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 Predicted Auroras Over North America for September 26, 2011. Credit:University of Alaska Skywatchers in northern Europe are already seeing some aurora activity as a strong-to-severe geomagnetic storm is in progress, according to the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center and SpaceWeather.com. The fuel for this storm was a coronal mass ejection over the weekend that has now reached Earth. This is great news for skywatchers, as both the Northern and Southern lights should be spectacular. But this is not so good news for satellite companies. The Goddard Space Weather Lab reports a “strong compression of Earth’s magnetosphere. Simulations indicate that solar wind plasma [has penetrated] close to geosynchronous orbit starting at 13:00 UT.” Geosynchronous satellites could therefore be directly exposed to solar wind plasma and magnetic fields. The active region on the Sun will be pointed straight at Earth in few days as the Sun rotates, so this could be a week of high auroral activity. If you are able to capture images, send the to Universe Today via email or upload them to our Flickr page, and we’ll share them! See an image below of the Sun from September 25, 2011, showing the Active Region 1302, courtesy of John Chumack. (...)
Read the rest of Aurora Alert for September 26 and 27! (42 words)
© nancy for Universe Today, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: aurora, Aurora Australis, aurora borealis
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 Hubble Space Telescope image of a 5000 light-year (1.5 kiloparsec) long jet being ejected from the active nucleus of the active galaxy M87, a radio galaxy. The blue synchrotron radiation of the jet contrasts with the yellow starlight from the host galaxy. Nope. A standard candle isn’t the same red, green, blue, yellow and omni-present pink wax sticks that decorate your every day birthday cake. Until now a standard candle meant a Cepheid variable star – or more recently – a Type 1a supernova. But something new happens almost every day in astronomy, doesn’t it? So start thinking about how an active galactic nucleus could be used to determine distance… (...)
Read the rest of AGNs As A New Standard Candle? (527 words)
© tammy for Universe Today, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: AGN, Cosmological Distances, Standard Candle
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ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli shot some 3-D video during his 6 months on board the International Space Station (Dec 2010 to May 2011) and the footage has now been put together into a “tour” of the space station. Nespoli and the crew used ESA’s Erasmus Recording Binocular (ERB-2) stereoscopic camera, capturing “day-in-the-life” activiites on the ISS, from educational activities, to scientific experiments and physical training, also demonstrating the way astronauts move in weightlessness through the various modules. So, grab your red/blue 3-D glasses to watch the video. ERB-2 was used on August 6, 2011 by astronaut Ron Garan to broadcast live 3-D video from space. The ERB-2 is the about the size of a shoebox, with high-definition optics and advanced electronics.
© nancy for Universe Today, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Space Station, Videos
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 Galaxy Cluster Abell 1689 Supernovae are among astronomers most important tools for exploring the history of the universe. Their frequency allows us to examine how active star formation was, how heavy elements have developed, and the distance to galaxies across vast distances. Yet even these titanic explosions are only so bright, and there’s an effective limit on how far we can detect them with the current generation of telescopes. However, this limit can be extended with a little help from gravity. (...)
Read the rest of A Magnified Supernova (351 words)
© jvois for Universe Today, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Abell 1689, Gravitational Lensing, Supernovae
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 The Green Flash. Credit: Robert Sparks Robert Sparks captured this photo on the evening of November 20th, 2010 in Tucson, Arizona. The photo shows the sunset in Tucson mountains in the west. On the very tip of the setting yellow Sun, the green flash followed by a pale blue and purple flash to the right can be clearly seen. The green flash is a green spot that occurs shortly after sunset or before sunrise. Usually, green flashes can be observed at an unobstructed horizon, such as over the ocean. But contrary to a lot of misconceptions, they can also be seen over cloud tops and mountain tops. Robert also provided us with the technical details of the photo: “I took the pic with a Canon Digital Rebel Xti with a 55-250mm Zoom lens (250mm zoom at f/5.6, ISO100 and a 1/2000th of a second exposure. I was taking the pics in burst mode and am attaching two of them here. You can see visible changes in the few tenths of a second between exposures (separated by approximately 0.27 seconds based on the camera’s rated speed).”
Want to get your astrophoto featured on Universe Today? Join our Flickr group, post in our Forum or send us your images by email (this means you’re giving us permission to post them). Please explain what’s in the picture, when you took it, the equipment you used, etc.
