The magic Hubble Space Telescope

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990near ultraviolet, visible, and near infrared spectra. The telescope is named after the astronomer Edwin Hubble.

and remains in operation. With a 2.4-meter (7.9 ft) mirror, Hubble's four main instruments observe in the

Hubble's orbit outside the distortion of Earth's atmosphere allows it to take extremely high-resolution images with almost no background light. Hubble's Deep Field has recorded some of the most detailed visible-light images ever, allowing a deep view into space and time. Many Hubble observations have led to breakthroughs in astrophysics, such as accurately determining the rate of expansion of the universe.

Although not the first space telescope, Hubble is one of the largest and most versatile, and is well known as both a vital research tool and a public relations boon for astronomy. The HST was built by the United States space agency NASA, with contributions from the European Space Agency, and is operated by the Space Telescope Science Institute. The HST is one of NASA's Great Observatories, along with the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the Spitzer Space Telescope.

Space telescopes were proposed as early as 1923. Hubble was funded in the 1970s, with a proposed launch in 1983, but the project was beset by technical delays, budget problems, and the Challenger disaster. When finally launched in 1990, Hubble's main mirror was found to have been ground incorrectly, compromising the telescope's capabilities. The optics were corrected to their intended quality by a servicing mission in 1993.

Hubble is the only telescope designed to be serviced in space by astronauts. After launch by Space Shuttle Discovery in 1990, four subsequent Space Shuttle missions repaired, upgraded, and replaced systems on the telescope. A fifth mission was canceled on safety grounds following the Columbia disaster. However, after spirited public discussion, NASA administrator Mike Griffin approved one final servicing mission, completed in 2009. The telescope is still operating as of 2014, and may last until 2020.^[6] Its scientific successor, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), is currently scheduled for launch in 2018.

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NASA Telescopes Uncover Early Construction of Giant Galaxy

Astronomers have for the first time caught a glimpse of the earliest stages of massive galaxy construction. The

building site, dubbed “Sparky,” is a dense galactic core blazing with the light of millions of newborn stars that are forming at a ferocious rate.

The discovery was made possible through combined observations from NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, the W.M. Keck Observatory in Mauna Kea, Hawaii, and the European Space Agency's Herschel space observatory, in which NASA plays an important role.

A fully developed elliptical galaxy is a gas-deficient gathering of ancient stars theorized to develop from the inside out, with a compact core marking its beginnings. Because the galactic core is so far away, the light of the forming galaxy that is observable from Earth was actually created 11 billion years ago, just 3 billion years after the Big Bang.

Although only a fraction of the size of the Milky Way, the tiny powerhouse galactic core already contains about twice as many stars as our own galaxy, all crammed into a region only 6,000 light-years across. The Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years across.

“We really hadn’t seen a formation process that could create things that are this dense,” explained Erica Nelson of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, lead author of the study. “We suspect that this core-formation process is a phenomenon unique to the early universe because the early universe, as a whole, was more compact. Today, the universe is so diffuse that it cannot create such objects anymore.”

In addition to determining the galaxy’s size from the Hubble images, the team dug into archival far-infrared images from Spitzer and Herschel. This allowed them to see how fast the galaxy core is creating stars. Sparky produced roughly 300 stars per year, compared to the 10 stars per year produced by our Milky Way.

“They’re very extreme environments,” Nelson said. “It’s like a medieval cauldron forging stars. There’s a lot of turbulence, and it’s bubbling. If you were in there, the night sky would be bright with young stars, and there would be a lot of dust, gas, and remnants of exploding stars. To actually see this happening is fascinating.”

Astronomers theorize that this frenzied star birth was sparked by a torrent of gas flowing into the galaxy’s core while it formed deep inside a gravitational well of dark matter, invisible cosmic material that acts as the scaffolding of the universe for galaxy construction.

Observations indicate that the galaxy had been furiously making stars for more than a billion years. It is likely that this frenzy eventually will slow to a stop, and that over the next 10 billion years other smaller galaxies may merge with Sparky, causing it to expand and become a mammoth, sedate elliptical galaxy.

