NASA Goddard Space Flight Center adalah rumah bagi organisasi terbesar
dari gabunagna ilmuwan, insinyur dan teknologi yang membangun pesawat
ruang angkasa, instrumen dan teknologi baru untuk mempelajari bumi,
matahari, tata surya kita, dan alam semesta. Disana juga adalah tempat
dari foto foto dan video yang menakjubkan dari alam semesta kita. Inilah
beberapa diantaranya dari ribuan foto yang mereka rilis (beberapa orang
ada yang percaya, bahwa ada banyak juga yang tidak mereka rilis ke
publik)
The
STEREO (Ahead) spacecraft caught this spectacular eruptive prominence
in extreme UV light as it blasted away from the Sun (Apr. 12-13, 2010).
This was certainly among the largest prominence eruptions seen by either
the STEREO or SOHO missions. The length of the prominence appears to
stretch almost halfway across the sun, about 500,000 miles. Prominences
are cooler clouds of plasma that hover above the Sun’s surface, tethered
by magnetic forces. They are notoriously unstable and commonly erupt as
this one did in a dramatic fashion
This
is a mosaic image, one of the largest ever taken by NASA’s Hubble Space
Telescope of the Crab Nebula, a six-light-year-wide expanding remnant
of a star’s supernova explosion. Japanese and Chinese astronomers
recorded this violent event nearly 1,000 years ago in 1054, as did,
almost certainly, Native Americans.
The orange filaments are the tattered remains of the star and consist mostly of hydrogen. The rapidly spinning neutron star embedded in the center of the nebula is the dynamo powering the nebula’s eerie interior bluish glow. The blue light comes from electrons whirling at nearly the speed of light around magnetic field lines from the neutron star. The neutron star, like a lighthouse, ejects twin beams of radiation that appear to pulse 30 times a second due to the neutron star’s rotation. A neutron star is the crushed ultra-dense core of the exploded star.
The Crab Nebula derived its name from its appearance in a drawing made by Irish astronomer Lord Rosse in 1844, using a 36-inch telescope. When viewed by Hubble, as well as by large ground-based telescopes such as the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, the Crab Nebula takes on a more detailed appearance that yields clues into the spectacular demise of a star, 6,500 light-years away.The newly composed image was assembled from 24 individual Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 exposures taken in October 1999, January 2000, and December 2000. The colors in the image indicate the different elements that were expelled during the explosion. Blue in the filaments in the outer part of the nebula represents neutral oxygen, green is singly-ionized sulfur, and red indicates doubly-ionized oxygen
This
spectacular “blue marble” image is the most detailed true-color image
of the entire Earth to date. Using a collection of satellite-based
observations, scientists and visualizers stitched together months of
observations of the land surface, oceans, sea ice, and clouds into a
seamless, true-color mosaic of every square kilometer (.386 square mile)
of our planet.
Much of the information contained in this image came from a single remote-sensing device-NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS. Flying over 700 km above the Earth onboard the Terra satellite, MODIS provides an integrated tool for observing a variety of terrestrial, oceanic, and atmospheric features of the Earth. The land and coastal ocean portions of these images are based on surface observations collected from June through September 2001 and combined, or composited, every eight days to compensate for clouds that might block the sensor’s view of the surface on any single day.Two different types of ocean data were used in these images: shallow water true color data, and global ocean color (or chlorophyll) data. Topographic shading is based on the GTOPO 30 elevation dataset compiled by the U.S. Geological Survey’s EROS Data Center. MODIS observations of polar sea ice were combined with observations of Antarctica made by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s AVHRR sensor—the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer. The cloud image is a composite of two days of imagery collected in visible light wavelengths and a third day of thermal infra-red imagery over the poles. Global city lights, derived from 9 months of observations from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, are superimposed on a darkened land surface map.
(3
September 2005) — Typhoon Nabi is featured in this image photographed
by an Expedition 11 crewmember on the International Space Station, as it
swirls in the Pacific Ocean, heading toward southern Korea and Japan.
At the time this image was taken Typhoon Nabi was ~23N 133E with
sustained winds ~100 knots, gusting to 120 knots
Papua
New Guinea’s Manam Volcano released a thin, faint plume on June 16,
2010, as clouds clustered at the volcano’s summit. The Advanced Land
Imager (ALI) on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite took this
picture the same day. Rivulets of brown rock interrupt the carpet of
green vegetation on the volcano’s slopes. Opaque white clouds partially
obscure the satellite’s view of Manam. The clouds may result from water
vapor from the volcano, but may also have formed independent of volcanic
activity. The volcanic plume appears as a thin, blue-gray veil
extending toward the northwest over the Bismarck Sea.
