A Reminder For Those Studying Maths

LL Ori and the Orion Nebula : Stars can make waves in the Orion Nebula’s sea of gas and dust. This esthetic close-up of cosmic clouds and stellar winds features LL Orionis, interacting with the Orion Nebula flow. Adrift in Orion’s stellar nursery and still in its formative years, variable star LL Orionis produces a wind more energetic than the wind from our own middle-aged Sun. As the fast stellar wind runs into slow moving gas a shock front is formed, analogous to the bow wave of a boat moving through water or a plane traveling at supersonic speed. The small, arcing, graceful structure just above and left of center is LL Ori’s cosmic bow shock, measuring about half a light-year across. The slower gas is flowing away from the Orion Nebula’s hot central star cluster, the Trapezium, located off the upper left corner of the picture. In three dimensions, LL Ori’s wrap-around shock front is shaped like a bowl that appears brightest when viewed along the “bottom” edge. This beautiful painting-like photograph is part of a large mosaic view of the complex stellar nursery in Orion, filled with a myriad of fluid shapes associated with star formation. via NASA

Dreaming of a future where writing code on coffee cups results in automatic refills…💭✨

Electric “Wallpaper”

Types stereotype at school/college (sarcastic)

MBTI in college (stereotypical/sarcastic)

I’ll do college. This turned out to be more stereotypical than sarcastic :/

INFJ - Sits around the campus to people-watch for hours, makes friends with the campus cat, realizes they are actually the campus cat, actually makes an effort to cook

INTJ - Is graduating a year early because they take twice the normal course load even during the summer, somehow still has time to read books that are not required textbooks

INTP - Lives in the computer lab, always wears the same clothes (because they’re too lazy to go home to shower), forgets to go to classes and exams, miraculously stays up for 72 hrs straight before essay due dates

INFP - Goes on a quest to find themselves, changes majors 5 times, enters an existential crisis and broods about life for months, stops caring about the outside world and walks into every single pole and door on campus

ISFJ - Wanders around the campus with neatly organized binders, color-codes post-its, and colorful gel pens, could open a stationary store but they’re way too attached to their pens

ISFP - Sneaks into the science lab to rescue all the lab animals, opens an animal rights club, finds their true calling by becoming a social activist, runs a rally every week on campus

ISTP - Goes to classes but always sits at the back and sleeps, tries to make their own beer as an experiment, joins a band, forgets they were in school

ISTJ - Has tons of “friends” who constantly ask to borrow their very organized lecture notes, low key enjoys the popularity

ENTP - Makes money off ISTJ’s notes by photocopying and selling them to other students, becomes a full time entrepreneur, drops out

ENFP - Keeps failing exams because they get bored and doodle all over the essay questions, switches majors 20 times, is undeclared until 4th year

ENTJ - Gets an internship during 2nd year, job offers during the 3rd year, is reluctant to come back to school but unfortunately they do need those grades for law school

ENFJ - Volunteers at charities around the city, can be seen at student networking events, joins a bunch of student clubs and ends up running all of them

ESFP - Is constantly hungover or constantly high, crashes parties as a hobby, can never be found inside their dorm room

ESTP - Breaks into school at night to drink because just taking classes is not challenging enough, streaks around the campus when final exams are done

ESTJ - An honor student with straight A’s, reads all textbooks since the first month, argues with professors for getting some facts wrong, ends up being a Teaching Assistant

ESFJ - Is in college for the sole purpose of making friends and hanging out with them, succeeds, has at least 10 friends in every class, holds house parties with 100+ people, everyone mistakes their house for a sorority/frat

-eilamona[ MBTI Merch | Support eilamona on patreon ]

[ send sarcastic asks | previous sarcastic answers ]

Starscape js

Extroverts as Cat Things

ENFJ: waking you up at 3 a.m. for snuggles because they felt neglected while you were sleeping

ENFP: cat-walking around the house as if they own it (they do) and twitching their butt/tail in greeting like a queen waving

ESFJ: sitting on your lap and looking at your phone/laptop as if they want to know what’s going in the little glowy box

ESFP: rolling over to show you their belly and then when you approach running towards whatever they want

ENTJ: judging you silently from the window as you go about your everyday life because you stupid human

ENTP: running around the house as though possessed for no apparent reason besides boredom

ESTJ: sitting on the same spot on the corner of your bed for hours and expecting you to feed them your food

ESTP: knocking all your stuff off your dresser, because they can, and because they’re the most important thing on your dresser

Jupiter's Great Red Spot Getting Taller as it Shrinks

Discover how a team of our scientists has uncovered evidence that Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is growing taller as it gets smaller.

