Hubble telescope exhibit gives hands-on experience – Coastal Review Online

A scale model of the Hubble Space Telescope and its contributions to the exploration of planets, stars, galaxies and the universe make up a hands-on experience on display through June 23 at Cape Fear Museum of History and Science in Wilmington.

Hubble Space Telescope: New Views of the Universe is a traveling exhibit through National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA. Hubble, a space-based observatory launched and deployed by the space shuttle Discovery in 1990, orbits 326 miles above the Earth, according to NASA.

The exhibit features the telescopes various instruments and the role that each one plays in providing new images and discoveries, and showcases Hubbles images and data of planets, galaxies, regions around black holes, and many other fascinating cosmic entities.

Visitors also get a glimpse of the various hurdles Hubble faced in its career and discover the role that astronauts played in repairing and servicing the observatory, and be introduced to the James Webb Space Telescope launched Dec. 25, 2021.

Cape Fear Museum at 814 Market St. is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 1-5 p.m. Sunday. Standard admission prices are $8 for adults; $7 for seniors, students and military with valid ID; $5 for children 6-17; and free for children 5 and under and for museum members.

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Hubble telescope exhibit gives hands-on experience - Coastal Review Online

PHOTO OF THE DAY: NASA’s Hubble Telescope Captures Spiral Galaxy’s Dazzling Swirls – SpaceCoastDaily.com

one of 19 nearby spiral galaxies recently imaged by the telescope NGC 4254, a spiral galaxy, is resplendent in orange and blue in this Jan. 29, 2024, image from the James Webb Space Telescope. (NASA image)

(NASA) NGC 4254, a spiral galaxy, is resplendent in orange and blue in this Jan. 29, 2024, image from the James Webb Space Telescope.

This is one of 19 nearby spiral galaxies recently imaged by the telescope as part of the long-standing Physics at High Angular Resolution in Nearby GalaxieS program supported by more than 150 astronomers worldwide.

Webbs Near-Infrared Camera captured millions of stars in these images, which sparkle in blue tones. At the same time, the telescopes Mid-Infrared Instrument data highlights glowing dust, showing us where it exists around and between stars.

Explore the intricacies of spiral galaxies in this deep dive.

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PHOTO OF THE DAY: NASA's Hubble Telescope Captures Spiral Galaxy's Dazzling Swirls - SpaceCoastDaily.com

NASA’s Hubble Telescope Captures "Last Gasp" Of Dying Binary Star System – NDTV

NGC 2346 resides in the constellation Monoceros, NASA said.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) regularly captures stunning images of our universe, leaving space lovers mesmerized. The social media handles of the US Space Agency are a treasure trove for those who love to watch educational videos and fascinating images showcasing Earth and space. Now, in its recent post, the agency's Hubble Space Telescope shared a picture of the "last gasp" of a dying binary star system.

"At the center of the nebula NGC 2346 is a pair of stars that are so close together that they orbit around each other every 16 days! This #HubbleClassic shows the "last gasp" of this binary star system as it dies. Located about 2,000 light-years away, NGC 2346 resides in the constellation Monoceros." NASA said while sharing the image.

It is to be noted that NGC 2346 is a so-called "planetary nebula," which is ejected from Sun-like stars which are near the ends of their lives.

The central star of NGC 2346 is believed to be a relatively near pair of stars that orbit each other every 16 days, which makes the galaxy unusual. It is thought that the binary star was initially farther apart. But one of the binary's components essentially swallowed its companion star as it developed, grew larger, and became a red-giant star.

Subsequently, the companion star spiralled downwards inside the red giant, releasing gas into a ring surrounding the binary system. Later, a faster stellar wind arose perpendicular to the ring and inflated two enormous "bubbles" when the red giant's hot core was revealed. "This two-stage process is believed to have resulted in the butterfly-like shape of the nebula. NGC 2346 lies about 2,000 light-years away from us, and is about one-third of a light-year in size," the European Space Agency explained.

In the image, a two-lobed structure of gas is seen expanding out from a central pinkish region. It almost resembles dark red and orange wings. The black background of the space is dotted with some small stars.

Since being shared, the post has amassed over 58,000 likes and several reactions on the platform.

"Lovely," said a user.

"Hubble is cool," stated another user.

A third user said, "The science is so amazing"

"Wow," remarked a person.

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NASA's Hubble Telescope Captures "Last Gasp" Of Dying Binary Star System - NDTV

NASA says Hubble Telescope will resume science operations after gyroscope glitch – Space.com

Following a string of setbacks concerning one of its directional instruments, the Hubble Space Telescope will get back to its job of capturing deep space images soon enough, NASA says.

It all began on Nov. 19, when one of the iconic observatory's three gyroscopes (a trio that live on from an original set of six) began providing faulty readings. In general, gyroscopes are devices that use either circulating beams of light or rapidly spinning wheels to help scientists make sure an object is facing the direction they want it to face. Incorrect gyroscope readings on the Hubble Telescope, as you might imagine, can therefore drastically affect science measurements. To image a specific spot in deep space with this Earth-orbiting telescope, you'd have to make sure it's actually facing that spot in deep space.

Thus, Hubble entered safe mode on Nov. 19 something that's programmed to happen automatically when certain issues arise with the observatory. The team, however, was able to bring it back online the following day. But things weren't looking good shortly after, when gyro issues sent Hubble into yet another safe mode situation on Nov. 21. The team brought Hubble back once more shortly after that, only for the beloved telescope to retreat into its dark corner once again on Nov. 23.

Related: Hubble Telescope revisits gorgeous spiral galaxy, offering a newly filtered view (photo)

That most recent safe mode entrance was slightly worrying as it persisted for longer than the previous two dips. It wasn't too worrying though because, first of all, this isn't the first time Hubble's gyros have raised issues leading to a shutdown. And secondly, maybe most importantly, the observatory can actually function with only one gyroscope. The team just uses three because it maximizes efficiency.

But perhaps all of this is moot at this point, because as of Dec. 7, NASA confirmed that it plans on restoring Hubble for science operations once more. With all three gyros too!

"Based on the performance observed during the tests, the team has decided to operate the gyros in a higher-precision mode during science observations. Hubbles instruments and the observatory itself remain stable and in good health," NASA officials wrote in a statement.

Though it's been over three decades since Hubble began exploring the vibrant reaches of our universe and though a new observatory in town has been catching most of the spotlight recently this Reynolds-wrap-looking telescope is surely not finished yet.

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NASA says Hubble Telescope will resume science operations after gyroscope glitch - Space.com

Hubble telescope spots enormous galaxy with mysterious shells | Space

The Hubble Space Telescope has captured a stunning new view of a gigantic galaxy that is more than twice the size of the Milky Way.

The elliptical galaxy, known as NGC 474, is located approximately 100 million light-years from Earth. The Hubble telescope captured an up-close view of the central region of the galaxy, revealing its enormous size.

Measuring roughly 250,000 light-years across, NGC 474 is 2.5 times larger than our own galaxy, the Milky Way. But the size of NGC 474 is not its only unique feature, according to a statement from NASA (opens in new tab), which released the new image May 18.

Related: The best Hubble Space Telescope images of all time!

The recent Hubble observations show that NGC 474 has a series of complex layered shells that surround its spherical core. Although the source of these shells is unknown, they may be the result of a galactic merger in which NGC 474 absorbed one or more smaller galaxies, according to the statement.

During a galactic merger, the absorbed galaxy could create waves, forming the layered shells observed in NGC 474. This process is similar to how a pebble dropped in water creates ripples.

"About 10% of elliptical galaxies have shell structures, but unlike the majority of elliptical galaxies, which are associated with galaxy clusters, shelled ellipticals usually lie in relatively empty space," NASA officials said in the statement. "It may be that they've cannibalized their neighbors."

The new image of NGC 474 was taken using Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys. Researchers also used data from Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 and Wide Field Camera 3 to get a comprehensive view of the massive galaxy.

Follow Samantha Mathewson @Sam_Ashley13. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Hubble telescope spots enormous galaxy with mysterious shells | Space

Is there life on Venus? New findings dash old hopes – India Today

As countries including India prepare to send spacecraft and balloons to Venus, a new study dashes hopes of finding life in the clouds hovering above the planet. Researchers have found no evidence of chemical fingerprints that could raise the possibility of life ever existing in the thick clouds.

Led by researchers from Cambridge University, the study used a combination of biochemistry and atmospheric chemistry to test the life in the clouds hypothesis, which astronomers have speculated about for decades. They found that life cannot explain the composition of the Venusian atmosphere.

The study published in the journal Nature Communications states that it has been proposed that abundant Venusian life could obtain energy from its environment using three possible sulfur energy-metabolisms. The new results could still be useful for studying the atmospheres of similar planets throughout the galaxy.

Also Read | Scientists observe never before seen 'exotic' particles in Cern collider

Weve spent the past two years trying to explain the weird sulphur chemistry we see in the clouds of Venus. Life is pretty good at weird chemistry, so weve been studying whether theres a way to make life a potential explanation for what we see, co-author Dr Paul Rimmer from Cambridges Department of Earth Sciences said in a statement.

