Tuesday, October 31, 2017

FROM HOT TO HOTTEST



This sequence of images shows the sun from its surface to its upper atmosphere all taken at about the same time (Oct. 27, 2017). The first shows the surface of the sun in filtered white light; the other seven images were taken in different wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light. Note that each wavelength reveals somewhat different features. They are shown in order of temperature from the first one at 6,000 degree C. surface out to about 10 million degrees C. in the upper atmosphere. Yes, the sun's outer atmosphere is much, much hotter than the surface. Scientists are getting closer to solving the processes that generate this phenomenon.


Credit: Solar Dynamics Observatory, NASA.





HALLOWEEN 2017 /// INFO: LICENCIADO EN FÍSICA: JOSÉ LUIS LOMÁSCOLO


Halloween, la noche de brujas, la noche en que los antiguos celtas creían que la línea que separa a este mundo del otro se estrechaba, permitiendo a los espíritus atravesarla.

Desde una distancia estimada entre 222 y 256 millones de años luz, nos llega esta imagen de pesadilla digna de la celebración de Halloween.



Imagen de rayos X de la región central del cúmulo de galaxias de Perseo.


La imagen fue tomada por el Observatorio Chandra de rayos X, la zona blanco brillante que se localiza sobre el ojo que presenta un punto blanco en su interior corresponde al núcleo de la galaxia NGC 1275, esta última se encuentra cerca del centro del gran cúmulo de galaxias de Perseo que contiene miles de galaxias inmersas en una nube de gas cuya temperatura alcanza los 50 millones de grados, esto permite que dicho gas emita rayos X.


En la región central de NGC 1275 se sitúa un agujero negro supermasivo con una masa 340 millones de veces mayor que la de nuestro Sol.


Este agujero negro produciría dos chorros de partículas y radiación electromagnética que despejarían de sus trayectorias al gas caliente emisor de rayos X dando lugar a los ojos de nuestro espectro cósmico, una tercera burbuja alargada en la masa del gas intergaláctico da lugar a su boca y su nariz está constituida por una galaxia que está precipitándose hacia el centro del racimo de galaxias e intercepta los rayos X provenientes del gas caliente.



Imagen artística donde se representan los chorros de partículas y radiación electromagnética emitidos por un agujero negro





Ubicación de NGC 1275 dentro de la constelación de Perseo.




" Constelación del PERSEO " / PROYECTOR PLANETARIO ZEISS






" Constelación del PERSEO " / Vista desde ROSARIO - ARGENTINA






Ghostbusters Movie ( 1984 )











Info: Lic. en Física José Luis Lomáscolo
( Museo Experimental de Ciencias )








Idea, compaginación y fotos a cielo abierto: Esmeralda Sosa 
( Técnica - Planetario Ciudad de Rosario )



Monday, October 30, 2017

LENTICULAR CLOUDS Taken by Antonio Finazzi on October 29, 2017 @ Chiuduno(BG) Italy





Lenticular clouds at evening dusk.
Details: Nikon D5500, 800 ISO, Nikkor zoom 18-140mm

Sunday, October 29, 2017

COMET ASASSN Taken by Mike Broussard on October 29, 2017 @ Perry, Louisiana, USA



C/2017 O1 (ASASSN) on Oct 29, 2017, 05:40 UT. 36x180 sec @ ISO 3200 and 21x180 sec @ ISO 1600, TV-85 at F/5.6, Canon T3, IDAS-LPS, Atlas EQ-G w/EQMOD. Bortle Green zone with transparent conditions.

RUSSIAN WAR GAMES SPARK ' BLUE AURORAS '


Around the Arctic Circle, people see green auroras almost every night. It's nothing to write home about. Blue auroras, on the other hand, are very unusual. That's why this photo taken on Oct. 26th by Oliver Wright in Abisko, Sweden, is so remarkable:




"It was totally blue," says Wright, a veteran aurora tour guide who has witnessed hundreds of geomagnetic storms. "I've never seen anything quite like it!" In Tromso, Norway, Daniel Drelciuc saw it, too--"a big blue mass next to the classic green aurora," he says.

