Walking On Air

http://youtu.be/hWz5ltE_I4c

This video features a series of time lapse sequences photographed by the Expedition 30 crew aboard the International Space Station. Set to the song "Walking in the Air," by Howard Blake, the video takes viewers around the world, through auroras, and over dazzling lightning displays. The sequences are as follows: :01 -- Stars over southern United States :08 -- US west coast to Canada :21 -- Central Europe to the Middle East :36 -- Aurora Australis over the Indian Ocean :54 -- Storms over Africa 1:08 -- Central United States 1:20 -- Midwest United States 1:33 -- United Kingdom to Baltic Sea 1:46 -- Moonset 1:55 -- Northern United States to Eastern Canada 2:12 -- Aurora Australis over the Indian Ocean 2:32 -- Comet Lovejoy 2:53 -- Aurora Borealis over Hudson Bay 3:06 -- United Kingdom to Central Europe Song lyrics: We're walking in the air We're floating in the moonlit sky The people far below are sleeping as we fly I'm holding very tight I'm riding in the midnight blue I'm finding I can fly so high above with you Far across the world The villages go by like dreams The rivers and the hills The forests and the streams Children gaze open mouth Taken by surprise Nobody down below believes their eyes We're surffing in the air We're swimming in the frozen sky We're drifting over icy Mountain floating by Suddenly swooping low on an ocean deep Arousing of a mighty monster from its sleep We're walking in the air We're floating in the midnight sky And everyone who sees us greets us as we fly This video can also be seen on the NASA website: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=141042671

Mooi filmpje van de maan‏.

Hieronder een mooi filmpje van de maan

Je kan de kwaliteit best wijzigen want standaard wordt ie afgespeeld op 360 p. Je kan gaan tot 720 p (HD beelden)

http://youtu.be/0MPcgDE6IyA

♥

Brave New World With stephen hawking: 3- deilge docu

Brave New World With stephen hawking - [s1e1] 





Brave New World With Stephen Hawking [s1e2]





Brave New World With stephen hawking - [s1e3]

Thank you to my new friend Kit Miller of The Astrology News who made the suggestion that the Healing Rays that I work with are also associated with Planetary Energies. Very cool! Here is my intuitive take on them.

Emerald Ray = Jupiter (Kit got me started, as this was her suggestion. This makes perfect sense as Jupiter is associated with the healing AA Raphael, and also with the Guru.)

Violet Flame = Venus (Kwan Yin is associated with this Ray, so that also connects very nicely.)

Indigo Ray = Saturn (not exactly sure why, but it fits. It has to do with focus and discipline.)

Crystal Ray = Uranus (for it's lightning fast and innovative nature.)

Blue Ray = Neptune (for it's healing and empathic nature. Neptune is also associated with Pisces and the color blue.)

Diamond Heart/Ray = Pluto (for getting to the "heart" of the matter; and also for its transmutational properties, as diamonds are created out of compressed denser materials.)

Bron: https://www.facebook.com/starsandvibes

Leuke docu met Frank de Winne en Andre Kuipers.

http://collegerama.tudelft.nl/mediasite/SilverlightPlayer/Default.aspx?peid=2a33e6fb6e73411280b289c6b50ee4141d


Deze is leuk vooral eerste deel.

Ik vond deze link hier: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sterrenvereniging-Astra-Alteria/105398296209923

Solar System.

Solar System

The Whole Story

Copy credit : Marcus Chown

Bron:

https://www.facebook.com/Milky way scientists

Guidestar 01- 2012.

Open publication - Free publishing - More sterrenkunde

http://issuu.com/patrickjaecques/docs/guidestar01-2012?mode=window&backgroundColor=%23222222

Voor nog meer boeken op het net: http://issuu.com/patrickjaecques

Flocculent spiral NGC 2841

Bron: http://spacetelescope.org/news/heic1104/

Standing out from the Crowd.

The compact nature of globular clusters is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, having so many stars of a similar age in one bundle gives astronomers insights into the chemical makeup of our galaxy in its early history. But, at the same time, the high density of stars in the cores of globulars also makes it difficult for astronomers to resolve individual stars.

