High five on the fifth of May… a grand new active region rotating into view, a massive prominence unleashed and blown away by the solar wind, handsome sunspot 1471, some wonderful filaments arching across the chromosphere… and clear skies to enjoy all of the above. A fantastic day to observe the sun. Here is moon colored version. A close-up view in white light of active region 1476, seen rotating into view at the left limb.
(via ryanoshea)
Unseen potential planet revealed by its gravity
Using the same theory that predicted Neptune’s existence, a Kepler team showed that the observed tranist variations of a known exoplanet around a Sun-like star are most likely the result of a hidden world.
Illustration courtesy the Southwest Research Institute
(via the-star-stuff)
Light from Alien Super-Earth Seen for 1st Time
Light from an alien “super-Earth” twice the size of our own Earth has been detected by a NASA space telescope for the first time in what astronomers are calling a historic achievement.
NASA’s infrared Spitzer Space Telescope spotted light from the alien planet 55 Cancri e, which orbits a star 41 light-years from Earth. A day on the extrasolar planet lasts just 18 hours.
The planet 55 Cancri e was first discovered in 2004 and is not a habitable world. Instead, it is known as a super-Earth because of its size: The world is about twice the width of Earth and is super-dense, with about eight times the mass of Earth.
But until now, scientists have never managed to detect the infrared light from the super-Earth world.
(via ikenbot)
Greater Numbers Don’t Always Stave Off Extinction
A basic tenet underpinning scientists’ understanding of extinction is that more abundant species persist longer than their less abundant counterparts, but a new Univ. of Georgia study reveals a much more complex relationship.
A team of scientists analyzed more than 46,000 fossils from 52 sites and found that greater numbers did indeed help clam-like brachiopods survive the Ordovician extinction, which killed off approximately half of the Earth’s life forms some 444 million years ago. Surprisingly, abundance did not help brachiopod species persist for extended periods outside of the extinction event.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Greater-Numbers-Dont-Always-Stave-Off-Extinction-050812.aspx
(via laboratoryequipment)
How much water is there on, in, and above the Earth?
This picture shows the size of a sphere that would contain all of Earth’s water in comparison to the size of the Earth. The blue sphere sitting on the United States, reaching from about Salt Lake City, Utah to Topeka, Kansas, has a diameter of about 860 miles (about 1,385 kilometers) , with a volume of about 332,500,000 cubic miles (1,386,000,000 cubic kilometers). The sphere includes all the water in the oceans, seas, ice caps, lakes and rivers as well as groundwater, atmospheric water, and even the water in you, your dog, and your tomato plant.
(via unknownskywalker)
Today at around 13:00 UT the large active region 1476 showed its power once again. It unleashed a M1.4-class solar flare. In this image seen through the 131 angstrom channel we can see extremely hot temperatures around 10 million degrees K or 18 million degrees F. M-class solar flares can cause brief radio blackouts that affect Earth’s polar regions. Minor radiation storms sometimes follow an M-class flare. Since this active region is now getting perfectly situated to cause space weather events, which would now impact Earth, scientists are keeping their eyes on AR1476. #NASA #SDO #Sun (Taken with instagram)
May 2, 2012: The full Moon has a reputation for trouble. It raises high tides, it makes dogs howl, it wakes you up in the middle of the night with beams of moonlight stealing through drapes. If a moonbeam wakes you up on the night of May 5th, 2012, you might want to get out of bed and take a look. This May’s full Moon is a “super Moon,” as much as 14% bigger and 30% brighter than other full Moons of 2012.
The scientific term for the phenomenon is “perigee moon.” Full Moons vary in size because of the oval shape of the Moon’s orbit. The Moon follows an elliptical path around Earth with one side (“perigee”) about 50,000 km closer than the other (“apogee”). Full Moons that occur on the perigee side of the Moon’s orbit seem extra big and bright.
Such is the case on May 5th at 11:34 pm Eastern Daylight Time1 when the Moon reaches perigee. Only one minute later, the Moon will line up with Earth and the sun to become brilliantly full. The timing is almost perfect.
(via thevisualcircle)
Beautiful. Computer-generated image of Pluto, the former 9th planet now demoted to dwarf planet.
