Mercury. Here Comes the Sun. June 21 marked both the summer and winter solstice, the longest or shortest day of the year for sunlight depending on which hemisphere you reside. Here are some glimpses of the power, beauty, and transforming presence of the sun, taken since the beginning of June. -- Lloyd Young(27 photos total) In this handout photo released by Nasa Earth Observatory on June 7, 2011 and taken from Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory, sunspot complex 1226-1227, shows the Sun unleashing an M-2 (medium-sized) solar flare, an S1-class radiation storm and a coronal mass ejection resulting in a large cloud of particles mushrooming up and falling back down giving the impression of covering an area of almost half the solar surface. An unusual solar flare observed by a NASA space observatory on June 7 could cause some disruptions to satellite communications and power on Earth over the next day or so, officials said. Photopic Sky Survey.
Averted Imagination | Solar System Photography by Alan Friedman. Dust Models Paint Alien's View of Solar System. Dust Models Paint Alien's View of Solar System New supercomputer simulations tracking the interactions of thousands of dust grains show what the solar system might look like to alien astronomers searching for planets. The models also provide a glimpse of how this view might have changed as our planetary system matured.
"The planets may be too dim to detect directly, but aliens studying the solar system could easily determine the presence of Neptune -- its gravity carves a little gap in the dust," said Marc Kuchner, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. who led the study. "We're hoping our models will help us spot Neptune-sized worlds around other stars. " The dust originates in the Kuiper Belt, a cold-storage zone beyond Neptune where millions of icy bodies -- including Pluto -- orbit the sun. Scientists believe the region is an older, leaner version of the debris disks they've seen around stars like Vega and Fomalhaut. Related Links: Earth Moon Photos | Universe Today. Want to stay on top of all the space news?
Follow @universetoday on Twitter We’re familiar with the close-up images of Earth captured by orbital satellites and astronauts on the International Space Station. But here are a few pictures of the Earth and Moon captured at a distance, while passing around the Moon, or orbiting distant Saturn. In the words of Carl Sagan, “Look again at that dot. That’s here. Since Sagan commented on Voyager 1′s image of Earth, several more pics of the Earth and Moon have been captured that really put our tiny spot in the Universe into perspective. Voyager 1 – the Pale Blue Dot This image, captured by NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft on February 14, 1990, is the one Sagan was talking about.
Cassini – the Earth from Saturn This is easily the best picture ever captured by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, and in the running for the best space pictures of all time. But this image is extra special. Here’s an image of Earth captured from the surface of another planet. Los Cielos del Ecuador, Chimborazo Volcano. With an altitude of 6268 meters (20564 ft) above sea level, Chimborazo volcano is the highest summit in Ecuador but of course not the highest summit on the planet. This record belongs to Mount Everest (8848 metres / 29029 ft above sea level).
However, because the Earth is not a perfect sphere but rather an oblate spheroid (a sphere flattened along the axis from pole to pole such that there is a bulge around the equator) and that Chimborazo is very close to the equator line (only -1 degree in latitude), Chimborazo is known as the "the farthest location from the center of the Earth". 6384.687 Km against 6382.467 Km for Everest that is, a difference of 2.220 Km/1.38 miles.
Ecuatorian people will kindly and proudly remind you about this fact "Chimborazo, el punto mas lejano del centro de la Tierra". Corona up to 6 solar radii. Solar Eclipse Gallery: Jan. 15, 2010. Astrometry.net.