Located 13 kilometers (8 miles) off the coast of mainland Papua New Guinea, Manam forms an island 10 kilometers (6 miles) wide. It is a stratovolcano. The volcano has two summit craters, and although both are active, most historical eruptions have arisen from the southern crater.NASA Earth Observatory image created by Jesse Allen, using EO-1 ALI data provided courtesy of the NASA EO-1 team. Caption by Michon Scott. Instrument: EO-1 – ALI
In
this natural-color image from August 31, 2010, the ocean’s canvas
swirls with turquoise, teal, navy, and green, the abstract art of the
natural world. The colors were painted by a massive phytoplankton bloom
made up of millions of tiny, light-reflecting organisms growing in the
sunlit surface waters of the Barents Sea. Such blooms peak every August
in the Barents Sea.
The variations in color are caused by different species and concentrations of phytoplankton. The bright blue colors are probably from coccolithophores, a type of phytoplankton that is coated in a chalky shell that reflects light, turning the ocean a milky turquoise. Coccolithophores dominate the Barents Sea in August. Shades of green are likely from diatoms, another type of phytoplankton. Diatoms usually dominate the Barents Sea earlier in the year, giving way to coccolithophores in the late summer. However, field measurements of previous August blooms have also turned up high concentrations of diatoms.
The Barents Sea is a shallow sea sandwiched between the coastline of northern Russia and Scandinavia and the islands of Svalbard, Franz Josef Land, and Novaya Zemlya. Within the shallow basin, currents carrying warm, salty water from the Atlantic collide with currents carrying cold, fresher water from the Arctic. During the winter, strong winds drive the currents and mix the waters. When winter’s sea ice retreats and light returns in the spring, diatoms thrive, typically peaking in a large bloom in late May.
The shift between diatoms and coccolithophores occurs as the Barents Sea changes during the summer months. Throughout summer, perpetual light falls on the waters, gradually warming the surface. Eventually, the ocean stratifies into layers, with warm water sitting on top of cooler water. The diatoms deplete most of the nutrients in the surface waters and stop growing. Coccolithophores, on the other hand, do well in warm, nutrient-depleted water with a lot of light. In the Barents Sea, these conditions are strongest in August.The shifting conditions and corresponding change in species lead to strikingly beautiful multicolored blooms such as this one. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired this image.
A
blue-hot star, 90 times more massive than our Sun, is hurtling across
space fast enough to make a round trip from Earth to the Moon in merely
two hours. Though the speed is not a record-breaker, it is unique to
find a homeless star that has traveled so far from its nest. The only
way the star could have been ejected from the star cluster where it was
born is through a tussle with a rogue star that entered the binary
system where the star lived, which ejected the star through a dynamical
game of stellar pinball.This is strong circumstantial evidence for stars
as massive as 150 times our Sun’s mass living in the cluster. Only a
very massive star would have the gravitational energy to eject something
weighing 90 solar masses. The runaway star is on the outskirts of the
30 Doradus nebula, a raucous stellar breeding ground in the nearby Large
Magellanic Cloud. The finding bolsters evidence that the most massive
stars in the local universe reside in 30 Doradus, making it a unique
laboratory for studying heavyweight stars. 30 Doradus, also called the
Tarantula Nebula, is roughly 170,000 light-years from Earth.
The
highest-resolution-yet temperature map and images of Saturn’s icy moon
Mimas obtained by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft reveal surprising patterns
on the surface of the small moon, including unexpected hot regions that
resemble “Pac-Man” eating a dot, and striking bands of light and dark in
crater walls.The left portion of this image shows Mimas in visible
light, an image that has drawn comparisons to the “Star Wars” Death
Star. The right portion shows the new temperature map, which resembles
1980s video game icon “Pac Man.”
Detail
view of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. This is a false-color satellite
image, acquired by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and
Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on March 10, 2010.
