Danielle Jones: NASA Ambassador @physicistmua-blog - Tumblr Blog

Rain on the Sun? Yes, but it's not water - it's plasma! This happens after an eruption on the Sun produces both a Coronal Mass Ejection and a moderate solar flare at the same time - then plasma in the nearby solar corona cools and falls back down. We call this coronal rain. Because they are electrically charged, electrons, protons, and ions in the rain were channeled along existing magnetic loops near the Sun's surface, making the scene appear as a three-dimensional sourceless waterfall. Shown in ultraviolet light, it highlights matter glowing at a temperature of about 50,000 Kelvin. Each second in the featured time lapse video takes about 6 minutes in real time, so that the entire coronal rain sequence lasted about 10 hours. Recent observations have confirmed that that coronal rain can also occur in smaller loops for as long as 30 hours. Credit: NASA Goddard/Solar Obervatory ___________ #nasaearth #nasasocial #nasajpl #nasa #solarobservatory #thesun #coronalrain #JPL #astronomy #astrophotography #astronomyphotography #astronomypictureoftheday #nasagoddardspaceflightcenter #nasagoddard (at Baltimore, Maryland)

#astrophotography #nasa #nasajpl #solarobservatory #jpl #coronalrain #astronomy #nasaearth #nasagoddard #astronomypictureoftheday #astronomyphotography #nasagoddardspaceflightcenter #nasasocial #thesun

The first test shot from TESS just came back! Look at all those stars!! TESS is NASA's next planet hunter (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite), and is one step closer to searching for new worlds after successfully completing a lunar flyby on May 17. The spacecraft passed about 5,000 miles from the Moon, which provided a gravity assist that helped TESS sail toward its final working orbit. As part of camera commissioning, the science team snapped a two-second test exposure using one of the four TESS cameras. The image, centered on the southern constellation Centaurus, reveals more than 200,000 stars. TESS is expected to cover more than 400 times as much sky as shown in this image with its four cameras during its initial two-year search for exoplanets. A science-quality image, also referred to as a “first light” image, is expected to be released in June. #tessmission #NASA #astrophotography #astronomy

#tessmission #astronomy #astrophotography #nasa

Imagery of the sun is so captivating. A coronal hole was seen on the Sun on May 2-4, 2018. The dark coronal hole extends about halfway across the solar disk when observed in a wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light. This type of light is typically invisible to our eyes, but was captured here by our Solar Dynamics Observatory and colorized in purple. Coronal holes are magnetically open areas on the Sun from which solar wind — the Sun’s constant outflow of material — rushes out into space. Such solar wind streams can trigger the aurora when they interact with Earth’s magnetic field. Credit: NASA/SDO , Repost: @NASA #nasa #space #sun #solar #sdo #light #earth #solarsystem#science #video #ultraviolet #uv #uvlight #picoftheday

#light #solar #ultraviolet #video #space #science #uv #earth #uvlight #picoftheday #nasa #solarsystem #sdo #sun

This short new movie of a comet’s surface is pretty incredible!!! The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft arrived at Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko in 2014 and became the first mission to ever orbit around a comet. Additionally, its small Philae lander became the first to touch down on a comet’s surface—although it was lost after landing. You are viewing a striking series of 12.5-second exposure photos taken from about 13km away from the comet, turned into a short movie (by Twitter user landru79). The bright dots travelling from the top of the frame to the bottom, which look something like snow, are in fact background stars. They have that apparent motion as the spacecraft moves and the comet rotates. The more rapidly moving streaks are thought to be dust particles illuminated by the Sun. There also appear to be a few streaking cosmic rays. This confirms the notion that comets are remnants from when the Solar System formed rather than fragments from later collisions. Comets therefore offer a window to 4.6 billion years ago. #comet #astrophotography #astronomy #europeanspaceagency

