All posts by space

Secrets of Space
Pictures

Death of a Star

Death of a star - NASA
Death of a star in the Helix nebula

The circle of life and death is truly universal and as previously we have shown the birth of a star, thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope we can now look at the impending death of a star. The large tadpole-shaped objects are called “cometary knots” due to their resemblance to comets (glowing heads and gossamer tails). They are believed by scientists to be the last gasp of a  dying star. The scale/size involved in these cometary knots is quite astounding,  with the gaseous head believed to be twice the size of our solar system alone and each comet like tail stretching for up to 100 billion miles (1,000 times the distance between Earth and the Sun).

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Pictures

Earth and Moon as seen from Mars

Image
Earth and Moon - NASA
Earth and Moon as seen from Mars

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) looked back and took this picture of the Earth and Moon from Mars, using its High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera. Taken from approximately 142 million miles (88 million km) away, one can barely make out the west coast of South America in the lower right hand portion of the partial Earth image.

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Pictures

Cygnus Loop Supernova

Image
Cygnus - NASA
Cygnus Loop Supernova Blast Wave

This very “psychedelic” looking image didn’t originate in any human mind, no matter how stimulated. Instead it gives us a peek into the marvel that is our universe. This composite image was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and shows a stunning supernova in a part of the northern constellation Cygnus, the Swan.

The bubble-like expanding blast wave is believed to have resulted from a colossal stellar explosion, that occurred about 15,000 years ago. The supernova remnant is within the plane of our Milky Way galaxy and is 2,600 light-years away. Data from Hubble allowed astronomers to directly compare the actual structure of the shock with their theoretical model calculations. The supernova image shows the blast wave overrunning dense clumps of gas, where the different colours represent different gases at certain temperatures (red=sulfur; green=hydrogen; and blue=oxygen atoms).

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Videos

NASA hangout on x-class solar flare

Video

On March 29, 2014, there was a significant solar event where an x-class flare burst off the right side of the sun. Several NASA spacecraft, a ground based telescope and five observatories were tasked with studying the solar flare and the coronal mass ejection (cme). This NASA hangout/discussion includes Jeffrey Newmark from the NASA Headquarters; Adrian Daw who is the IRIS project scientist at NASA Goddard; Albert Shih, the RHESSI scientist at NASA Goddard; Sabrina Savage, the Hinode deputy project scientist at NASA Marshall and Lucia Kleint from the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute. These scientists and researchers describe how multiple NASA and other organizations and missions worked together to explore the sun’s surface and atmosphere, providing us with some of the unprecedented images of the onset of a solar flare.

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Learn

NASA’s research aircraft

NASA has played a very important role with the United States Air Force, Navy and commercial military/aerospace companies in researching flight dynamics, propulsion, special materials, aircraft design, etc.

NASA Research Aircraft
NASA’s wide array of military research aircraft

This NASA photo includes an interesting cross section of its research aircraft. Starting on the left and going clock wise, the major aircraft are:

Rockwell-MBB X-31 
The Rockwell-Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm X-31 was a test platform designed for validating thrust vectoring engine technology for DARPA, NASA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR). Two X-31 Enhanced Fighter Maneuverability planes were built and 500 test flights were conducted between 1990-95.

McDonnell Douglas F-15 STOL
The F-15 STOL/MTD (Short Takeoff and Landing/Maneuver Technology Demonstrator) was a modified F-15 Eagle. This technology demonstrator was used by NASA and the US Air Force to study thrust vectoring and maneuverability. The single testbed was later used for the F-15 ACTIVE (Advanced Control Technology for Integrated Vehicles) to further study enhanced aircraft maneuverability.

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