The study used a combination of biochemistry and atmospheric chemistry to test the life in the clouds hypothesis. (Photo: Cambridge University)

The team used a combination of atmospheric and biochemical models to study the chemical reactions that are expected to occur, given the known sources of chemical energy in Venuss atmosphere. Venus has long been known as Eart's mysterious twin that has been scarred for millions of years due to extreme climatic changes.

The team looked at a particular feature of the Venusian atmosphere the abundance of sulphur dioxide (SO2). On Earth, most SO2 in the atmosphere comes from volcanic emissions. On Venus, there are high levels of SO2 lower in the clouds, but it somehow gets sucked out of the atmosphere at higher altitudes.

Also Read | There are over 1000 galaxies in this one picture clicked by James Webb Telescope

The model included a list of metabolic reactions that lifeforms would carry out in order to get their food, and the waste by-products. The researchers ran the model to see if the reduction in SO2 levels could be explained by these metabolic reactions and found that the metabolic reactions can result in a drop in SO2 levels, but only by producing other molecules in very large amounts that arent seen.

If life was responsible for the SO2 levels we see on Venus, it would also break everything we know about Venuss atmospheric chemistry. We wanted life to be a potential explanation, but when we ran the models, it isnt a viable solution. But if life isnt responsible for what we see on Venus, its still a problem to be solved theres lots of strange chemistry to follow up on, Sean Jordan from Cambridges Institute of Astronomy, the papers first author said.

Researchers say their method of analysing atmospheric signatures will be valuable when the James Webb Space Telescope, the successor to the Hubble Telescope, begins returning images of other planetary systems later this year.

Also Read | Dogs are not what you think of them. They were once wolves

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Is there life on Venus? New findings dash old hopes - India Today

How to watch the ‘super-est’ supermoon, coming Tuesday night – The Cincinnati Enquirer

Dean Regas| Special to Cincinnati Enquirer

Solar astronomers around the world are monitoring our sun, 24 hours a day.

The sun seems like a steady ball of light, but using safe solar viewing equipment and state-of-the art satellites, astronomers are able to detect dramatic explosions from sunspots, solar flaresand coronal mass ejections that arc off the surface and even blast into space.

The suns activity has been slowly ramping up this year.After months of relative quiet, more violent magnetic storms are popping up. This increase is part of an expected 11-year cycle that astronomers have noted since the 17th century.

When the solar activity peaks, it is called solar maximum.And although solar maximum is not expected until 2024 or 2025, solar activity should be on the rise this year, giving us dramatic images and videos from space telescopes.

An enormous comet is heading toward Earth this month: Here's how to watch it pass by

On Tuesday night, astronomers celebrate perigee syzygy.But the moon-loving backyard stargazers and general public have a catchier term for this regular astronomical event: a supermoon.

About every 14 monthsthe full moon makes a slightly closer pass to the Earth. When this supermoon occurs, the moons diameter can appear 14% larger and its surface shines 30% brighter than the furthest full moon of the year, also known as the puny moon.

Celebrating the supermoon is not an ancient tradition.It became a mainstream term only in 2011 when the media picked up on this annual phenomenon.Since then, it has become a popular annual event, and the next supermoon is due to grace the night skies on Tuesday, July 12 and into the morning hours of July 13.

As the moon orbits the Earth, it slowly changes its distance from us.It varies from about 252,000 miles at its farthest, to around 221,000 miles at its closest.

The best time to see the supermoon is just as it rises.Look for it cresting the southeastern horizon just after sunset.

When it is low in the sky, the moon often takes on a reddish appearance.That tint is caused by the moonlight scattering through the Earths atmosphere much in the same way a sunset turns red.

The moon always looks larger near the horizon, but its merely an illusion.Technically, the moon will be more than 1,000 miles closer to you just after midnight when it will be higher in the southern sky.So, stay up late to experience that Super-est Moon.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is not designed to observe themoon, but is instead primed to peer to the planets, stars, galaxies and into the deepest regions of our universe.

Launched from Earth on December 25, 2021, the JWST has made a one-million-mile journey into space to circle the sun and study the distant universe.

It's the largest and most advanced space telescope ever made.Its mirrors can gather 6.5 times as much light as the Hubble Telescope.It will also be able to detect fainter energy by seeing in the infrared wavelengths, light not visible to the eye.

The main focus of the telescope will be to examine distant galaxies and peer at the farthest objects in the universe.Astronomers hope to gain new insights on the earliest stages of the universes creation in unprecedented clarity.

Now that testing is complete, the JWST is ready to start imaging, what astronomers call first light.The first official picture is scheduled to be released on July 12.

Placing a large telescope one million miles from Earth is a risky venture.If anything breaks, astronauts will never be able to visit it.Instead, engineers on Earth will have to conduct all repairs remotely.

In June, NASA reported that a dust-sized meteoroid (a tiny speck of space dust) struck the telescope and caused minor damage.The impact has not significantly affected the resolution of the instruments but was noticeable to those monitoring data coming to Earth.

Tune in Tuesday night to see the first light pictures from the James Webb Space Telescope, but then be sure to get outside and behold the closest full moon of the year, the supermoon.

Dean Regas is the Astronomer for the Cincinnati Observatory, and author of the books 100 Things to See in the Night Sky and How to Teach Grown-Ups About Pluto. He can be reached at dean@cincinnatiobservatory.org

What:Learn all about the Sun, see it through safe solar-viewing equipment, and eat ice cream sundaes.

Where: Cincinnati Observatory, 3489 Observatory Place.

When: Sunday, July 10, 1-4 p.m.

Tickets:$15, $10 children;$12, $7 children advance; cincinnatiobservatory.org.

What:Join us forsupermoonviewing party. Bring blankets, lawn chairs, and set up outside on the Observatory hillside. Supermoon will also feature guests in costume from a galaxy far, far away

Where: Cincinnati Observatory, 3489 Observatory Place.

When:Tuesday, July 12, 8-10 p.m.

Tickets:$15, $10 children;$12, $7 children advance; cincinnatiobservatory.org.

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How to watch the 'super-est' supermoon, coming Tuesday night - The Cincinnati Enquirer

Want to tell a good story? Come here! – Long Island Advance

Linda Leuzzi

Good stories have their magic. Personal stories move us in books, movies, on the radio, and lately YouTube, Facebook and other platforms. But the ones that involve climbing on stage, facing an audience, and sharing an affecting moment has built a groundswell fan momentum thanks to The Moth, a non-profit group dedicated to the art and craft of storytelling. Theyre celebrating 25 years.

Find out how to tell a good story at the Mama Farm B & B stage, July 9, at 6 p.m. The Moth senior directors and co-authors of How to Tell A Story: The Essential Guide to Memorable Storytelling from The Moth, Jenifer Hixon and Kate Tellers, will guide you through. Mama Farm executive director Elettra Wiedemann is hosting the event that includes dinner with Bellport native chef Francis Derby.

Besides the new B & B, Wiedemann is known for the family friendly events offered. But what got her to The Moth folks?About 12 years ago I attended a Moth StorySlam in New York City at a huge event space in Chinatown, she said. One was an astronaut, his story was terrifying and enthralling, another was abandoned by a scuba ship for a day and the thoughts that went through his head in the water and the scary creatures he encountered, and there was one by a young hair stylist who found herself giving David Bowie his iconic haircut.

As Wiedemann said, theres a simplicity to the act. Theres no music, its pure concentration. I started listening to The Moth Radio after that and always wanted them here.

Tellers and Hixon spoke to the Advance about the process and the lure.Whats the biggest stymie for people?

I would say that people dont believe they have a story to tell or that its not important, Tellers said. Stories make us vulnerable and thats scary.And someone might be okay to tell their story at the dinner table but not on stage because they feel its more formal, Hixon added.(Both women have told their stories on stage. Catch Tellers relating A Car of Ones Own, and Hixons Where Theres Smoke on YouTube.)

Their book is a collective collaboration that also includes Meg Bowles, Catherine Burns and Sarah Austin Jenness. What prompted it?People share their lives on stage and we spent many years refining how we do that, answered Tellers. At 25 years we wanted a record, so putting it in book form, its a way to share.

Hixon said theres a language, phrases, syndromes that come up again and again in stories.Also, we wanted to inspire more people, she said. Were always looking for people to share their stories.

In the book, astronaut Mike Massimino, talks about the time he broke the Hubble Telescope in his story A View of the Earth. He accidently stripped the screw while he was floating in space, tethered to the shuttle. He redeemed himself; but before that he thought `Gabby and Daniels dad broke the Hubble Space Telescope.So were all thinking, `oh my God, he almost lost it, but his thought was `this will be the legacy my kids will know and the disappointment to his children. Its so humanizing, Hixson said.

The storytellers do stay in touch. People are lifers, Hixson admitted. They continue to pitch.Massimino has told stories several times and many are repeat storytellers or they stay friends.It becomes a family. We rehearse together and then theres the show.Not all the venues are large, but there have been whoppers. Hixson mentioned the Sydney Opera House with 6,000 in the audience; Tellers added the summer stage at Central Park with 3,000 on the lawn, Lincoln Center with 3,850 people, and the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in Portland, Oregon at 2,776.

