Saturday, December 31, 2016

FELIZ 2017 !



GRACIAS A TODOS LOS QUE VISITAN
 MI BLOG !!

GRACIAS GLOBALES !!!


THANKS TO ALL WHO VISIT
MY BLOG!

THANKS GLOBAL!


VIELEN DANK AN ALLE BESUCHER
MEIN BLOG!

DANK GLOBAL!


MERCI À TOUS CEUX QUI VISITENT
MON BLOG !

MERCI MONDIAL !


感謝所有訪問的那些
我的博客 !

全球的感謝 !


СПАСИБО ВСЕМ, КТО ПОСЕЩАЕТ
МОЙ БЛОГ!

БЛАГОДАРЯ ГЛОБАЛЬНОЙ!





FELIZ 2017 !

HAPPY 2017 !

GLÜCKLICH 2017 !

2017 HEUREUX !

快樂 2017!

СЧАСТЛИВЫЙ 2017 !




SPOTLESS SUN FOR END OF 2016 Taken by Noeleen Lowndes on December 31, 2016 @ Gold Coast QLD Australia





Today is the last day of 2016 and the Sun’s surface is absolutely spotless, but there is some activity on the solar limb with two lovely prominences on show.

Happy New Year everyone :-)

White light image taken with a Canon 70D camera and a 100-400mm lens with a 2x converter fitted with a glass solar filter, exposure 1/55th second and ISO320.

H-Alpha image is a composite image to capture the solar disc and the faint prominences. Taken with a 60mm Lunt solar telescope and a Canon 70D fitted with a 2x Barlow lens, exposure for disc 1/200th second and ISO400, prominences exposure 1/30th second and ISO500.



SPACE TIMEKEEPING: NASA'S SDO ADDS LEAP SECOND TO MASTER CLOCK


Images from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory — such as this one showing the sun as it appears in wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light — have a time stamp showing Universal Time on it. To maintain accuracy, SDO will join official clocks around the world in adding a leap second on Dec. 
31, 2016.

Credits: NASA/SDO



On Dec. 31, 2016, official clocks around the world will add a leap second just before midnight Coordinated Universal Time — which corresponds to 6:59:59 p.m. EST. NASA missions will also have to make the switch, including the Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, which watches the sun 24/7.


Clocks do this to keep in sync with Earth's rotation, which gradually slows down over time. When the dinosaurs roamed Earth, for example, our globe took only 23 hours to make a complete rotation. In space, millisecond accuracy is crucial to understanding how satellites orbit.


"SDO moves about 1.9 miles every second," said Dean Pesnell, the project scientist for SDO at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "So does every other object in orbit near SDO. We all have to use the same time to make sure our collision avoidance programs are accurate. So we all add a leap second to the end of 2016, delaying 2017 by one second."


The leap second is also key to making sure that SDO is in sync with the Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC, used to label each of its images. SDO has a clock that counts the number of seconds since the beginning of the mission. To convert that count to UTC requires knowing just how many leap seconds have been added to Earth-bound clocks since the mission started. When the spacecraft wants to provide a time in UTC, it calls a software module that takes into consideration both the mission's second count and the number of leap seconds — and then returns a time in UTC.





Images from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory — such as this one showing the sun as it appears in wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light — have a time stamp showing Universal Time on it. To maintain accuracy, SDO will join official clocks around the world in adding a leap second on Dec. 31, 2016.


Credits: NASA/SDO


INFRARED TRIFID Image Credit: J. Rho (SSC/Caltech), JPL-Caltech, NASA


The Trifid Nebula, also known as Messier 20, is easy to find with a small telescope, a well known stop in the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius. But where visible light pictures show the nebula divided into three parts by dark, obscuring dust lanes, this penetrating infrared image reveals filaments of glowing dust clouds and newborn stars. The spectacular false-color view is courtesy of the Spitzer Space Telescope. Astronomers have used the Spitzer infrared image data to count newborn and embryonic stars which otherwise can lie hidden in the natal dust and gas clouds of this intriguing stellar nursery. As seen here, the Trifid is about 30 light-years across and lies only 5,500 light-years away.