The core of NGC 6642, shown here in this Hubble Space Telescope image, is particularly dense, making this globular a difficult observational target for most telescopes. Furthermore, it occupies a very central position in our galaxy, which means that images inadvertently capture many stars that don’t belong to the cluster — these “field stars” just get in the way.

However, using Hubble’s powerful Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), astronomers can identify and remove such distracting field stars, and resolve the cluster’s dense core in unprecedented detail. Using Hubble’s ACS, astronomers have already made many interesting finds about NGC 6642. For example, many “blue stragglers” (stars which seemingly lag behind in their rate of aging) have been spotted in this globular, and it is known to be lacking in low-mass stars.

This picture was created from visible and infrared images taken with the Wide Field Channel of the Advanced Camera for Surveys. The field of view is approximately 1.6 by 1.6 arcminutes.

Credit:

ESA/Hubble & NASA

‘Deeltjes reizen sneller dan het licht’

Het deeltjeslab CERN in Genève heeft de wetenschappelijke wereld op zijn grondvesten doen schudden. Een Italiaanse studie suggereert dat neutrino’s sneller kunnen bewegen dan het licht. Neutrino’s zijn vrijwel massaloze deeltjes. In het spraakmakende Opera-experiment worden in CERN zogeheten muonneutrino’s gecreëerd. Zij vliegen dwars door de aarde over een afstand van 730 kilometer naar een detector in het ondergrondse lab in Gran Sasso.

Mocht het resultaat uit het Opera-experiment werkelijk kloppen, is daarmee de relativiteitstheorie van Albert Einstein in één klap omvergeblazen. Tevens zou het in theorie mogelijk zijn om terug in de tijd te reizen.
Deel deze gallery op Facebook.

Bron: http://nieuws.nl.msn.com/gallery-section/tijdreizen-mogelijk

Leuke pdf - jes.

Gevonden op deze site: http://www.astronomie.be/

1: De zon onze dagster:

http://www.astrolab.be/educatief/Educatieve%20Brochures/AstroLAB%20IRIS%20-%20Educatieve%20brochure%201%20-%20De%20Zon.pdf

2: licht in de sterrenkunde:

http://www.astrolab.be/educatief/Educatieve%20Brochures/AstroLAB%20IRIS%20-%20Educatieve%20brochure%202%20-%20Licht%20in%20de%20Sterrenkunde.pdf

3 is er niet!!! Helaas pindakaas.

4: Leuke astrofotografie projecten:

http://www.astrolab.be/educatief/Educatieve%20Brochures/AstroLAB%20IRIS%20-%20Educatieve%20brochure%204%20-%20Leuke%20Astrofotografie%20Projecten.pdf

5: Deep-sky fotografie fotografie met digitale camera? Kom Nou!

http://www.astrolab.be/educatief/Educatieve%20Brochures/AstroLAB%20IRIS%20-%20Educatieve%20brochure%205%20-%20DSLR%20Deep-Sky.pdf

Wetenschappers halen licht uit ‘niets’

Onderzoekers hebben aangetoond dat het mogelijk is om iets uit ‘niets’ te halen: ze haalden energie uit een lege ruimte.

Iets uit niets halen. Kan dat? Jawel, zolang u maar ontzettend snel beweegt. 41 jaar geleden voorspelden onderzoekers al dat dit alles mogelijk was. Nu hebben wetenschappers het ook aangetoond.

Niet leeg
Niets bestaat namelijk eigenlijk niet. Lege ruimte is niet leeg. In lege ruimte bevinden zich deeltjes die zijn en dan weer niet zijn. Zelfs een vacuüm vertoont hele kleine fluctuaties in energie.

WIST U DAT?

…onlangs weer gebleken is dat deeltjes echt sneller kunnen reizen dan het licht?

Spiegels
Dat is al eens aangetoond met twee spiegels die op een kleine afstand tot elkaar in een vacuüm werden gezet. Deze spiegels werden dan naar elkaar toegetrokken, omdat in de kleine ruimte tussen de spiegels minder deeltjes (fotonen in dit geval) zaten dan elders rondom de spiegels. De druk aan de buitenzijde was dan ook groter dan tussen de spiegels en hierdoor worden de spiegels tegen elkaar aangedrukt. Het bewijs dat er energie is in een vacuüm.

