Saturday, June 30, 2018
" MOON & MARS " ( with mist ) DESDE ROSARIO - ARGENTINA //// FOTOS: ESMERALDA SOSA
.. 7.45 am ..
.. mucha neblina ..
PARA VER FOTO EN HD ABRIR SIGUIENTE LINK
Friday, June 29, 2018
SIGMA OCTANTIS AND FRIENDS Image Credit & Copyright: Frank Sackenheim
South pole star Sigma Octantis (of the constellation Octans) is on the left of this starry expanse spanning over 40 degrees across far southern skies. You'll have to look hard to find it, though. The southern hemisphere's faint counterpart to the north star Polaris, Sigma Octantis is a little over one degree from the South Celestial Pole. Also known as Polaris Australis, Sigma Octantis is dimmer than 5th magnitude, some 25 times fainter than Polaris and not easy to see with the unaided eye. In fact, it may be the faintest star depicted on a national flag. The remarkable deep and wide-field view also covers faint, dusty galactic cirrus clouds, bounded at the right by the star clusters and nebulae along the southern reaches of plane of our Milky Way galaxy. Near the upper right corner is yellowish Gamma Crucis, the top of the Southern Cross. Easy to pick out above and right of center is the long Dark Doodad nebula in the southern constellation Musca, the Fly.
MESSIER 24: SAGITTARIUS STAR CLOUD Image Credit & Copyright: Roberto Colombari
Unlike most entries in Charles Messier's famous catalog of deep sky objects, M24 is not a bright galaxy, star cluster, or nebula. It's a gap in nearby, obscuring interstellar dust clouds that allows a view of the distant stars in the Sagittarius spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy. When you gaze at the star cloud with binoculars or small telescope you are looking through a window over 300 light-years wide at stars some 10,000 light-years or more from Earth. Sometimes called the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud, M24's luminous stars fill the left side of this gorgeous starscape. Covering about 4 degrees or the width of 8 full moons in the constellation Sagittarius, the telescopic field of view contains many small, dense clouds of dust and nebulae toward the center of the Milky Way, including reddish emission from IC 1284 near the top of the frame.
MOONRISE Taken by Piotr Potępa on June 28, 2018 @ Piwnice near Torun, Poland
Todays moonrise above the radiotelescope in Piwnice near Torun, Poland.
Wednesday, June 27, 2018
MOONRISE, COMB RIDGE. Taken by Paul Martini on June 26, 2018 @ Bluff, Utah
Sony A7s w/sony FE 16-35 @ 16 MM, 30 seconds @ f 5.6, ISO 200.
MOONRISE Taken by Wade B Clark Jr on June 26, 2018 @ Near Lyman, Washington, Washington State, USA.
A beautiful moonrise from Skagit County in northwest Washington State.
Tuesday, June 26, 2018
DARK NEBULAS ACROSS TAURUS Image Processing & Copyright: Oliver Czernetz - Data: Digitized Sky Survey (POSS-II)
Sometimes even the dark dust of interstellar space has a serene beauty. One such place occurs toward the constellation of Taurus. The filaments featured here can be found on the sky between the Pleiades star cluster and the California Nebula. This dust is not known not for its bright glow but for its absorption and opaqueness. Several bright stars are visible with their blue light seen reflecting off the brown dust. Other stars appear unusually red as their light barely peaks through a column of dark dust, with red the color that remains after the blue is scattered away. Yet other stars are behind dust pillars so thick they are not visible here. Although appearing serene, the scene is actually an ongoing loop of tumult and rebirth. This is because massive enough knots of gas and dust will gravitationally collapse to form new stars -- stars that both create new dust in their atmospheres and destroy old dust with their energetic light and winds.
Monday, June 25, 2018
NASA’S JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE TO TARGET JUPITER’S GREAT RED SPOT
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the most ambitious and complex space observatory ever built, will use its unparalleled infrared capabilities to study Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, shedding new light on the enigmatic storm and building upon data returned from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories.
This photo of Jupiter, taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, was snapped when the planet was comparatively close to Earth, at a distance of 415 million miles.
Credits: NASA, ESA, and A. Simon (NASA Goddard)
Jupiter’s iconic storm is on the Webb telescope’s list of targets chosen by guaranteed time observers, scientists who helped develop the incredibly complex telescope and among the first to use it to observe the universe. One of the telescope’s science goals is to study planets, including the mysteries still held by the planets in our own solar system from Mars and beyond.
Leigh Fletcher, a senior research fellow in planetary science at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, is the lead scientist on the Webb telescope’s observations of Jupiter’s storm. His team is part of a larger effort to study several targets in our solar system with Webb, spearheaded by astronomer Heidi Hammel, the executive vice president of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA). NASA selected Hammel as an interdisciplinary scientist for Webb in 2002.
“Webb’s infrared sensitivity provides a wonderful complement to Hubble visible-wavelength studies of the Great Red Spot,” explained Hammel. “Hubble images have revealed striking changes in the size of the Great Red Spot over the mission’s multi-decade-long lifetime.”
Fletcher and his team plan to use Webb’s mid-infrared instrument (MIRI) to create multispectral maps of the Great Red Spot and analyze its thermal, chemical and cloud structures. The scientists will be able to observe infrared wavelengths that could shed light on what causes the spot’s iconic color, which is often attributed to the sun’s ultraviolet radiation interacting with nitrogen, sulfur and phosphorus-bearing chemicals that are lifted from Jupiter’s deeper atmosphere by powerful atmospheric currents within the storm.
