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cosmicfunnies

The last but not least of Assorted Planets Month!

And now to cool you all off with some “refreshing” rain!

This week’s entry: Planetary Rain

http://www.zmescience.com/other/science-abc/rain-titan-earth-neptune/

http://io9.com/on-jupiter-you-can-see-neon-rain-1640118403

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Cute!😁

nasa

They Put a Flag on the Moon

It’s 1969 and Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong are the first humans to land on the Moon. In now iconic footage, Aldrin and Armstrong carefully assemble and maneuver an American flag to place on the lunar surface. The fabric unfurls, staying suspended without any wind to animate the stars and stripes. The flagpole sways precariously as the crew work to anchor it in the Moon’s low gravity at just 1/6th that of Earth’s. How did this moment come about? On Flag Day, let’s dive behind-the-scenes of what led to getting the American flag on the Moon 50 years ago.

Image: Astronaut Buzz Aldrin poses for a photograph beside the deployed United States flag during the Apollo 11 mission.

Seeking to empower the nation, President John F. Kennedy gave us a grand charge. The human spaceflight program of the early 1960s was challenged to work on missions that sent humans to the surface of another world. Following President Kennedy’s death in 1963, President Richard Nixon stressed a more international perspective to the Apollo missions. To reconcile the need for global diplomacy with national interests, we appointed the Committee on Symbolic Activities for the First Lunar Landing.

Image: NASA Administrator Thomas Paine and President Richard Nixon are seen aboard the USS Hornet, Apollo 11’s splashdown recovery vessel.

The committee, and the U.S. at large, wanted to avoid violating the United Nations Outer Space Treaty, which prohibited any nation from taking possession of a celestial body. After some debate, they recommended that the flag only appear during the Apollo 11 spacewalk. A plaque would accompany it, explaining that the flag was meant to stand for peaceful exploration, not conquest.

Image: The plaque reads “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all of mankind.” Under the text are signatures by President Nixon, Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Michael Collins.

A team of engineers at Johnson Space Center had three months to resolve several issues regarding the flag’s assembly. First, was the Moon’s lack of atmosphere. The flag, quite literally, could not fly the way it does on Earth. To address this, a horizontal crossbar was added to support the flag’s weight and give the illusion of it waving.

Image: NASA technician David L. McCraw shows the flag next to a Lunar Module mockup.

Second was the flag’s assembly, which had to be as lightweight and compact as possible so as not to take up limited storage space. The completed package, which was attached to Lunar Module’s ladder, weighed just under ten pounds. It received an outer case made of steel, aluminum, and Thermoflex insulation and blanketing to shield the flag from the 2,000 degree Fahrenheit spike from the Eagle’s descent engine.

Image: Component pieces of the flag assembly.

The last issue was mobility. Bulky spacesuits significantly restricted the astronauts’ range of motion, and suit pressurization limited how much force they could apply. To accommodate these limits, the team included telescoping components to minimize the need to reach and maneuver the poles. A red painted ring on the flagpole indicated how far into the ground it should be driven. Hinges and catches would lock into place once the pieces were fully extended.

Image: Diagram from the 1969 Apollo 11 press release illustrating astronaut spacesuit reach capabilities and ideal working height.

Fifty years after Apollo 11, the flag we planted on the lunar surface has likely faded but its presence looms large in United States history as a symbol of American progress and innovation.

Image: A close-up view of the U.S. flag deployed on the Moon at the Taurus-by the crew of Apollo 17, the most recent lunar landing mission.

The story doesn’t stop here. Anne Platoff’s article “Where No Flag Has Gone Before” sheds more light on the context and technical process of putting the United States flag on the Moon. You can also check out Johnson Space Center’s recent feature story that details its presence in later missions. Happy Flag Day! Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

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👏🚀😍

wonders-of-the-cosmos

This image of Neptune was taken by Voyager 2’s wide-angle camera when the spacecraft was 590,000 km (370,000 miles) from the planet.

