The Horsehead Nebula from Blue to Infrared

One of the most identifiable nebulae in the sky, the Horsehead Nebula in Orion, is part of a large, dark, molecular cloud. Also known as Barnard 33, the unusual shape was first discovered on a photographic plate in the late 1800s. The red glow originates from hydrogen gas predominantly behind the nebula, ionized by the nearby bright star Sigma Orionis. The darkness of the Horsehead is caused mostly by thick dust, although the lower part of the Horsehead's neck casts a shadow to the left. Streams of gas leaving the nebula are funneled by a strong magnetic field. Bright spots in the Horsehead Nebula's base are young stars just in the process of forming. Light takes about 1,500 years to reach us from the Horsehead Nebula. The above image is a digital combination of images taken in blue, green, red, and hydrogen-alpha light from the Argentina, and an image taken in infrared light by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope.

Rho Ophiuchi Wide Field

The clouds surrounding the star system Rho Ophiuchi compose one of the closest star forming regions. Rho Ophiuchi itself is a binary star system visible in the light-colored region on the image right. The star system, located only 400 light years away, is distinguished by its colorful surroundings, which include a red emission nebula and numerous light and dark brown dust lanes. Near the upper right of the Rho Ophiuchi molecular cloud system is the yellow star Antares, while a distant but coincidently-superposed globular cluster of stars, M4, is visible between Antares and the red emission nebula. Near the image bottom lies IC 4592, the Blue Horsehead nebula. The blue glow that surrounds the Blue Horsehead's eye -- and other stars around the image -- is a reflection nebula composed of fine dust. On the above image left is a geometrically angled reflection nebula cataloged as Sharpless 1. Here, the bright star near the dust vortex creates the light of surrounding reflection nebula. Although most of these features are visible through a small telescope pointed toward the constellations of Ophiuchus, Scorpius, and Sagittarius, the only way to see the intricate details of the dust swirls, as featured above, is to use a long exposure camera.

NASA Spacecraft Just One Year Away from Pluto

Less than a year from now, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft will make the first-ever visit to Pluto, potentially revolutionizing scientists' understanding of the dwarf planet.
Because Pluto is so far away — it orbits the sun at an average distance of 3.65 billion miles (5.87 billion kilometers) — many questions about the dwarf planet's composition and activity remain unanswered. Researchers hope New Horizons will lay some of those questions to rest when it flies by Pluto on July 15, 2015.
Many predictions have been made by the science community, including possible rings, geyser eruptions, and even lakes,"  Adriana Ocampo, program executive for NASA's New Frontiers program, said in a statement. "Whatever we find, I believe Pluto and its satellites will surpass all our expectations and surprise us beyond our imagination.
Orbiting the sun once every 248 years, Pluto lies outside the reach of most visible instruments. The best images from NASA's famous Hubble Space Telescope simply show Pluto's spherical shape and reddish color. Changes in the dwarf planet's color patterns over the years hint that something is happening there, but no one knows exactly what.
 By late April 2015, New Horizons will be close enough to Pluto and its moons to capture pictures rivaling those of Hubble. On July 14, 2015, the craft will make a close flyby of the icy world, ultimately zooming within about 6,200 miles (10,000 kilometers) of its surface. If it cruised past Earth at that range, New Horizons would be able to recognize individual buildings and their shapes.
 Because Pluto has never been visited up-close by a spacecraft from Earth, everything we see will be a first," Ocampo said. "I know this will be an astonishing experience full of history-making moments." New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, likened the upcoming visit to the way Mariner 4revolutionized understanding of Marsin July 1965. At the time, many people thought the Red Planet was a life-friendly world possibly harboring liquid water and even plants. The New Horizons flyby could change perceptions of Pluto just as dramatically, Stern said

The flight in won't be without its challenges. Since New Horizons launched in 2006, two new moons have been discovered orbiting Pluto, upping the total known satellite countto five: Charon, Nix, Kerberos, Styxand Hydra. As many as 10 other moonscould still await detection in the system, one study suggested.
According to simulations, meteorites striking Pluto's moons could send tiny rocks flying into space, where many of them would enter orbit around the dwarf planet. The debris field likely changes with time as it orbits, growing larger as new material is added. As the New Horizons probe gets closer and closer to Pluto, the mission team will need to keep watch on the system in case evasive maneuvers are required.
"The New Horizons team continues to do a magnificent job in keeping the spacecraft healthy and ready for this incredible rendezvous," said Ocampo. "The spacecraft is in good hands."

WOW The SUN!

