Gathering Materials For My First Solar System Ambassador Event, The Landing Of The Perseverance Rover

Did some work on this little guy this evening:

http://skyserver.sdss.org/dr9/en/tools/explore/obj.asp?ra=213.34784249&dec=0.57352944

IMAGE CREDIT: http://skyserver.sdss.org/dr9/en/credits/

Fun times at the Apollo to Artemis Gala celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Apollo 16! #nasa #nasasolarsystemambassador #solarsystemambassador #artemis #apollo16 #sls (at U.S. Space & Rocket Center) https://www.instagram.com/p/CcneEbjOwD_/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

I had a wonderful time talking to a group of kids and parents the other night. We talked about NASA, Space Science, and Women In STEM. #nasa #daisyscouts #girlscouts #solarsystemambassador https://www.instagram.com/p/CbS0W5SuIxG/?utm_medium=tumblr

My cool shirt arrived today! @earthspaceexplorationasu @asuinterplanetary #asu #arizonastateuniversity #astronomy #planets #solarsystemambassador #humanspaceflight #moon #mars https://www.instagram.com/p/CPRpFf8DF6y/?utm_medium=tumblr

Looking forward to the launch of Perseverance as part of MARS2020. Hoping to continue conducting educational opportunities for students in my area. @nasa @nasajpl #mars #marsrover #perseverance #stem #steam #stemeducation @nasasolarsystem https://www.instagram.com/p/CDNrSYAHsR3/?igshid=1c5lo9rnvwtop

Merry Christmas and a Happy CRS-21 Launch!!! 🎄 🚀 #nasasocial #nasa #iss #internationalspacestation #spacex #dragon #merrychristmas https://www.instagram.com/p/CIeJecrDeX4/?igshid=1ep76if4gvodq

Imagine a grain of sand on your fingertip at arms length. That is the amount of sky covered in this image! This is the first deep field image from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. All of those little smudges are galaxies with billions of stars in them. What we see tomorrow will be absolutely mind blowing! #explorepage #nasa #jwst #telescope #space #solarsystemambassador https://www.instagram.com/p/Cf5EXutOYhx/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Hubble Peers at Cosmic Blue Bauble

NASA - Hubble Space Telescope patch. April 12, 2019

Globular clusters are inherently beautiful objects, but the subject of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image, Messier 3, is commonly acknowledged to be one of the most beautiful of them all. Containing an incredible half-million stars, this 8-billion-year-old cosmic bauble is one of the largest and brightest globular clusters ever discovered. However, what makes Messier 3 extra special is its unusually large population of variable stars — stars that fluctuate in brightness over time. New variable stars continue to be discovered in this sparkling stellar nest to this day, but so far we know of 274, the highest number found in any globular cluster by far. At least 170 of these are of a special variety called RR Lyrae variables, which pulse with a period directly related to their intrinsic brightness. If astronomers know how bright a star truly is based on its mass and classification, and they know how bright it appears to be from our viewpoint here on Earth, they can thus work out its distance from us. For this reason, RR Lyrae stars are known as standard candles — objects of known luminosity whose distance and position can be used to help us understand more about vast celestial distances and the scale of the cosmos. Messier 3 also contains a relatively high number of so-called blue stragglers, which are shown quite clearly in this Hubble image. These are blue main sequence stars that appear to be young because they are bluer and more luminous than other stars in the cluster. As all stars in globular clusters are believed to have formed together and thus to be roughly the same age, only a difference in mass can give these stars a different color. A red, old star can appear bluer when it acquires more mass, for instance by stripping it from a nearby star. The extra mass changes it into a bluer star, which makes us think it is younger than it really is. Messier 3 is featured in Hubble’s Messier catalog, which includes some of the most fascinating objects that can be observed from Earth’s Northern Hemisphere. See the NASA-processed image and other Messier objects at: https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/hubble-s-messier-catalog.

Hubble Space Telescope (HST)

For more information about Hubble, visit: http://hubblesite.org/ http://www.nasa.gov/hubble http://www.spacetelescope.org/ Text Credits: ESA (European Space Agency)/NASA/Rob Garner/Image, Animation, Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, G. Piotto et al. Best regards, Orbiter.ch Full article

See the Universe in a New Way with the Webb Space Telescope's First Images

Are you ready to see unprecedented, detailed views of the universe from the James Webb Space Telescope, the largest and most powerful space observatory ever made? Scroll down to see the first full-color images and data from Webb. Unfold the universe with us. ✨

Carina Nebula

This landscape of “mountains” and “valleys” speckled with glittering stars, called the Cosmic Cliffs, is the edge of the star-birthing Carina Nebula. Usually, the early phases of star formation are difficult to capture, but Webb can peer through cosmic dust—thanks to its extreme sensitivity, spatial resolution, and imaging capability. Protostellar jets clearly shoot out from some of these young stars in this new image.

Southern Ring Nebula

The Southern Ring Nebula is a planetary nebula: it’s an expanding cloud of gas and dust surrounding a dying star. In this new image, the nebula’s second, dimmer star is brought into full view, as well as the gas and dust it’s throwing out around it. (The brighter star is in its own stage of stellar evolution and will probably eject its own planetary nebula in the future.) These kinds of details will help us better understand how stars evolve and transform their environments. Finally, you might notice points of light in the background. Those aren’t stars—they’re distant galaxies.

Stephan’s Quintet

Stephan’s Quintet, a visual grouping of five galaxies near each other, was discovered in 1877 and is best known for being prominently featured in the holiday classic, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” This new image brings the galaxy group from the silver screen to your screen in an enormous mosaic that is Webb’s largest image to date. The mosaic covers about one-fifth of the Moon’s diameter; it contains over 150 million pixels and is constructed from almost 1,000 separate image files. Never-before-seen details are on display: sparkling clusters of millions of young stars, fresh star births, sweeping tails of gas, dust and stars, and huge shock waves paint a dramatic picture of galactic interactions.

WASP-96 b

WASP-96 b is a giant, mostly gas planet outside our solar system, discovered in 2014. Webb’s Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) measured light from the WASP-96 system as the planet moved across the star. The light curve confirmed previous observations, but the transmission spectrum revealed new properties of the planet: an unambiguous signature of water, indications of haze, and evidence of clouds in the atmosphere. This discovery marks a giant leap forward in the quest to find potentially habitable planets beyond Earth.

Webb's First Deep Field

This image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, known as Webb’s First Deep Field, looks 4.6 billion years into the past. Looking at infrared wavelengths beyond Hubble’s deepest fields, Webb’s sharp near-infrared view reveals thousands of galaxies—including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared—in the most detailed view of the early universe to date. We can now see tiny, faint structures we’ve never seen before, like star clusters and diffuse features and soon, we’ll begin to learn more about the galaxies’ masses, ages, histories, and compositions.

These images and data are just the beginning of what the observatory will find. It will study every phase in the history of our Universe, ranging from the first luminous glows after the Big Bang, to the formation of solar systems capable of supporting life on planets like Earth, to the evolution of our own Solar System.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space—and for milestones like this!

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

A little bit history… and an exciting future. #saturnv #sls #spacelaunchsystem #nasa #nasaartemis #solarsystemambassador (at U.S. Space & Rocket Center) https://www.instagram.com/p/CRNrGmFDtwq/?utm_medium=tumblr