Fotonen
Onderzoekers zijn nu echter nog een stap verder gegaan, zo is in het blad Nature te lezen. Ze hebben energie uit zo’n vacuüm gehaald. “Het was een heel moeilijk technisch experiment,” moet onderzoeker Chris Wilson bekennen. “We waren heel blij toen het gelukt was.”

Voor het experiment was maar één spiegel nodig. Deze moest met de snelheid van het licht reizen. De bewegingsenergie wordt dan geabsorbeerd door de fotonen en zij geven die energie weer af door paren echte fotonen te vormen. De onderzoekers gebruikten geen spiegel voor hun experiment, maar maakten gebruik van een supergeleidend elektrisch circuit met een oscillator die de afstand die een elektron door het circuit moet afleggen heel snel kon veranderen. De onderzoeker lieten de elektron heel snel reizen (met ongeveer een kwart van de snelheid van het licht) en dat was snel genoeg om bewegingsenergie over te brengen op fotonen. “Deeltjes werden in paren geproduceerd en kwamen direct uit het vacuüm,” vertelt Wilson. En dat is toch wel een doorbraak: mogelijk kan het onderzoekers helpen om een beter beeld te krijgen van donkere energie. Onderzoekers vermoeden namelijk dat donkere energie mede mogelijk wordt gemaakt door de energie van virtuele fotonen.

Geschreven door Caroline Hoek op 21 november 2011 om 11:56 uur

Bron: http://www.scientias.nl/

Parallel Universes, Galaxies, Stars, Planets and Black Energy

http://youtu.be/iiHP0C4EEdA

'The greatest unsolved mysteries of the universe': Dr Paul Francis at ANU, March 2010

http://youtu.be/n19HIHCpOVE

Dr Quantum - Double Slit Experiment

http://youtu.be/DfPeprQ7oGc

Dr Quantum - Double Slit Experiment

This clip is from: "What The Bleep Do We Know!?: Down The Rabbit Hole" and is used for educational purposes. 
http://www.whatthebleep.com/

Stars - Peaceful Music

http://youtu.be/peRwo-jbL5M

Foto's

Be yourself magazines.

http://www.wix.com/itsyouinside/b-yourself/magazine

Nieuw magazine van november is er.

Open publication - Free publishing

Alle magazines op een rij: http://issuu.com/itsyouinside/docs/b-yourself_magazine_nr_10_november_2011/1#share

Deze is van oktober:

Open publication - Free publishing - More bewust

Star Size Comparison HD

Leuke linkjes.

Astronomie – wetenschap.

https://sites.google.com/site/aquilalommel/wie-zijn-wij

http://sterrenkunde.startkabel.nl/

http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruimtevaart

http://allesoversterrenkunde.nl/

http://www.reuzenplaneten.nl/

http://www.troybrophy.com/projects/solarsystem/planetaryscale.html

http://www.urania.be/

http://www.mira.be/

http://www.astron.nl/

http://www.thuisexperimenteren.nl/fysica.htm

Hubble ziet extreem ver sterrenstelsel in piepjong heelal

Astronomen hebben met ruimtetelescoop Hubble een sterrenstelsel gevonden dat 480 miljoen jaar na de oerknal al bestond.

Daarmee is het stelsel het verst van ons verwijderde en het vroegst ontstane sterrenstelsel dat we tot nu toe hebben waargenomen. Bijzonder is echter vooral dat het om maar één stelsel gaat. Op basis van eerdere waarnemingen zou je er namelijk minstens een paar verwachten.

Waar het bij dit onderzoek om draait, is de vraag wanneer de eerste sterrenstelsels in ons inmiddels 13,7 miljard jaar oude heelal ontstonden. Om die te beantwoorden, is het van belang om voor allerlei verschillende tijdstippen na de oerknal het aantal stelsels te ‘turven’. Hoeveel sterrenstelsels waren er één miljard jaar na de oerknal? Hoeveel 750 miljoen jaar na de oerknal? Enzovoort.

