Starship Asterisk*

This image of Saunders Island and Wolstenholme Fjord with Kap Atholl in the background was taken during an Operation IceBridge survey flight in April, 2013. Sea ice coverage in the fjord ranges from thicker, white ice seen in the background, to thinner grease ice and leads showing open ocean water in the foreground.

In March 2013, NASA's Operation IceBridge scientists began another season of research activity over Arctic ice sheets and sea ice. IceBridge, a six-year NASA mission, is the largest airborne survey of Earth's polar ice ever flown. It will yield an unprecedented three-dimensional view of Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets, ice shelves and sea ice. These flights will provide a yearly, multi-instrument look at the behavior of the rapidly changing features of the Greenland and Antarctic ice.

Image Credit: NASA / Michael Studinger

A new Chandra image of SN 1006 provides new details about the remains of an exploded star.

This explosion was witnessed from Earth over a millennium ago.

The Chandra data provides the best map to date of the debris field including information on important elements expanding into space.

SN 1006 belongs to a class of supernova used to measure the expansion of the Universe.

This year, astronomers around the world have been celebrating the 50th anniversary of X-ray astronomy. Few objects better illustrate the progress of the field in the past half-century than the supernova remnant known as SN 1006.

When the object we now call SN 1006 first appeared on May 1, 1006 A.D., it was far brighter than Venus and visible during the daytime for weeks. Astronomers in China, Japan, Europe, and the Arab world all documented this spectacular sight. With the advent of the Space Age in the 1960s, scientists were able to launch instruments and detectors above Earth's atmosphere to observe the Universe in wavelengths that are blocked from the ground, including X-rays. SN 1006 was one of the faintest X-ray sources detected by the first generation of X-ray satellites.

A new image of SN 1006 from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory reveals this supernova remnant in exquisite detail. By overlapping ten different pointings of Chandra's field-of-view, astronomers have stitched together a cosmic tapestry of the debris field that was created when a white dwarf star exploded, sending its material hurtling into space. In this new Chandra image, low, medium, and higher-energy X-rays are colored red, green, and blue respectively.

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of an M6.5 class flare at 3:16 EDT on April 11, 2013. This image shows a combination of light in wavelengths of 131 and 171 Angstroms. Credit: NASA/SDO

MargaritaMc wrote:

starsurfer wrote:MWP 1
http://www.noao.edu/image_gallery/html/im1127.html
Copyright: T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage) and H. Schweiker (WIYN and NOAO/AURA/NSF)

Golly - that is really beautiful - and strange.
This is the info from the url above

This image was obtained with the wide-field view of the Mosaic camera on the Mayall 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory. MWP1 is a very usually shaped, unusually large, and unusually old, planetary nebulae. The progenitor star is also one of the hottest stars known, so hot it is producing large amounts of X-rays. The image was generated with observations in the Oxygen [OIII] (blue) and Hydrogen-Alpha (orange) filters. In this image, North is up, East is to the left.

RJN wrote:Found on somebody's G+ page, who seemingly did not take the image nor owns the copyright. Can you find the copyright holder? Here is the image:

waterlightning_unknown.jpg

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Source: CICLOPS

From the south pole of the frozen surface of Enceladus, enormous, effervescent jets of icy brine spew volumes of vapor and ice particles at high speeds. Some of the material is jettisoned into space where it is snared by Saturn's gravity, wherein Saturn's hazy E ring is created. The organic-rich compounds that make up this salty spray marks Enceladus as a potential habitable zone candidate.

Scientists theorize the jets originate deep below the moon's thick ice cap in a warm subsurface ocean and find their pressurized escape from vents along the "Tiger Stripe" trenches, nicknamed as such due to their distinct striping across the moons ever-changing southern terrain.

I've been held spellbound by Enceladus since first viewing Cassini's stunning images of it's sunlit jets and desolate landscapes. With considerate input by Dr. Carolyn Porco, I was able to better understand how to render the exciting dynamics taking place on Saturn's tiny companion.

RJN wrote:Found on somebody's G+ page, who seemingly did not take the image nor owns the copyright. Can you find the copyright holder? Here is the image:

waterlightning_unknown.jpg