3d.si | Apollo 11 Command Module. To mark the 47th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon-landing mission, the Smithsonian has made available a high-resolution 3-D scan of the command module “Columbia,” the spacecraft that carried astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin and Michael Collins to the moon. This highly detailed model allows anyone with an internet connection to explore the entire craft including its intricate interior, which is not possible when viewing the artifact in the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. The Smithsonian is also making the data files of the model available for download so it can be 3-D printed or viewed with virtual-reality goggles.
The scanning allowed for the curatorial and collections team to get glimpses of the interior of the Command Module that they had not previously seen. Protective covering over the hatch opening of the Command Module has only been removed a handful of times since the artifact came into the collection in 1971. Read more on the Smithsonian Newsdesk » Exclusive AURORA skycam video: See the impossible with the new Canon ME20F-SH. Conversion Calculator - NELM (V) to MPSAS (B) systems. K. Fisher fisherka@csolutions.net Rev. 8/2006 Math Appendix Convert NELM (V mags) to MPSAS (B) sky brightness Formula: B_mpsas = 21.58 - 5 log(10^(1.586-NELM/5)-1) Source: Schaefer, B.E.
Feb. 1990. Telescopic Limiting Magnitude. PASP 102:212-229 Convert MPSAS (B) sky brightness to NELM (V mags) Formula: NELM=7.93-5*log(10^(4.316-(Bmpsas/5))+1) Source: Olof Carlin, Nils. Light Pollution map. Close The light pollution map has two base layers (road and hybrid Bing maps), light pollution overlays and the user light pollution measurements overlay. To add your SQM measurements turn on the "User SQM data" layer and click on the pencil icon.
You can also display only measurements within a specified date range using the date selector bar. The light pollution 2010 overlay was made from "Version 4 DMSP-OLS Stable Lights Coverage". The light pollution 2012, 2014, 2015 overlays were made from "VIIRS DNB Cloud Free Composites". Data courtesy of Earth Observation Group, NOAA National Geophysical Data Center. Royal Museums Greenwich. Frontiers and Controversies in Astrophysics — Open Yale Courses. About the Course This course focuses on three particularly interesting areas of astronomy that are advancing very rapidly: Extra-Solar Planets, Black Holes, and Dark Energy. Particular attention is paid to current projects that promise to improve our understanding significantly over the next few years. The course explores not just what is known, but what is currently not known, and how astronomers are going about trying to find out. View class sessions » Course Structure This Yale College course, taught on campus twice per week for 50 minutes, was recorded for Open Yale Courses in Spring 2007.
Course Materials Download all course pages [zip - 10MB] Video and audio elements from this course are also available on: About Professor Charles Bailyn Charles Bailyn is the Thomas E. Syllabus Professor Charles Bailyn, Thomas E. Description Texts See reading assignments for individual lectures Requirements There will be weekly problem sets that contain both quantitative problems and essay-type questions. Survey. Cieli Perduti - Home. HOME. Untitled. Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter A close-up look at the Sun on the last day of 2011, showing impressive multiple prominences with sunspots AR1389 at the eastern limb. Credit: Efrain Morales Rivera, Jaicoa Observatory This is an awesome image of the Sun captured by Efrain Morales Rivera from the Jaicoa Observatory in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, on December 31, 2011. It shows multiple steam-like prominences on the eastern limb of the Sun.
Tagged as: Astrophotos, Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), sun. A Balanced Budget on Titan. Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter Hazy Titan and the smaller, cloudless Dione seen on December 10, 2011 by the Cassini spacecraft. (NASA/JPL/SSI/J. Major) It’s been said many times that the most Earthlike world in our solar system is not a planet at all, but rather Saturn’s moon Titan. At first it may not seem obvious why; being only a bit larger than the planet Mercury and coated in a thick opaque atmosphere containing methane and hydrocarbons, Titan sure doesn’t look like our home planet.
Now, researchers have identified yet another similarity between Saturn’s hazy moon and our own planet: Titan’s energy budget is in equilibrium, making it much more like Earth than the gas giant it orbits. Energy balance (or “budget”) refers to the radiation a planet or moon receives from the Sun versus what it puts out. Blue hazes hover high above thicker orange clouds over Titan's south pole (NASA/JPL/SSI) Of course, this doesn’t mean Titan is a balmy world. How Can Growing Galaxies Stay Silent? Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter The Andromeda Galaxy (M31) with minor satellite galaxy M32 Beginning around 2005, astronomers began discovering the presence of very large galaxies at a distance of around 10 billion lightyears.
