My #mom Went To Be With My #dad Yesterday Morning. I Will Miss Her Dearly. #togetherforever They Gave

Thank you for your endless curiosity Dr. Hawking.

Jupiter and Saturn appear to the naked eye as a single star, dubbed the "Christmas Star," last seen 800 years ago. Viewed from my deck. 🤩 #christmasstar #jupitersaturnconjunction https://www.instagram.com/p/CJFbSF2rMPv/?igshid=tz61xuv73023

Earth’s Ocean and Beyond

Image Credit: NOAA

Earth’s ocean has been the backdrop for ancient epics, tales of fictional fish and numerous scientific discoveries. It was, and will always be, a significant piece of the Earth’s story. Most of the ocean is unexplored– about 95% of this underwater realm is unseen by human eyes (NOAA). There is only one global Ocean. In fact, the ocean represents over 70% of the Earth’s surface and contains 96.5% of the Earth’s water.

We and the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research work together alongside organizations like the Schmidt Ocean Institute and Ocean Exploration Trust to better understand our oceans and its processes. While space may be the final frontier, understanding our own planet helps scientists as they explore space and study how our universe came to be.

On #WorldOceansDay let’s explore how Earth’s ocean informs our research throughout the solar system.

Earth and Exoplanets

“In interpreting what we see elsewhere in the solar system and universe, we always compare with phenomena that we already know of on Earth…We work from the familiar toward the unknown.” - Norman Kuring, NASA Goddard

We know of only one living planet: our own. As we move to the next stage in the search for alien life, the effort will require the expertise of scientists of all disciplines. However, the knowledge and tools NASA has developed to study life on Earth will also be one of the greatest assets to the quest.

The photo above shows what Earth would look like at a resolution of 3 pixels, the same that exoplanet-discovering missions would see. What should we look for, in the search of other planets like our own? What are the unmistakable signs of life, even if it comes in a form we don’t fully understand? Liquid water; every cell we know of – even bacteria around deep-sea vents that exist without sunlight – requires water.

Phytoplankton (Algae) Bloom vs. Atmosphere of Jupiter

Jupiter’s storms are mesmerizing in their beauty, captured in many gorgeous photos throughout the decades from missions like Voyager 1 and Juno. The ethereal swirls of Jupiter are the result of fluids in motion on a rotating body, which might come as a surprise, since its atmosphere is made of gas!

The eddies in Jupiter’s clouds appear very similar to those found in Earth’s ocean, like in the phytoplankton (or algae) bloom in the Baltic Sea, pictured above. The bloom was swept up in a vortex, just a part of how the ocean moves heat, carbon, and nutrients around the planet. Blooms like this, however, are not all beauty - they create “dead zones” in the areas where they grow, blooming and decaying at such a high rate that they consume all the oxygen in the water around them.

Arctic Sea Ice and Europa Ice Crust

While the Arctic (North Pole) and the Antarctic (South Pole) are “polar opposites,” there is one huge difference between the North and South Poles– land mass. The Arctic is ocean surrounded by land, while the Antarctic is land surrounded by ocean. The North Pole  is located in the middle of the Arctic Ocean amid waters that are almost permanently covered with constantly shifting sea ice.

By studying this sea ice, scientists can research its impact on Earth system and even formation processes on other bodies like Europa, an icy moon of Jupiter. For example, it is possible that the reddish surface features on Europa’s ice may have communicated with a global subsurface ocean layer during or after their formation. 

Aquanauts and Astronauts

As new missions are being developed, scientists are using Earth as a testbed. Just as prototypes for our Mars rovers made their trial runs on Earth’s deserts, researchers are testing both hypotheses and technology on our oceans and extreme environments.

NEEMO, our Extreme Environment Mission Operations project, is an analog mission that sends groups of astronauts, engineers and scientists to live in Aquarius, the world’s only undersea research station located off the Florida Keys, 62 feet (19 meters) below the surface. Much like space, the undersea world is a hostile, alien place for humans to live. NEEMO crew members, known as aquanauts, experience some of the same challenges there that they would on a distant asteroid, planet or moon.

