun’s activity waxes and wanes. The current solar cycle began in December 2008 and is now decreasing in intensity and heading toward solar minimum, expected in 2019-2020. Solar minimum is a phase when solar eruptions are increasingly rare, but history has shown that they can nonetheless be intense.

Footage of the Sept. 6 X2.2 and X9.3 solar flares captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory in extreme ultraviolet light (131 angstrom wavelength)

Our Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite, which watches the Sun constantly, captured images of both X-class flares on Sept. 6.

Solar flares are classified according to their strength. X-class denotes the most intense flares, followed by M-class, while the smallest flares are labeled as A-class (near background levels) with two more levels in between. Similar to the Richter scale for earthquakes, each of the five levels of letters represents a 10-fold increase in energy output. 

The first flare peaked at 5:10 a.m. EDT, while the second, larger flare, peaked at 8:02 a.m. EDT.

Footage of the Sept. 6 X2.2 and X9.3 solar flares captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory in extreme ultraviolet light (171 angstrom wavelength) with Earth for scale

Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however — when intense enough — they can disturb Earth’s atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel.

Both Sept. 6 flares erupted from an active region labeled AR 2673. This area also produced a mid-level solar flare on Sept. 4, 2017. This flare peaked at 4:33 p.m. EDT, and was about a tenth the strength of X-class flares like those measured on Sept. 6.

Footage of the Sept. 4 M5.5 solar flare captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory in extreme ultraviolet light (131 angstrom wavelength)

This active region continues to produce significant solar flares. There were two flares on the morning of Sept. 7 as well. 

For the latest updates and to see how these events may affect Earth, please visit NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center at http://spaceweather.gov, the U.S. government’s official source for space weather forecasts, alerts, watches and warnings.

Follow @NASASun on Twitter and NASA Sun Science on Facebook to keep up with all the latest in space weather research.

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