As for the evenings rollout, Wiedemann said the gates open at 6 p.m. Our chef will be preparing an incredible dinner, slow roasted pork shoulder or roasted eggplant for vegetarians, with alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, and well do ground tours.You havent lived until you come to Mama Farm in Brookhaven off South Country Road. An organic CSA, the animal kingdom includes heritage chickens, turkeys, and bees. A Lincoln sheep, Frida Kahlo, was grazing near Wiedemann during the interview, along with her friends in the field. It was pointed out that a male turkey was loitering around the outside of the cage where the girl turkeys resided. Did he get out?

Isabella Rossellini, who established the farm in 2013 and is Wiedemanns mother, was on the grounds. She commented it was a wild turkey who wanted to mate with the others and get food. Smart boy.Why stay out in the wild when theres a food concierge team, joked Wiedemann.The Learn to Tell Your Story with the Moth presentation will take place after dinner at 7:30 p.m. with a Moth storyteller. Then The Moth team will go on stage and play back how the story was constructed, Wiedemann said.For more information and tickets, go online at http://www.mamafarmus.com

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Want to tell a good story? Come here! - Long Island Advance

Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2022 finalists: All the otherworldly photos – Mashable

Photographs from space are currently nothing like we've seen before.

With the James Webb Telescope taking unprecedented images of the deepest we've seen of the universe, the Hubble Telescope snapping colliding galaxies, NASA's Mars rover Perseverance peering into new parts of the planet, and astrophotographers looking up just at the right time, astronomy photography is at its best right now.

And while we don't all have a high-powered telescope or planetary rover to peer into the beyond, every year, on Earth, we rely on talented photographers to bring us a little closer to the skies many of whom feature in the annual Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition.

London's Royal Museums Greenwich has unveiled the finalists for this year's batch. The astrophotography competition, which has been running for 14 years, received over 3,000 entries taken from 57 countries. The winners will be announced at an online ceremony on Sept. 15, and will be displayed in an exhibition at the National Maritime Museum in London from Sept. 17.

You can see them below, across nine categories including galaxies, stars and nebulae, aurorae, sun, moon, and more. We've added the photographers' words under each image so you can know what you're looking at.

And if you'd like to see previous years, here's the finalists and winners from 2021.

"Hydra's Pinwheel"Credit: Peter Ward

Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille first observed what later became known as the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy on 23 February 1752 from the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa. This image, taken exactly 270 years later, combines a deep set of H-alpha exposures along with colour data to highlight the ruby-like star-forming regions of this beautiful barred spiral galaxy.

"Cosmic Collision"Credit: Mark Hanson, Mike Selby

NGC 5426 and NGC 5427 are two spiral galaxies of similar size engaged in a major interaction. Known collectively as Arp 27, the interaction is expected to continue for tens of millions of years.

"Interacting Galaxies in Eridanus"Credit: Terry Robison

This pair of interacting galaxies are in the southern constellation of Eridanus (the River). They are outlying members of the Fornax Cluster of galaxies. They are so close to one another that gravitational forces have distorted one of the spiral arms of the larger galaxy, NGC 1532. These forces have triggered bursts of star formation in both galaxies, but more so in NGC 1532, where a new generation of massive stars has been created.

"Clouds of Hydrogen Gas"Credit: Simon Tang

Clouds of hydrogen gas give way as the magnetic field lines of the sun snap and clash together. This display of nature creates astonishing features, known as prominences, on the limb of the Sun.

Partial Eclipse of the Sun in H-alphaCredit: Alessandro Ravagnin

A partial eclipse of the Sun shot from the Veneto region of Italy as it reached its maximum on June 10, 2021. It was a day of low solar activity, which allowed for this crisp image of the Moon passing in front of the Sun.

"Solar Inferno"Credit: Stuart Green

The Sun looks different every time astrophotographers capture an image as new sunspots form, grow and eventually fade away. The photographer selectively filtered out all wavelengths of light except a narrow red band (known as the H-alphaline) to reveal an active region of change of the Sun.

"The Crescent Nebula"Credit: Bray Falls

A deep view of the Crescent Nebula in Cygnus, the result of shockwaves originating from the WolfRayet star WR 134.

"Suburbs of Carina Nebula"Credit: Ignacio Diaz Bobillo

The main object in this image is a nebula catalogued as RCW 53c and seldom captured by astrophotographers.

"The Rolling Waves of Vela"Credit: Paul Milvain

This image captures a region on the edge of the constellation Vela. The Vela Supernova Remnant is a very heavily imaged region, but this section is not commonly associated with the supernova remnant. It shows rich star colours and the strong presence of H-alpha and SII emissions.

"Stacks and Stones"Credit: Derek Horlock

Stacking stones has had a practical use since prehistoric times, as a navigational tool to mark trails or territorial boundaries. Stacks are common on the beaches at St Agnes in the Isles of Scilly and provide an anchor for the Milky Way piercing through the nights sky in this image.

"The Starry Sky Over the Worlds Highest National Highway"Credit: Yang Sutie

The illuminated National Highway 219, the highest national highway in the world, snakes through the foreground, almost mirroring the majestic image of the Milky Way above. The two are separated by Kula Kangri, a mountain located in Shannan Prefecture, Tibet.

"Moonrise Over Los Angeles"Credit: Sean Goebel

An alignment of the Moon, mountain and iconic skyline of Los Angeles following a winter storm on 18 December 2021.

"Equinox Moon and Glastonbury Tor"Credit: Hannah Rochford

A single exposure captures people enjoying the full Harvest Moon rising behind Glastonbury Tor in the United Kingdom in September 2021.

"Riverside of Funakawa in Spring"Credit: Takanobu Kurosaki

When the Funakawa River was renovated in 1957, approximately 280 Yoshino cherry trees were planted on both banks of the embankment. They draw the eyeline towards the distant horizon, into an inky blue sky with only the hazy moonlight breaking through the darkness.

"Comet C/2021 A1 (Leonard)"Credit: Lionel Majzik

Comet Leonard was discovered by G.J. Leonard on Jan. 3, 2021 and made its closest pass to Earth on Dec. 12, 2021. The photographer secured some time with the robotic telescope at the Skygems Remote Observatories in Namibia on Dec. 27 to capture this rare glimpse of a comet that will leave the solar system and not be seen again.

"Saturn and its Moons"Credit: Flvio Fortunato

Saturns moons are distributed almost symmetrically around the planet, balancing the composition of the photograph.

"The Jovian Family"Credit: Damian Peach

Jupiter captured with three of its largest moons. The famous Great Red Spot is visible on Jupiter itself, along with many other spots and storms. Similar details are also visible on all three of the Jovian moons. The bright ray crater Osiris can be seen clearly on Ganymede at the upper left.

"Spectrum"Credit: Stefan Liebermann

The Northern Lights over the famous Icelandic mountain, Vestrahorn. A panorama of three photos, processed with Lightroom and Photoshop.

"Electric Wizardry"Credit: Shane Turgeon

The Northern Lights are reflected in the still waters of a lake in Alberta, Canada.

"An Icelandic Saga"Credit: Carl Gallagher

The photographer went on a nine-day, 2500-mile road trip, chasing gaps in the clouds, to capture the Aurora Borealis above the wreck of the Gardur in the Westfjords region of Iceland.

"Solar Wind Power"Credit: Esa Pekka Isomursu

A vivid auroral corona behind the wind turbine gives the illusion of an interaction between the two, as if the turbine was driven by the solar wind or the turbine was dispersing the aurora. This was taken during a strong auroral storm in northern Finland.

"Fly over the South Pole"Credit: Tom Glenn

A composite of images of the lunar south pole created on two different dates (giving different views of the region). It one of the most detailed amateur-produced maps of this part of the moon, which is very difficult to observe from Earth.

"Fly over the South Pole"Credit: Andrea Vanoni

Due to favourable libration, in this image you can see the craters and mountains at the lunar south pole, including the crater Bailly (with its discernible basin) on the right. Under Bailly are the craters Bettinus, Kircher and Wilson. The Montes Leibnitz are visible on the edge.

"Inverted Minerals"Credit: Noah Kujawski

The lunar surface, although it appears grey and monochrome, contains hidden colours within the soil, caused by different minerals. This colour is too faint to see with the naked eye, but digital images allow astrophotographers to enhance the colours and reveal a different view of the moon. This image is the inverted view of those colours, a unique perspective on our moon.

Want more astronomy photography? Here's the best space snaps from 2021.

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Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2022 finalists: All the otherworldly photos - Mashable

First Look: BlissLights Sky Lite Evolve Is a Convincing Star Projector That Emulates The Night Sky – Yahoo Life

We love our smart lights. Most people envision smart bulbs on lamps, strip lights lining the edge of a table, or even perhaps string lights for those outdoor events in the backyard. The last thing that comes to mind when thinking about smart lights are galaxies and nebulas being projected onto walls, but thats exactly what makes BlissLights unique in the space.

After getting a sneak peek at the BlissLights Sky Lite Evolve at an event in New York City, we were beyond enchanted by what this portable star projector could do. What sets it apart from other smart lighting solutions weve checked out and tested is that the BlissLights Sky Lite Evolve sprinkles a healthy dose of color and dynamic animations that makes it feel like youre looking through the Hubble telescope. Need some convincing? Then check out our quick demo video below.