“I think our discovery settles the question of whether this mode of building galaxies actually happened or not,” said team-member Pieter van Dokkum of Yale University. “The question now is, how often did this occur? We suspect there are other galaxies like this that are even fainter in near-infrared wavelengths. We think they’ll be brighter at longer wavelengths, and so it will really be up to future infrared telescopes such as NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to find more of these objects.”

The paper appears in the Aug. 27 issue of the journal Nature.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., in Washington.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Spacecraft operations are based at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, Littleton, Colorado. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at Caltech. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

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Video - Have you seen the earth from the space??

Let's go to see our famous earth from the space. It's like a dream.

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Saturn: the 6th planet of the solar system

Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in the Solar System, after Jupiter. Roman god of agriculture, its astronomical symbol (♄) represents the god's sickle. Saturn is a gas giant with an average radius about nine times that of Earth.^[10][11] While only one-eighth the average density of Earth, with its larger volume Saturn is just over 95 times more massive.^[12][13][14]

Named after the

Saturn's interior is probably composed of a core of iron, nickel and rock (silicon and oxygen compounds), surrounded by a deep layer of metallic hydrogen, an intermediate layer of liquid hydrogen and liquid helium and an outer gaseous layer.^[15] The planet exhibits a pale yellow hue due to ammonia crystals in its upper atmosphere. Electrical current within the metallic hydrogen layer is thought to give rise to Saturn's planetary magnetic field, which is weaker than Earth's magnetic field but has a magnetic moment 580 times that of the Earth due to Saturn's larger body radius. Saturn's magnetic field strength is around one-twentieth the strength of Jupiter's.^[16] The outer atmosphere is generally bland and lacking in contrast, although long-lived features can appear. Wind speeds on Saturn can reach 1,800 km/h (500 m/s), faster than on Jupiter, but not as fast as those on Neptune.^[17]

Saturn has a prominent ring system that consists of nine continuous main rings and three discontinuous arcs, composed mostly of ice particles with a smaller amount of rocky debris and dust. Sixty-two^[18] known moons orbit the planet; fifty-three are officially named. This does not include the hundreds of "moonlets" comprising the rings. Titan, Saturn's largest and the Solar System's second largest moon, is larger than the planet Mercury and is the only moon in the Solar System to retain a substantial atmosphere.

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Neptune The 8th planet of the solar system

Neptune is the eighth and farthest planet from the Sun in the Solar System. It is the fourth-largest planet bygaseous planets in the Solar System, Neptune is the most dense. Neptune is 17 times the mass of Earth and is slightly more massive than its near-twin Uranus, which is 15 times the mass of Earth but not as dense. Neptune orbits the Sun at an average distance of 30.1 astronomical units. Named after the Roman god of the sea, its astronomical symbol is ♆, a stylised version of the god Neptune's trident.

diameter and the third-largest by mass. Among the

Neptune was the first planet found by mathematical prediction rather than by empirical observation. Unexpected changes in the orbit of Uranus led Alexis Bouvard to deduce that its orbit was subject to gravitational perturbation by an unknown planet. Neptune was subsequently observed on 23 September 1846 by Johann Galle within a degree of the position predicted by Urbain Le Verrier, and its largest moon, Triton, was discovered shortly thereafter, though none of the planet's remaining 13 moons were located telescopically until the 20th century. Neptune has been visited by one spacecraft, Voyager 2, which flew by the planet on 25 August 1989.

Neptune is similar in composition to Uranus, and both have compositions which differ from those of the larger gas giants, Jupiter, and Saturn. Neptune's atmosphere, while similar to Jupiter's and Saturn's in that it is composed primarily of hydrogen and helium, along with traces of hydrocarbons and possibly nitrogen, contains a higher proportion of "ices" such as water, ammonia, and methane. Astronomers sometimes categorise Uranus and Neptune as "ice giants" to emphasise these distinctions. The interior of Neptune, like that of Uranus, is primarily composed of ices and rock.Perhaps the core has a solid surface, but the temperature would be thousands of degrees and the atmospheric pressure crushing. Traces of methane in the outermost regions in part account for the planet's blue appearance.