At
94 kilometers (58 miles) by 39 kilometers (24 miles) in size, the B-09B
iceberg is comparable to the state of Rhode Island, which is wider but
not quite so long. After lingering near the Mertz Glacier in Eastern
Antarctica for several years, the massive iceberg collided with the
glacier tongue on February 12 or 13, breaking it away from the rest of
the glacier. The former glacier tongue formed a new iceberg nearly as
large as B-09B. These images, all from the Moderate Resolution Imaging
Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor on NASA’s Aqua satellite, show the
iceberg and glacier tongue immediately before and after the
collision.The iceberg formed from the Mertz Glacier Tongue is 78
kilometers (48 miles) long by 39 kilometers (24 miles) wide and has a
mass of 700-800 billion tons, reported BBC News. The glacier tongue had
previously contributed to keeping a section of the ocean free of ice, a
condition known as a polynya. The polynya provided a significant feeding
site for wildlife like penguins. The shorter tongue may not protect the
area from sea ice, reducing or even eliminating the polynya and the
access to food it provided
Hubble
has snapped a spectacular view of M 66, the largest “player” of the Leo
Triplet, and a galaxy with an unusual anatomy: it displays asymmetric
spiral arms and an apparently displaced core. The peculiar anatomy is
most likely caused by the gravitational pull of the other two members of
the trio.
The unusual spiral galaxy, Messier 66, is located at a distance of about 35 million light-years in the constellation of Leo. Together with Messier 65 and NGC 3628, Messier 66 is the member of the Leo Triplet, a trio of interacting spiral galaxies, part of the larger Messier 66 group. Messier 66 wins in size over its fellow triplets — it is about 100 000 light-years across.This is a composite of images obtained through the following filters: 814W (near infrared), 555W (green) and H-alpha (showing the glowing of the hydrogen gas). They have been combined so to represent the real colours of the galaxy.
A
long-exposure Hubble Space Telescope image shows a majestic face-on
spiral galaxy located deep within the Coma Cluster of galaxies, which
lies 320 million light-years away in the northern constellation Coma
Berenices.
The galaxy, known as NGC 4911, contains rich lanes of dust and gas near its center. These are silhouetted against glowing newborn star clusters and iridescent pink clouds of hydrogen, the existence of which indicates ongoing star formation. Hubble has also captured the outer spiral arms of NGC 4911, along with thousands of other galaxies of varying sizes. The high resolution of Hubble's cameras, paired with considerably long exposures, made it possible to observe these faint details.
NGC 4911 and other spirals near the center of the cluster are being transformed by the gravitational tug of their neighbors. In the case of NGC 4911, wispy arcs of the galaxy's outer spiral arms are being pulled and distorted by forces from a companion galaxy (NGC 4911A), to the upper right. The resultant stripped material will eventually be dispersed throughout the core of the Coma Cluster, where it will fuel the intergalactic populations of stars and star clusters.
The Coma Cluster is home to almost 1,000 galaxies, making it one of the densest collections of galaxies in the nearby universe. It continues to transform galaxies at the present epoch, due to the interactions of close-proximity galaxy systems within the dense cluster. Vigorous star formation is triggered in such collisions.
The
Carina Nebula is a star-forming region in the Sagittarius-Carina arm of
the Milky Way that is 7,500 light years from Earth, and more than
14,000 stars in the region.
This
image of Earth’s city lights was created with data from the Defense
Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) Operational Linescan System
(OLS). Originally designed to view clouds by moonlight, the OLS is also
used to map the locations of permanent lights on the Earth’s surface.
The brightest areas of the Earth are the most urbanized, but not necessarily the most populated. (Compare western Europe with China and India.) Cities tend to grow along coastlines and transportation networks. Even without the underlying map, the outlines of many continents would still be visible. The United States interstate highway system appears as a lattice connecting the brighter dots of city centers. In Russia, the Trans-Siberian railroad is a thin line stretching from Moscow through the center of Asia to Vladivostok. The Nile River, from the Aswan Dam to the Mediterranean Sea, is another bright thread through an otherwise dark region.Even more than 100 years after the invention of the electric light, some regions remain thinly populated and unlit. Antarctica is entirely dark. The interior jungles of Africa and South America are mostly dark, but lights are beginning to appear there. Deserts in Africa, Arabia, Australia, Mongolia, and the United States are poorly lit as well (except along the coast), along with the boreal forests of Canada and Russia, and the great mountains of the Himalaya.
Viewed
from space, the most striking feature of our planet is the water. In
both liquid and frozen form, it covers 75% of the Earth’s surface. It
fills the sky with clouds. Water is practically everywhere on Earth,
from inside the rocky crust to inside our cells.
This detailed, photo-like view of Earth is based largely on observations from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. It is one of many images of our watery world featured in a new story examining water in all of its forms and functions. Here is an excerpt: “In all, the Earth’s water content is about 1.39 billion cubic kilometers (331 million cubic miles), with the bulk of it, about 96.5%, being in the global oceans. As for the rest, approximately 1.7% is stored in the polar icecaps, glaciers, and permanent snow, and another 1.7% is stored in groundwater, lakes, rivers, streams, and soil.
