Comet McNaught Next To The Dome Of The NTT On La Silla. The Picture Was Taken In January 2007.

Orion Launch Abort System Attitude Control Motor Hot-Fire Test via NASA https://ift.tt/2Wk4fYE

Orion’s Belt Rises Through the Atmosphere (desktop/laptop) Click the image to download the correct size for your desktop or laptop in high resolution

Crew Safe After Soyuz Launch Abort

NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin are in good condition following an aborted launch of their Soyuz spacecraft.

The Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to the International Space Station at 4:40 a.m. EDT Thursday, October 11 (2:40 p.m. in Baikonur) carrying American astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin. Shortly after launch, there was an anomaly with the booster and the launch ascent was aborted, resulting in a ballistic landing of the spacecraft. Search and rescue teams were deployed to the landing site. Hague and Ovchinin are out of the capsule and are reported to be in good condition.

Note: This video is edited for length, but includes the launch, the initial report of the issue, and the confirmation that the crew landed safely.

Arizona: Student-Led CatSat Mission Selected for Flight by NASA

Tucson AZ (SPX) Mar 19, 2019 An inflatable space antenna designed by University of Arizona students is one of 16 small research satellites from 10 states NASA has selected to fly as auxiliary payloads aboard space missions planned to launch in 2020, 2021 and 2022. The selections are part of the 10th round of NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative. CubeSats are a type of spacecraft called nanosatellites, often measurin Full article

Cherenkov Radiation: When Electrons go Faster than the Speed of Light!

Well faster than light is an overstatement in the sense that it only happens in water. Basically the speed of light in water is 0.75c and although matter can be accelerated faster than that it is still below the speed of light in a vacuum. And that’s what basically causes the blue light or Chernenkov radiation, particles in a medium moving faster than the speed of light in that medium. 

How does that happen though? Well that is due to very excited neutrinos produced by the nuclear reactor colliding with the nuclei of the water that is surrounding it. The collision produces muons and electrons which have the resulting momentum faster than the speed that light can travel in water. Which in turn brings the electrons in the surrounding water atoms/molecules to a higher state, and when they return back to the ground state they emit light in the wavelength of the resulting momentum transfer from those excited particles. 

A common analogy is the sonic boom of a supersonic aircraft or bullet. The sound waves generated by the supersonic body propagate at the speed of sound itself; as such, the waves travel slower than the speeding object and cannot propagate forward from the body, instead forming a shock front. In a similar way, a charged particle can generate a light shock wave as it travels through an insulator.

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55 Nights with Saturn

Solar flares produce gamma rays by several processes, one of which is illustrated here. The energy released in a solar flare rapidly accelerates charged particles. When a high-energy proton strikes matter in the sun’s atmosphere and visible surface, the result may be a short-lived particle – a pion – that emits gamma rays when it decays.

Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

NGC 3576, Statue of Liberty Nebula

This is so important. I have two years left of my Bachelor degree, and it took me 16 years to get my associate. Never give up, even if you have to put those goals on hold (sometimes multiple times), because life happens. Make yours worth it.

just because someone’s accomplishing more than you are right now doesn’t mean you’re failing. success isn’t a race