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satellite & space - Photos

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Knowing that Earth's average solar day is almost exactly 24 hours, an analemma can be traced by plotting the position of the Sun as viewed from a fixed position on Earth at the same time every day for an entire year. The resulting curve resembles a figure of eight. This curve is commonly printed on globes, usually in the eastern Pacific Ocean. It is possible, though challenging, to photograph the analemma, by leaving the camera in a fixed position for an entire year and snapping images on 24-hour intervals (or some multiple thereof).

According to the National Geographic (link above), the first analemma photograph ever made—created over New England in the U.S. between 1978 and 1979—stands as one of the few analemma pictures in the world that does not use a composited foreground. The shot includes 44 exposures of the sun and a picture of a house, all taken from the same location and all on a single frame of film.

In addition, during summer solstice, winter solstice, and one of the equinoxes, photographer Dennis di Cicco made long exposures with a solar filter, beginning each day at sunrise and ending at 8:30 a.m. ET. The resulting image shows part of the sun's arc during those three days.

"Most people say you have to be nuts to attempt a year-long exposure of the sun," di Cicco wrote on the TWAN astrophotography website. "Those who have succeeded will probably agree!"

*This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia page for Analemma

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Jupiter

January 24th 2011 01:27

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass slightly less than one-thousandth of the Sun but is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas giant along with Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Together, these four planets are sometimes referred to as the Jovian planets.

The planet was known by astronomers of ancient times and was associated with the mythology and religious beliefs of many cultures. The Romans named the planet after the Roman god Jupiter. When viewed from Earth, Jupiter can reach an apparent magnitude of −2.94, making it on average the third-brightest object in the night sky after the Moon and Venus. (Mars can briefly match Jupiter's brightness at certain points in its orbit.)

Jupiter is primarily composed of hydrogen with a quarter of its mass being helium; it may also have a rocky core of heavier elements. Because of its rapid rotation, Jupiter's shape is that of an oblate spheroid (it possesses a slight but noticeable bulge around the equator).

The outer atmosphere is visibly segregated into several bands at different latitudes, resulting in turbulence and storms along their interacting boundaries. A prominent result is the Great Red Spot, a giant storm that is known to have existed since at least the 17th century when it was first seen by telescope. Surrounding the planet is a faint planetary ring system and a powerful magnetosphere. There are also at least 63 moons, including the four large moons called the Galilean moons that were first discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610. Ganymede, the largest of these moons, has a diameter greater than that of the planet Mercury.

Jupiter has been explored on several occasions by robotic spacecraft, most notably during the early Pioneer and Voyager flyby missions and later by the Galileo orbiter. The most recent probe to visit Jupiter was the Pluto-bound New Horizons spacecraft in late February 2007. The probe used the gravity from Jupiter to increase its speed. Future targets for exploration in the Jovian system include the possible ice-covered liquid ocean on the moon Europa.

The images in this post about Jupiter are from this article on the mother nature network. View the full article here.

*This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia page for Jupiter.

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Nasa & European Space Agency Satellite Photos

December 22nd 2010 01:58

Ireland

'The emerald isle' lives up to its name on a remarkably clear October day. The red-brown of the rugged cliffs in the west of Ireland contrast with the softer inland greens of pasture and meadows. The country's topography is bowl-like, with a central lowland surrounded by broken mountains near the coasts. In the low, central regions, a network of lakes can be seen. Grey smudges mark the location of major cities: Dublin on the east coast, Galway in the west, Limerick inland and south of Galway, and near Lough Neagh in Northern Island, Belfast, on 11 October.

Barnes Ice Cap

The Barnes ice cap, a remnant of the Laurentide ice sheet that sprawled over the US during the Pleistocene age, is a bowling-pin-shaped glacier on Canada’s Baffin Island. Seen here in early September 2010, it shows a portion of the ice cap near its south-eastern end, with Gee Lake sitting immediately off the glacier. Resembling a clamshell, grooves run roughly east-west on the glacier surface. Rather than appearing pristine white, the ice and snow is banded with dust layers spanning vast time periods. By studying such ice cores containing these dust layers, scientists can learn about ancient climates.

Storms over the USA

The storm that swept across the center of the United States on 26 and 27 October saw the country lashed with strong winds, rain, hail, and tornadoes. Such extratropical cyclones form over the US in the spring and autumn, when the temperature difference from north to south is large. Warm, high-pressure air rushes toward the cooler, low-pressure air in the north. Because the Earth is rotating, the air moving in circles the area of low pressure, creating the comma-shaped cyclone shown.

Russian Volcanoes

Klyuchevskaya volcano (seen at the foot of this image), on the Kamchatka peninsula in Russia’s far east, continues its frequent but relatively mild volcanic activity, seen here on 11 October. The ash-rich plume is grey, as are the ash-covered slopes near the summit, while snow and clouds are the white areas.