In contrast to the hazy, relatively featureless atmosphere of Uranus, Neptune's atmosphere is notable for its active and visible weather patterns. For example, at the time of the 1989 Voyager 2flyby, the planet's southern hemisphere possessed a Great Dark Spot comparable to the Great Red Spot on Jupiter. These weather patterns are driven by the strongest sustained winds of any planet in the Solar System, with recorded wind speeds as high as 2,100 kilometres per hour (1,300 mph). Because of its great distance from the Sun, Neptune's outer atmosphere is one of the coldest places in the Solar System, with temperatures at its cloud tops approaching 55 K (−218 °C). Temperatures at the planet's centre are approximately 5,400 K (5,000 °C). Neptune has a faint and fragmented ring system (labeled 'arcs'), which may have been detected during the 1960s but was only indisputably confirmed in 1989 by Voyager 2.

Source: Wikipedia

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NASA's MAVEN Spacecraft Makes Final Preparations For Mars

On Sept. 21, 2014, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution spacecraft will complete roughly 10 months

of travel and enter orbit around the Red Planet.

The orbit-insertion maneuver will be carried out as the spacecraft approaches Mars, wrapping up an interplanetary journey of 442 million miles (711 million kilometers). Six thruster engines will fire briefly for a “settling” burn that damps out deviations in pointing. Then the six main engines will ignite two by two in quick succession and will burn for 33 minutes to slow the craft, allowing it to be captured in an elliptical orbit.

This milestone will mark the culmination of 11 years of concept and development for MAVEN, setting the stage for the mission’s science phase, which will investigate Mars as no other mission has.

“We’re the first mission devoted to observing the upper atmosphere of Mars and how it interacts with the sun and the solar wind,” said Bruce Jakosky, principal investigator for MAVEN at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

These observations will help scientists determine how much gas from Mars’ atmosphere has been lost to space throughout the planet’s history and which processes have driven that loss.

En route

Procedures to line up MAVEN for proper orbit insertion began shortly after MAVEN launched in November 2013. These included two trajectory-correction maneuvers, performed in December 2013 and February 2014.

Calibration of the mission’s three suites of science instruments – the Particles and Fields Package, the Remote Sensing Package and the Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer – was completed during the cruise phase to Mars.

“Every day at Mars is gold,” said David Mitchell, MAVEN’s project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The early checks of instrument and spacecraft systems during cruise phase enable us to move into the science collection phase shortly after MAVEN arrives at Mars.”

The voyage also gave the team an opportunity to take data on the interplanetary solar wind using the Fields and Particles Package.

Meanwhile, teams in California, Colorado and Maryland carried out rehearsals of the entire orbit insertion twice. The science team also performed a weeklong simulation of the planning and implementation required to obtain science data. Two months prior to arrival at Mars, all instruments were turned off, in preparation for orbit insertion.

Into orbit

During orbit insertion, MAVEN will be controlled by its on-board computers. By that time, the team will have uploaded the most up-to-date information about the spacecraft’s location, velocity and orientation. The insertion instructions will have been updated, and the fuel valves will be open, to warm the fuel to an operating temperature of about 77 to 79 degrees Fahrenheit (25 to 26 degrees Celsius).

If all goes well, the spacecraft will need no further commands from the ground. The important exception is that final trajectory corrections could be made, if needed, 24 hours or 6 hours prior to insertion. That would only happen, however, if the navigation team concluded that the spacecraft was coming in at too low of an altitude.

Otherwise, during the last 24 hours, the spacecraft will carry out preprogrammed procedures to make all systems as “quiet” as possible, which is the safest condition for orbit insertion. These steps include automatically executing a new version of the fault protection, which will tell the craft how to react to an on-board component anomaly leading up to or during orbit insertion.

In addition, the spacecraft will have to reorient itself so that the thrusters are pointed in the correct direction for the burn. In this final orientation, MAVEN’s high-gain antenna, which is used for most communication with the spacecraft, will point away from Earth. During that period, MAVEN’s low-gain antenna will be used for limited communication capacity at a reduced data rate.

At last, the insertion will begin. For the next 33 minutes, the craft will burn more than half the fuel onboard as it enters an orbit 236 miles (380 kilometers) above the northern pole.

Three minutes after the engines turn off, the MAVEN computers will reinstate the normal safeguards, reorient the spacecraft to point the high-gain antenna toward Earth, and reestablish normal communications. At that point, MAVEN will transmit the data obtained during the insertion back to Earth, along with information on the state of the spacecraft, and the MAVEN team will learn if everything worked properly.