#astronomy #europeanspaceagency #comet #astrophotography

Hubble just made an amazing discovery: a galaxy with seemingly no dark matter. 👀 Galaxies are nearly synonymous with dark matter. They seem to be mostly dark matter with specks of regular matter mixed in. Despite the fact that no dark matter has been directly observed with science experiments, galaxies’ strange motion is the knock-out reason why astronomers think the universe is filled with six times more of this mysterious stuff than regular matter. This galaxy, called NGC1052-DF2 is entirely new territory as far as observations go. But paradoxically, it might strengthen the case for dark matter’s existence. NGC1052-DF2 shows that these strange, ultra-diffuse galaxies have a whole lot more to teach astronomers. If something has a lot of gravity, then the objects orbiting it need to move quickly around it so they don’t spiral into the center. But nearly every galaxy seems to rotate way faster around its edges than the amount of visible matter they contain would imply. That’s led astronomers to believe that these galaxies are filled with lots and lots of dark matter. Scientists had already cataloged NGC1052-DF2, but when they monitored the motion of 10 of its bright clusters of stars, it didn’t seem to rotate at all, according to the paper published today. #darkmatter #hubble #nasa #nasajpl #astronomy #scheduledpost

#astronomy #darkmatter #nasa #nasajpl #hubble #scheduledpost

Hubble just captured something kind of mind bending and amazing. It's called an Einstein Ring. You're looking at a massive blanket of hundreds of galaxies caught in each other's gravitational pulls. The combined mass of these galaxies is so great that it causes a distortion in the fabric of space and time. That distortion is represented by a glowing ring in the center of the image, which is actually a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. The background galaxy is diverted and distorted around the massive intervening cluster, which makes it seem that a galaxy is in multiple places at once. What happens is that when light passes through a dense object with a massive gravitational pull, that object is able to distort the path of light. Because the light is forced to take a path other than a straight line, it circles around the galaxy as it's influenced by massive gravitational forces. The mass of this galaxy cluster is large enough to severely distort the spacetime around it, creating the odd, looping curves that almost encircle the cluster. #hubble #themoreyouknow #astrophotography #astronomy #hubbletelescope #NASA #einsteinring Picture: Hubble Space Telescope 🔭

#astronomy #einsteinring #themoreyouknow #astrophotography #nasa #hubbletelescope #hubble

Eclipse viewing with friends/family was bananas. There are no words. Two years of hard work, public education, experiments, planning, and interviews is finally over. I know I say it all the time, but I'm so lucky to be able to represent Kansas City as an Ambassador for NASA. Thank you to all that made this event special - and especially those who made me a part of their eclipse viewing experience, even if I wasn't there beside you. Now I need beer/wine/bath bombs/a massage. This week is for relaxing, I think!

I LOVE WHAT I DO! Thank you, Lakeview MS! #NASAAmbassador #Eclipse2017

#eclipse2017 #nasaambassador

It's officially ECLIPSE DAY! I'll be uploading from Snapchat all day for my events and eclipse madness (Snap: meandmrjones ... I need a new screen name). So happy to be a part of NASA's extended team for such an amazing event. Here we go!

Cassini images keep getting better ... I will miss her dearly!

Part of what I love about being associated with NASA is the inclusion of the public. This week, Juno passed by The Great Red Spot and all of its onboard instrumentation was turned on. The images are then uploaded at the link below and the public can process them at will. Amateurs make great discoveries every day (look at the chart of asteroid discoveries - mostly amateur astronomers). Even if you're not into the topography or chemistry of planets, looking at these images in full resolution is so humbling and awe inspiring. I can't wait to show these in all my presentations this year!

The Eclipse is less than a month away! Do you have your glasses ready? Eclipse safety is extremely important! Make sure you snag a pair of viewing goggles before staring up at the Sun! If you're in the Kansas City area, contact me for your very own pair. Not in KC? Don't worry! Send me a message and I can help you find a public organization that is giving them out for free!

The Mars concept vehicle is kind of amazing. Further proof that Batman may, in fact, really exist.

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Danielle Jones: NASA Ambassador