Solar prominences and filaments on the Sun on September 18, 2014, as seen with a hydrogen alpha filter. Credit and copyright: John Chumack/Galactic Images.
This is a question we are often asked: what is the difference between a coronal mass ejection (CME) and a solar flare? We discussed it in a recent astrophoto post, but today NASA put out a video with amazing graphics that explains it — and visualizes it — extremely well.
“CMEs and solar flares are both explosions that occur on the Sun,” the folks at NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center’s Scientific Visualization Studio explain. “Sometimes they occur together, but they are not the same thing.”
CMEs are giant clouds of particles from the Sun hurled out into space, while flares are flashes of light — occurring in various wavelengths — on the Sun.
Sprite with Airglow and Gravity Waves over South Dakota. Credit and copyright: Randy Halverson.
Look! Fast! Sprite lightning occurs only at high altitudes above thunderstorms, only last for a thousandth of a second and emit light in the red portion of the visible spectrum, so they are really difficult to see. But one of our favorite astrophotographers and timelapse artists, Randy Halverson captured sprites during a recent thunderstorm in South Dakota. But wait, there’s more!
In his timelapse video, above, you’ll also see some faint aurora as well as green airglow being rippled by gravity waves.
See some imagery from the storm, below:
More sprites with airglow and gravity waves over South Dakota on August 20, 2014. Credit and copyright: Randy Halverson.
See more images and information about Randy’s fun night of observing these phenomena on his website, dakotalapse.
Noctilucent clouds over Sweden on July 27, 2014. Credit and copyright: Göran Strand
This year, the noctilucent cloud season has been especially eventful, and this new timelapse from Swedish astrophotographer Göran Strand shows these “night-shining” clouds covering the entire sky over the course of 2 hours.
“On the 27th of July 2014 I saw some of the most beautiful Noctilucent Clouds I’ve ever seen,” Göran said via email. “They emerged shortly after sunset and after a while they covered the entire sky.”
In the movie you can see an all-sky timelapse view that shows how these clouds changed during the evening.
See some gorgeous still photos from that night, below:
Noctilucent clouds are wispy, glowing tendrils of high-altitude ice crystals that shine long after the Sun has set. They appear in upper latitudes only and form about 83 km (51 miles) up in the atmosphere. The icy clouds are illuminated by the Sun when it is just below the horizon, giving the clouds their “night-shining” properties.
Also called polar mesospheric clouds, these are the highest cloud formations in the atmosphere. They’ve been associated with rocket launches and space shuttle re-entries, and another theory is that they might also be associated with meteor activity.
Noctilucent clouds over Sweden on July 27, 2014. Credit and copyright: Göran Strand.
The Milky Way over a volcano in Indonesia. Credit and copyright: Thierry Legault.
Here’s a beautiful new timelapse from the extremely talented astrophotographer Thierry Legault. He recently traveled to Java Island in Indonesia to the Bromo-Tengger-Semeru National Park and shot imagery and footage of two active volcanoes, both during the day and at night. The views are absolutely stunning.
“At night, the activity of the sky, nature (volcanoes, clouds and fog) and humans (cars and hikers) is very intense!” Legault said via email.
Below are a couple of still photos from the video:
Fog surrounds the volcanoes of Tengger-Bromo-Semeru Park in Java, Indonesia. Credit and copyright: Thierry Legault.
Thanks to Thierry Legault for sharing his videos and images with Universe Today!
Image of the TechDemoSat-1 in orbit, taken minutes after separation of the satellite from the Soyuz-2 launcher and shows a view of the Earth from Space, with the spacecraft's Antenna Pointing Mechanism in view. Credit: SSTL.
Here’s a great video from a camera mounted on the exterior of the TechDemoSat-1, an in-orbit technology demonstration mission from the UK. It launched on July 8, 2014 on a Soyuz-2, and the video shows the satellite moments after separation from the upper stage. The satellite even took a selfie, below.
The video shows the satellite’s rotation and reveals a spectacular vista of “blue marble” Earth (visible is cloudy skies over the Pacific, south of French Polynesia).
It’s interesting to note that some identified flying objects zip past the field of view: At :25 seconds, the Fregat upper stage of the Soyuz-2 rocket appears as a gold object passing away from the satellite left to right at a distance of approximately 60 meters. At :34 seconds a white “dot” crosses the frame left to right – which has been identified as one of the other satellites that shared the ride into orbit with TechDemoSat-1.
“It is very rare to see actual footage of our satellites in orbit,” said Sir Martin Sweeting, Executive Chairman of Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL), the company behind the mission, “and so viewing the video taken from TechDemoSat-1 moments after separation from the rocket has been a hugely rewarding and exciting experience for everyone at SSTL. We are delighted with the progress of commissioning the TechDemoSat-1 platform, and are looking forward to the next phase – the demonstration of a range of new technologies being flown on this innovative mission.”
The satellite is roughly the size of a refrigerator but wieghs just 150kg. TechDemoSat (TDS-1) carries eight separate payloads from UK academia and industry plus other payloads from SSTL for product development. Find out more here from SSTL.
Still of Felicity Jones and Eddie Redmayne in 'The Theory of Everything.' Via IMBd and Focus Features.