Image credit: NASA/JPL

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Beautiful💙

This note waa last Monday😊

wonders-of-the-cosmos

This rich galaxy cluster, catalogued as CL0024+17, is allowing astronomers to probe the distribution of dark matter in space. The blue streaks near the center of the image are the smeared images of very distant galaxies that are not part of the cluster. The distant galaxies appear distorted because their light is being bent and magnified by the powerful gravity of CL0024+17, an effect called gravitational lensing. Dark matter cannot be seen because it does not shine or reflect light. Astronomers can only detect its influence by how its gravity affects light. By mapping the distorted light created by gravitational lensing, astronomers can trace how dark matter is distributed in the cluster. While mapping the dark matter, astronomers found a dark-matter ring near the cluster’s center. The ring’s discovery is among the strongest evidence that dark matter exists. The Hubble observations were taken in November 2004 by the Advanced Camera for Surveys.

Credit: NASA, ESA, M.J. Jee and H. Ford (Johns Hopkins University)

ursula-uriarte

Can’t wait to dive into this beauty!!!! 🖤

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Productivity Days✔

Happy International Day of Human Space Flight 🚀👽🌎

My study yesterday

wonders-of-the-cosmos

It’s 13 March. On this day in 1781 Uranus was discovered by William Herschel.

March 13, 1781. The seventh planet – Uranus – was discovered on this date, completely by accident. British astronomer William Herschel was performing a survey of all stars of at least magnitude 8 – stars slightly too faint to be seen with the eye alone, in other words. That’s when he noticed a very faint object – only barely above the limit for viewing with the eye – that that moved in front of the fixed stars.

This movement clearly demonstrated the object was closer to us than the stars. At first he thought he had found a comet. Later, he and others realized it was a new planet in orbit around our sun, the first new planet discovered since ancient times

William Herschel announced its discovery on March 13, 1781, expanding the known boundaries of the Solar System for the first time in history and making Uranus the first planet discovered with a telescope.

NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft flew closely past distant Uranus, the seventh planet from the Sun, in January 1986.

Voyager 2 radioed thousands of images and voluminous amounts of other scientific data on the planet, its moons, rings, atmosphere, interior and the magnetic environment surrounding Uranus.

Image credit: NASA / JPL / Voyager (read more) (William Herschel)

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#uranus #urano #planet #planeta #astronomer #astronomia #astronomy #solarsystem #ring #williamherschel #telescope #science #umbriel #oberon #ariel #titania #sistemasolar #puck #miranda #astronomo

nasa

Countdown to Calving at Antarctica's Brunt Ice Shelf

Cracks growing across Antarctica’s Brunt Ice Shelf are poised to release an iceberg with an area about twice the size of New York City, (about 604 square miles). It is not yet clear how the remaining ice shelf will respond following the break, posing an uncertain future for scientific infrastructure and a human presence on the shelf that was first established in 1955.

NASA Earth Observatory image by Joshua Stevens, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Kathryn Hansen, with image interpretation by Chris Shuman (NASA/UMBC).

The above image, from the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8, shows the area on January 23, 2019. The crack along the top of the image—the so-called Halloween crack—first appeared in late October 2016 and continues to grow eastward from an area known as the McDonald Ice Rumples. The rumples are due to the way ice flows over an underwater formation, where the bedrock rises high enough to reach into the underside of the ice shelf. This rocky formation impedes the flow of ice and causes pressure waves, crevasses, and rifts to form at the surface.

The more immediate concern is the rift visible in the center of the image. Previously stable for about 35 years, this crack recently started accelerating northward as fast as 4 kilometers per year.

Calving is a normal part of the life cycle of ice shelves, but the recent changes are unfamiliar in this area. The edge of the Brunt Ice Shelf has evolved slowly since Ernest Shackleton surveyed the coast in 1915, but it has been speeding up in the past several years.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

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😢