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You know BlissLights projectors are legit when theyve been included in our best Christmas laser light projectors and best star projectors guides. What makes the Sky Lite Evolve different from its previous generation projectors is its compact size. Seriously, we did think it was going to be close to the size of an Amazon Echo Dot smart speaker, so we were really surprised about its compact size. Furthermore, it doesnt follow the design of a traditional star projector, but rather, an orb-shaped design thats a bit more charming.

BlissLight Sky Lite Evolve First Look Review

Other smart lights tend to be complementary to the room where theyre used, but in the case of the BlissLights Sky Lite Evolve, it actually takes center stage because of its dynamic projection. Most notably, its bright at night and replicates the subtle movements that nebulas are known for. Using the BlissHome app, were able to control the intensity of the green laser lights and even the animation of the projection.

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BlissLight Sky Lite Evolve First Look Review

If you have pets at home, theyll be entranced by the projection. The effect is mesmerizing at times, especially because its so realistic. We played around with the settings in the app to change its colors, and in one instance, it looked like a portal opened up in our ceiling. Its that convincing, which isnt something that other smart lights offer.

Even though the previous projectors were controlled via Bluetooth through the app, the Sky Lite Evolve offers proper smart home integration with support for Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. Weve set it up to work as a group with other smart lights in our home, so one quick voice command turns on a bunch of different smart lights simultaneously. Theres also the convenience of simply turning on/off the Sky Lite Evolve with a quick voice command.

BlissLight Sky Lite Evolve First Look Review

If youre looking for a different kind of smart light, then consider picking yourself up a pre-order of the BlissLights Sky Lite Evolve starting on July 6 at the discounted rate of $50.99 through July 14 with general availability through its website and Amazon in late July for $59.99. In the meantime, weve gathered some other BlissLights projectors that are worth buying.

Buy: BlissLights Sky Light Evolve

Sure, its the previous generation star projector, but the BlissLights Sky Lite 2.0 still offers all of the dazzling nebula projections and blue laser light stars. Best of all, its been discounted by 50% off for a limited time.

BlissLight Sky Lite 2.0 first look

Buy: BlissLights Sky Lite 2.0 $34.99 (orig. $69.99) 50% OFF

Expanding its selection, the BlissLights BlissRadia is actually a neat color-changing table lamp and night light. We were impressed by how it was able to cycle through an assortment of colors simultaneously.

BlissLight BlissRadia first look

Buy: BlissLights BlissRadia $39.99

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First Look: BlissLights Sky Lite Evolve Is a Convincing Star Projector That Emulates The Night Sky - Yahoo Life

Hubble telescope spots celestial ‘eye,’ a galaxy with an …

A cosmic hurricane shows its 'eye' in a new image from the Hubble Space Telescope.

The spiral galaxy NGC 5728 has quite a powerhouse at its center. This structure located 130 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Libra is in a unique cosmic category thanks to its active core.

NGC 5728 is a Seyfert galaxy, which means that one of its particular characteristics is the active galactic nucleus at its core that shines bright thanks to all the gas and dust that is hurled around its central black hole. Sometimes galactic cores are busy and luminous enough to outshine the rest of the galaxy in visible and infrared light. But Seyfert galaxies like NGC 5728 are a special Goldilocks treat, because human instruments can still view the rest of Seyfert galaxies clearly.

Related: Vibrant globular cluster sparkles in new Hubble telescope photo

The European Space Agency (ESA) published this new image on Monday (Sept. 27). According to ESA, which jointly operates the Hubble Space Telescope with NASA, the spacecraft used its Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) to capture this view. Officials said in a statement that describes the photo that even as glorious as this cosmic scene appears here, there is also a lot going on near NGC 5728 that the camera doesn't capture.

"As this image shows, NGC 5728 is clearly observable, and at optical and infrared wavelengths it looks quite normal," ESA officials wrote in the description. "It is fascinating to know that the galaxy's centre is emitting vast amounts of light in parts of the electromagnetic spectrum that WFC3 just isn't sensitive to!"

It turns out that the iris of NGC 5728's galactic 'eye' might in fact be emitting some visible and infrared light that the camera would otherwise detect if it weren't for the glowing dust surrounding the core.

Follow Doris Elin Urrutia on Twitter @salazar_elin. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Hubble telescope spots celestial 'eye,' a galaxy with an ...

JADES will go deeper than the Hubble Deep Fields – EarthSky

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field (in its eXtreme version) is the deepest view of the universe yet obtained and will be, until JADES takes over. It stretches approximately 13 billion light-years and includes approximately 10,000 galaxies. It took 11.3 days for the Hubble Space Telescope to collect these ancient photons. Try downloading the largest version and zoom in on different sections. Were seeing these galaxies as they were billions of years ago. How might they look today? Image via NASA/ ESA/ S. Beckwith (STSci)/ HUDF team.

Astronomers announced a new deeper-than-ever sky survey this month (January 15, 2021), to be conducted with the James Webb Space Telescope, the Hubble telescopes successor, scheduled for launch in October of this year. The new survey is abbreviated JADES, which is short for James Webb Space Telescope Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey. The survey will be like the Hubble Deep Fields, but deeper still. Its main goal is to see far away in space and thus far back into the very young universe and image it just at the end of the so-called Cosmic Dark Ages, that is, at the time when gas in the universe went from being opaque to transparent. This is also the time when the very first stars were forming very large, massive and bright stars in a veritable firestorm of star birth when the young universe was less than 5% of its current age.

The 2021 lunar calendars are here. Order yours before theyre gone!

The Webb telescope will be located near the second Lagrange point a relatively stable region of space, gravitationally speaking, known as L2 some 930,000 miles (1.5 million km) from Earth. To conduct the new survey, the Webb telescope will be staring at a small point of space for nearly 800 hours (approximately 33 days) to be able to see fainter objects than those ever seen before and thus to find the first generation of galaxies. Astronomers want to know, among other things, how fast did these galaxies form, and how fast did their stars form? They also want to look for the very first supermassive black holes, which are thought to lie at the hearts of nearly all large galaxies, including our Milky Way.

The long-anticipated launch of the James Webb Space Telescope has been postponed a number of times for a variety of reasons, most recently because of effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. It is the formal successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, but is equipped with instrumentation able to image further into the infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum than Hubble could.

This capability also makes it a worthy successor to the infrared Spitzer Space Telescope which recently went into retirement.

What makes the infrared part of the spectrum so important for surveys like JADES? If you look really deep, you will also look back in time, and the farther back in time you look, the more redshifted the galaxies are (the farther away they are, the faster they move away from us, and the more their light has been shifted towards the red part of the spectrum). This means that the light we want to observe, originally in the optical (visible) part of the electromagnetic spectrum, might not even show much in the optical part anymore. Instead, its been shifted to longer wavelengths, into the infrared regime.

In other words, the use of infrared cameras is necessary to be able to see the light from the first generation of galaxies. Daniel Eisenstein, a professor of astronomy at Harvard University, said:

Galaxies, we think, begin building up in the first billion years after the Big Bang, and sort of reach adolescence at 1 to 2 billion years. Were trying to investigate those early periods. We must do this with an infrared-optimized telescope because the expansion of the universe causes light to increase in wavelength as it traverses the vast distance to reach us. So even though the stars are emitting light primarily in optical and ultraviolet wavelengths, that light is shifted quite relentlessly out into the infrared. Only Webb can get to the depth and sensitivity thats needed to study these early galaxies.

In fact, the James Webb Space Telescope was built specifically for this purpose. Up to now, infrared images are much less resolved less clear than optical images, because of their longer wavelength. With its much larger collecting area, the Webb will be able to image, in infrared, at the same resolution detail that Hubble could obtain in the optical part of the spectrum.

Get ready for a whole new set of mind-blowing images of the universe, this time in the infrared, from Webb!

After having successfully deployed its solar panels precisely as its supposed to do once its in space the Webb telescope is shown here ready for the final tests on December 17, 2020, at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center. Then it will be packed up and transported to French Guyana, to be launched on October 31, 2021, via an Ariane V rocket. Image via NASA/ Chris Gunn.

The use of deep field surveys is a young science, for two reasons. First, astronomers didnt have the right instrumentation before Hubble to do them. Second, its also because no one initially knew the result of staring into a piece of empty space for a long time. Such a long stare into the unknown would require valuable observation time, and if this long observation didnt produce any results, it would be considered a waste.

But in 1995, Robert Williams, then the director of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STSci), which administrates the Hubble telescope, decided to use his directors discretionary time to point the Hubble toward a very small and absolutely empty-looking part of the sky in the direction of the constellation Ursa Major the Great Bear. There were no stars visible from our Milky Way (or extremely few), no nearby galaxies visible in the field, and no visible gas clouds. Hubble collected photons for 10 consecutive days, and the result, the Hubble Deep Field, was a success and a paradigm changer: A patch of sky about as small as the eye of George Washington on an American quarter (25-cent coin) held out at arms length, showed a 10 billion-light-years-long tunnel back in time with a plethora of galaxies around 3,000 of them at different evolutionary stages along the way. The field of observational cosmology was born.

This was done again in 1998 with the Hubble telescope pointed to the southern sky (Hubble Deep Field South), and the result was the same. Thus we learned that the universe is uniform over large scales.