“Then, there will be a sigh of relief,” said Carlos Gomez-Rosa, MAVEN mission and science operations manager at Goddard.

Later, the team will upload new instructions for the science portion of the mission, as well as turn on and check out the science instruments.

New view of Mars

The team will perform six maneuvers to move the spacecraft from its insertion orbit into the four-and-a-half-hour orbit that will be used to gather science data.

This science orbit will be elliptical, with the spacecraft flying about 90 miles (approximately 150 kilometers) above the surface at periapsis, or closest point, in the orbit to “sniff” the upper atmosphere. At apoapsis, the farthest point from the surface, MAVEN will pull back 3,900 miles (roughly 6,300 kilometers) to observe the entire atmosphere.

With each pass, MAVEN will make measurements of the composition, structure and escape of atmospheric gases.

“MAVEN’s orbit through the tenuous top of the atmosphere will be unique among Mars missions,” said Jakosky. “We’ll get a new perspective on the planet and the history of the Martian climate, liquid water and planetary habitability by microbes.”

Izumi Hansen and Elizabeth Zubritsky
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
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Waht is the satellite??

In the context of spaceflight, a satellite is an artificial object which has been intentionally placed into orbit. Such objects are sometimes called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as the Moon.

The world's first artificial satellite, the Sputnik 1, was launched by the Soviet Union in 1957. Since then, thousands of satellites have been launched into orbit around the Earth. Some satellites, notably space stations, have been launched in parts and assembled in orbit. Artificial satellites originate from more than 50 countries and have used the satellite launching capabilities of ten nations. A few hundred satellites are currently operational, whereas thousands of unused satellites and satellite fragments orbit the Earth as space debris. A few space probes have been placed into orbit around other bodies and become artificial satellites to the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Vesta, Eros, and the Sun.

Satellites are used for a large number of purposes. Common types include military and civilian Earth observation satellites, communications satellites, navigation satellites, weather satellites, and research satellites. Space stations and human spacecraft in orbit are also satellites. Satellite orbits vary greatly, depending on the purpose of the satellite, and are classified in a number of ways. Well-known (overlapping) classes include low Earth orbit, polar orbit, and geostationary orbit.

About 6,600 satellites have been launched. The latest estimates are that 3,600 remain in orbit.^[1] Of those, about 1,000 are operational;^[2][3] the rest have lived out their useful lives and are part of the space debris. Approximately 500 operational satellites are in low-Earth orbit, 50 are in medium-Earth orbit (at 20,000 km), the rest are in geostationary orbit (at 36,000 km).^[4]

Satellites are propelled by rockets to their orbits. Usually the launch vehicle itself is a rocket lifting off from a launch pad on land. In a minority of cases satellites are launched at sea (from a submarine or a mobile maritime platform) or aboard a plane (see air launch to orbit).

Satellites are usually semi-independent computer-controlled systems. Satellite subsystems attend many tasks, such as power generation, thermal control, telemetry, attitude control and orbit control.

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Jupiter: The 5th palnet

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with mass one-thousandth of that of the Sun but is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in the Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas giant along with Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Together, these four planets are sometimes referred to as the Jovian or outer planets. The planet was known by astronomers of ancient times.^[11] The Romans named the planet after the Roman god Jupiter.^[12] When viewed from Earth, Jupiter can reach an apparent magnitude of −2.94, bright enough to cast shadows,^[13] and making it on average the third-brightest object in the night sky after the Moon and Venus. (Mars can briefly match Jupiter's brightness at certain points in its orbit.)

Jupiter is primarily composed of hydrogen with a quarter of its mass being helium, although helium only comprises about a tenth of the number of molecules. It may also have a rocky core of heavier elements,^[14] but like the other gas giants, Jupiter lacks a well-defined solid surface. Because of its rapid rotation, the planet's shape is that of an oblate spheroid (it possesses a slight but noticeable bulge around the equator). The outer atmosphere is visibly segregated into several bands at different latitudes, resulting in turbulence and storms along their interacting boundaries. A prominent result is the Great Red Spot, a giant storm that is known to have existed since at least the 17th century when it was first seen by telescope. Surrounding Jupiter is a faint planetary ring system and a powerful magnetosphere. There are also at least 67 moons, including the four large moons called the Galilean moons that were first discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610. Ganymede, the largest of these moons, has a diameter greater than that of the planet Mercury.