This true-color image of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot was created by citizen scientist Björn Jónsson using data from the JunoCam imager on NASA’s Juno spacecraft.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Björn Jónsson
Fletcher explained that using MIRI to observe in the 5 to 7 micrometer range could be particularly revealing for the Great Red Spot, as no other mission has been able to observe Jupiter in that part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and observations in such wavelengths are not possible from Earth. Those wavelengths of light could allow the scientists to see unique chemical byproducts of the storm, which would give insight into its composition.
“We’ll be looking for signatures of any chemical compounds that are unique to the [Great Red Spot]…which could be responsible for the red chromophores,” said Fletcher. Chromophores are the parts of molecules responsible for their color. Fletcher added, “If we don’t see any unexpected chemistry or aerosol signatures…then the mystery of that red color may remain unresolved.”
Webb’s observations may also help determine whether the Great Red Spot is generating heat and releasing it into Jupiter’s upper atmosphere, a phenomenon that could explain the high temperatures in that region. Recent NASA-funded research showed that colliding gravity waves and sound waves, produced by the storm, could generate the observed heat, and Fletcher said Webb might be able to gather data to support this.
“Any waves produced by the vigorous convective activity within the storm must pass through the stratosphere before they reach the ionosphere and thermosphere,” he explained. “So if they really do exist and are responsible for heating Jupiter’s upper layers, hopefully we’ll see evidence for their passage in our data.”
Generations of astronomers have studied the Great Red Spot; the storm has been monitored since 1830, but it has possibly existed for more than 350 years. The reason for the storm’s longevity largely remains a mystery, and Fletcher explained that the key to understanding the formation of storms on Jupiter is to witness their full life cycle — growing, shrinking, and eventually dying. We did not see the Great Red Spot form, and it may not die anytime soon (though it has been shrinking, as documented by images from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories), so scientists must rely on observing “smaller and fresher” storms on the planet to see how they begin and evolve, something that Webb may do in the future, said Fletcher.
“These particular observations will reveal the storm’s vertical structure, which will be an important constraint for numerical simulations of Jovian [Jupiter] meteorology,” he explained. “If those simulations can help explain what Webb observes in the infrared, then we’ll be a step closer to understanding how these gigantic maelstroms live for so long.”
The James Webb Space Telescope will be the world's premier space science observatory. Webb will solve mysteries of our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international project led by NASA with its partners, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).
Read more about Jupiter here: https://www.nasa.gov/jupiter
For more information about the Webb telescope, visit: www.nasa.gov/webb
By Eric Villard / Laura Betz
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
RARE TWINNING RAINBOW Taken by Jan Curtis on June 21, 2018 @ Cheyenne, Wyoming
Perhaps the brightest rainbow Ive ever seen. It followed on the tails of a extremely severe thunderstorm that fortunately passed just a few miles to my north. I did received 3/8 hail over a 15 minute period but missed the core of probably +2 hail. Rained 0.35 in 23 minutes.
Timelapse: https://www.flickr.com/photos/79387036@N07/29073519338/in/dateposted-public/
Realtime video: (Clearest view)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/79387036@N07/41136763660/in/dateposted-public/
Sunday, June 24, 2018
CENTURY’S LONGEST TOTAL LUNAR ECLIPSE - GET READY FOR A RARE ASTRONOMICA...
Thousands of skywatchers are preparing for the next rare celestial event. The Total Lunar Eclipse of July 27-28 is the next biggest astronomical phenomenon this year.
This is the second and last total lunar eclipse of 2018.
What's more interesting?
The July 2018 full moon presents the longest total lunar eclipse of the 21st century (2001 to 2100) on the night of July 27-28, 2018, lasting for a whopping 1 hour and 43 minutes.
So, the Moon will be totally eclipsed for about 103 minutes. From beginning to end, it will last for 6 hours and 14 minutes.
This lunar eclipse is primarily visible from the world’s Eastern Hemisphere (Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand). South America, at least in part, can watch the final stages of the eclipse just after sunset July 27, whereas New Zealand will catch the beginning stages of the eclipse before sunrise July 28. North America, most of the Arctic and much of the Pacific Ocean will miss out entirely, as shown on worldwide map below.
The greatest eclipse (20:22 UTC) takes place at or around midnight for Madagascar and the Middle East. Europe and Africa view the greatest eclipse during the evening hours (sometime between sunset and midnight on July 27), whereas most of Asia, Indonesia and Australia view the greatest eclipse in the morning (sometime between midnight and sunrise on July 28).
Lunar eclipses can be visible from everywhere on the night side of the Earth, if the sky is clear. From some places, the entire eclipse will be visible, while in other areas the Moon will rise or set during the eclipse.
earthsky.com
Read more here: http://earthsky.org/?p=282841
Find Eclipses in Your City
https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/lunar/2018-july-27
The shortest Lunar Eclipse of the century!
The total eclipse of the full moon too place on April 4, 2015 and lasted less than five minutes, making it the shortest total lunar eclipse of the 21st century.
Mark your calendars!
A rare celestial event is waiting for us!
Don't Miss Out ..... Century’s Longest Lunar Eclipse!
Clear Skies to everyone!
Clips, images credit: NASA/JPL, Worldwide map via EclipseWise, timeanddate.com , earthsky.com & nemesis maturity channel own work
Music credit: YouTube Audio Library
" MESSIER 13 " ( HERCULES ) DESDE ROSARIO - ARGENTINA /// FOTOS: ESMERALDA SOSA
... mucho FRIO ..
.. horizonte NORTE ..
.. desde mi dormitorio ..
Colinder 399 ( en Constelación de SAGITTA )
PARA VER FOTOS EN HD ABRIR SIGUIENTE LINK
MESSIER 13 ( Vista HEMISFERIO NORTE )