What a powerful sight!
Nothing very unusual -- it just threw a filament. Toward the middle of 2012, a long standing solar filament suddenly erupted into space producing an energetic Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). The filament had been held up for days by the Sun's ever changing magnetic field and the timing of the eruption was unexpected. Watched closely by the Sun-orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory, the resulting explosion shot electrons and ions into the Solar System, some of which arrived at Earth three days later and impacted Earth's magnetosphere, causing visible aurorae. Loops of plasma surrounding an active region can be seen above the erupting filament in the ultraviolet image. Over the past week the number of sunspots visible on the Sun unexpectedly dropped to zero, causing speculation that the Sun has now passed a very unusual solar maximum, the time in the Sun's 11-year cycle when it is most active. Sun spot are areas of very strong magnetic field it so strong it causes that area of the Sun to be cooler than its surrounding,so they appear dark! If you could move one away from the sun it would be very bright.Here is a pic that show what the sun magnetic field look like.It very crazy!!

Bright Center

Monday, July 14, 2014: Nearby spiral galaxy NGC 1433 shines in a view obtained by NASA/ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The galaxy lies about 32 million light-years from Earth, and researchers place in a class of very active galaxy known as a Seyfert galaxy, which represents 10% of all galaxies. These deep-sky objects possess very bright, luminous centers comparable to that of our galaxy, the Milky Way. Hubble Space Telescope obtained the image using a combination of ultraviolet, visible, and infrared light. NGC 1433 makes up part of a survey of 50 nearby galaxies known as the Legacy ExtraGalactic UV Survey (LEGUS). Image released July 7, 2014.

The subsurface ocean inside Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, could be as salty as any body of water here on Earth

Gravity data collected by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft suggest that Titan’s ocean must have an extremely high density. Salt water has a higher density than fresh water because the presence of salt adds more mass to a given amount of water.
Researchers think the ocean could be as salty as the Dead Sea of Israel and Jordan, with a high concentration of dissolved salts made of sulfur, sodium and potassium.
The average salt concentration in Earth’s oceans is around 3.5 percent, but parts of the Dead Sea can reach 40 percent salinity.
Titan is surrounded by an ice shell, but below the surface, scientists believe there is an ocean of liquid water that could be just as salty as the Dead Sea.

Cassini collected gravity and topography data during its flybys of Titan over the past 10 years, allowing researchers to create a new model of the structure of the moon’s outer icy shell.
The new model suggests that the thickness of the icy crust varies across the moon’s surface. This means that the ocean underneath is probably in the process of freezing, too. If the ocean is freezing, it would decrease the chances that the ocean could support life, since freezing would limit the exchange of materials between the water and the surface!!!


The new data could also provide some insight into Titan’s unique atmosphere, which is  consistently around 5 percent methane. It is still a mystery how Titan maintains methane in its atmosphere since sunlight quickly breaks up the gas.
Scientists believe some kind of natural process must be cycling the methane into the atmosphere; from there, it falls back down to the surface as methane rain, similar to the water cycle on Earth. Since Titan’s surface is mostly frozen, researchers think any methane rising into the atmosphere must be coming from a few scattered unfrozen "hot spots."
 The $3.2 billion Cassini mission launched in 1997 and arrived in orbit around Saturn in 2004. The mission also dropped a probe named Huygens onto the surface of Titan in January 2005.

 How the surface look like in this art photo.The Water is methane  which on Earth its a gas but the temp on the surface is very cold.

Doomed Star Eta Carinae

Eta Carinae may be about to explode. But no one knows when - it may be next year, it may be one million years from now. Eta Carinae's mass - about 100 times greater than our Sun - makes it an excellent candidate for a full blown supernova. Historical records do show that about 150 years ago Eta Carinae underwent an unusual outburst that made it one of the brightest stars in the southern sky. Eta Carinae, in the Keyhole Nebula, is the only star currently thought to emit natural LASER light. This image, taken in 1996, brought out new details in the unusual nebula that surrounds this rogue star. Now clearly visible are two distinct lobes, a hot central region, and strange radial streaks. The lobes are filled with lanes of gas and dust which absorb the blue and ultraviolet light emitted near the center. The streaks remain unexplained.(NGC 3372 )

NGC 4651: The Umbrella Galaxy

Spiral galaxy NGC 4651 is a mere 62 million light-years distant, toward the well-groomed northern constellation Coma Berenices. About the size of our Milky Way, this island universe is seen to have a faint umbrella-shaped structure that seems to extend (left) some 100 thousand light-years beyond the bright galactic disk. The giant cosmic umbrella is now known to be composed of tidal star streams - extensive trails of stars gravitationally stripped from a smaller satellite galaxy. The small galaxy was eventually torn apart in repeated encounters as it swept back and forth on eccentric orbits through NGC 4651. In fact, the picture insert zooms in on the smaller galaxy's remnant core, identified in an extensive exploration of the system, using data from the large Subaru and Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea. Work begun by a remarkable collaboration of amateur and professional astronomers to image faint structures around bright galaxies suggests that even in nearby galaxies, tidal star streams are common markers of such galactic mergers. The result is explained by models of galaxy formation that also apply to our own Milky Way.