But while these galaxies were large, they didn’t appear to have a similarly large number of formed stars. Given that astronomers expect galaxies to grow through mergers and mergers tend to trigger star formation, the presence of such large, undeveloped galaxies seemed odd. How could galaxies grow so much, yet have so few stars? One of the leading propositions is that the galaxies have undergone frequent mergers, but each one was very small and didn’t encourage large scale star formation. From their study, they determined that around 15% of quiet galaxies had a nearby counterpart that had at least 10% the mass of the larger galaxy. The team proposes several reasons this may be the case.
About Jon Voisey. Dusty Plasma From Enceladus Might Affect Saturn’s Magnetosphere. Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter Cassini View Of Saturn - Credit: Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Discovered by the Cassini mission, Saturn Kilometric Radiation (SKR) has been something of an enigma to astronomers. According to the radio and plasma wave instruments, variations occur in sync with the planet’s rotation. However, there are periodic “bursts” of radiation which are in line with Saturn’s magnetosphere. What makes this odd? The rate isn’t quite the same. Thanks to investigations of Enceladus by Cassini in 2008, new information about the plasma environment surrounding Saturn’s satellite could show a marked impact on the magnetosphere.
How is it being affected? “These signatures result from half or more of the electrons being attached to dust grains and by the interaction between the surrounding cold plasma and the predominantly negatively charged submicrometer-sized dust grains.” says M. Original Story Source: American Geophysical Union. The Workings of our Solar System Creates Beautiful Musical Palindrome. Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter If you like math, music and space (separately or in any combination) you’re gonna love this. Musician Daniel Starr-Tambor has created a song by assigning each planet a note and speeding up the orbital periods of the planets where 2 seconds represents one Earth year, with a note playing for each orbit.
But this isn’t just any typical song; it ends up being a musical palindrome, which means it can be played the same both forwards and backwards … that is, if you lived long enough to play to the end of the song. Back in the 17th century composers like J.S. That’s just cool. Hat tip: Brain Pickings Tagged as: music, Solar System. Saturn's Largest Moon Seen in Unprecedented Detail | Wired Science.
Titan is one of the solar system’s coldest places, but that hasn’t stopped Saturn’s largest moon from being incredibly dynamic.A collection of 13 new studies about Titan show previously undetected craters and river deltas, and provide improved maps of its surface and interior.They also reveal new details about the moon’s mysterious 29.5-Earth-year-long seasonal cycle (the equivalent of one year on Saturn, which orbits the sun at a distance of 890 million miles).
“We’re really starting to see quite a lot of profound changes on Titan,” said planetary scientist Ralph Lorenz at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory. “We’re learning things now that you could only learn after years of repeat observations.”The findings come from nearly 8 years of observations by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft in the Saturn system. Backyard Science: How You Can Make a Difference. Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter Three people enjoy the summer sky over the Delaware river, NJ, USA in August 2006. Image Credit: Wikimedia.org It’s a great time to be an amateur astronomer! Nowadays, “backyard” astronomers armed with affordable CCD imagers, high-quality tracking mounts, inexpensive PC’s and the internet at their fingertips are making real contributions to Astronomy science. How are people in their backyards contributing to real science these days? Consider that in 1991, the Hubble Space Telescope launched with a main camera of less than 1 megapixel.
With access to fairly high resolution cameras and equipment, many amateurs have taken breathtaking images of the night sky. One spectacular example of amateur discoveries was covered by Universe Today earlier this year. Often times when a supernova is detected, scientists must act quickly to gather data before the supernova fades. A before and after animation of Supernova 2010lt. 2013 Meteor shower viewing times and information at Spacedex.com. Il 2013 anno delle comete, Ison sarà “più luminosa della luna piena” NASA e-Book Features.
March to the Moon Image Gallery. 10 Years of Gorgeous Images of Earth From Space | Wired Science. 10 Years of Aqua Satellite's Incredible Images of Earth From Space | Wired Science. VISTA gigapixel mosaic of the central parts of the Milky Way. Your ‘Supermoon’ Images from Around the World. Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter San Souci lighthouse and the perigee Moon, in the Dominican Republic. Credit: Goku Abreu. We asked for ‘em, and you sent ‘em in: here are great images of the perigee Moon on May 5, 2012, the largest full Moon of the year taken by our readers. The perigee Moon as seen in Opelika, Alabama USA. The Supermoon on a finger, as seen in Aguilas, Murcia Spain. An artist's view of the 'Supermoon.' Largest Full Moon for 2012 from Dayton, Ohio USA. Perigee Moon on May 5, 2012 from Altamonte Springs, Florida USA.