In auroras, blue is a sign of nitrogen. Energetic particles striking ionized molecular nitrogen (N2+) at very high altitudes can produce a cold azure glow, most often seen during intense geomagnetic storms. On Oct. 26th, however, geomagnetic activity was not intense.

Maybe these weren't auroras, after all. Another theory is emerging for the blue apparition. On Oct. 26th, the Russian military staged a nuclear battle drill and test-launched a number of ballistic missiles from land, sea and air. At least one of them created a magnificent cloud of blue exhaust. Alexey Yakovlev photographed the display from Strezhevoy, Russia:















His photo looks so strange, you might think it is Photoshopped. It's real. A sequence of images on Yakovlev's Russian language social media page shows the cloud expanding naturally into the atmosphere.
The instigating missile may have been a Topol ICBM reportedly launched from the Plesetsk space center 800 km north of Moscow toward the Kura test range in Kamchatka. The flight path is about right for a sighting by Yakovlev. Moreover, when Russia test-launched the same type of missile last month, some sky watchers reported unusual clouds then, too.
Perhaps high altitude winds blew some of this blue exhaust west, visually mixing with geomagnetic auroras over Scandinavia. Wright notes that the blue and green lights were indeed moving independently, as if they came from different sources. "I'm leaning toward the rocket explanation," he says.

Friday, October 27, 2017

MIRACH'S GHOST Image Credit & Copyright: Kent Wood



As far as ghosts go, Mirach's Ghost isn't really that scary. Mirach's Ghost is just a faint, fuzzy galaxy, well known to astronomers, that happens to be seen nearly along the line-of-sight to Mirach, a bright star. Centered in this star field, Mirach is also called Beta Andromedae. About 200 light-years distant, Mirach is a red giant star, cooler than the Sun but much larger and so intrinsically much brighter than our parent star. In most telescopic views, glare and diffraction spikes tend to hide things that lie near Mirach and make the faint, fuzzy galaxy look like a ghostly internal reflection of the almost overwhelming starlight. Still, appearing in this sharp image just above and to the left of Mirach, Mirach's Ghost is cataloged as galaxy NGC 404 and is estimated to be some 10 million light-years away.

ASTROLABE RECOVERED FROM PORTUGUESE SHIPWRECK ///// IS IT ESMERALDA? /// by JASON URBANUS


Portugal bronze astrolabe ( University of Warwick ) COVENTRY, ENGLAND — According to a BBC News report, an astrolabe dating to between 1495 and 1500 has been recovered from a shipwreck in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Oman.

Mariners used such navigational instruments to measure the altitude of the sun. This astrolabe was recovered from the Esmeralda, part of a Portuguese fleet led by explorer Vasco da Gama, who was the first person to sail directly from Europe to India.

Laser scanning of the instrument, conducted by researchers at the University of Warwick, revealed navigation markings. David Mearns of Blue Water Recovery said the instrument had to have been made before 1502, when the ship left Lisbon.

It also bears a Portuguese coat of arms, and the personal emblem of Don Manuel I, who became King of Portugal in 1495.




(University of Warwick)



 +info:  “ Is it Esmeralda? ”


In 1498, Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama created shock waves in Europe when he reached and returned from the Indian coast—and its valuable spices—by sailing all the way around Africa, a 24,000-mile journey.

Da Gama found both success and hostility in the Indian Ocean, so when Portuguese king Manuel I dispatched him to the Indies again, in 1502, he went equipped with an armada of 20 ships and instructions not only to acquire spices, but also to harass and destroy the Muslim shipping industry that had monopolized the spice trade. One of these ships, Esmeralda, was captained by da Gama’s uncle, Vicente Sodré. Though the infamously brutal Sodré was directed by da Gama to patrol the Indian coast and protect Portuguese interests, he opted to sail toward the Arabian Peninsula in search of conquest and the rich plunder of Muslim ships.

In 1503, Esmeralda and its crew, including Sodré, were lost in a storm off the coast of present-day Oman.



Trenches Oman esmeralda ( Courtesy David Mearns ) 
Divers excavate a wreck thought to be Esmeralda, Oman




For five hundred years, Esmeralda remained a footnote to the Age of Discovery—until divers discovered its possible wreck site in 1998, on the island of Al Hallaniyah, 25 miles south of the Omani coast.

