Archive for September 22nd, 2009

Updated view of the oil slick in the Timor sea.

What was probably a sheen of oil calmed the waters of the Timor Sea and darkened the mirror-like reflection of the Sun when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image on September 17, 2009. The top image shows the wider area, with part of Western Australia at lower right. The colorful water near the shore is probably a mixture of sediment and phytoplankton. The bottom image is a close up of the area outlined in white.

The oil was leaking from a well that was damaged during drilling on August 21. According to news reports, chemicals that help the oil disperse are being dropped on the slick from airplanes. The light-colored streaks may be some combination of oil and dispersant.

Newly released images from Discovery’s ferry flight back to KSC. The first two are the takeoff from Edwards AFB, and the rest follow the landing to the mate-demate device.

Read the rest of this entry »

There are two images below, one you wont see till after the jump. They are the same image, except for the difference of a label. As for the image itself, it comes from the Chandra X-ray Observatory and what you’re looking at is the center of the Milky Way. Click for larger image on both.

A dramatic new vista of the center of the Milky Way galaxy from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory exposes new levels of the complexity and intrigue in the Galactic center. The mosaic of 88 Chandra pointings represents a freeze-frame of the spectacle of stellar evolution, from bright young stars to black holes, in a crowded, hostile environment dominated by a central, supermassive black hole.

Permeating the region is a diffuse haze of X-ray light from gas that has been heated to millions of degrees by winds from massive young stars – which appear to form more frequently here than elsewhere in the Galaxy – explosions of dying stars, and outflows powered by the supermassive black hole – known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). Data from Chandra and other X-ray telescopes suggest that giant X-ray flares from this black hole occurred about 50 and about 300 years earlier.

The area around Sgr A* also contains several mysterious X-ray filaments. Some of these likely represent huge magnetic structures interacting with streams of very energetic electrons produced by rapidly spinning neutron stars or perhaps by a gigantic analog of a solar flare.

Scattered throughout the region are thousands of point-like X-ray sources. These are produced by normal stars feeding material onto the compact, dense remains of stars that have reached the end of their evolutionary trail – white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes.

Because X-rays penetrate the gas and dust that blocks optical light coming from the center of the galaxy, Chandra is a powerful tool for studying the Galactic Center. This image combines low energy X-rays (colored red), intermediate energy X-rays (green) and high energy X-rays (blue).

Another great video about NASA’s next solar probe, the launch has been delayed once again from October, and unfortunately wont be earlier than February 3rd in 2010. If you have no idea what I’m talking about when I say SDO, feel free to click the SDO tag.

Dean Pesnell, the SDO Project Scientist, explains how the the Extreme Ultraviolet Variability Experiment (EVE) instrument will allow us to better measure solar irradiance in extreme ultraviolet wavelengths. This type of irradiance, which is absorbed completely by Earth’s upper atmosphere, can be dangerous to astronauts and electronics in space.

I rarely revisit a topic, especially when its been so well covered before. Yet this newly released high quality video of the DM-1 static test is worth sharing.