Jupiter has been explored on several occasions by robotic spacecraft, most notably during the early Pioneer and Voyager flyby missions and later by the Galileo orbiter. The most recent probe to visit Jupiter was the Pluto-bound New Horizons spacecraft in late February 2007. The probe used the gravity from Jupiter to increase its speed. Future targets for exploration in the Jovian system include the possible ice-covered liquid ocean on the moon Europa.

So This planet in colder than the earth.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter 

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The Moon - The nearly planet to the earth

 If you have not seen and expore the moon yet... Read this article.

Our moon makes Earth a more livable planet by moderating our home planet's wobble on its axis, leading to a relatively stable climate, and creating a tidal rhythm that has guided humans for thousands of years. The moon was likely formed after a Mars-sized body collided with Earth and the debris formed into the most prominent feature in our night sky.

10 Need-to-Know Things About Earth's Moon:

1. If the sun were as tall as a typical front door, Earth would be the size of a nickel and the moon would the size of a green pea.
2. The moon is Earth's satellite and orbits the Earth at a distance of about 384 thousand km (239 thousand miles) or 0.00257 AU.
3. The moon makes a complete orbit around Earth in 27 Earth days and rotates or spins at that same rate, or in that same amount of time. This causes the moon to keep the same side or face towards Earth during the course of its orbit.
4. The moon is a rocky, solid-surface body, with much of its surface cratered and pitted from impacts.
5. The moon has a very thin and tenuous (weak) atmosphere, called an exosphere.
6. The moon has no moons.
7. The moon has no rings.
8. More than 100 spacecraft been launched to explore the moon. It is the only celestial a body beyond Earth that has been visited by human beings (The Apollo Program).
9. The moon's weak atmosphere and its lack of liquid water cannot support life as we know it.
10. Surface features that create the face known as the "Man in the moon" are impact basins on the moon that are filled with dark basalt rocks.

 Link source: http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=Moon

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The solar system (Video)

From youtube

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The Earth ... Our fantastic planet

Let's discaver our planet, When we live.

Earth, also known as the world, Terra, or Gaia, is the third planet from the Sun, the densest planet in the Solar System, the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets, and the only celestial body known to accommodate life. It is home to an untold number of species,^[30] including billions of humans^[31] who depend upon its biosphere and minerals. The Earth's human population is divided among about two hundred independent states that interact through diplomacy, conflict, travel, trade, and media.

According to evidence from sources such as radiometric dating, Earth was formed around four and a half billion years ago. Within its first billion years, life appeared in its oceans and began to affect its atmosphere and surface, promoting the proliferation of aerobic as well as anaerobic organisms and causing the formation of the atmosphere's ozone layer. This layer and Earth's magnetic field block the most life-threatening parts of the Sun's radiation, so life was able to flourish on land as well as in water. Since then, Earth's position in the Solar System, its physical properties and its geological history have allowed life to persist.

Earth's lithosphere is divided into several rigid segments, or tectonic plates, that migrate across the surface over periods of many millions of years. Over 70% percent of Earth's surface is covered with water,^[34] with the remainder consisting of continents and islands which together have many lakes and other sources of water that contribute to the hydrosphere. Earth's poles are mostly covered with ice that is the solid ice of the Antarctic ice sheet and the sea ice that is the polar ice packs. The planet's interior remains active, with a solid iron inner core, a liquid outer core that generates the magnetic field, and a thick layer of relatively solid mantle.

Earth gravitationally interacts with other objects in space, especially the Sun and the Moon. During one orbit around the Sun, the Earth rotates about its own axis 366.26 times, creating 365.26 solar days, or one sidereal year.^{[n 6]} The Earth's axis of rotation is tilted 23.4° away from the perpendicular of its orbital plane, producing seasonal variations on the planet's surface with a period of one tropical year (365.24 solar days). The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It began orbiting the Earth about 4.53 billion years ago (bya). The Moon's gravitational interaction with Earth stimulates ocean tides, stabilizes the axial tilt, and gradually slows the planet's rotation.

From Wikipedia

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