Picture Of The Day - January 21, 2019

R136a1 System

A visit to a more familiar system in the Large Magellanic Cloud Galaxy. The program depicts a large gas orbiting the star at a distance of 738.59 AU along with several large moons.

R136a1 is believed to be the most massive known star with a mass 315 times that of our sun. The star shines with a luminosity of 8.7 million suns. The gas giant even at its extreme orbital distance of 738.59 AU, still receives more solar radiation than Earth.

High Resolution Images

Bright Blue Sun

Inner Dwarf Planet from a moon

Outer moon.

Approaching eclipse

Double moons

2018 September 16

A Solar Filament Erupts Image Credit: NASA’s GSFC, SDO AIA Team

Explanation: What’s happened to our Sun? Nothing very unusual – it just threw a filament. Toward the middle of 2012, a long standing solar filament suddenly erupted into space producing an energetic Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). The filament had been held up for days by the Sun’s ever changing magnetic field and the timing of the eruption was unexpected. Watched closely by the Sun-orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory, the resulting explosion shot electrons and ions into the Solar System, some of which arrived at Earth three days later and impacted Earth’s magnetosphere, causing visible aurorae. Loops of plasma surrounding an active region can be seen above the erupting filament in the featured ultraviolet image. Although the Sun is now in a relatively inactive state of its 11-year cycle, unexpected holes have opened in the Sun’s corona allowing an excess of charged particles to stream into space. As before, these charged particles are creating auroras.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap180916.html

Epic space by Tobias Roetsch.

Amazing Star Trails (Lincoln Harrison)

Trifid Nebula

For scientists watching the Red Planet from our orbiters, the past month has been a windfall. “Global” dust storms, where a runaway series of storms create a dust cloud so large they envelop the planet, only appear every six to eight years (that’s 3-4 Mars years). Scientists still don’t understand why or how exactly these storms form and evolve.

Read the full story HERE. 

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

Evening of the Cosmos. Widescreen Wallpapers 1440 x 900.

Website, Instagram, Facebook, Deviantart, and Artstation

Picture of the day 2 - November 28, 2018

Cratered surface of a small burnt dwarf planet. Fissures run through the surface from the core cooling and the crust shrinking.