Only a thousandth of 1% of the water on Earth exists as water vapor in the atmosphere. Despite its small amount, this water vapor has a huge influence on the planet. Water vapor is a powerful greenhouse gas, and it is a major driver of the Earth’s weather and climate as it travels around the globe, transporting heat with it.For human needs, the amount of freshwater for drinking and agriculture is particularly important. Freshwater exists in lakes, rivers, groundwater, and frozen as snow and ice. Estimates of groundwater are particularly difficult to make, and they vary widely. Groundwater may constitute anywhere from approximately 22 to 30% of fresh water, with ice accounting for most of the remaining 78 to 70%.”
Huge Eruptive Prominence Seen on Sun
The Crab Nebula
The orange filaments are the tattered remains of the star and consist mostly of hydrogen. The rapidly spinning neutron star embedded in the center of the nebula is the dynamo powering the nebula’s eerie interior bluish glow. The blue light comes from electrons whirling at nearly the speed of light around magnetic field lines from the neutron star. The neutron star, like a lighthouse, ejects twin beams of radiation that appear to pulse 30 times a second due to the neutron star’s rotation. A neutron star is the crushed ultra-dense core of the exploded star.
The Crab Nebula derived its name from its appearance in a drawing made by Irish astronomer Lord Rosse in 1844, using a 36-inch telescope. When viewed by Hubble, as well as by large ground-based telescopes such as the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, the Crab Nebula takes on a more detailed appearance that yields clues into the spectacular demise of a star, 6,500 light-years away.The newly composed image was assembled from 24 individual Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 exposures taken in October 1999, January 2000, and December 2000. The colors in the image indicate the different elements that were expelled during the explosion. Blue in the filaments in the outer part of the nebula represents neutral oxygen, green is singly-ionized sulfur, and red indicates doubly-ionized oxygen
Planet Earth
Much of the information contained in this image came from a single remote-sensing device-NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS. Flying over 700 km above the Earth onboard the Terra satellite, MODIS provides an integrated tool for observing a variety of terrestrial, oceanic, and atmospheric features of the Earth. The land and coastal ocean portions of these images are based on surface observations collected from June through September 2001 and combined, or composited, every eight days to compensate for clouds that might block the sensor’s view of the surface on any single day.Two different types of ocean data were used in these images: shallow water true color data, and global ocean color (or chlorophyll) data. Topographic shading is based on the GTOPO 30 elevation dataset compiled by the U.S. Geological Survey’s EROS Data Center. MODIS observations of polar sea ice were combined with observations of Antarctica made by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s AVHRR sensor—the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer. The cloud image is a composite of two days of imagery collected in visible light wavelengths and a third day of thermal infra-red imagery over the poles. Global city lights, derived from 9 months of observations from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, are superimposed on a darkened land surface map.
Typhoon Nabi
Manam Volcano, Papua New Guinea
Located 13 kilometers (8 miles) off the coast of mainland Papua New Guinea, Manam forms an island 10 kilometers (6 miles) wide. It is a stratovolcano. The volcano has two summit craters, and although both are active, most historical eruptions have arisen from the southern crater.NASA Earth Observatory image created by Jesse Allen, using EO-1 ALI data provided courtesy of the NASA EO-1 team. Caption by Michon Scott. Instrument: EO-1 – ALI
Phytoplankton Bloom in the Barents Sea
The variations in color are caused by different species and concentrations of phytoplankton. The bright blue colors are probably from coccolithophores, a type of phytoplankton that is coated in a chalky shell that reflects light, turning the ocean a milky turquoise. Coccolithophores dominate the Barents Sea in August. Shades of green are likely from diatoms, another type of phytoplankton. Diatoms usually dominate the Barents Sea earlier in the year, giving way to coccolithophores in the late summer. However, field measurements of previous August blooms have also turned up high concentrations of diatoms.
The Barents Sea is a shallow sea sandwiched between the coastline of northern Russia and Scandinavia and the islands of Svalbard, Franz Josef Land, and Novaya Zemlya. Within the shallow basin, currents carrying warm, salty water from the Atlantic collide with currents carrying cold, fresher water from the Arctic. During the winter, strong winds drive the currents and mix the waters. When winter’s sea ice retreats and light returns in the spring, diatoms thrive, typically peaking in a large bloom in late May.