Who says science and love (and science and the arts) don’t go together? A new movie set to premiere in November 2014 will feature the life story of physicist Stephen Hawking and focuses on his relationship with Jane Wilde, the art student he fell in love with while studying at Cambridge in the 1960s. “The Theory of Everything” also depicts Hawking’s genuius amid the diagnosis of a fatal illness at age 21 and how he has survived. From the movie blurb:
Little was expected from Stephen Hawking, a bright but shiftless student of cosmology, given just two years to live following the diagnosis of a fatal illness at 21 years of age. He became galvanized, however, by the love of fellow Cambridge student, Jane Wilde, and he went on to be called the successor to Einstein, as well as a husband and father to their three children. Over the course of their marriage as Stephen’s body collapsed and his academic renown soared, fault lines were exposed that tested the lineaments of their relationship and dramatically altered the course of both of their lives.
Artist's concept of OSIRIS-REx at Bennu. (Credit: NASA/GSFC)
I love anything that attempts to provide a sense of scale about the Solar System (see here and here for even more examples) and this one brings us down past the Sun, planets, and moons all the way to asteroid size — specifically asteroid 101955 Bennu, the target of the upcoming OSIRIS-REx mission.
Created by the OSIRIS-REx “321Science!” team, consisting of communicators, film and graphic arts students, teens, scientists, and engineers, the video shows some relative scales of our planet compared to the Sun, and also the actual size of asteroid Bennu in relation to some familiar human-made structures that we’re familiar with. (My personal take-away from this: Bennu — one of those “half grains of sand” — is a rather small target!)
A NASA New Frontiers mission, OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer) will launch in Sept. 2016 on a two-year journey to the asteroid 101955 Bennu. Upon arrival OSIRIS-REx will map Bennu’s surface and also measure the Yarkovsky effect, by which asteroids’ trajectories can change over time due to the small force exerted by radiant heat.
A meteor streaks through the sky over Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in California. Credit and copyright: Gavin Heffernan/Sunchaser Pictures.
Shooting the night sky from an area filled with canyons and towering trees might sound like a challenge, but Gavin Heffernan and his crew at Sunchaser Pictures have “majestically” succeeded with this new timelapse from Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks in California. They spent three days and two nights around the summer solstice, covering the 1,353 square miles of the two parks. They captured gorgeous night sky views, star trails, bright meteor streaks, and satellite passes — all framed by the magnificent landscape of the area.
“It was undoubtedly one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen, with incredible canyons, mountains, and vistas out of a fantasy novel,” Gavin told UT via email. “Far removed from any light pollution, the skies were equally stunning, with some epic milky ways, star trails, and the brightest meteor picture I’ve ever captured.” Image above — and see the new timelapse video below, with the meteor trails coming at 1:41 & 2:26:
Gavin said most night shots were captured with 25 second exposures on two Canon EOS 6D’s with a variety of wide, fast lenses, including a 24mm f1/4 and 28mm f1/8. The stunning star trails effect is created by tracing rotations of the Earth’s axis, using long exposures.
Star trails at dawn just as the Sun rises above the mountains in Kings Canyon. Credit and copyright: Gavin Heffernan.
Find out more about this video on Vimeo and you can watch a “behind the scenes” video of what it took to make this video — including an encounter with a brown bear! — here.
Screenshot from Thierry Legault's video of the Bastille Day fireworks from the Eiffel Tower, July 14, 2014.
Who had the best view of the Bastille Day fireworks last night? From this lovely video from astrophotographer Thierry Legault, it appears the low-hanging, bright waning Moon may have had the preferred vantage point to watch the fine pyrotechnics from the Eiffel Tower. But Thierry had a pretty good view, as well! He told us he took this video from a hill a few kilometers west of Eiffel Tower.
XCOR Aerospace's Lynx suborbital vehicle is designed to fly to 328,000 feet (Credit: XCOR)
Well, technically not space*, but suborbital, and that’d still be way cool! And what’s even cooler is that you can enter to win a trip on an XCOR Lynx Mark II suborbital flight while helping to support a good cause of your choice, courtesy of The Urgency Network’s “Ticket to Rise” campaign. Check out the dramatic spaceflight-packed promotional video and find out how to enter below:
The Urgency Network is an online platform whereby participants can win experience-based prizes by participating in campaigns that are designed to aid and support good causes, many of which assist specific communities in need, awareness groups, and conservation efforts. You earn “entries” for prize drawings by purchasing gift packages from the participating foundations or by donating time, social media presence, or money directly. It’s a way for organizations that might not have (or be able to afford) a large PR department to get funded and gain widespread exposure. Learn more about The Urgency Network here.
In the Ticket to Rise campaign, the grand prize is beyond stratospheric — literally! One lucky winner will experience a ride aboard an XCOR Lynx Mark II suborbital craft, a single-stage space vehicle that takes off from a runway to ultimately coast briefly at a maximum altitude of 328,000 feet (about 100 km), experiencing 4 minutes of microgravity before re-entry and a runway landing. It’s a supersonic 30-minute flight to the very edge of space!
(*Actually, 100 km is right at the von Karman line, so riding the Lynx Mark II past that could qualify you as an astronaut. Just sayin’.)
How a Lynx Mark II flight works (Source: XCOR)
Add to that you’d be helping any one of dozens of good causes (you can choose from different ones by clicking the “Select a Different NonProfit” text link on the donation page) and it’s a win-win for everyone. And even if you don’t get a seat aboard a spaceship (many will enter, few will win) you can still get some pretty awesome promo offers from the organizations as bulk-entry packages.
The deadline to enter the campaign is 11:59:59 p.m. EDT August 11, 2014. Drawing will be held on August 12. The Lynx flight is dependent on meeting all requirements and passing physical exams and tests by XCOR Aerospace, and although the date is expected to be in the fall of 2015, this is rocket science and things change. Read the official contest rules for all details, fine print, etc.