Een beperking daarbij is dat hoe verder je het verleden in wilt gaan, hoe dieper je het heelal in moet kijken. Dat is een gevolg van het gegeven dat licht tijd nodig heeft om afstanden te overbruggen. Zo heeft zonlicht acht minuten nodig om de aarde te bereiken, met als gevolg dat we de zon zien zoals hij acht minuten geleden was. Kijken we naar de veel verder weg gelegen sterren aan de nachtelijke hemel, dan zien we die zoals ze jaren geleden waren. En willen we het heelal zien zoals het enkele honderden miljoenen jaren na de oerknal was, dan moeten we nóg veel verder kijken; zo ver als nodig is om ervoor te zorgen dat licht dat in de gewenste periode werd uitgezonden ons nu bereikt.

Sterrenkundige Rychard Bouwens van de Universiteit Leiden en collega’s hebben dat laatste gedaan, voor het tijdstip van 480 miljoen jaar na de oerknal. Daartoe lieten ze de Hubble Space Telescope met een in mei 2009 geïnstalleerde infraroodcamera 87 uur naar hetzelfde plekje aan de hemel turen. De reden daarvoor: het gaat hier om objecten op zulke grote afstanden, dat je een extreem lange belichtingstijd nodig hebt om er nog íéts van te kunnen zien. De oogst van deze onderneming, zoals gezegd: één enkel sterrenstelsel. (Tenminste, daar lijkt het op; er is een geschatte kans van 20 procent dat we met iets anders te maken hebben.)

Wat deze vondst interessant maakt, is dat eerdere waarnemingen van 630 miljoen jaar na de oerknal enkele tientallen sterrenstelsels aan het licht brachten, terwijl er voor de periode van 900 tot 1200 miljoen jaar na de oerknal zelfs enkele duizenden zijn gevonden. Oftewel: hoe langer na de oerknal, hoe meer sterrenstelsels. Logisch ook; toen het heelal ontstond, waren er geen sterrenstelsels, enkele miljarden jaren later waren er talloze; in de tussentijd moeten ze dus stukje bij beetje zijn ontstaan. Maar trek je die trend door naar het verleden, dan zou je bij 480 miljoen jaar na de oerknal op zijn minst een paar sterrenstelsels verwachten – niet ééntje-of-misschien-zelfs-geen.

De conclusie die we uit dit gebrek aan sterrenstelsels kunnen trekken: in de periode van 480 miljoen jaar na de oerknal tot enkele honderden miljoenen jaren later ontstonden sterrenstelsels rapper dan verwacht. En: het stelsel dat Bouwens en collega’s hebben gevonden, zou weleens een van de eerste exemplaren van ons heelal kunnen zijn.

Bronnen: Nature, Astronomie.nl
Beeld: G. Illingworth/R. Bouwens/HUDF09 Team/ESA/NASA

How to land humans on an asteroid

AENEA mission patch

 

25 January 2011
After a year of intensive studies, young engineers from Europe faced an unusual but challenging task on the future space exploration: can you safely transport humans to a near-Earth asteroid in an international endeavour?

The virtual mission was called AENEA – Human Exploration of a Near Earth Asteroid – and it came to completion last week during the fifth international Master SEEDS (Space Exploration and Development Systems) event at ESTEC, in Noordwijk, The Netherlands.
ESA supported this academic course to educate young engineers for industries that wish to establish their role in the international space arena.
The day before their presentations, the pupils had the opportunity to visit many of the ESTEC facilities and found the state-of-the-art Concurrent Design Facility particularly relevant to their mission design.  

Their presentations was preceded with an overview of ESA exploration activities – the Lunar Lander, Advanced Reentry Vehicle and Expert – by the head of Transportation and Exploration, Bruno Gardini.
ESA astronaut Frank De Winne, the first European commander of the International Space Station, also took to the stage and presented a well-received overview of his OasISS mission.
It was not an easy task to design a mission to transport humans safely to a near-Earth asteroid, performing extravehicular activities on its surface, scientific experiments and technological tests to extend the scientific knowledge and capabilities in space exploration and utilisation.
“The students have matured over the one-year period and developed a professional capability to handle engineering problems with a system mind”, said the SEEDS Educational Project Manager, Prof. Ernesto Vallerani.
“Now they are prepared to enter the industrial world with specific competences, engaged in advance space activities.”
 