Over the past three years, an archaeological project led by the Oman Ministry of Heritage and Culture and Blue Water Recoveries Ltd. has investigated the early sixteenth-century shipwreck.

More than 2,800 artifacts have been recovered by archaeologists, including elements of the ship’s rigging, ceramics, coins, artillery, firearms, munitions, and trade goods.


These objects are not only helping to confirm the ship’s identity, but are also providing valuable information about early Portuguese exploration. “As the earliest ‘Ship of Discovery’ ever to be found and excavated by archaeologists,” says project director David Mearns, “we knew that virtually every artifact recovered could provide new insights into how the Portuguese conducted navigation, trade, and naval warfare during this historically important period.”





Trenches Oman indio ( Courtesy David Mearns ) 3-D scan of índio coin 

Because the ship’s cargo had remained underwater for more than five centuries, many of the artifacts were badly corroded and difficult to analyze. Researchers relied on imaging technology to gather information invisible to the naked eye or that would require destructive techniques to obtain.

A CT scan of the ship’s bell allowed some of its faded lettering to be read. Thus far, the numbers 498 and the letter M have been identified, which experts believe may be part of the inscribed year 1498 and, perhaps, the name Esmeralda.



Another CT scan was performed on a clump of 24 silver coins, which had corroded into a large mass and were too brittle to be separated. The image revealed the presence of a Portuguese índio coin, one of the rarest coins in existence.

The silver índio—of which there is only one other surviving example—was minted by Manuel I in 1499 after da Gama’s first return from the East, and was designed specifically for trade with India. Because it was only minted for a short time ( it was replaced in 1504 ), this discovery has been a useful tool in helping both date and identify the shipwreck. “Even at this relatively early stage in the archaeological assessment of the wreck site,” says Mearns, “the evidence strongly indicates that the wreckage we found is from Sodré’s Esmeralda.”



https://www.archaeology.org/news/6042-171024-portugal-bronze-astrolabe

https://www.archaeology.org/issues/221-1607/trenches/4553-trenches-oman-shipwreck

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

MARIUS HILLS AND A HOLE IN THE MOON Image Credit: NASA, Lunar Orbiter 2; Inset: Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter



Could humans live beneath the surface of the Moon? This intriguing possibility was bolstered in 2009 when Japan's Moon-orbiting SELENE spacecraft imaged a curious hole beneath the Marius Hills region on the Moon, possibly a skylight to an underground lava tube. Follow-up observations by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) indicated that the Marius Hills Hole (MHH) visually extends down nearly 100 meters and is several hundred meters wide. Most recently, ground penetrating radar data from SELENE has been re-analyzed to reveal a series of intriguing second echoes -- indicators that the extensive lava tubes exist under Marius Hills might extend down even kilometers and be large enough to house cities. Such tubes could shelter a future Moon colony from large temperature swings, micro-meteor impacts, and harmful solar radiation. Potentially, underground lava tubes might even be sealed to contain breathable air. These lava tubes likely formed when lunar volcanos were active billions of years ago. Pictured, the surface of Marius Hills region was captured in the 1960s by NASA's Lunar Orbiter 2 mission, while an inset image of the MHH is shown from NASA's continuing LRO. Several volcanic domes are visible, while Marius Crater is visible on the upper right.

CON MIS COMPAÑERITOS DEL PLANETARIO: RAÚL BARONTINI, JUAN IGNACIO GERINI, FRANCO CAVALLO & ESMERALDA SOSA /// FOTO: ESMERALDA SOSA



Juan Ignacio Gerini, Franco Cavallo, Raúl Barontini & Esmeralda Sosa




Raúl Barontini, Franco Cavallo, Esmeralda Sosa & Gusty ( en brazos de Juan Ignacio Gerini )



MANTENIMIENTO PLANETARIO CIUDAD DE ROSARIO - POR: FRANCO CAVALLO /// FOTOS: ESMERALDA SOSA ( con la "asistencia" de GUSTY )


.. reemplazando lámparas ESTRELLAS 1ERA MAGNITUD ..













.. LOS CHICOS SE PASARON ! ..
.. TODO PERFECTO ! ..




.. Gracias Franco ! ..