Deep-sea Robotic Exploration and Space Robotic Exploration

Video credit: Deep Sea Robotics/Schmidt Ocean Institute and Mars Curiosity rover/NASA

From mapping the seafloor through bathymetry to collecting samples on the surface of Mars, researchers are utilizing new technologies more than ever to explore. Satellite and robotic technology allow us to explore where humans may not be able to– yet. They teach us valuable lessons about the extreme and changing environments, science, as well as provide a platform to test new technologies.

Jezero Crater and Dvina River Delta, Arkhangelsk, Russia/Mars Delta

River deltas, the point where a river meets the ocean, are sites of rich sediment and incredible biodiversity. The nutrients that rivers carry to the coastlines make a fertile place for fish and shellfish to lay their eggs.

The Jezero crater on Mars (pictured in false-color on the right) has been selected as the Mars2020 landing site, and has a structure that looks much like a river delta here on Earth! Pictures from our Mars Global Surveyor orbiter show eroded ancient deposits of transported sediment long since hardened into interweaving, curved ridges of layered rock. This is one of many hints that Mars was once covered in an ancient ocean that had more water than the Arctic Ocean. Studying these deltas on Earth helps us spot them on other planets, and learning about the ocean that was once on Mars informs how our own formed.

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

"Your dreams are yours to pursue, they are beautiful, and you can't let anyone slow you down." ~ Sky Taylor to Vesha Celeste Pathway to the Stars: Part 1, Vesha Celeste #scifiauthor #spaceopera #authorsofinstagram #scifi #sciencefictionnovels #biotechnology #neuroscience #nanotechnology #longevity #theoreticalphysics #astronomy #virtualuniverse https://www.instagram.com/p/Bunk5e_ARbJ/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=fezlj30jxc0z

NASA Kepler’s Scientists Are Doing What Seems Impossible: Turning Pixels Into Planets

“It isn’t the image itself that gives you this information, but rather how the light from image changes over time, both relative to all the other stars and relative to itself. The other stars out there in our galaxy have sunspots, planets, and rich solar systems all their own. As Kepler heads towards its final retirement and prepares to be replaced by TESS, take a moment to reflect on just how it’s revolutionized our view of the Universe. Never before has such a small amount of information taught us so much.”

When you think about exoplanets, or planets around stars other than the Sun, you probably visualize them like we do our own Solar System. Yet direct images of these worlds are exceedingly rare, with less than 1% of the detected exoplanets having any sort of visual confirmation. The way most planets have been found has been from the Kepler spacecraft, which gives you the very, very unimpressive image of the star you see featured at the top. Yet just by watching that star, the light coming from it, and the rest of the field-of-view over time, we can infer the existence of sunspots, flares, and periodic “dips” in brightness that correspond to the presence of a planet. In fact, we can figure out the radius, orbital period, and sometimes even the mass of the planet, too, all from this single point of light.

How do we do it? There’s an incredible science in turning pixels into planets, and that’s what made NASA’s Kepler mission so successful!

Great post!

These Are The Top 10 Hubble Images Of 2018

“Year after year since its 1990 launch, Hubble keeps revolutionizing our view of the Universe. No other observatory continues to teach us so much. 28 years on, it’s still yielding uniquely spectacular scientific sights.”

There were a slew of scientific, astronomical breakthroughs made this past year, and Hubble was at the forefront of a great many of them. There was a tremendous dust storm enveloping Mars, and Hubble was there to capture it. Saturn’s rings are evaporating so quickly that they’ll be gone in 100 million years, and Hubble captured them. Ultraviolet light is created in great abundance in the nearby Universe from star-forming galaxies, and Hubble completed a survey of them. Ultra-distant galaxies form stars too, and Hubble was there to image them and measure how far it truly is to them. Galaxies speed through clusters; clusters contain stars ripped out of galaxies; nebulae race to form stars before the gas gets blown away by the existing ones. Through it all, Hubble was there.