	AENEA presentation ceremony

A multisite study

A number of elements were identified and developed to accomplish AENEA’s overall mission requirements. A few of the elements were studied in detail: mission analysis, robotic system, communications, guidance navigation control, heavy launch vehicles, transportation modules, reaction control cystems and crew habitation systems.
Work on this mission design was performed in each of the three locations (Germany, France and Italy) under the close supervision of their professors and experts from industry as well as academia.
The type of work the students performed was equivalent to pre-Phase-A, leading to the definition of a space infrastructure to support the exploration mission objectives.
 

For the duration of their studies, the students attended preparatory courses in Torino: “Understanding Space: Introduction to Space basic Concepts” and “Learning Space Systems: Fundamentals of Space Engineering”. They undertook an intensive period of preliminary design and subsequently engaged in six months of project work in Toulouse, Bremen and Torino.
Thanks to this course, young and enthusiastic people from Europe have found a role in the international space exploration initiative. Their reinforced engineering skills are needed to develop the space systems and to follow in the footsteps of their older colleagues.
Video feed of the presentation can be seen here.
 bron: esa

New material blocks light from exhibiting diffraction.

By Chris Lee | Last updated about 18 hours ago

NIST

I admit this failing: I am an optics geek, and all things light-related tend to get me... um... excited. But arecent paper in Nature Photonics presented a result that most people will find very startling: researchers have created a material which prevents light from exhibiting diffraction.

Some of you with experience in optics may be thinking that this is nothing special, because you have heard of solitons. For those of you who haven't heard of solitons, let me introduce you to them and then explain why this is not a typical soliton.

The sort of spatial soliton that most people refer to involves a wave that compensates for its own diffraction. The way this works is that the laser light has an intensity profile that is most intense near the center and least intense in the wings. If you send it through a material that is nonlinear, it will face a refractive index that will depend on the light intensity. The result is that the light creates a lens as it moves. The lens focuses the light while the natural diffraction of the light beam causes it to expand. At the right intensity, the two balance out and the light beam continues to move through the material without expanding.

But the size of the light beam that you put into the material is not the same as the light beam that you get out, since it will contract to some diameter that allows the focusing effect to balance diffraction. This size depends on how bright the light field is as well. A bright light field will contract to a smaller diameter than a weaker light field.

How does this differ from the research in the Nature Photonics paper? In the new material that the researchers made, there is no mechanism by which the diffraction is compensated. Instead, the material simply doesn't allow diffraction to occur—we will get to how this occurs later—meaning that the light field can't expand or contract. Indeed, what you put in is exactly what you get out, independent of the light intensity, making this very different from a normal soliton.

Now we get to the difficult part: how does this come about? The material consists of potassium, tantalum, and niobate, along with some impurities of copper and lithium. As the material cools after it is mixed, it creates a bunch of different regions that have slightly different arrangements in their crystalline structure, resulting in nanometer sized regions that have slightly different linear and nonlinear optical responses. The size and order of these regions depends on how fast the mix is cooled, so with some experimentation, the researchers can control the nonlinear optical properties of the material.

The end result is that, for some cooling rates, the researchers create a material that doesn't have any of the expected self focusing because the nonlinear properties vary on too fine a scale. Instead, the way the refractive index changes depends on how fast the brightness of the laser beam changes as we move out from the center of the laser beam—a property referred to as the gradient. Usually, this is very weak, but the random and very fine structure of the ceramic allows this gradient effect to dominate.

The critical thing about the gradient is that, for all normal laser beams, it is independent of the maximum intensity of the laser beam. So, it doesn't matter how intense the laser beam is, it will always form a spatial soliton that is exactly like the input beam.

The question then becomes: what do we use it for? I am not sure that the authors of the paper have a clear idea about this either. They mention possibilities for imaging, because if you focus the light at the entrance of the material, it is still focused on exiting, but I'm not quite sure how this would help. Nevertheless, it is a very cool development, and I suspect that applications will follow.