Next was the installation of a new, powerful camera on Hubble (the Advanced Camera for Surveys) in 2002. The incredible Hubble Ultra Deep Field was acquired in 2004, in a similarly small patch of sky near the constellation Orion, about 1/10 of a full moon diameter (2.4 x 3.4 arc minutes, in contrast to the original Hubble Deep Fields north and south, which were 2.6 x 2.6 arc minutes). And so our reach was extended even deeper into space, and even further back in time, showing light from 10 thousand galaxies along a 13-billion-light-years-long tunnel of space. If youll remember that the universe is about 13.77 billion years old, youll see this is getting us really close to the beginning!

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field was the most sensitive astronomical image ever made at wavelengths of visible (optical) light until 2012, when an even more refined version was released, called the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field, which reached even farther: 13.2 billion years back in time.

The JADES survey will be observed in two batches, one on the northern sky and one on the southern in two famous fields called GOODS North and South (abbreviated from Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey).

Marcia Rieke, a professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona who co-leads the JADES Team with Pierre Ferruit of the European Space Agency (ESA), explained:

We chose these fields because they have such a great wealth of supporting information. Theyve been studied at many other wavelengths, so they were the logical ones to do.

View larger. | Look closely. Every single speck of light in this image is a distant galaxy (except for the very few ones with spikes which are foreground stars). This telescopic field of view is part of the GOODS South field. Its one of the directions in space thatll be observed in JADES, a new survey that aims to study the very first galaxies to appear in the infancy of the universe. Image via NASA/ Hubble Space Telescope/ James Webb Space Telescope site.

The GOODS fields have been observed with several of the most famous telescopes, covering a great wavelength range from infrared through optical to X-ray. They are not fully as deep (the observations dont reach as far back) as the Ultra Deep Field, but cover a larger area of the sky (4-5 times larger) and are the most data-rich areas of the sky in terms of depth combined with wavelength coverage. By the way, the first deep field, HDF-N, is located in the GOODS north image, and the Ultra deep field/eXtreme (dont you love these names?) is located in the GOODS south field.

There are a large number of ambitious science goals for the JADES program pertaining to the composition of the first galaxies, including the first generation of supermassive black holes. How these came about at such an early time is a mystery. As well, the transition of gas from neutral and opaque to transparent and ionized, something astronomers call the epoch of reionization, is not well understood. JADES team member Andrew Bunker, professor of astrophysics at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, who is also part of the ESA team behind the Webb telescope, said:

This transition is a fundamental phase change in the nature of the universe. We want to understand what caused it. It could be that its the light from very early galaxies and the first burst of star formation It is kind of one of the Holy Grails, to find the so-called Population III stars that formed from the hydrogen and helium of the Big Bang.

People have been trying to do this for many decades and results have been inconclusive so far.

But, hopefully, not for much longer!

Bottom line: JADES is an ambitious new deep sky survey to be observed with the James Webb Space Telescope, once launched. It will reach further back in time and space than any survey before, to study the very first generation of galaxies after the universe transitioned from opaque to transparent.

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JADES will go deeper than the Hubble Deep Fields - EarthSky

Space-themed decor brings heavens indoors – Jacksonville Journal-Courier

Kim Cook Associated Press

Rachel Magana, senior visual designer at the sustainable furniture-rental company Fernish, says she picked up some cosmological decorating ideas from a colleagues recent nursery project. Base your color palette around deep blue tones, then splash in bits of color like yellow, white or red.

Rachel Magana, senior visual designer at the sustainable furniture-rental company Fernish, says she picked up some cosmological decorating ideas from a colleagues recent nursery project. Base your color

Photo: Dustin Walker Photography | Fernish (via AP)

Rachel Magana, senior visual designer at the sustainable furniture-rental company Fernish, says she picked up some cosmological decorating ideas from a colleagues recent nursery project. Base your color palette around deep blue tones, then splash in bits of color like yellow, white or red.

Rachel Magana, senior visual designer at the sustainable furniture-rental company Fernish, says she picked up some cosmological decorating ideas from a colleagues recent nursery project. Base your color

Space-themed decor brings heavens indoors

It was a tough year here on Earth, but 2020 was a bright spot for space exploration. SpaceX sent its futuristic Starship to new heights, three countries launched Mars missions, and robots grabbed debris from the moon and an asteroid.

Next year promises more, including a planned launch of the Hubble Space Telescopes successor.

Perhaps its no surprise then that space themes are having a moment in home decor. When so many of us Earthlings are stuck at home because of the pandemic, space imagery can add a sense of adventure or whimsy to rooms, walls and ceilings.

Ive done outer space, and starry skies, says New York interior designer Patrice Hoban. My clients love using stars as a backdrop in nurseries. Ive also worked with glow-paint to add an extra pop to kids rooms and home theaters.

She sticks tiny glow-in-the-dark stars to the ceiling; the light can last for hours. Its the closest thing Ive found to being in a planetarium, she says.

Rachel Magana, senior visual designer at the sustainable furniture-rental company Fernish, picked up some cosmological decorating ideas from a colleagues recent nursery project.

Base your color palette around deep blue tones, then splash in bits of color like yellow, white or red, she says.

Or create your own galaxy wall, she says. Paint a blue wall, then use some watered-down white paint to splatter it with fine droplets. You may just create some new constellations.

She suggests adding fun, space-agey lamps, and vintage NASA posters.

Outer space has inspired designers for decades. In the 1960s, the space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, along with the development of space age-y, synthetic materials, led to a surge in futuristic furniture like molded plastic chairs and Sputnik-shaped lighting.

These days, you can download artwork directly from NASA at solarsystem.nasa.gov, or find it at retailers like Red Bubble, Etsy and Zazzle.

Magana also suggests making a letter board with a space-themed quote like Neil Armstrongs famous One small step for man phrase.

Much of the astronomy-themed art in the marketplace would be striking in any room. There are lunar graphics on canvas at Target. Tempapers got constellation wallpapers, but if you cant do wallpaper, consider Kenna Sato Designs constellation decals for walls or ceilings.

Galaxy Lamps has a sphere that looks like a planetoid. Charge it up with the included USB and cycle through 16 colors with three lighting modes. Theres a moon version, too. And at Beautiful Halo, find a collection of rocket-ship ceiling fixtures.

German designer Jan Kath has created a rug collection called Spacecrafted inspired by imagery of gas clouds and asteroid nebulae from the Hubble telescope.

Studio Greytak, in Missoula, Montana, has designed a Jupiter lamp out of the mineral aragonite, depicting the whirling, turbulent gases of the planet. And theres the Impact table, where a chunk of desert rose crystals is embedded with cast glass, as though a piece of asteroid had plunged into a pool.

Zodiac wall decals and a Milky Way throw rug can be found at Project Nursery. There are hanging mobiles of the planets and of stars and clouds, at both Crate & Kids and Pottery Barn Kids.

A glow-in-the-dark duvet cover printed with the solar system is also at PBK, but if youre ready to really head to the stars, check out Snurk Livings duvet set. The studio, owned by Dutch designers Peggy van Neer and Erik van Loo, has designed the set photoprinted with a life-size astronaut suit.

Creating a night sky on the ceiling of a home theater seems to be popular; Houzz has hundreds of examples for inspiration.

Maydan Architects in Palo Alto, California, designed one for a recent project.

Our clients grandfather was the owner of multiple movie theaters, says Mary Maydan. One of them had a retractable ceiling that enabled guests to experience the starry sky at night. When our client decided to build their home theater, this installation was actually fulfilling a lifelong dream.

The ceiling isnt retractable, but has an eight-paneled fixture depicting the Milky Way and a shooting star.

It provides very soft light and was intended to be kept on during the screening of the movie and create a magical experience, says Maydan.

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Space-themed decor brings heavens indoors - Jacksonville Journal-Courier

Good morning, Starshine! Scroll through the universe with the most iconic images of space – Hindustan Times

Its a big year for astrophysicists. In October, NASA will launch the worlds largest, most powerful observatory into space. The James Webb Space Telescope, much delayed, much redesigned, has already cost $9 billion. But when its been installed just beyond the Moons orbit, its infrared sensors will peer through interstellar gas and dust, to see deeper into space than mankind has ever been able to.

The Moon, at the speed of light, is just over a second away. The Sun is eight minutes away. As you look further into space, youre essentially looking further back in time, seeing objects not as they are, but as they were when the light that youre seeing first left them.

Just as, theoretically, you could be looking at stars in the sky that have long since died, NASA says the new telescope can look far enough to see what stars, galaxies and solar systems looked like in the first billion years after the Big Bang (which occurred over 13 billion years ago). Crucially, a specially developed on-board camera will beam images back in high resolution. Pics or it didnt happen, right?

If youve been paying attention to the heavens, or at least astronomy news, youll have noticed how much clearer our views of space have become in the last few years. Until the 1990s, images of the cosmos looked like the inside of a discotheque random pinpoints of bright light, bright blurry patches, mists of pinks, blues and purples.

Since then, space agencies and observatories have zoomed in on multicolour nebulas, starbursts, black holes, the Sun in close-up and the moons on Mars. The Hubble Telescope, launched into low-Earth orbit in 1990, has revealed the depths of the universe with better and better clarity. The New Horizons spacecraft flying by Pluto, 3 billion miles away, revealed in 2015 that the dwarf planet has a heart-shaped feature on its side.