“Artist’s impression of how the surface of Pluto might look, according to one of the two models that a team of astronomers has developed to account for the observed properties of Pluto’s atmosphere, as studied with CRIRES. The image shows patches of pure methane on the surface. At the distance of Pluto, the Sun appears about 1000 times fainter than on Earth.” (image source: European Southern Observatory)
(via deafmuslimpunx)
A Dangerous Sunrise on Gliese 876d
Illustration Credit & Copyright: Inga Nielsen (Hamburg Obs., Gate to Nowhere)Explanation: On planet Gliese 876d, sunrises might be dangerous. Although nobody really knows what conditions are like on this close-in planet orbiting variable red dwarf star Gliese 876, the above artistic illustration gives one impression. With an orbit well inside Mercury and a mass several times that of Earth, Gliese 876d might rotate so slowly that dramatic differences exist between night and day. Gliese 876d is imagined above showing significant volcanism, possibly caused by gravitational tides flexing and internally heating the planet, and possibly more volatile during the day. The rising red dwarf star shows expected stellar magnetic activity which includes dramatic and violent prominences. In the sky above, a hypothetical moon has its thin atmosphere blown away by the red dwarf’s stellar wind. Gliese 876d excites the imagination partly because it is one of the few extrasolar planets known to be in or near to the habitable zone of its parent star.
(via fyeahcarlsagan)
Earth From Mars by NASA Goddard Photo and Video on Flickr.
Some stars capture rogue planets
New research suggests that billions of stars in our galaxy have captured rogue planets that once roamed interstellar space. The nomad worlds, which were kicked out of the star systems in which they formed, occasionally find a new home with a different sun. This finding could explain the existence of some planets that orbit surprisingly far from their stars.
To reach their conclusion, astronomers simulated young star clusters containing free-floating planets. They found that if the number of rogue planets equaled the number of stars, then 3-6% of the stars would grab a planet over time. The more massive a star, the more likely it is to snag a planet drifting by. Over time, the clusters disperse due to close interactions between their stars, so any planet-star encounters have to happen early in the cluster’s history.
Rogue planets are a natural consequence of star formation. Newborn star systems often contain multiple planets. If two planets interact, one can be ejected and become an interstellar traveler. If it later encounters a different star moving in the same direction at the same speed, it can hitch a ride. A captured planet tends to end up hundreds or thousands of times farther from its star than Earth is from the Sun. It’s also likely to have a orbit that’s tilted relative to any native planets, and may even revolve around its star backward.
Above: In this artist’s conception, a captured world drifts at the outer edge of a distant star system, so far from its Sun-like host that the star’s disk is barely resolvable at upper right. New research shows that one in 20 stars within our galaxy might have captured a free-floating planet.
The First Images and Video Footage from Outer Space, 1946-1959
In October 1946, American scientists, working in White Sands, New Mexico, shot a V-2 missile 65 miles into the air. The missile (originally designed by the Nazis during World War II) carried a 35-millimeter camera aloft that snapped an image every second and a half. When the missile returned to Earth, the camera itself was demolished by the impact. But the film, protected by a steel casing, remained unscathed, according to Air & Space Magazine. And when the scientists recovered the film, they witnessed something never seen by humans before — the first images of our planet taken from outer space. As one scientist put it, we got to see (above) “how our Earth would look to visitors from another planet coming in on a space ship.”
In October 1946, American scientists, working in White Sands, New Mexico, shot a V-2 missile 65 miles into the air. The missile (originally designed by the Nazis during World War II) carried a 35-millimeter camera aloft that snapped an image every second and a half. When the missile returned to Earth, the camera itself was demolished by the impact. But the film, protected by a steel casing, remained unscathed, according to Air & Space Magazine. And when the scientists recovered the film, they witnessed something never seen by humans before — the first images of our planet taken from outer space. As one scientist put it, we got to see (above) “how our Earth would look to visitors from another planet coming in on a space ship.”
By the 1950s, the U.S. Air Force started working with a new line of missile, the Thor missile. And it made history in May, 1959. Launched from Cape Canaveral, the Thor Missile Number 187 carried a General Electric-manufactured “data capsule” and 16-millimeter camera in its nose cone. The flight lasted 15 minutes, covered 1500 miles, and ended in the Atlantic Ocean. According to the GE Film Catalog, when the data capsule was recovered:
General Electric scientists began the careful processing of the capsule’s contents. They were not long in finding the results they had hoped for—in the subdued light of a photographic dark room, on a still-dripping strip of developed motion picture film, the eyes of man beheld for the first time the image of the earth as it appears from beyond the atmosphere.
You can watch the historic video immediately above.
(via APOD: 2012 April 6 - Venus and the Sisters)
Venus here is in conjunction with the Pleiades. The diffraction spikes are from the shape of the aperture of the lens used for the shot.
Image Credit & Copyright: Fred Espenak (Bifrost Astronomical Observatory)
Also, the observatory is named “Bifrost”. I wonder if it’s on a rainbow bridge.
Terrestrial Planets
Also known as rocky planets, these bodies are composed primarily of rock and metal and have very high densities. They also tend to be relatively small in size and have slow periods of rotation. The terrestrial planets in our solar system are Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. They are the planets closest to the Sun. Terrestrial planets tend to have very few natural satellites, or moons. Of the four terrestrial planets in our solar system, only two have moons. Earth has one moon while Mars has two.
Images Credit: solarsystem.nasa.gov