Nature Photonics, 2011

Bron: http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/01/new-material-blocks-light-from-exhibiting-diffraction.ars

Met dank aan lucas pellens en http://www.aquilalommel.tk/

Over de ISS...

Op 15 december 20:09 uur zal om 19:09 GMT (16 december om 01:09 Baikonur tijd), ESA-astronaut Paolo Nespoli vliegen op een Sojoez naar het internationale ruimtestation (ISS) voor een zes maanden durende missie. Het ISS is nu voltooid en ongeveer 50% van het ISS onder druk modules zijn 'made in Europe'. Dit verhaal geeft de huidige status van onze internationale buitenpost op de baan. Meer achtergrond informatie is te vinden op: http://www.esa.int/esaHS/iss.html

Video: Ascent - Commemorating Shuttle

Photographic documentation of a Space Shuttle launch plays a critical role in the engineering analysis and evaluation process that takes place during each and every mission. Motion and Still images enable Shuttle engineers to visually identify off-nominal events and conditions requiring corrective action to ensure mission safety and success. This imagery also provides highly inspirational and educational insight to those outside the NASA family.

Tour of the ISS

Nu heb je de gelegenheid om in het ISS ruimtevaartcomplex

eens rond te zweven. Frank de Winne is ook even te zien

in deze enorm grote behuizing....                toch speciaal

International Space Station Tour

Butterfly emerges from stellar demise in planetary nebula NGC 6302.

This celestial object looks like a delicate butterfly. But it is far from serene.

What resemble dainty butterfly wings are actually roiling cauldrons of gas heated to nearly 20 000 degrees Celsius. The gas is tearing across space at more than 950 000 kilometres per hour — fast enough to travel from Earth to the Moon in 24 minutes!

A dying star that was once about five times the mass of the Sun is at the centre of this fury. It has ejected its envelope of gases and is now unleashing a stream of ultraviolet radiation that is making the cast-off material glow. This object is an example of a planetary nebula, so-named because many of them have a round appearance resembling that of a planet when viewed through a small telescope.

The Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), a new camera aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, snapped this image of the planetary nebula, catalogued as NGC 6302, but more popularly called the Bug Nebula or the Butterfly Nebula. WFC3 was installed by NASA astronauts in May 2009, during the Servicing Mission to upgrade and repair the 19-year-old Hubble.

NGC 6302 lies within our Milky Way galaxy, roughly 3800 light-years away in the constellation of Scorpius. The glowing gas is the star's outer layers, expelled over about 2200 years. The "butterfly" stretches for more than two light-years, which is about half the distance from the Sun to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri.

The central star itself cannot be seen, because it is hidden within a doughnut-shaped ring of dust, which appears as a dark band pinching the nebula in the centre. The thick dust belt constricts the star's outflow, creating the classic "bipolar" or hourglass shape displayed by some planetary nebulae.

The star's surface temperature is estimated to be over 220 000 degrees Celsius, making it one of the hottest known stars in our galaxy. Spectroscopic observations made with ground-based telescopes show that the gas is roughly 20 000 degrees Celsius, which is unusually hot compared to a typical planetary nebula.

The WFC3 image reveals a complex history of ejections from the star. The star first evolved into a huge red giant, with a diameter of about 1000 times that of our Sun. It then lost its extended outer layers. Some of this gas was cast off from its equator at a relatively slow speed, perhaps as low as 32 000 kilometres per hour, creating the doughnut-shaped ring. Other gas was ejected perpendicular to the ring at higher speeds, producing the elongated "wings" of the butterfly-shaped structure. Later, as the central star heated up, a much faster stellar wind, a stream of charged particles travelling at more than 3.2 million kilometres per hour, ploughed through the existing wing-shaped structure, further modifying its shape.

The image also shows numerous finger-like projections pointing back to the star, which may mark denser blobs in the outflow that have resisted the pressure from the stellar wind.

The nebula's reddish outer edges are largely due to light emitted by nitrogen, which marks the coolest gas visible in the picture. WFC3 is equipped with a wide variety of filters that isolate light emitted by various chemical elements, allowing astronomers to infer properties of the nebular gas, such as its temperature, density and composition.