THE NEW YEAR IN ANCIENT EGYPT





Happy New Year

Although it is not technically the New Year according to the ancient Egyptian calendar, I would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a safe and prosperous New Year for 2017.

Be brave, be kind, be generous.

I look forward to sharing more news and information about ancient Egypt with you, and hope you enjoy learning about this fascinating topic with me.

#HappyNewYear2017 #Egyptology #Peace

LUNAR FARSIDE Image Credit: NASA / GSFC / Arizona State Univ. / Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter


Tidally locked in synchronous rotation, the Moon always presents its familiar nearside to denizens of planet Earth. From lunar orbit, the Moon's farside can become familiar, though. In fact this sharp picture, a mosaic from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's wide angle camera, is centered on the lunar farside. Part of a global mosaic of over 15,000 images acquired between November 2009 and February 2011, the highest resolution version shows features at a scale of 100 meters per pixel. Surprisingly, the rough and battered surface of the farside looks very different from the nearside covered with smooth dark lunar maria. The likely explanation is that the farside crust is thicker, making it harder for molten material from the interior to flow to the surface and form the smooth maria.


COMET 45P/HONDA-MRKOS-PAJDUŠAKOVA DESDE ROSARIO ARGENTINA 29-12-02016 /// FOTOS: ESMERALDA SOSA


.. MUY PERO MUY DIFÍCIL DE ENCONTRAR ..

.. la BLUE HOUR demasiada LARGAAAAAA .. 

.. en una noche super diafana con 80% de humedad característica de ROSARIO ..




9:22pm





9:28pm





9:37pm





9:46 pm





PARA VER IMAGENES EN HD ABRIR SIGUIENTE LINK












Cometa 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova


Fue descubierto el 3 de diciembre de 1948 por el astrónomo aficionado japonés Minoru Honda ( 26 de febrero 1913-26 de agosto 1990 ), el cometa lleva su nombre y el de los codescubridores, el astrónomo checoslovaco Antonín Mrkos ( 27 de enero 1918-29 de  mayo 1996 ) y la astrónoma eslovaca L'udmila Pasdusakova ( 29 de junio 1916-6 de octubre 1979 ).

La letra P junto al número en el nombre indica que se trata de un cometa periódico ( con un período orbital inferior a los 200 años ).

Otras letras que pueden aparecer en el nombre de un cometa son, 


C = no periódico,D = desaparecido o extinguido, X = órbita no calculada.

Período orbital : 5.26 años

Diámetro : entre 1 y 1.6 kilómetros

Afelio : 824 millones de kilómetros

Perihelio : 79 millones de kilómetros




Recorrido del cometa 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pasdusakova desde el 15 de diciembre del 2016 hasta el 14 de enero del 2017


( Sky & Telescope )



.. mil gracias Cachitus por la info! ..






Thursday, December 29, 2016

NASA'S NEOWISE MISSION SPIES ONE COMET, MAYBE TWO


An artist’s rendition of 2016 WF9 as it passes Jupiter’s orbit inbound toward the sun.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA's NEOWISE mission has recently discovered some celestial objects traveling through our neighborhood, including one on the blurry line between asteroid and comet. Another--definitely a comet--might be seen with binoculars through next week.

An object called 2016 WF9 was detected by the NEOWISE project on Nov. 27, 2016. It's in an orbit that takes it on a scenic tour of our solar system. At its farthest distance from the sun, it approaches Jupiter's orbit. Over the course of 4.9 Earth-years, it travels inward, passing under the main asteroid belt and the orbit of Mars until it swings just inside Earth's own orbit. After that, it heads back toward the outer solar system. Objects in these types of orbits have multiple possible origins; it might once have been a comet, or it could have strayed from a population of dark objects in the main asteroid belt.

2016 WF9 will approach Earth's orbit on Feb. 25, 2017. At a distance of nearly 32 million miles (51 million kilometers) from Earth, this pass will not bring it particularly close. The trajectory of 2016 WF9 is well understood, and the object is not a threat to Earth for the foreseeable future.

