Topic: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope catches images of Asteroid breaking up

March 8, 2014 |

Written by Tony Phillips

Washington, D.C. – NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has recorded the never-before-seen break-up of an asteroid into as many as 10 smaller pieces. Fragile comets, comprised of ice and dust, have been seen falling apart as they approach the sun, but nothing like this has ever before been observed in the asteroid belt.

“This is a rock, and seeing it fall apart before our eyes is pretty amazing,” said David Jewitt of the University of California at Los Angeles, who led the astronomical forensics investigation.

This series of Hubble Space Telescope images reveals the breakup of an asteroid over a period of several months starting in late 2013. The largest fragments are up to 180 meters (200 yards) in radius.

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NASA’s Aqua Satellite observes Frozen State of the Great Lakes

March 3, 2014 |

Written by Kathryn Hansen
NASA’s Earth Science News Team

Washington, D.C. – At night, as cold settles in, lake ice creaks and groans. It’s been excessively cold, and I camped exposed on the snow-swept surface. Other than the lack of vegetation and the sounds at night, you’d never know you were on a lake.

It feels like an empty plain. In some places, you see pressure ridges where ice has pushed into itself, sticking up like clear blue stegosaurus plates.  — Craig Childs

Author Craig Childs is not describing an Arctic lake. He’s describing the bitterly cold and frozen scene on Lake Superior, during his February 2014 trek on the ice near the coast of Ashland, Wisconsin.

This image, acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite, shows the Great Lakes on February 19, 2014, when ice covered 80.3 percent of the lakes. (Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA)

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NASA tracks Sunspot’s third lap across the Sun

March 2, 2014 |

Written by Karen C. Fox
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Greenbelt, MD – A giant sunspot – a magnetically strong and complex region on the sun’s surface – has just appeared over the sun’s horizon. This is the third trip for this region across the face of the sun, which takes approximately 27 days to make a complete rotation.

Scientists track sunspots that are part of active regions, which often produce large explosions on the sun such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections, or CMEs.

A giant sunspot appeared on Feb. 25, 2014, for its third trip across the face of the sun. This blend of two images from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory shows the sunspot in visible light and an X-class flare observable in ultraviolet light. (NASA/SDO/Goddard Space Flight Center)

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NASA’s IRIS Telescope sees it’s strongest Solar Flare to date

February 24, 2014 |

Written by Karen C. Fox
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Greenbelt, MD – On January 28th, 2014, NASA’s Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS, witnessed its strongest solar flare since it launched in the summer of 2013. Solar flares are bursts of x-rays and light that stream out into space, but scientists don’t yet know the fine details of what sets them off.

IRIS peers into a layer of the sun’s lower atmosphere just above the surface, called the chromosphere, with unprecedented resolution. However, IRIS can’t look at the entire sun at the same time, so the team must always make decisions about what region might provide useful observations.

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NASA’s Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes discover galaxy at the edge of our seeable Universe

February 8, 2014 |

Written by Whitney Clavin
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – NASA’s Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes have spotted what might be one of the most distant galaxies known, harkening back to a time when our universe was only about 650 million years old (our universe is 13.8 billion years old).

The galaxy, known as Abell2744 Y1, is about 30 times smaller than our Milky Way galaxy and is producing about 10 times more stars, as is typical for galaxies in our young universe.

This image of the galaxy cluster Abell 2744 was obtained with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The zoomed image shows the region around the galaxy Abell2744_Y1, one of the most distant galaxy candidates known, harkening back to a time when the universe was 650 million years old.

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NASA scientists use new Technique to examine meteor, comet materials for components of Life

February 4, 2014 |

Written by Bill Steigerwald
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Greenbelt, MD – While the origin of life remains mysterious, scientists are finding more and more evidence that material created in space and delivered to Earth by comet and meteor impacts could have given a boost to the start of life.

Some meteorites supply molecules that can be used as building blocks to make certain kinds of larger molecules that are critical for life.

Researchers have analyzed carbon-rich meteorites (carbonaceous chondrites) and found amino acids, which are used to make proteins.

This photo compares the sample size typically used in meteorite studies (yellow oval) to the sample size used with the new equipment (blue circle) in Goddard’s Astrobiology Analytical Laboratory. (Michael Callahan)

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NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) captures image of baby stars in the Trifid nebula

January 31, 2014 |

Written by Whitney Clavin
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – A storm of stars is brewing in the Trifid nebula, as seen in this view from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The stellar nursery, where baby stars are bursting into being, is the yellow-and-orange object dominating the picture.

Yellow bars in the nebula appear to cut a cavity into three sections, hence the name Trifid nebula.

Colors in this image represent different wavelengths of infrared light detected by WISE. The main green cloud is made up of hydrogen gas.

Radiation and winds from massive stars have blown a cavity into the surrounding dust and gas, creating the Trifid nebula, as seen here in infrared light by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA)

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NASA to launch five Earth Science Missions in 2014

January 28, 2014 |

Written by Alan Buis
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – For the first time in more than a decade, five NASA Earth science missions will be launched into space in the same year, opening new and improved remote eyes to monitor our changing planet.

The five launches, including two to the International Space Station (ISS), are part of an active year for NASA Earth science researchers, who also will conduct airborne campaigns to the poles and hurricanes, develop advanced sensor technologies, and use satellite data and analytical tools to improve natural hazard and climate change preparedness.

Artist’s rendering of NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO)-2, one of five new NASA Earth science missions set to launch in 2014, and one of three managed by JPL. (NASA-JPL/Caltech)

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NASA’s Hubble, Chandra, NuSTAR and Fermi spacecrafts to observe newly discovered Supernova

January 27, 2014 |

Written by Francis Reddy
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Greenbelt, MD – An exceptionally close stellar explosion discovered on January 21st has become the focus of observatories around and above the globe, including several NASA spacecraft. The blast, designated SN 2014J, occurred in the galaxy M82 and lies only about 12 million light-years away.

This makes it the nearest optical supernova in two decades and potentially the closest type Ia supernova to occur during the life of currently operating space missions.

Swift’s UVOT captured the new supernova (circled) in three exposures taken on Jan. 22, 2014. Mid-ultraviolet light is shown in blue, near-UV light in green, and visible light in red. Thick dust in M82 scatters much of the highest-energy light, which is why the supernova appears yellowish here. The image is 17 arcminutes across, or slightly more than half the apparent diameter of a full moon. (NASA/Swift/P. Brown, TAMU)

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Clarksville’s Gateway Chamber Orchestra to host “Wind Serenades” concert at Austin Peay State University February 9th-10th

January 22, 2014 |

Clarksville, TN – There’s a famous scene in the 1984 Oscar-winning film “Amadeus” where the Italian composer Antonio Salieri looks over sheet music for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Gran Partita” serenade.

Salieri’s face contorts into a mixture of agony and ecstasy as he images the sounds of that serenade’s “Adagio.”

Gateway Chamber Orchestra

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