Boteti River, Botswana

Starting in the late 1990s, insufficient rains left Botswana's Boteti river dry year after year. But in September 2010, water once again flowed. Much of the rain that falls on the highlands of Angola makes a long, slow journey to Botswana's Okavango delta. If more water flows into the delta than it can hold, some continues southward through the Boteti. On September 29, as the Okavango delta overflowed, the Boteti flows toward the south-east before turning northward into the expansive salt pans of Makgadikgadi. This image shows the river stopping short of Makgadikgadi, which lies to the east. Frank Eckhardt of the University of Cape Town, says the presence of any water in the river valley had become unusual by 2010, and some observers thought the Boteti had died.

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Exoplanets

December 6th 2010 01:27

An extrasolar planet, or exoplanet, is a planet outside the Solar System. As of October 2010, astronomers have announced the detection of nearly 500 such planets, with hundreds more planet candidates awaiting to be confirmed by more detailed investigations. The vast majority have been detected through radial velocity observations and other indirect methods rather than actual imaging. Most are giant planets thought to resemble Jupiter; this partly reflects a sampling bias in that more massive planets are easier to observe with current technology. Several relatively lightweight exoplanets, only a few times more massive than Earth, have also been detected and projections suggest that these will eventually be found to outnumber giant planets. It is now known that a substantial fraction of stars have planetary systems, including at least around 10% of sun-like stars. (The true proportion may be much higher.) It follows that billions of exoplanets must exist in our own galaxy alone. There also exist planets that orbit brown dwarfs and free floating planets that do not orbit any parent body at all, though as a matter of definition it is unclear if either of these should be referred to by the term "planet."

Extrasolar planets became an object of scientific investigation in the nineteenth century. Many astronomers supposed that they existed, but there was no way of knowing how common they were or how similar they might be to the planets of our solar system. The first confirmed detection was made in 1992, with the discovery of several terrestrial-mass planets orbiting the pulsar PSR B1257 12. The first confirmed detection of an exoplanet orbiting a main-sequence star was made in 1995, when a giant planet, 51 Pegasi b, was found in a four-day orbit around the nearby G-type star 51 Pegasi. The frequency of detections has tended to increase on an annual basis since then.

As of October 2010, only 7 of the 500 or so known Exoplanets have been imaged. In time, they'll be many more.
This gallery from Discover Magazine shows the best of these images.
More information about the images below can be found by clicking here.

Exoplanet 1: The first ever directly seen

This is the historic first picture of a planet orbiting another star.

The planet, called 2M1207 b, has about 5 times the mass of Jupiter, and orbits the star over 8 billion km (5 billion miles) out, about twice the distance of Neptune from the Sun.

Exoplanet 2 - Fomalhaut b

This image shows how it was confirmed Fomalhaut b was a planet.

Exoplanets 3, 4, and 5: The first exoplanetary family portrait

The same day astronomers announced the discovery of Fomalhaut b seen in the previous two pictures, they had another surprise: the first picture of an actual exoplanet solar system!

Exoplanet 4: The rainbow from HR 8799 c

Scientists were able to tease out the spectrum of HR 8799 c in the infrared, obtaining a direct spectrum of an exoplanet for the first time.

Exoplanet 6: The coldest world

This planet is orbiting the star 1RXS J160929.1-210524. The large distance of the planet from its star - 50 billion km (30 billion miles) - is far more than any other planet discovered.

*This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia page for Extrasolar planet.

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How Will The World End?

November 3rd 2010 02:44

As reported on Focus.com, ever since the beginning of time there have been those predicting when and how the world will end. Some of those predictions have come and gone without incident, whereas others are still on the way.
Below we take a look at some of the most common theories on what may bring about the apocalypse. Read the full article here.

Robot Takeovers

As technology barrels forward, the robotics industry has been making great strides in Artificial Intelligence (most notably Honda's ASIMO). This long-feared capability gives robots the ability to make decisions, solve problems, and carry out instructions, causing Hollywood and conspiracy theorists alike to imagine a world where robots become so powerful that they can exist outside of human rule. Much like John Conner in the Terminator, or Will Smith in iRobot, humans would be forced to go to war against our mechanistic adversaries, resulting in the enslavement and destruction of mankind.

Megatsunami

A megatsunami is exactly what it sounds like - an impossibly large wave moving at supersonic speeds that lays waste to everything in it's path. Some apocalyptic predictors, such as Apocalypse-Soon, believe that these devastating waves grow to be hundreds of feet high, big enough to engulf entire cities in just minutes. These waves have occurred very few documented times in Earth's history and are usually generated from volcanic eruptions, enormous landslides, or massive meteors hitting the ocean. Some geologists predict that the next megatsunami might occur in the next 1000 years when a volcanic eruption due to hit the Canary Islands could cause a 500 billion ton piece of land to fall into the ocean, generating a wave that would be aimed at the eastern United States coast line.

Zombies

Perhaps one of the most popular apocalypse theories is the invasion of flesh eating zombies that spread their undead virus through our population until we are completely wiped out. Countless movies and books have been created around this familiar nightmare, however the zombie apocalypse is far from a Hollywood-only creation. True believers, like the authors of this Cracked article, appeal to scientific evidence of neurotoxins and brain parasites that could create conditions similar to those depicted on the big screen. True believers even can read survivalist book "The Zombie Survival Guide," a tome that imparts practical strategies to help readers prepare for the day the dead rise.