Though once big enough to swallow three Earths with room to spare, Jupiter’s Great Red Spot has been shrinking for a century and a half. Nobody is sure how long the storm will continue to contract or whether it will disappear altogether.

A new study suggests that it hasn’t all been downhill, though. The storm seems to have increased in area at least once along the way, and it’s growing taller as it gets smaller.

Observations of Jupiter date back centuries, but the first confirmed sighting of the Great Red Spot was in 1831. But until then, researchers aren’t certain whether earlier observers who saw a red spot on Jupiter were looking at the same storm.

Amy Simon, an expert in planetary atmospheres at our Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and her team traced the evolution of the Great Red Spot, analyzing its size, shape, color  and drift rate. They also looked at the storm’s internal wind speeds, when that information was available from spacecraft.

This new study confirms that the storm has been decreasing in diameter overall since 1878 and is now big enough to accommodate just over one Earth at this point. Then again, the historical record indicates the area of the spot grew temporarily in the 1920s. Scientists aren’t sure why it grew for a bit.

Because the storm has been contracting, the researchers expected to find the already-powerful internal winds becoming even stronger, like an ice skater who spins faster as she pulls in her arms.

But that’s not what is happening. Instead of spinning faster, the storm appears to be forced to stretch up. It’s almost like clay being shaped on a potter’s wheel. As the wheel spins, an artist can transform a short, round lump into a tall, thin vase by pushing inward with his hands. The smaller he makes the base, the taller the vessel will grow.

The Great Red Spot’s color has been deepening, too, becoming is a more intense orange color since 2014. Researchers aren’t sure why that’s happening, but it’s possible that the chemicals coloring the storm are being carried higher into the atmosphere as the spot stretches up. At higher altitudes, the chemicals would be subjected to more UV radiation and would take on a deeper color.

In some ways, the mystery of the Great Red Spot only seems to deepen as the iconic storm gets smaller. Researchers don’t know whether the spot will shrink a bit more and then stabilize, or break apart completely.

For more information, go here/watch this:

For the full story, click HERE. 

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

I love the overlap of science disciplines (coincidentally my two favorite ones)

City lights photographed from the International Space Station and Neurons imaged with fluorescence microscopy.

Source images; Cities (1) (2) (3) (4) (5), Neurons (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

8 Common Questions About Our James Webb Space Telescope

You might have heard the basics about our James Webb Space Telescope, or Webb, and still have lots more questions!  Here are more advanced questions we are frequently asked.  (If you want to know the basics, read this Tumblr first!)

Webb is our upcoming infrared space observatory, which will launch in 2021. It will spy the first luminous objects that formed in the universe and shed light on how galaxies evolve, how stars and planetary systems are born and how life could form on other planets.

1. Why is the mirror segmented? 

The James Webb Space Telescope has a 6.5-meter (21.3-foot) diameter mirror, made from 18 individual segments. Webb needs to have an unfolding mirror because the mirror is so large that it otherwise cannot fit in the launch shroud of currently available rockets.

The mirror has to be large in order to see the faint light from the first star-forming regions and to see very small details at infrared wavelengths. 

Designing, building and operating a mirror that unfolds is one of the major technological developments of Webb. Unfolding mirrors will be necessary for future missions requiring even larger mirrors, and will find application in other scientific, civil and military space missions.

2. Why are the mirrors hexagonal?

In short, the hexagonal shape allows a segmented mirror to be constructed with very small gaps, so the segments combine to form a roughly circular shape and need only three variations in size. If we had circular segments, there would be gaps between them.

Finally, we want a roughly circular overall mirror shape because that focuses the light into the most symmetric and compact region on the detectors. 

An oval mirror, for example, would give images that are elongated in one direction. A square mirror would send a lot of the light out of the central region.

3. Is there a danger from micrometeoroids?

A micrometeoroid is a particle smaller than a grain of sand. Most never reach Earth’s surface because they are vaporized by the intense heat generated by the friction of passing through the atmosphere. In space, no blanket of atmosphere protects a spacecraft or a spacewalker.

Webb will be a million miles away from the Earth orbiting what we call the second Lagrange point (L2). Unlike in low Earth orbit, there is not much space debris out there that could damage the exposed mirror. 

But we do expect Webb to get impacted by these very tiny micrometeoroids for the duration of the mission, and Webb is designed to accommodate for them.

All of Webb’s systems are designed to survive micrometeoroid impacts.

4. Why does the sunshield have five layers?

Webb has a giant, tennis-court sized sunshield, made of five, very thin layers of an insulating film called Kapton.  

Why five? One big, thick sunshield would conduct the heat from the bottom to the top more than would a shield with five layers separated by vacuum. With five layers to the sunshield, each successive one is cooler than the one below. 

