Equatorial Pacific Region during the preceding 24 hours The Himawari-8 weather satellite was launched on 7 October, 2014 and went into service on 7 July, 2015. It is in geostationary orbit 35,900 Km above the equator and centered on New Guinea. It images the earth in real time every 10 minutes. http://himawari8.nict.go.jp is a comprehensive[…]
The JunoCam camera aboard NASA’s Juno mission is operational and transmitting data after the spacecraft’s July 4 arrival at Jupiter. Juno’s visible-light camera was turned on six days after Juno fired its main engine, placing itself into orbit around the solar system’s largest planet. The first high-resolution images of the gas giant Jupiter are still[…]
At 9:32 AM, EDT on this date forty seven years ago, humanity finally came of age, venturing off our home world, home to all life that we know of since the dawn of recorded history, for a thousand millennia. It has been said, and quite accurately, that for the 21 hours his two companions were[…]
Almost half a million of the people alive today were alive 100 years ago. These same people have seen so much during that time and we’ve learned far more than the great lights of that day could have ever imagined. Ironically, it was through some of those great lights that we have progressed as far[…]
A relatively strong, C-class solar flare was observed on Sunday, July 17th by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. The flare is noteworthy in that the sun has been relatively quiescent, on its way to solar minimum. The image and the accompanying video below are composites, compiled from hard Ultraviolet and X-ray images obtained by the SDO,[…]
Tonight at 22:57 UTC (6:57 EDT), the moon will be 180º from the sun as it is every month at astronomical Full Moon. July’s full moon is otherwise known as the “Full Buck Moon”, the “Thunder Moon” or the “Hay Moon” in North America. At this time of year, buck deer begin to grow antlers,[…]
As twilight deepens tonight and as you step outside facing south, it’s as though nature was trying to dress to impress, complete with her best jewels! Tonight’s waxing gibbous moon, less than 24 hours before full, is in Sagittarius, set against the far more distant galactic center. Although the sky’s brightness will continue to increase[…]
Astronomers using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea announced today that a new trans-Neptunian dwarf planet has been discovered. Known as RR245, the frigid, newly-discovered world was discovered as part of the ongoing Outer Solar System Origins Survey (OSSOS). With an orbital period of 700 years and a semi-major axis of 11.8 billion km (almost twice[…]
In what could only be described as a visual metaphor for a bright, hopeful, limitless future, this image, iconic as it is inspirational, epitomizes the essence of our mission at Astronomy For Change: a young child is chasing Juno along a Florida beach as the intrepid explorer slips the surly bonds of Earth into a[…]
In beautiful cadence, the progress of knowledge and understanding cascading across the millennia culminating now, with Juno’s successful arrival at Jupiter. In resounding brilliance, we are in orbit around the largest planet in our solar system, in search of our beginning. In the waning hours of July 4th, Juno successfully began its two year orbit[…]
As I write this post, NASA’s Juno spacecraft has commenced the Jupiter Orbital Insertion (JOI) burn, the most perilous phase of the mission. No spacecraft has ever flown this close to Jupiter or its intense radiation belts. The Juno Mission to Jupiter, has arrived at its destination. Juno is the second spacecraft designed for NASA’s[…]
Scientists are an interesting breed of people, they are creative, adventurers, critical, and pragmatic. This may not be the initial subset of people you would look to for inspiration. However, think for an instance of the motivation required to tackle the great intellectual challenges of our time. Scientists are driven by constant curiosity and inspired[…]
Solar panels so flexible and thin that they can be wrapped around the frame of a pair of glasses have been developed by scientists in a potential breakthrough for wearable electronics. The panels, developed by a team of researchers in South Korea, are just a single micrometre across – much thinner than the average human[…]
NASA’s Juno spacecraft is going closer to the massive and mysterious planet Jupiter than any spacecraft has ever gone. The ship has flown more than 1.7 billion miles over five years, and on Thursday Juno began executing the sequence of commands that will take it right to Jupiter’s clouds. On July 4th, the engines will[…]
In another first for extrasolar planetary astronomy, it was announced on 20 June that NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, reconfigured and designated as the “K2 Mission”, has discovered the youngest exoplanet to date orbiting a brand new star. Follow-up confirmation observations were made using the W. M. Keck Observatory’s twin 10 meter telescopes on Mauna Kea,[…]