Gamma-Ray Bursts

Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) are extremely rare, powerful flashes of Gamma-Rays emanating from interstellar explosions in distant galaxies. Such a blast is thought to occur when a star collapses and becomes a black hole, however no GRBs have yet occurred in the Milky Way galaxy, and have thus never collided with Earth. Some apocalypse conspiracy theorists worry about the devastating effects that could occur if a GRB blast were to shine on our planet, and the research of physicist S. E Thorsett only serves to strengthen their fear. "The absorption of this radiation in the atmosphere would [cause] photo- dissociation of N2," wrote Thorsett in a 1995 edition of the Astrophysical Journal. "[This would] greatly reducing the ozone concentration for several years."

The Year 2012

There are just about as many explanations for how the world will end in 2012 as there people who fearfully await it's notorious arrival. Worldwide fires, worldwide floods, mountain-leveling earthquakes, megatusnamis, atomic war, flesh eating diseases - if something could bring about the end of human life, it is thought by many to be on its way in 2012. The worry over the otherwise normal year stems from the Mayan calendar, which ends on December 21st, 2012. As UniverseToday explains, "when something ends (even something as innocent as an ancient calendar), people seem to think up the most extreme possibilities for the end of civilization as we know it. Though this is the only prediction on our list that has not happened yet because the foretold date has not yet come, it is worth pointing out there is no scientific proof for the coming destruction, and we ought to keep in mind that all calendars have to end at some time.

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Historic NASA Photos

October 13th 2010 03:13

NASA has put together a collection of historical photos on the NASA Flickr stream for public viewing. for the whole collection. The photos are also available, along with thousands more, on the NASA Images website here. Below is a sample.

[ Click here to read more ]

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Images From Saturn

June 18th 2010 03:09

Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in the Solar System, after Jupiter.

Saturn is well known for its prominent system of rings, consisting mostly of ice particles with a smaller amount of rocky debris and dust. Sixty-one known moons also orbit the planet

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Upcoming NASA Missions

May 7th 2010 02:50

As reported on Network World, in NASA's recent budget they announced funding for many critical satellite and robotic missions. These missions include a huge planned mission to Mars as well as other operations that will send spacecraft to Pluto, Jupiter, Mercury, Pluto and the Sun. New climate change research and observation satellites are also heavily funded. See a sample below or read the full article here.

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High Definition Images From Mars

April 28th 2010 02:49

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRise) is a camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The 65 kg, $40 million (USD) instrument consists of a 0.5 meter reflecting telescope, the largest of any deep space mission, which allows it to take pictures with resolutions up to 0.3 m, resolving objects about a meter across.

NASA recently undertook a program called HiWish which allowed regular citizens to suggest areas on Mars to point the HiRise camera. Some of the first images from the initiative have been released and can be seen below

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Strange Facts About Space

April 5th 2010 01:43

Space is an unusual place to us humans, there the laws of physics no longer seem to apply.
The universe is so huge that it's almost impossible for us to comprehend the sheer enormity of it all.
However, we now believe we have a decent grasp of what goes on in our own solar system. But even in the local neighbourhood things become very strange up there

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Satellites Orbiting Earth

February 17th 2010 01:47

The first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, was launched by the Soviet Union in 1957. By 2010 thousands of satellites had been launched into orbit around the Earth. These originate from more than 50 countries and have used the satellite launching capabilities of ten nations. A few hundred satellites are currently operational, whereas thousands of unused satellites and satellite fragments orbit the Earth as space debris.

Satellites are used for a large number of purposes. Common types include military (spy) and civilian Earth observation satellites, communication satellites, navigation satellites, weather satellites, and research satellites. Satellite orbits vary greatly, depending on the purpose of the satellite, and are classified in a number of ways. Well-known (overlapping) classes include low Earth orbit, polar orbit, and geostationary orbit

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Could We Live On Mars?

February 8th 2010 01:05

Can Mars Be Terraformed?

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The Speed of Light

January 8th 2010 02:07

The speed of light (usually denoted c) is a physical constant. Its value is exactly 299,792,458 metres per second, often approximated as 300,000 kilometres per second or 186,000 miles per second. It is the speed of electromagnetic radiation (such as radio waves, visible light, or gamma rays) in vacuum, where there are no atoms, molecules or other types of matter that can slow it down

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Average Colour of the Universe

January 6th 2010 01:55

What color is the universe? More precisely, if the entire sky were smeared out, what color would the final mix be? This whimsical question came up when trying to determine what stars are commonplace in nearby galaxies. The answer, depicted above, is a conditionally perceived shade of beige. To determine this, astronomers computationally averaged the light emitted by one of the largest sample of galaxies yet analyzed: the 200,000 galaxies of the 2dF survey. The resulting cosmic spectrum has some emission in all parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, but a single perceived composite color. This color has become much less blue over the past 10 billion years, indicating that redder stars are becoming more prevalent. In a contest to better name the color, notable entries included skyvory, univeige, and the winner: cosmic latte

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