Varun Bhalerao, assistant professor with the department of physics at IIT-Bombay and a scientist who worked on Indias first robotic telescope in 2018, says visuals are integral to the field. Astronomy, because of its nature and scale, has no control over its experiments we cant fast-forward to see how the Sun might evolve. So observation is everything.

No ones looking through telescopes to make those observations, anymore. Complex machines, often working in tandem with dozens of others, do the peering, measuring and data-collecting instead. And as theyve improved, so has the view. The visualised data bridges the gap between academic knowledge and what one would see in space. Its not unlike discovering a work of art like the Mona Lisa, and seeing a whole new world, Bhalerao says.

Those pictures have a history of changing life on Earth. Copernicuss sketches indicating that it was the Sun, not the Earth, at the centre of the universe, shook the foundations of 16th-century Europe and brought about a scientific revolution. Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space, didnt pack a camera in his Vostok capsule in 1961. But the Apollo 8 crew, headed to the Moon in 1968, did. Their photo, Earthrise, depicting Earth peeking over the desolate lunar surface, showed us for the first time just how fragile this planet is, reminded us that it is all we have, and helped popularise the environmental movement.

SPECKS AND SPECIFICATIONS

Taking a photo in space isnt quite a point-and-shoot affair. Even on the International Space Station, orbiting only 408 km above Earths surface, the Suns too bright, shadows too stark, and everything goes by too fast theres a sunrise and sunset every 90 minutes. But visiting astronauts now get mandatory training on how to operate the dozens of on-board, always-on cameras to take the best shots of a changing Earth. As a result, theyve captured erupting volcanoes, Australias wildfires, snow melting off the Himalayas and coastlines as theyve changed over time.

For objects far, far away, such as the nearest black hole a dark something in a sea of dark nothing its a waiting game. Eight telescopes across Earth collaborated to create the 2019 image of the supermassive black hole and its shadow (the dark space in the centre, the point of no return) in the centre of the galaxy, M87. And even after the pictures were taken, it took two years to collect and process them the data was too large to transfer online.

Because everything is moving in space rotating, revolving, exploding, expanding or collapsing even familiar objects take time to capture. To shoot the icy, gritty rings on Saturn, our solar systems most photogenic inhabitant, the spacecraft Cassini spent at least a decade examining them more closely. It needed to find an angle that looked straight through the rings, and take enough shots to piece together the composite of translucent arcs that we finally saw in 2018.

For scientists like Bhalerao, the images are a way to see the world outside the numbers and calibrations that typically fill an astronomers day. For us, usually, seeing the data is enough to fill us with wonder kind of like a composer who can hear the aria in their mind using only the sheet music, he says. But its quite something to see how vast the Andromeda galaxy is, or how brightly the young stars shine in the Pillars of Creation nebula. Its a breath-taking side-effect. And it makes you wonder who we are and our relationship with the cosmos.

SEEING HEAVEN IN YOUR VIEWFINDER

1. What on Earth is a Magnetar? Its not on Earth; its in space. The little purple dot right in the centre is a dense star with the most powerful magnetic field in the universe. How magnetic? About 100 million times stronger than the most powerful magnets made by humans. We only know of 31 of these, and discovered this Magnetar, known as J1818.0-1607, last year. Its 500 years old, so probably among the youngest out there. It pulses bright and spins furiously, about 21,000 light years away. Scientists combined X-rays from the Chandra satellite telescope and infrared data from other observatories to create this composite, the first high-resolution image of J18, released on January 8, 2021.

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2. Who knew that our sun was a glowing mosaic up close? The Daniel K Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii, the worlds most powerful tool for observing the sun, started sending out test images only in January 2020. This is its best work, the highest-resolution image ever taken of the Sun from Earth. Those yellow bits (each as vast as the Indo-Gangetic plain), are hot plasma cells turbulently rising from inside the star. The dark borders indicate where plasma is cooling and sinking. The original image, if you printed it, would cover an area of 36,500 sq km you could literally look at it for days.

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3. A swirly side to Mars: This image was acquired a week before Christmas 2020. It looked like the red planet was getting into the festive mood too. The European Space Agencys Mars Express probe used a high-resolution stereo camera to capture what looks like a haloed angel sinking into cappuccino foam at Marss watery south pole. Notice the heart on her side? Its a dark mineral field. Mars Express has been orbiting our neighbour since 2003. This image, along with thousands of others, has helped us understand its geography better.

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4. Star trails of a local kind: What are we looking at? Earth, in fast forward. NASA astronaut Christina Koch, on board the International Space Station, took over 200 photos in a span of six minutes in October 2019, as the ISS travelled over Namibia towards the Red Sea. This resulting time-lapse composite features both natural and artificial lights. See the thin tread marks? The yellow-and-white dotted streaks are city lights. The dark orange strips are from fires in Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. White splotches are lightning storms. And the arcs are from stars in space, with a few travelling satellites thrown in.

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5. A smorgasbord of sky: With the human eye, youll see, at best, only half the sky, a hemisphere oriented to where youre standing. But in December 2020, scientists compiled data from more than 1.8 billion stars to plot a 360-degree-view map of the sky. The European Space Agencys Gaia satellite drew on the colour and brightness of stars it has observed since 2013. Its a lot to take in at once. Bright areas indicate dense star clusters, dark patches occur where the stars are fewer and fainter. The bright strip is our Milky Way. Were somewhere in there.

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6. By Jove, hes stormy! Weve been looking at Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, since at least the 7th century BCE. By 1610 CE, Galileo had used a telescope to discover four of its largest moons; weve since counted 79. Then sharper telescopes spotted the storm larger than Earth that forms its Great Red Spot. Weve been flying past and sneaking peeks since 1973, but its only in August 2020 that the Hubble Space Telescope offered this detailed look at its atmosphere. The weather report: A new storm brewing under the Great Red Spot. Researchers are calling it Red Spot Jr. The new image also features the Jupiter moon Europa. Therell be even better views soon. The European Space Agencys Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer is due to launch in 2022, and NASAs Europa Clipper mission will follow two years later.

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7. All the space you need: In many ways, this is the image that started it all. In January 2015, NASA released to the public its highest-quality picture, an image of our neighbouring spiral galaxy, Andromeda, 2.5 million light years away. It is massive, made up of 1.5 billion pixels. To view it without zooming out, youd need 600 HD TV screens. The composite draws on photographs taken by the Hubble Telescope over three years, from more than 411 points, and has been helping scientists make precision studies of large spiral galaxies. There are 100 million stars in the image, any one of which could harbour planets that support life.

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8. One of our own: Finally, beautiful images of space from an Indian programme. When ISRO launched its Mars Orbiter Mission in 2013, there was trepidation. Only the Soviet Union, the United States and the European Space Agency had sent voyagers to Mars none had succeeded on their first attempt. But in 2014, our spacecraft entered the Red Planets orbit, making us blush with pride. On board was the Mars Colour Camera, designed to closely study the planets morphological features and atmospheric phenomena. It went to work immediately, beaming back these gorgeous shots in its first year. Over the years, the orbiter has set back some 1,000 images, enough for ISRO to fill an atlas. Weve had rare glimpses of Marss clouds and dust; the dark side of its moon, Deimos; and as recently as July 2020, its other moon Phobos. Not bad for a mission that was expected to last only six months.

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VIEW A SLIDESHOW OF MORE IMAGES HERE

9. How a star explodes and dies: The elements that make up life on Earth come from inside the furnaces of stars and the explosions that mark their deaths. Which is why researchers are fascinated by supernovas and their remnants, and are so interested in Cassiopeia A, the debris of a starburst 11,000 light years away, which possibly exploded in 1680. Because a supernova is millions of degrees hot, their glow needs X-ray vision that Earth-based telescopes cant manage. Thankfully, NASAs Chandra X-ray Observatory has been orbiting Earth since 1999. Its mirrors pick up X-rays 100 times better. Chandra made 16 pointings at Cas A between 2000 and 2010. In 2017 it released this image capturing the volume and locations of silicon (red), sulphur (yellow), calcium (green) and iron (purple). The blue veins show high-energy X-ray emission. That blue outer ring is an expanding blast wave. Hows that for spectacle?

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10. Black holes are really donuts: Black holes are not things, but places; collapsed stars or star groups with such strong gravity that they suck in everything around them, including light. Albert Einstein theorised on their existence in 1916, but astronomers only identified one in 1971. Then, in 2017, came visuals. The Event Horizon Telescope, eight radio telescopes working across international borders, observed something unusual in the centre of the galaxy Messier87, which is 55 million light years away. It looked like a bright ring, a shape that could only be formed when light itself was being bent. A black hole. It turned out to be huge about 6.5 billion times bigger than our sun. The telescopes next planned target is the centre of our own galaxy, a suspiciously dark corner long said to hold a black hole too. Who knows what well see.

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Good morning, Starshine! Scroll through the universe with the most iconic images of space - Hindustan Times

Space-themed decor brings the heavens indoors – The Columbian

It was a tough year here on Earth, but 2020 was a bright spot for space exploration. SpaceX sent its futuristic Starship to new heights, three countries launched Mars missions, and robots grabbed debris from the moon and an asteroid.