The heat radiates out from between the layers, and the vacuum between the layers is a very good insulator. From studies done early in the mission development five layers were found to provide sufficient cooling. More layers would provide additional cooling, but would also mean more mass and complexity. We settled on five because it gives us enough cooling with some “margin” or a safety factor, and six or more wouldn’t return any additional benefits.

Fun fact: You could nearly boil water on the hot side of the sunshield, and it is frigid enough on the cold side to freeze nitrogen!

5. What kind of telescope is Webb?

Webb is a reflecting telescope that uses three curved mirrors. Technically, it’s called a three-mirror anastigmat.

6. What happens after launch? How long until there will be data?

We’ll give a short overview here, but check out our full FAQ for a more in-depth look.

In the first hour: About 30 minutes after liftoff, Webb will separate from the Ariane 5 launch vehicle. Shortly after this, we will talk with Webb from the ground to make sure everything is okay after its trip to space.

In the first day: About 10.5 hours after launch, Webb will pass the Moon’s orbit, nearly a quarter of the way to Lagrange Point 2 (L2).

In the first week: We begin the major deployment of Webb. This includes unfolding the sunshield and tensioning the individual membranes, deploying the secondary mirror, and deploying the primary mirror.

In the first month: As the telescope cools in the shade of the sunshield, we turn on the warm electronics and initialize the flight software. As the telescope cools to near its operating temperature, parts of it are warmed with electronic heaters. This prevents condensation as residual water trapped within some of the materials making up the observatory escapes into space.

In the second month: We will turn on and operate Webb’s Fine Guidance Sensor, NIRCam, and NIRSpec instruments. 

The first NIRCam image, which will be an out-of-focus image of a crowded star field, will be used to identify each mirror segment with its image of a star in the camera. We will also focus the secondary mirror.

In the third month: We will align the primary mirror segments so that they can work together as a single optical surface. We will also turn on and operate Webb’s mid-infrared instrument (MIRI), a camera and spectrograph that views a wide spectrum of infrared light. By the end of the third month, we will be able to take the first science-quality images. Also by this time, Webb will complete its journey to its L2 orbit position.

In the fourth through the sixth month: We will complete the optimization of the telescope. We will test and calibrate all of the science instruments.

After six months: Webb will begin its science mission and start to conduct routine science operations.

7. Why not assemble it in orbit?

Various scenarios were studied, and assembling in orbit was determined to be unfeasible.

We examined the possibility of in-orbit assembly for Webb. The International Space Station does not have the capability to assemble precision optical structures. Additionally, space debris that resides around the space station could have damaged or contaminated Webb’s optics. Webb’s deployment happens far above low Earth orbit and the debris that is found there.

Finally, if the space station were used as a stopping point for the observatory, we would have needed a second rocket to launch it to its final destination at L2. The observatory would have to be designed with much more mass to withstand this “second launch,” leaving less mass for the mirrors and science instruments.

8. Who is James Webb?

This telescope is named after James E. Webb (1906–1992), our second administrator. Webb is best known for leading Apollo, a series of lunar exploration programs that landed the first humans on the Moon. 

However, he also initiated a vigorous space science program that was responsible for more than 75 launches during his tenure, including America’s first interplanetary explorers.

Looking for some more in-depth FAQs? You can find them HERE.

Learn more about the James Webb Space Telescope HERE, or follow the mission on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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

Types of people: Make-up products

Foundation: Everyone’s go-to friend. Wants everything to be perfect. Cares a lot. Always there for others. Fades into the background but is never forgotten.

Blush: Flower crowns. Homemade jam. Walking barefoot in the sand. Soft laughs. Gentle touches. Knowing what’s wrong with one look. Very sensitive.

Contour: Bold. Knows what they want to do. Doesn’t care about anyone’s opinions. Very confident. Doesn’t make friends easily but very popular.

Lipliner: Keeps their friends in check. Always the designated driver. Takes responsibility. Very controlled. Bit of a perfectionist. Rarely talks. Looks mean but is actually very nice.

Lipstick: Constantly striving to be better. Talks confidently. Wants to conquer the world. Grew up too fast. Powerful strides. Self-assured movements. Hard working.

Lipgloss: Falls in love easily. Thinks the best of everyone. Wants to stay young forever. Talks too much. Laughs loudly. Warm smiles and loving touches. Cares a lot.

Eyeshadow: Very fashionable. Keeps up with trends. Likes to wear a lot of different colours. Stands out in a crowd. Makes friends easily. Helps everyone they can.

Mascara: Rolls their eyes constantly. Very sarcastic. Wears all black. Creates a difference in a subtle way. Doesn’t show it but actually cares a lot. Tired all the time.