Infrared Orion from WISE

The Great Nebula in Orion is an intriguing place. Visible to the unaided eye, it appears as a small fuzzy patch in the constellation of Orion. But this image, an illusory-color four-panel mosaic taken in different bands of infrared light with the Earth orbiting WISE observatory, shows the Orion Nebula to be a bustling neighborhood or recently formed stars, hot gas, and dark dust. The power behind much of the Orion Nebula (M42) is the stars of the Trapezium star cluster, seen near the center of the above wide field image. The orange glow surrounding the bright stars pictured here is their own starlight reflected by intricate dust filaments that cover much of the region. The current Orion Nebula cloud complex, which includes the Horsehead Nebula, will slowly disperse over the next 100,000 years. via NASA http://ift.tt/1BrE6u9

NASA and State of the Union Speech

Keith's note: Astronaut Scott Kelly will be a featured guest at the State of the Union speech so you can expect some mention of NASA....



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Talking Nerdy to Me

My friend Cara Santa Maria hosts the science podcast “Talk Nerdy to Me” where she talks to scientists and science communicators about, well, science. She invited me on, and the episode is online.

We talked about a wide range of stuff: Meteorology, clouds, snow, why we love to do and talk about science, as well as (being who we are) the politicization of science and why that’s so dangerous right now. She brought up the recent issue of the QVC hosts trying to figure out what the Moon is, and the appointment of anti-science Senators to subcommittees that oversee critical science agencies.

It was fun to talk to her (and I apologize—she was in LA and I was at home in Colorado, and I don’t have good headphones; she had to edit it a bit to minimize a slight echo of her voice coming through my speakers. I really need to get a good set of headphones!) and let the conversation cover so much ground. I’ve been so busy lately writing and working on other projects that it’s been a while since I just sat and had a random-access conversation about science. I need to do this more!

Thanks for having me on, Cara. It’s always cool to get a little nerdery going.

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The Galactic Core in Infrared

What's happening at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy? To help find out, the orbiting Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes have combined their efforts to survey the region in unprecedented detail in infrared light. Infrared light is particularly useful for probing the Milky Way's center because visible light is more greatly obscured by dust. The above image encompasses more than 2,000 images from the Hubble Space Telescope's NICMOS taken in 2008. The image spans 300 by 115 light years with such high resolution that structures only 20 times the size of our own Solar System are discernable. Clouds of glowing gas and dark dust as well as three large star clusters are visible. Magnetic fields may be channeling plasma along the upper left near the Arches Cluster, while energetic stellar winds are carving pillars near the Quintuplet Cluster on the lower left. The massive Central Cluster of stars surrounding Sagittarius A* is visible on the lower right. Why several central, bright, massive stars appear to be unassociated with these star clusters is not yet understood. via NASA http://ift.tt/15d8D1i

The Flashing Eye of a Cyclone from Space

I’ve posted a lot of images of cyclones from space… but I have never seen anything like this!

That is the view of the tropical cyclone Bansi, which has been blowing in the Indian Ocean, a few hundred kilometers east of the island of Mauritius, which is itself east of Madagascar. It looks like the storm is powering up some sort of weapon!

The photo was taken by astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti when the space station was still well to the side of the cyclone. What you’re actually seeing is a flash of lightning illuminating the eye wall of the storm. That’s incredible.

You can also see a thin green line over the horizon; that’s airglow; oxygen atoms energized by the Sun during the day, slowly releasing that energy at night. It happens in a relatively thin layer about 100 km up. When you look across the Earth in this way you’re seeing through the thin sheet of glowing oxygen, across it, so the light can add up enough to see.

Cristoforetti also took another picture when the station was directly over the eye.

That’s no less amazing than the other one; again, a lightning flash lights up the eye, but you can see it’s offset, in the dense and turbulent clouds in the eye wall. The stroke is bright enough to light up clouds for many kilometers away.

The cyclone is expected to weaken as it moves out into the open waters of the southern Indian Ocean to the south and east, happily away from Mauritius.

If you want to see more photos of cyclones from space—and you do—then here’s a list of some of my posts about them. Bonus: There’s science galore in these photos, and I do love to explain it. Hurricanes and typhoons are among the most dangerous and powerful events our planet has to offer, and while they can be terrifying to experience on the ground (and I’ve had my own share of that over the years), they are just as beautiful to behold from space.

Sam: I’m jealous you get this view. But I’m glad you shared it with us.

P.S. Follow her on Twitter, because she’s in space, and she’s cool.

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Comet Lovejoy s Tail

Sweeping north in planet Earth's sky, Comet Lovejoy's greenish coma and blue tinted ion tail stretched across this field of stars in the constellation Taurus on January 13. The inset at the upper left shows the 1/2 degree angular size of the full moon for scale. So Lovejoy's coma appears only a little smaller (but much fainter) than a full moon on the sky, and its tail is visible for over 4 degrees across the frame. That corresponds to over 5 million kilometers at the comet's estimated distance of 75 million kilometers from Earth. Blown by the solar wind, the comet's tenuous, structured ion tail streams away from the Sun, growing as this Comet Lovejoy heads toward perihelion, its closest approach to the Sun, on January 30. While diatomic carbon (C2) gas fluorescing in sunlight produces the coma's green color, the fainter bluish tail is tinted by emission from ionized carbon monoxide (CO+). via NASA http://ift.tt/1ISU6V4

Used NASA Gold For Sale

Gold Plates, GSA Auction One lot consisting six 24KT gold plates weighing 6,015.5 grams. These plates were reportedly flown in space for 69 months. Please click on attachment for purity information rounded to the nearest 1/10th determined by x-ray fluorescence....



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