A shy supermoon from Brick Landing, North Carolina USA. The supermoon from Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brazil. Preparing for a Supermoon, on May 3, 2012 from Wauseon, Ohio. A lovely Moonrise at Soldier's Beach off the Central Coast of New South Wales, Australia. 'Taken from the Marin Headlands with about 573 other photographer friends. Super full Moon over Tucson, Arizona, USA. The perigee Moon from Toronto, Canada. The Best of Hubble: 22 Years of Amazing Images. Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter 22 years ago today, the Hubble Space Telescope launched into orbit. After overcoming initial problems, Hubble has gone on to become legendary, helping scientists to rewrite astronomy textbooks. To celebrate Hubble’s 22nd anniversary, here’s a slideshow from ESA’s Hubblecast that shows some of the best images from over two decades in orbit, set to specially commissioned music.
Here’s a list of the images shown and their descriptions: 1990: Saturn Among the first images to be sent back from Hubble after its launch in April 1990, this image of Saturn is good by the standards of ground-based telescopes, but slightly blurry. This is because of the well-publicized problem with Hubble’s mirror, which did not allow images to be focused properly. 1991: Orion Nebula Although not perfectly sharp, this early image of the Orion Nebula nevertheless shows the rich colors and structures of this bright star-forming region.
GRAIL Sends Back First Video of the Moon’s Far Side. Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter A first look from GRAIL, showing the lunar far side! A camera aboard ‘Ebb’ — one of NASA’s twin Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) lunar spacecraft has returned its first unique view of the far side of the Moon. The camera is the MoonKAM, which is part of a special program for students to study the Moon. “The quality of the video is excellent and should energize our MoonKAM students as they prepare to explore the Moon,” said Maria Zuber, GRAIL principal investigator. In the video, the north pole of the Moon is visible at the top of the screen as the spacecraft flies toward the lunar south pole. One of the first prominent geological features seen on the lower third of the Moon is the Mare Orientale, a 900-kilometer-wide (560-mile) impact basin that straddles both the Moon’s near and far side.
Information on participating in the MoonKAM project. Source: NASA Tagged as: GRAIL Lunar mission, Missions, Moon. NASA’s New Video, Voiced by Optimus Prime. NASA's Fermi Telescope Finds Giant Structure in our Galaxy. Beautiful Time-Lapse Video Shows Stars and Earth From Space Station | Wired Science. A stunning new time-lapse video shows off the movements of both the stars and our home planet as seen from the International Space Station. While other videos have mostly focused on the nighttime Earth rolling by, photographer Alex Rivest wanted to highlight something new.
He enhanced publicly available data from NASA’s Johnson Space Center to focus each shot on the background moving stars. The result is enough to make any backyard stargazer incredibly jealous. “As someone who tries to get away from light pollution to look up and get lost under the stars (I always take star time-lapse movies whenever I get away from the city lights), I am fascinated by what the stars must look like from space,” Rivest wrote in an email to Wired Science.
“This particular track, to me, made it feel like one was taking a stroll in low earth orbit, watching the stars.” With amazing shots of shifting green auroras, the slowly rising Milky Way, or the sun peeking over the Earth’s limb, the video is a treat. "The Most Amazing Highest Resolution Image of Earth Ever," Says NASA.
New Mesmerizing Video Shows the Whole Evolution of the Moon. Stop What You're Doing and Explore Mars Right Now. 2012 March 12 - The Scale of the Universe Interactive. This Beautiful Space Video Will Make You Have Flying Dreams Tonight. This Incredible Video Shows All Roads, Air, and Shipping Routes on the Entire Planet. Mathematic Proof That The Universe Had A Beginning. Cassini Exposes Phoebe As More Planet Than Moon. The Mystery of Venus’ Ashen Light. Earth Has Less Water Than You Think. Moon Phases: 6000 Year Catalog. Cassini Solstice Mission.
La pagina degli astrofili. Software, fenomeni celesti, effemeridi, eclissi, calendario lunare, la cometa dell'anno. Associazione Astrofili Vittorio Veneto. Immaginario Scientifico. Astro Anarchy.