This year promises more, including a planned launch of the Hubble Space Telescopes successor.

Perhaps its no surprise then that space themes are having a moment in home decor. When so many of us Earthlings are stuck at home because of the pandemic, space imagery can add a sense of adventure or whimsy to rooms, walls and ceilings.

Ive done outer space, and starry skies, says New York interior designer Patrice Hoban. My clients love using stars as a backdrop in nurseries. Ive also worked with glow-paint to add an extra pop to kids rooms and home theaters.

She sticks tiny glow-in-the-dark stars to the ceiling. Its the closest thing Ive found to being in a planetarium, she says.

Rachel Magana, senior visual designer at the sustainable furniture-rental company Fernish, picked up some cosmological decorating ideas from a colleagues recent nursery project.

Base your color palette around deep blue tones, then splash in bits of color like yellow, white or red, she says.

Or create your own galaxy wall, she says. Paint a blue wall, then use some watered-down white paint to splatter it with fine droplets. You may just create some new constellations.

She suggests adding fun, space-aged lamps, and vintage NASA posters.

Outer space has inspired designers for decades. In the 1960s, the space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, along with the development of space age-y, synthetic materials, led to a surge in futuristic furniture like molded plastic chairs and Sputnik-shaped lighting.

These days, you can download artwork directly from NASA: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov, or find it at retailers like Red Bubble, Etsy and Zazzle.

Magana also suggests making a letter board with a space-themed quote like Neil Armstrongs famous One small step for man phrase.

Much of the astronomy-themed art in the marketplace would be striking in any room. There are lunar graphics on canvas at Target. Tempapers got constellation wallpapers, but if you cant do wallpaper, consider Kenna Sato Designs constellation decals for walls or ceilings.

Galaxy Lamps has a sphere that looks like a planetoid. Charge it up with the included USB and cycle through 16 colors with three lighting modes. Theres a moon version, too. And at Beautiful Halo, find a collection of rocket-ship ceiling fixtures.

German designer Jan Kath has created a rug collection called Spacecrafted inspired by imagery of gas clouds and asteroid nebulae from the Hubble telescope.

Studio Greytak, in Missoula, Mont., has designed a Jupiter lamp out of the mineral aragonite, depicting the whirling, turbulent gases of the planet. And theres the Impact table, where a chunk of desert rose crystals is embedded with cast glass, as though a piece of asteroid had plunged into a pool.

Zodiac wall decals and a Milky Way throw rug can be found at Project Nursery. There are hanging mobiles of the planets and of stars and clouds, at both Crate & Kids and Pottery Barn Kids.

A glow-in-the-dark duvet cover printed with the solar system is also at PBK, but if youre ready to really head to the stars, check out Snurk Livings duvet set. The studio, owned by Dutch designers Peggy van Neer and Erik van Loo, has designed the set photoprinted with a life-size astronaut suit.

Creating a night sky on the ceiling of a home theater seems to be popular; Houzz has hundreds of examples for inspiration.

Read the original here:

Space-themed decor brings the heavens indoors - The Columbian

Right At Home: Space-themed dcor brings the heavens indoors – The Providence Journal

By Kim Cook| The Associated Press

It was a tough year here on Earth, but 2020 was a bright spot for space exploration. SpaceX sent its futuristic Starship to new heights, three countries launched Mars missions, and robots grabbed debris from the moon and an asteroid.

This year promises more, including theplanned launch of the Hubble Space Telescope's successor in October.

Perhaps it's no surprise then that space themes are having a moment in home decor. When so many of us Earthlings are stuck at home because of the pandemic, space imagery can add a sense of adventure or whimsy to rooms, walls and ceilings.

"I've done outer space, and starry skies," says New York interior designer Patrice Hoban. "My clients love using stars as a backdrop in nurseries. I've also worked with glow-paint to add an extra pop to kids' rooms and home theaters."

She sticks tiny glow-in-the-dark stars to the ceiling; the light can last for hours. "It's the closest thing I've found to being in a planetarium," she says.

Rachel Magana, senior visual designer at the sustainable furniture-rental company Fernish, picked up some cosmological decorating ideas from a colleague's recent nursery project.

"Base your color palette around deep blue tones, then splash in bits of color like yellow, white or red," she says.

"Or create your own galaxy wall," she says. "Paint a blue wall, then use some watered-down white paint to splatter it with fine droplets. You may just create some new constellations."

She suggests adding fun, space-agey lampsand vintage NASA posters.

Outer space has inspired designers for decades. In the 1960s, the "space race" between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, along with the development of space age-y, synthetic materials, led to a surge in futuristic furniture like molded plastic chairs and Sputnik-shaped lighting.

These days, you can download artwork directly from NASA at solarsystem.nasa.gov, or find it at retailers like Red Bubble, Etsy and Zazzle.

Magana also suggests making a letter board with a space-themed quote, like Neil Armstrong's famous "One small step for man" phrase.

Much of the astronomy-themed art in the marketplace would be striking in any room. There are lunar graphics on canvas at Target. Tempaper's got constellation wallpapers, but if you can't do wallpaper, consider Kenna Sato Designs' constellation decals for walls or ceilings.

Galaxy Lamps has a sphere that looks like a planetoid. Charge it up with the included USB and cycle through 16 colors with three lighting modes. There's a moon version, too. And at Beautiful Halo, find a collection of rocket-ship ceiling fixtures.

German designer Jan Kath has created a rug collection called Spacecrafted inspired by imagery of gas clouds and asteroid nebulae from the Hubble telescope.

Studio Greytak, in Missoula, Montana, has designed a Jupiter lamp out of the mineral aragonite, depicting the whirling, turbulent gases of the planet. And there's the Impact table, where a chunk of desert rose crystals is embedded in cast glass, as though a piece of asteroid had plunged into a pool.

Zodiac wall decals and a Milky Way throw rug can be found at Project Nursery. There are hanging mobiles of the planets and of stars and clouds, at both Crate & Kids and Pottery Barn Kids.

A glow-in-the-dark duvet cover printed with the solar system is also at PBK, but if you're ready to really head to the stars, check out Snurk Living's duvet set. The studio, owned by Dutch designers Peggy van Neer and Erik van Loo, has designed the set photoprinted with a life-size astronaut suit.

Creating a night sky on the ceiling of a home theater seems to be popular; Houzz has hundreds of examples for inspiration.

Maydan Architects in Palo Alto, California, designed one for a recent project.

"Our client's grandfather was the owner of multiple movie theaters," says Mary Maydan. "One of them had a retractable ceiling that enabled guests to experience the starry sky at night. When our client decided to build their home theater, this installation was actually fulfilling a lifelong dream."

The ceiling isn't retractable, but it has an eight-paneled fixture depicting the Milky Way and a shooting star.

"It provides very soft light and was intended to be kept on during the screening of the movie and create a magical experience," says Maydan.

Kim Cook writes AP's Right at Home column, which looks at themes in home dcor and home products. Follow her at: http://www.kimcookhome.com

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Right At Home: Space-themed dcor brings the heavens indoors - The Providence Journal

Everything you need to know about the Hubble Space Telescope – BBC Focus Magazine

Launching into Earth orbit 25 April 1990, The Hubble Space Telescope has been observing the distant Universe for over 30 years.

Designed to examine ultraviolet, visible, and infrared light waves, the solar-powered space telescope collects about 40,000 times more light than the human eye.

This has allowed Hubble to capture some of the most awe-inspiring photographs known to humankind, including images of remote tadpole galaxies, star births, nebulae and supernovae.

But despite all its amazing discoveries, you may have several questions about this technological marvel. Questions like How far can the Hubble Space Telescope see?, How big actually is it? and What will replace it?.

Find out the answers (and else everything you need to know about the NASA satellite) below.

The furthest galaxy ever observed by the Hubble telescope is the GN-z11 galaxy, about 13.4 billion light-years away.

As the galaxy is so far away and light can only travel so fast (299,792,458 meters a second), Hubble is effectively looking back in time when viewing very distant objects.

Although Hubble viewed GN-z11 as it was about 13.4 billion years ago, the galaxy will now be located around 32 billion light-years from Earth owing to the Universes expansion.

Weighing 11,110 kg (just less than two African elephants), the Hubble Space Telescope is about 13.2m long about the length of a bus.

The telescope relies on a huge 2.4m (7.8 ft) mirror to make its observations. When first launched, a tiny flaw in this mirror meant Hubble could not focus its lens, with all images captured appearing blurry.

Fortunately, three years later, in December 1993, the telescope was repaired by the Space Shuttle Endeavour crew across 11 days and five spacewalks. (You can listen to our podcast with the Kathryn Sullivan, who was part of the mission).

The Hubble Space Telescope orbits 547 kilometres (340 miles) above Earth and travels 8km (5 miles) every second. Inclined 28.5 degrees to the equator, it orbits the Earth once every 97 minutes.

Its possible to track the Hubble Space Telescopes location in real-time here.

Through its 30+ year mission, the Hubble Space Telescope has taken more than 1.4 million observations, with 16,000 studies using this data.