© dcast for Universe Today, 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Astrophotos
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 China's integrated Tiangong 1 spacecraft and Long March CZ-2F launch vehicle combination has arrived at launch tower at Jiuquan Satellite Launching Center in China. Credit: Chinese Manned Space Engineering (CMSE). China's human spaceflight program is gearing up to take a highly significant "Leap forward in Space" after their "Tiangong 1" prototype space station was rolled out to the remote Gobi desert launch pad at the countries Jiuquan Satellite Launching Center in Gansu Province in anticipation of blastoff sometime this week. Space officials from the Chinese Manned Space Engineering Office have now confirmed that liftoff of the 8.5 ton Tiangong 1 human rated module atop a Long March CZ-IIF booster rocket is slated to take place during a launch window that extends from Sept. 27 to Sept. 30. The launch was delayed a few days after the recent launch failure of a similar Chinese rocket, the Long March IIC. China's burgeoning space efforts come directly on the heels of the voluntary US shutdown of the Space Shuttle program,(...)
Read the rest of China set to ‘Leap Forward in Space’ as Tiangong 1 Rolls to Launch Pad (551 words)
© Ken Kremer for Universe Today, 2011. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Apollo misisons, China, china space program, Long March rocket, Shenzhou, Shenzhou 8, skylab, space stations, Tiangong 1
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 NGC 1058, the nearest galaxy to a potentially escaped supernova. Image credit: Bob Ferguson and Richard Desruisseau/Adam Block/NOAO/AURA/NSF In a post earlier this month, we looked at a team of astronomers searching for stars that were on ejected from their birthplaces in clusters. These stars could receive the needed kick from a gravitational swing by the core of the cluster to achieve a velocity of a few tens of km/sec. But a similar mechanism can function in the cores of galaxies giving stars a speed of roughly 1,000 km/sec, enough to leave their parent galaxies. a new study asks whether we have ever witnessed any of these stellar cast offs explode as supernovae. (...)
Read the rest of Homeless Supernovae (702 words)
© jvois for Universe Today, 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Supernovae
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 UARS Re-entry Animation. Credit: Efrain Morales The Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, or UARS, had reportedly re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean last Saturday, September 24, 2011. Approximately thirty hours before the decommissioned NASA observatory fell back to Earth, Efrain Morales was able to capture some final shots of the satellite over Puerto Rico which he was able to compile into an animation. “UARS over Puerto Rico Sept. 22nd 22:56 UT. It was manually tracked. The satellite was traveling about 2 to 2.5x faster (112 miles Alt.) than the ISS when it transits and very bright for approximately 10 seconds. This animation is composed of 32 images at 60 fps and over 80 captured frames taken total.”
Check out Efrain’s website for more photos. Want to get your astrophoto featured on Universe Today? Join our Flickr group, post in our Forum or send us your images by email (this means you’re giving us permission to post them). Please explain what’s in the picture, when you took it, the equipment you used, etc.
© dcast for Universe Today, 2011. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Astrophotos
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 Opportunity captured at Endeavour Crater rim on Sept 10, 2011, Sol 2712
Opportunity is visible at the end of the white arrow, sitting atop some light toned outcrops on the rim of Endeavour Crater located at the southern tip of a rim segment named Cape York. Opportunity is ascending Endeavour at Cape York ridge and positioned to the right of the small crater named Odyssey. This image was taken by the HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), Opportunity travelled nearly three years to reach this rim because it contains rocks even more ancient than the rocks of Meridiani Planum, which the rover has been exploring since 2004, and hence may teach us something about an even more ancient era in Martian history. Click to enlarge. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona Opportunity has just been imaged in high resolution at Endeavour crater by a powerful NASA camera orbiting overhead in Mars orbit. The new image (see above) was snapped while NASA's long lived robot was climbing a hilltop offering spectacular panoramic vistas peering into the vast crater which is some 14 miles (22 km) wide. The HiRiSE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter photographed Opportunity and her wheel tracks on September 10, 2011, or Martian Sol 2712 for a mission warrentied to last only 90 Sols ! The rover is sitting to the right of another small crater known as Odyssey. Click to enlarge the image.(...)
Read the rest of Opportunity spotted Exploring vast Endeavour Crater from Mars Orbit (310 words)
© Ken Kremer for Universe Today, 2011. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Cape York, Endeavour crater, Mars, Mars Exploration Rover, Mars Rovers, MER, NASA, Opportunity, Opportunity Rover
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 Astronaut Ron Garan in the cupola of the International Space Station over the coast of Australia. Credit: NASA This has become my new favorite space photo! Look closely into the windows of the Cupola on the International Space Station: That’s astronaut Ron Garan, on September 16, 2011, his last day on board the space station. “That’s me in the cupola of the International Space Station off the coast of Australia taking my last of over 25,000 pics that I still want to share with everyone,” Garan wrote on his Google+ page. Not only are the colors and view spectacular, but this has got to be one of the best destination photos ever — not to mention a priceless keepsake and memento for Garan from his expedition on the ISS. You can see some of the thousands of images Garan took from space on his Twitpic page.
© nancy for Universe Today, 2011. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Astrophotos, Earth Observation, Ron Garan, Space Station
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