The shift between diatoms and coccolithophores occurs as the Barents Sea changes during the summer months. Throughout summer, perpetual light falls on the waters, gradually warming the surface. Eventually, the ocean stratifies into layers, with warm water sitting on top of cooler water. The diatoms deplete most of the nutrients in the surface waters and stop growing. Coccolithophores, on the other hand, do well in warm, nutrient-depleted water with a lot of light. In the Barents Sea, these conditions are strongest in August.The shifting conditions and corresponding change in species lead to strikingly beautiful multicolored blooms such as this one. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired this image.
The Tarantula Nebula
Saturn’s Death Star/Pac-Man Moon
Detail of the Kamchatka Peninsula
10. Iceberg Collision at Mertz Glacier Tongue, Antarctica
The Messier 66 Spiral Galaxy
The unusual spiral galaxy, Messier 66, is located at a distance of about 35 million light-years in the constellation of Leo. Together with Messier 65 and NGC 3628, Messier 66 is the member of the Leo Triplet, a trio of interacting spiral galaxies, part of the larger Messier 66 group. Messier 66 wins in size over its fellow triplets — it is about 100 000 light-years across.This is a composite of images obtained through the following filters: 814W (near infrared), 555W (green) and H-alpha (showing the glowing of the hydrogen gas). They have been combined so to represent the real colours of the galaxy.
NGC 4911
The galaxy, known as NGC 4911, contains rich lanes of dust and gas near its center. These are silhouetted against glowing newborn star clusters and iridescent pink clouds of hydrogen, the existence of which indicates ongoing star formation. Hubble has also captured the outer spiral arms of NGC 4911, along with thousands of other galaxies of varying sizes. The high resolution of Hubble's cameras, paired with considerably long exposures, made it possible to observe these faint details.
NGC 4911 and other spirals near the center of the cluster are being transformed by the gravitational tug of their neighbors. In the case of NGC 4911, wispy arcs of the galaxy's outer spiral arms are being pulled and distorted by forces from a companion galaxy (NGC 4911A), to the upper right. The resultant stripped material will eventually be dispersed throughout the core of the Coma Cluster, where it will fuel the intergalactic populations of stars and star clusters.
The Coma Cluster is home to almost 1,000 galaxies, making it one of the densest collections of galaxies in the nearby universe. It continues to transform galaxies at the present epoch, due to the interactions of close-proximity galaxy systems within the dense cluster. Vigorous star formation is triggered in such collisions.
Carina Nebula
Permanent Light on Earth’s Surface
The brightest areas of the Earth are the most urbanized, but not necessarily the most populated. (Compare western Europe with China and India.) Cities tend to grow along coastlines and transportation networks. Even without the underlying map, the outlines of many continents would still be visible. The United States interstate highway system appears as a lattice connecting the brighter dots of city centers. In Russia, the Trans-Siberian railroad is a thin line stretching from Moscow through the center of Asia to Vladivostok. The Nile River, from the Aswan Dam to the Mediterranean Sea, is another bright thread through an otherwise dark region.Even more than 100 years after the invention of the electric light, some regions remain thinly populated and unlit. Antarctica is entirely dark. The interior jungles of Africa and South America are mostly dark, but lights are beginning to appear there. Deserts in Africa, Arabia, Australia, Mongolia, and the United States are poorly lit as well (except along the coast), along with the boreal forests of Canada and Russia, and the great mountains of the Himalaya.
Earth: The Water Planet
This detailed, photo-like view of Earth is based largely on observations from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. It is one of many images of our watery world featured in a new story examining water in all of its forms and functions. Here is an excerpt: “In all, the Earth’s water content is about 1.39 billion cubic kilometers (331 million cubic miles), with the bulk of it, about 96.5%, being in the global oceans. As for the rest, approximately 1.7% is stored in the polar icecaps, glaciers, and permanent snow, and another 1.7% is stored in groundwater, lakes, rivers, streams, and soil.
Only a thousandth of 1% of the water on Earth exists as water vapor in the atmosphere. Despite its small amount, this water vapor has a huge influence on the planet. Water vapor is a powerful greenhouse gas, and it is a major driver of the Earth’s weather and climate as it travels around the globe, transporting heat with it.For human needs, the amount of freshwater for drinking and agriculture is particularly important. Freshwater exists in lakes, rivers, groundwater, and frozen as snow and ice. Estimates of groundwater are particularly difficult to make, and they vary widely. Groundwater may constitute anywhere from approximately 22 to 30% of fresh water, with ice accounting for most of the remaining 78 to 70%.”
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