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Archive for the Astronomy category

October 14, 2020

Juno Flight

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NASA dicit:

This video uses images from NASA’s Juno mission to recreate what it might have looked like to ride along with the Juno spacecraft as it performed its 27th close flyby of Jupiter on June 2, 2020.

During the closest approach of this pass, the Juno spacecraft came within approximately 2,100 miles (3,400 kilometers) of Jupiter’s cloud tops. At that point, Jupiter’s powerful gravity accelerated the spacecraft to tremendous speed – about 130,000 mph (209,000 kilometers per hour) relative to the planet.

Citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill created the video using data from the spacecraft’s JunoCam instrument. The sequence combines 41 JunoCam still images digitally projected onto a sphere, with a virtual “camera†providing views of Jupiter from different angles as the spacecraft speeds by.

Video credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill

 

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September 24, 2020

WD 1856

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Wikipedia dicit:

WD 1856+534 is a white dwarf located in the constellation of Draco. At a distance of about 25 parsecs (80 ly) from Earth, it is the outer component of a visual triple star system consisting of an inner pair of red dwarf stars. The white dwarf displays a featureless absorption spectrum, lacking strong optical absorption or emission features in its atmosphere. It has an effective temperature of 4,700 K (4,430 °C; 8,000 °F), corresponding to an age of approximately 5.8 billion years. WD 1856+534 is approximately half as massive as the Sun, while its radius is much smaller, being 40% larger than Earth.

The white dwarf is known to host one exoplanet in orbit around it. The exoplanet was detected through the transit method by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) between July and August 2019. An analysis of the transit data in 2020 revealed that it is a Jupiter-like giant planet with a radius over ten times that of Earth’s, and orbits its host star closely at a distance of 0.02 astronomical units, or 60 times closer than Mercury’s distance from the Sun. The unexpectedly close distance of the exoplanet to the white dwarf implies that it must have migrated inward after its host star evolved from a red giant to a white dwarf, otherwise it would have been engulfed by its star.

Video credit: NASA Goddard

 

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September 23, 2020

OSIRIS-REx and Bennu

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Wikipedia dicit:

Using data collected by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, this animation shows the trajectories of particles after their emission from asteroid Bennu’s surface. The animation emphasizes the four largest particle ejection events detected at Bennu from December 2018 through September 2019. Additional particles, some with lifetimes of several days, that are not related to the ejections are also visible.

Video credit: M. Brozovic/JPL-Caltech/NASA/University of Arizona

 

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September 3, 2020

Shallow Lightning at Jupiter

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NASA dicit:

This animation takes the viewer on a simulated journey into Jupiter’s exotic high-altitude electrical storms. Get an up-close view of Mission Juno’s newly discovered “shallow lighting” flashes and dive into the violent atmospheric jet of the Nautilus cloud. The smallest white “pop-up” clouds on top of the Nautilus are about 100 km across. The ride navigates through Jupiter’s towering thunderstorms, dodging the spray of ammonia-water rain, and shallow lighting flashes. At these altitudes — too cold for pure liquid water to exit – ammonia gas acts like an antifreeze that melts the water ice crystals flung up to these heights by Jupiter’s powerful storms – giving Jupiter an unexpected ammonia-water cloud that can electrify the sky. The animation was created by combining an image of high-altitude clouds from the JunoCam imager on NASA’s Juno spacecraft with a computer-generated animation.

Video credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gil/Animation: Koji Kuramura/Music: Vangelis

 

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September 2, 2020

MAVEN

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NASA dicit:

Mars’ nightside atmosphere glows and pulsates in this data animation from MAVEN spacecraft observations. Green-to-white false color shows the enhanced brightenings on Mars’ ultraviolet “nightglow” measured by MAVEN’s Imaging UltraViolet Spectrograph at about 70 kilometers (approximately 40 miles) altitude. A simulated view of the Mars globe is added digitally for context, with ice caps visible at the poles. Three nightglow brightenings occur over one Mars rotation, the first much brighter than the other two. All three brightenings occur shortly after sunset, appearing on the left of this view of the night side of the planet. The pulsations are caused by downwards winds which enhance the chemical reaction creating nitric oxide which causes the glow. Months of data were averaged to identify these patterns, indicating they repeat nightly.

Video credit: NASA/MAVEN/Goddard Space Flight Center/CU/LASP

 

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September 1, 2020

Lucy

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NASA dicit:

NASA’s Lucy mission is launching in 2021 and will fly by seven different Trojan asteroids that are orbiting the same distance from the Sun as Jupiter. This video highlights the four main science objectives and the instruments aboard the spacecraft that will be utilized. Lucy will be the first space mission to study the Trojan asteroids, which are remnants of our early solar system.

Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Produced & Edited by: David Ladd (USRA)/Animations by: David Ladd (USRA), Walt Feimer (KBRwyle), Jacquelyn DeMink (USRA), Michael Lentz (USRA), Jonathan North (USRA)/Music: “Feels Good” – Wally Gagel & Xandy Barry [ASCAP], provided by Universal Production Music

 

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