A different object, discovered by NEOWISE a month earlier, is more clearly a comet, releasing dust as it nears the sun. This comet, C/2016 U1 NEOWISE, “has a good chance of becoming visible through a good pair of binoculars, although we can't be sure because a comet's brightness is notoriously unpredictable," said Paul Chodas, manager of NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object (NEO) Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

As seen from the northern hemisphere during the first week of 2017, comet C/2016 U1 NEOWISE will be in the southeastern sky shortly before dawn. It is moving farther south each day and it will reach its closest point to the sun, inside the orbit of Mercury, on Jan. 14, before heading back out to the outer reaches of the solar system for an orbit lasting thousands of years. While it will be visible to skywatchers at Earth, it is not considered a threat to our planet either.

NEOWISE is the asteroid-and-comet-hunting portion of the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission. After discovering more than 34,000 asteroids during its original mission, NEOWISE was brought out of hibernation in December of 2013 to find and learn more about asteroids and comets that could pose an impact hazard to Earth. If 2016 WF9 turns out to be a comet, it would be the 10th discovered since reactivation. If it turns out to be an asteroid, it would be the 100th discovered since reactivation.

What NEOWISE scientists do know is that 2016 WF9 is relatively large: roughly 0.3 to 0.6 mile (0.5 to 1 kilometer) across.

It is also rather dark, reflecting only a few percent of the light that falls on its surface. This body resembles a comet in its reflectivity and orbit, but appears to lack the characteristic dust and gas cloud that defines a comet.

"2016 WF9 could have cometary origins," said Deputy Principal Investigator James "Gerbs" Bauer at JPL. "This object illustrates that the boundary between asteroids and comets is a blurry one; perhaps over time this object has lost the majority of the volatiles that linger on or just under its surface."

Near-Earth objects (NEOs) absorb most of the light that falls on them and re-emit that energy at infrared wavelengths. This enables NEOWISE's infrared detectors to study both dark and light-colored NEOs with nearly equal clarity and sensitivity.

"These are quite dark objects," said NEOWISE team member Joseph Masiero, "Think of new asphalt on streets; these objects would look like charcoal, or in some cases are even darker than that."

NEOWISE data have been used to measure the size of each near-Earth object it observes. Thirty-one asteroids that NEOWISE has discovered pass within about 20 lunar distances from Earth's orbit, and 19 are more than 460 feet (140 meters) in size but reflect less than 10 percent of the sunlight that falls on them.

The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has completed its seventh year in space after being launched on Dec. 14, 2009.

Data from the NEOWISE mission are available on a website for the public and scientific community to use. A guide to the NEOWISE data release, data access instructions and supporting documentation are available at:

http://wise2.ipac.caltech.edu/docs/release/neowise/

Access to the NEOWISE data products is available via the on-line and API services of the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive.

A list of peer-reviewed papers using the NEOWISE data is available at:

http://neowise.ipac.caltech.edu/publications.html

DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-5011
agle@jpl.nasa.gov

Laurie Cantillo / Dwayne Brown
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1077 / 202-358-1726
laura.l.cantillo@nasa.gov / dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

JUMPY ACTIVE REGION









 Credit: Solar Dynamics Observatory, NASA.

SHELL GAME IN THE LMC Image Credit & Copyright: John Gleason





An alluring sight in southern skies, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is seen here through narrowband filters. The filters are designed to transmit only light emitted by ionized sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms. Ionized by energetic starlight, the atoms emit their characteristic light as electrons are recaptured and the atom transitions to a lower energy state. As a result, this false color image of the LMC seems covered with shell-shaped clouds of ionized gas surrounding massive, young stars. Sculpted by the strong stellar winds and ultraviolet radiation, the glowing clouds, dominated by emission from hydrogen, are known as H II (ionized hydrogen) regions. Itself composed of many overlapping shells, the Tarantula Nebula is the large star forming region at top center. A satellite of our Milky Way Galaxy, the LMC is about 15,000 light-years across and lies a mere 180,000 light-years away in the constellation Dorado.