Triton is the largest satellite/moon of the planet Neptune and was discovered by British astronomer William Lassell on October 10, 1846.
JPL’s Voyager 2 mission took this picture of Triton’s southern pole
Voyager 2 took this close up image of satellite Triton during a close flyby on August 25, 1989. This composite image was constructed using about a dozen pictures and the colour correction was added to the lower resolution images. Triton is relatively flat with some outcrops, ridges, plateaus, icy plains and a few craters. The large south polar cap at the bottom of the image is highly reflective and slightly pink in color; it is believed that it may consist of a slowly evaporating layer of nitrogen ice deposited during the previous winter.
One of the common questions we always ask when dealing with cosmic topics, is the distance of an object or phenomenon from Earth. This Google hangout by the Space Telescope Science Institute should help shed some light on this topic.
This Hubble hangout was hosted by Tony Darnell of Space Telescope Science Institute with Dr. Mario Livio and winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics (for discovering that the universe is accelerating as it expands), Dr. Adam Riess. One of the concepts discussed was the “Hubble Concept” – which postulates how fast the distant galaxies of the universe are moving away from us.
Blood moons have historic, religious (Christian and Jewish) and astronomical significance.
Picture of a blood moon taken by Peter Gaylard using a 15 second exposure of the lunar eclipse from his backyard in Sydney on 28th August 2007 using a Canon 350D camera
From an astronomical perspective, almost any total lunar eclipse could be called a blood moon as the moon does tend to turn a coppery-red colour. Historically, full moons of every month have been given names and the full moon in October was called the “Harvest Moon” or “Blood Moon” or “Sanguine Moon”.
The Biblical aspect of the phrase blood moon comes from end of times prophecy where the moon is supposed to turn blood red. As stated in Joel 2:31 –
“The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD.”
The recent intrigue surrounding blood moons also comes from the fact that over 2014-2015, we will be seeing four total lunar eclipses in a row without any partial eclipses in between which, will be separated by six full moons. This lunar tetrad, is quite rare with only eight that will occur this century and the ones in 2014-2015 will happen to fall on the Jewish feasts of Passover and Tabernacles – an even rarer phenomenon, having only occurred seven times before.
The Galileo spacecraft found many interesting landforms on Jupiter’s moon Io. Included are some that look like volcanoes, with active lava streams.
Many features of Io, including volcanoes
Several high-temperature volcanic hot spots have been detected in this region by both the Near Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (NIMS) and the solid state (CCD) imaging system on-board Galileo. The temperatures detected in this part of Io are consistent with active silicate volcanism in lava flows or inside irregular depressions called calderas (lava lakes).
Alpha Centauri is the closest star to Earth (after the Sun), with its light taking just over 4 years to reach us (4.37 light years from the Sun).
Alpha Centauri star from the constellation of Centaurus
Alpha Centauri is the third brightest star in our night sky and can be found in the Centaurus constellation. Alpha Centauri is a binary star system composed of two stars – Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B. A third star, Alpha Centauri C or Proxima Centauri is a much fainter red dwarf star also in the mix.
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