What do the top 10 images of 2018 look like, and what do they teach us about the Universe? It’s a year-end list to remember, along with a feast for your eyes!

Pathway to the Stars: Part 1, Vesha Celeste Posted on October 6, 2018 by Matthew Opdyke (FTB) Soon to be released (eBook-Kindle, Oct 9, 2018), is the first in a latched-on (or related) series, Pathway to the Stars: Part 1, Vesha Celeste. This will be a slightly more descriptive portion that goes into more detail of the first character introduced, Vesha Celeste. Please pre-order, read, review, comment, and enjoy! Thank you! Vesha Celeste journeys with Yesha Alevtina and her dream-angel, Sky, following a long life of high hopes, dreams, and professional achievements in astronomy and astrophysics. Yesha shows and teaches Vesha about biopods, spaceports, tech cities that are hidden, cloaked with invisibility, and located solar-system-wide. She introduces Vesha to the Virtual Universe and teaches her how Eliza Williams worked with Yesha and James Cooper to develop all of her advances and designs. There is a lot for her to learn, in this more-detailed prequel to a giant space opera awaiting humanity, in their quest to save the Universe, one very important step at a time. Enjoy Vesha’s beginning journey, in the first of a multi-story series, called Pathway to the Stars! https://matthew-opdyke-ftb.com/2018/10/06/pathway-to-the-stars-part-1-vesha-celeste/ #scifi #strongfemalelead #fantasy #spaceopera #biotechnology #nanotechnology #politicalscifi #physics #theoreticalphysics #darkmatter #utopian #hope #edifying #entertainment https://www.instagram.com/p/BomBkaNHxWv/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=19fgl64n8927t

Space Is Full Of Planets, And Most Of Them Don’t Even Have Stars

“When we look at our Universe, where our own galaxy contains some 400 billion stars and there are some two trillion galaxies in the Universe, the realization that there are around ten planets for every star is mind-boggling. But if we look outside of solar systems, there are between 100 and 100,000 planets wandering through space for every single star that we can see. While a small percentage of them were ejected from solar systems of their own, the overwhelming majority have never known the warmth of a star at all. Many are gas giants, but still more are likely to be rocky and icy, with many of them containing all the ingredients needed for life. Perhaps, someday, they’ll get their chance. Until then, they’ll continue to travel, throughout the galaxy and throughout the Universe, vastly outnumbering the dizzying array of lights illuminating the cosmos.”

According to the International Astronomical Union, planets need to have enough mass to pull themselves into hydrostatic equilibrium, they need to orbit a star and not any other object, and they need to clear their orbits in a certain amount of cosmic time. But what do you call an object that would have been a planet, if only it were in orbit around a star, but instead wanders through the heavens alone, unbound to any larger masses? These rogue planets are surprisingly ubiquitous in our galaxy and beyond, and we expect that they’ll far outnumber not only the stars, but even the planets that are found orbiting stars. Where do these rogue worlds come from? A percentage of them are orphans, having been ejected from the solar system that they formed in, but the overwhelming majority ought to have never been part of a star system at all.

Come learn how even though space is full of planets, many containing the ingredients for life, most of them don’t even have stars to orbit to give them a chance.

I am pleased to announce a NEW RELEASE to my Space Opera series. It is now available on Amazon in ebook and paperback formats! Pathway to the Stars: Part 4, Universal Party Autographed copies of printed material are available for direct purchase on the author website at https://www.ftb-pathway-publications.com Thank you, Kim, for putting this together! #spaceopera #futurism #scifiauthor #sciencefiction #scififantasy #biotech #nanotech #neurotech #spacetravel #solarsystem #politicalscifi #strongfemalelead #entertain #educate https://www.instagram.com/p/Bur_fTyA4xP/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=15y5ce5xhxpf5