The white-coloured regions are areas where light is emitted by sulphur. These are regions where fast-moving gas overtakes and collides with slow-moving gas that left the star at an earlier time, producing shock waves in the gas (the bright white edges on the sides facing the central star). The white blob with the crisp edge at upper right is an example of one of those shock waves.

NGC 6302 was imaged on 27 July 2009 with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 in ultraviolet and visible light. Filters that isolate emissions from oxygen, helium, hydrogen, nitrogen and sulphur from the planetary nebula were used to create this composite image.

These Hubble observations of the planetary nebula NGC 6302 are part of the Hubble Servicing Mission 4 Early Release Observations.

Credit:

NASA, ESA and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team

Bron: http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic0910h/

ESA maakt de zon voor iedereen beschikbaar

 

A mega-filament erupts on the Sun as seen on JHelioviwer

14 December 2010
New software developed by ESA makes available online to everyone, everywhere at anytime, the entire library of images from the SOHO solar and heliospheric observatory. Just download the viewer and begin exploring the Sun.
 

	A solar prominence in JHelioviewer

JHelioviewer is new visualisation software that enables everyone to explore the Sun. Developed as part of the ESA/NASA Helioviewer Project, it provides a desktop program that enables users to call up images of the Sun from the past 15 years. More than a million images from SOHO can already be accessed, and new images from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory are being added every day. The downloadable JHelioviewer is complemented by the website Helioviewer.org, a web-based image browser.
 

A prominence arcs up from the solar surface.

Using this new software, users can create their own movies of the Sun, colour the images as they wish, and image-process the movies in real time. They can export their finished movies in various formats, and track features on the Sun by compensating for solar rotation.
“We wanted to make it easy to view solar images from different observatories and instruments, and to make it easy to make movies,” says Daniel Müller, ESA SOHO Deputy Project Scientist. “Before, it took hours to combine images from different telescopes to make a movie of the Sun for a given period. With JHelioviewer, everyone can do this in minutes. This is an interactive visual archive of the entire SOHO mission.”
 

	A prominence twists above the solar surface.

JHelioviewer is written in the Java programming language, hence the ‘J’ at the beginning of its name. It is open-source software, meaning that all its components are freely available so others can help to improve the program.
The code can even be reused for other purposes; it is already being used for Mars data and in medical research. This is because JHelioviewer does not need to download entire datasets, which can often be huge – it can just choose enough data to stream smoothly over the Internet.
 

An eruption blasts from the Sun on JHelioviewer

It also allows data to be annotated, say, solar flares of a particular magnitude to be marked or diseased tissues in medical images to be highlighted.
“The goal of JHelioviewer, and the Helioviewer Project as a whole, is to offer intuitive interfaces to large datasets from many different sources. In effect, it is a virtual observatory,” says Müller.
For more information, click here
 

Solar storms erupt from the Sun in JHelioviewer

Bron: http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMYTMRRJHG_index_0.html

Solar Prominence Eruption (JHelioviewer/ SDO AIA)

Expedition 26 Soyuz Launch (201012160002HQ)

Jingle Bells was the first song played in space

This harmonica, and these bells, are sitting in the Smithsonian Museum today. In 1965, however, they were in space, with astronauts Walter M. "Wally" Schirra Jr. and Thomas P. Stafford, who were doing a pre-Christmas mission aboard Gemini 6.

Just before Stafford and Schirra were scheduled to reenter Earth's atmosphere December 16, the pair reported they had sighted some sort of UFO. Schirra recounted the moment when Stafford contacted Mission Control in Schirra's Space, a memoir he wrote with Richard Billings:
"We have an object, looks like a satellite going from north to south, probably in polar orbit.... Looks like he might be going to re-enter soon.... You just might let me pick up that thing.... I see a command module and eight smaller modules in front. The pilot of the command module is wearing a red suit."
Then ground controllers heard the strains, both familiar and otherworldly, of "Jingle Bells." The Santa Claus plot had been hatched weeks before the Gemini 6 mission. "Wally came up with the idea," recalls Stafford, now a retired Air Force general, who chairs an International Space Station advisory group. "He could play the harmonica, and we practiced two or three times before we took off, but of course we didn't tell the guys on the ground."
"I could hear the voices at Mission Control getting tense," Stafford adds, "when I talked about sighting something else up there with us. Then, after we finished the song, [Mission Control's] Elliot See relaxed and just said, 'You're too much.'"