The telescope has brought light to the causes of gamma-ray bursts,how planetary collisions work,the expansion of the Universeand evenhidden dark matter.

Hubble is also credited with discovering Plutos two moons (Nix and Hydra), and how nearly every major galaxy is anchored by a black hole at its heart. The telescope has also increased our understanding of the Universes age, the atmosphere of exoplanets and how galaxies evolve.

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The telescope is named in honour of Edwin Hubble (1889-1953), an astronomer who discovered many galaxies beyond our own using a telescope in California in the 1920s.

He is often credited as the man who confirmed the Universe is expanding, a finding that was announced in 1929.

Dr Edwin Hubble by the Schmidt Photographic Telescope in 1949 Getty

As it doesnt have its own propulsion system, the Hubble Space Telescope is actually falling back to Earth. But very slowly: a report from September 2018 predicts a Hubble re-entry no earlier than 2027. The mean date is around 2038.

However, its successor, the James Webb Telescope (fitted with a 6.5-metre lens) is planning to be launched in 2021.

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Everything you need to know about the Hubble Space Telescope - BBC Focus Magazine

Former NASA administrator: Biden will reestablish ‘constancy of purpose’ in space and nation | Opinion – Florida Today

Charles F. BoldenJr., Your Turn Published 1:26 p.m. ET Oct. 6, 2020

During my years at NASA, first as an astronaut followed by my appointment as NASA administrator in 2009, a fundamental principle upon which all programs were operated was constancy of purpose. Coined by Vice Adm. Joe Dyer, chairman of the NASA Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel during my tenure as NASA administrator, this concept recognized that, to be successful, our efforts must be consistently funded, managed, and carried out over long spans of time.

NASA programs unfold over years, from Apollo, to the space shuttle, Hubble Telescope, and the International Space Station. The same will be true of the development and implementation of the Space Launch System, Orion crew capsule and the hoped-for Gateway that will orbit around the moon. These are multi-year, multi-administration projects that will need constancy of purpose to be successful.

Constancy of purpose also has an important place in my life as a father, grandfather, husband and citizen.

Our Constitution is the original example of constancy of purpose for the United States. It is the foundational document providing the underpinning of our society over hundreds of years. It is a living document that changes when it needs to adapt to give us guidance to us as a nation. Adapting that document to fit our current needs requires steady leadership and integrity that we do not see in our current administration.

Holmdel, NJ- 05/18/11- The 78th annual commencement of Monmouth University takes place at PNC Bank Arts Center on Wednesday, May 18, 2011. Commencement speaker, the Honorable Charles F. Bolden Jr., Administrator of NASA; Astronaut, addresses the crowd.DOUG HOOD/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER(Photo: DOUG HOOD/ASBURY PARK PRESS)

Constancy of purpose has been attacked across our society over the past four years.

The Affordable Care Act has provided critical health care coverage for more than 20 million Americans but is under attack with nothing proposed to take its place.

Our local governments have been forced to manage the worst worldwide pandemic in a century without guidance from the federal government the entity capable of effectively dealing with such an emergency.

Science is under attack on a daily basis from the very individuals who should be supporting the advancement of understanding.

Internationally, our nation, which President Reagan called the shining city on the hill, is no longer looked to for leadership in issues that cross the globe.

It is for these reasons that I joined almost 500 former public servants in signing a public letter endorsing Joe Biden to be the next president of the United States.

Along with my colleagues, I believe that Biden is, above all, a good man with a strong sense of right and wrong. He is guided by principles that have long made America great: democracy is a hard-won fight we must defend and support at home and abroad; Americas power and influence stem as much from her moral authority as it does from her economic and political power. Biden understands that.

Biden is compassionate, empathetic, and grounded in the utmost integrity. He has a love of people, the ability to listen, and the human capacity to care for and offer counsel when it is really needed. These are marks of the strong leader we need today.

Critical organizations such as NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the State Department need leadership that shares these values and uses constancy of purpose to carry out their missions. Biden understands that and will lead us back to President Reagans shining city on the hill.

Maj. Gen.Charles F. BoldenJr. is a retired Marine officer, astronaut, and former NASA administrator.

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Former NASA administrator: Biden will reestablish 'constancy of purpose' in space and nation | Opinion - Florida Today

Hubble telescopes finds that Andromedas halo is already touching the Milky Way’s halo – Firstpost

FP TrendingSep 02, 2020 12:44:31 IST

Andromeda galaxy or M31 is the nearest galaxy to our Milky Way. While it is 2.5 million light-years away from us, recent observations by NASAs Hubble telescope has revealed that the halo of Andromeda is already touching Milky Ways halo.

The halo of a galaxy or a galactic halo is the envelope of a galaxy that is mainly composed of gas and a few stars. These halos are a characteristic feature of most disc galaxies like the Andromeda and the Milky Way.

This illustration shows the location of the 43 quasars scientists used to probe Andromedas gaseous halo. These quasarsthe very distant, brilliant cores of active galaxies powered by black holesare scattered far behind the halo, allowing scientists to probe multiple regions. Looking through the immense halo at the quasars light, the team observed how this light is absorbed by the halo and how that absorption changes in different regions. By tracing the absorption of light coming from the background quasars, scientists are able to probe the halos material. Image Credits: NASA, ESA, and E. Wheatley (STScI)

In the recent study, scientists have managed to map the enormous halo of Andromeda and the results have revealed that the halo extends 1.3 million light-years from the galaxy. This is about halfway to the Milky Way, stated a report by NASA. The article also said that the extension is not linear and the halo has spread as far as two million light-years in certain directions. As the Milky Way has its own halo that spreads as far as one million light-years, Andromedas halo is already bumping into the halo of our own galaxy.

Samantha Berek of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, who was a co-investigator in the project explained that this reservoir of gas or the halo contains fuel for future star formation within the galaxy. According to Berek the fuel is also for outflows from events such as supernovae. Berek adds that it is full of clues regarding the evolution of the galaxy, and they are finally able to study it in great detail.

The mapping has also revealed the structure of the halo. According to the space agency, the nearly invisible halo has a layered structure with two main nested and distinct shells of gas. Scientists think the two-part structure might have been the result of a few supernova explosions within Andromedas main disk.

The entire study has been published in The Astrophysical Journal.

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Hubble telescopes finds that Andromedas halo is already touching the Milky Way's halo - Firstpost

ISRO’s AstroSat detects galaxy that is one of the earliest sources of UV-light in space – Firstpost

tech2 News StaffSep 02, 2020 18:05:04 IST

An international team of astronomers detected extreme-Ultraviolet (UV) light originating from a galaxy called AUDFs01 that is 9.3 billion light-years away from Earth.

There arethree subdivisions of ultraviolet radiation: near-ultraviolet (NUV), middle ultraviolet (MUV), far-ultraviolet (FUV), and extreme ultraviolet (EUV).

The teamthat made this discovery includes scientists from India, Switzerland, France, The USA, Japan and The Netherlands and is being led by Dr Kanak Saha, Associate Professor at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune.

Combined four-colour image of the AstroSat Uv Deep Field (AUDF). Red and green colours from HST while cyan and dark blue are from AstroSat. AUDFs01 is in the square box. Highlighted images in the boxes below are from HST and AstroSat. Image Credit: Kanak Saha (IUCAA)/ISRO

The galaxy AUDFs01 is located in the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field (XDF). The XDF was assembled by combining 10 years of photographs captured of a patch of sky at the centre of the original Hubble Ultra Deep Field by the Hubble Telescope.

Since EUV can only be observed from space, the team made use of the Indian Space Research Organisation's AstroSat to detect it pouring out of the galaxy.

AstroSat is India's first mission that focuses solely on astronomy and is a multi-wavelength satellite. At any given point, it has five X-ray and ultraviolet telescopes working in tandem. It was first launched in 2015 and is supposed to have a mission life of five years.

Using one of the six payloads onboard the satellite, the UVIT- the observation showed that the galaxy AUDFs01 is the first example of a galaxy with clumpy morphology and leaking ionizing radiation.

Dr Somak Raychaudhury, Director of IUCAA, said in a statement This is a very important clue to how the dark ages of the Universe ended and there was light in the Universe. We need to know when this started, but it has been very hard to find the earliest sources of light.

According to a report by The Print, after the team made this observation, they analysed the data for two years to ensure they had made no mistakes since the Hubble telescope had not been able to detect it. They wanted to be certain that the emission was indeed originating from the AUDFs01.

An artistic rendering of the AstroSat satellite. Image courtesy: ISRO

"AstroSat/UVIT was able to achieve this unique feat because the background noise in the UVIT detector is much less than the ones on Hubble Space Telescope, said Saha in a statement released by ISRO.

We knew it would be an uphill task to convince the international community that UVIT has recorded extreme-UV emission from this galaxy when more powerful HST has not," he added.

The results of this study have been published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

NASA's Public Affairs Officer Felicia Chou told ANI that said that "NASA congratulates the researchers on their exciting discovery" and the American space agency believes that this will further mankind's understanding.

She said, "Science is a collaborative effort around the world, and discoveries like these help further humankind's understanding of where we come from, where are we going, and are we alone."

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ISRO's AstroSat detects galaxy that is one of the earliest sources of UV-light in space - Firstpost