Pieces of Earth

[nasa]

Science When the Sun Don’t Shine

About once a year, somewhere on Earth, the sun is blocked by the moon. This phenomenon – called a total solar eclipse – is one of the most beautiful natural events.

Blocking the light of the sun during a total solar eclipse reveals the sun’s relatively faint, feathery atmosphere, called the corona. The corona is one of the most interesting parts of the sun. We usually study it using an instrument called a coronagraph, which uses a solid disk to make an artificial eclipse by blocking the sun’s face.

To successfully block all of the sun’s bright light – which can bend around the sharp edges of a coronagraph disk – coronagraphs must block much more than just the face of the sun.  So total solar eclipses are a rare chance to study the lower part of the corona, close to the surface of the sun.   

We have sent a team of scientists to Indonesia, where they’re preparing for an experiment during the March 8, 2016, eclipse, visible from Southeast Asia.

The scientists are measuring a certain kind of light – called polarized light – scattered by electrons in the lower corona, which will help us understand the temperature and speed of these electrons.

The March 8 eclipse is a preview of the total solar eclipse that will be visible across the US in August 2017.

Remember, you should never look directly at the sun – even if the sun is partly obscured. This also applies during a total eclipse up until the time when the sun is completely and totally blocked. More on safety: http://go.nasa.gov/1L6xpnI

For more eclipse information, check out nasa.gov/eclipse

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

[mymodernmet]

Mesmerizing Photos Capture the Colorful Glow of the Milky Way Over Yellowstone National Park

[spaceplasma]

Some galaxies have extremely bright cores, suggesting that they contain a supermassive black hole that is pulling in matter at a prodigious rate. Astronomers call these “active galaxies,” and Hercules A is one of them. In visible light, Hercules A looks like a typical elliptical galaxy. In X-ray light, however, Chandra detects a giant cloud of multimillion-degree gas (purple). This gas has been heated by energy generated by the infall of matter into a black hole at the center of Hercules A that is over 1,000 times as massive as the one in the middle of the Milky Way. Radio data (blue) show jets of particles streaming away from the black hole. The jets span a length of almost one million light years.  

Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO, Optical: NASA/STScI, Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA

[blazepress]

South America photographed from the International Space Station.

[space-pics]

Iberian Peninsula from the ISS http://space-pics.tumblr.com/

[micdotcom]

55 Twitter photos from space that will fill you with ethereal wonder

Reid Wiseman is a national treasure.

Follow micdotcom 

[plagved]

[reuterspictures]

Deadly clashes in Egypt

The death toll in violence on Monday at the Cairo headquarters of the Republican Guard rose to over 50, after the Muslim Brotherhood accused the security forces of attacking protesters there.

[observingearth]

This tree has become a symbol of hope in Japan. It is the one tree that survived from a forest in the city of Rikuzentakata, Japan, after the tsunami struck.

[mymangotree-deactivated20160622]

[bbe101]

follow backs if asked

[-vvaste]

[observingearth]

The 16th century Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan and his crew had plenty of time to study the southern sky during the first circumnavigation of planet Earth.

As a result, two fuzzy cloud-like objects easily visible to southern hemisphere skygazers are known as the Clouds of Magellan, now understood to be satellite galaxies of our much larger, spiral Milky Way galaxy. The prominent patch just left of center is 30 Doradus, also known as the magnificent Tarantula Nebula, is a giant star-forming region about 1,000 light-years across.

[observingearth]

Have you ever seen a little rainbow off to the side of the Sun?

Sundogs are just sunlight refracting through hexagonal falling ice crystals in the Earth's atmosphere. When thin ice crystals flitter down nearly horizontally, they best refract sunlight sideways and create sundogs. 

The above image was taken through a polarizing filter during October 2012 inMérida, Spain. Via Nasa Image of the Day

[observingearth]

The Richat Structure in the Sahara Desert of Mauritania is easily visible from space because it is nearly 50 kilometers across.

The possibility that the Richat Structure was formed by a volcanic eruption also seems improbable because of the lack of a dome of igneous or volcanic rock. The above image was captured by the ASTER instruments onboard the orbiting orbiting Terra satellite. Why the Richat Structure is nearly circular remains a mystery.

Via Nasa Image of the Day

[pleoros]

Laura Tidwell

[archatlas]

REM Island Concrete

[observingearth]

Milky-colored ripples on the Atlantic Ocean trail behind the Canary Islands (map) off the west coast of Africa in this June 15 image snapped by NASA's Terra satellite.