Thanks to leharrist for Submitterating!

Bouw je eigen windmolen.

http://www.lowtechmagazine.be/2007/10/bouw-je-eigen-1.html

Tapes van Apollo 13 vrijgegeven

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, — Tapes van Apollo 13 vrijgegeven

Wat vertellen ruimtevaarders tegen elkaar tijdens een vlucht? NASA geeft de gesprekken aan boord van haar maanmissies vrij.

De Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie NASA heeft de gesprekken aan boord van de mislukte maanmissie Apollo 13 openbaar gemaakt. Ook van de eerste succesvolle maanmissie Apollo 11 uit 1969 worden binnenkort uitgeschreven tapes vrijgegeven op de website spacelog.org.

Op dit moment zijn daar al de transcripties te vinden van gesprekken die werden opgenomen aan boord van twee ruimtemissies: Apollo 13 (1970) en Mercury 3 (1962).

Vooral Apollo 13 is interessant, omdat het om een van de eerste en meest befaamde missies naar de maan gaat. De missie werd voortijdig afgebroken nadat er een zuurstoftank scheurde en de elektrische systemen beschadigd raakten.

In de transcripties staat onder meer te lezen hoe astronaut Jack Swigert het begin van het onheil aan vluchtbegeleider Joseph P. Kerwin meedeelt (“Hey Joe. Jim vertelt dat er een walm van, je weet wel, een brandgeur hangt in het tunnelgedeelte.”).
Succesvolle mislukking

In de uitgeschreven tapes staan ook meer triviale conversaties. Zo blijkt dat Swiger vlak na de lancering aan het raden was boven welk land ze zich bevonden. Waarbij leidinggevende Jim Lovell hem er blijkbaar op attent moest maken dat het blauw onder hen wel degelijk water was. Met de hint dat ze zich in de westelijke hemisfeer bevonden, besloot Swigert dat de Apollo 13 hen op dat ogenblik over de Golf van Mexico voerde.

Ondanks de technische problemen slaagden de ruimtevaarders er uiteindelijk in om veilig naar de Aarde terug te keren. ‘Een succesvolle mislukking’ werd de missie daarom achteraf genoemd.

De NASA heeft aangekondigd dat ze nog meer transcripties van ruimtemissies publiek zal maken. Daarbij onder meer de gesprekken tijdens de Apollo 11-missie uit 1969, die in de eerste succesvolle landing op de maan resulteerde.

Bron: http://knack.rnews.be/nl/actualiteit/nieuws/wetenschap/

Quantum Mechanics: The Uncertainty Principle

A Brief History Of Quantum Mechanics

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Comets - Remnants Of The Beginning

Sword Of Orion

Planetary Studies

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Life of a Star: 12 billion years in 6 minutes

wonderful telescope!!!

wonderful telescope!!! 
www.officinastellare.com

Mooie foto's.

The Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft is seen as it arrives at the launch pad Monday, Dec. 13, 2010 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The Soyuz is scheduled to launch the crew of Expedition 26 Wednesday at 2:09 p.m. EST.

Answer to Cities from Space Challenge #2: Hahah Scott Poovey is right! It is London!

NASA Image of the Day: Galaxy Triplet ARP 274
On April 1-2, the Hubble Space Telescope photographed the winning target in the Space Telescope Science Institute’s 'You Decide' competition in celebration...http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/iotd.html

Projecy Mercury Explained

Less than a year after its birth, the National Aeronautics and Space Agency announced its first astronaut class, the Mercury Seven, on April 9, 1959. Project Mercury proved that humans could live and work in space, paving the way for all future human exploration.

This cutaway drawing of the Mercury capsule was used by the Space Task Group at the first NASA inspection, on Oct. 24, 1959.

Love this Cassini pic of Saturn! How cool is that? It's from Astronomy Pic of the Day.

Love this pic of the Space Station taken by the departing STS-119 crew. Had to share!