Best Images from NASA

Thanks NASA, we live in the 21st century, the age of global mobility, information and technology. Never before has humankind been so close to unlocking the mysteries of outer space, and yet, never before have we understood quite so clearly what a colossal task that is. One thing is for certain, though, and that is the fact that countless artists of the 21st century, be they graphic artists, engineers, or DJ’s, are being increasingly inspired by science and the things we are discovering about our solar system every day. On the internet, you can look at images from the high-powered lens of the Hubble Space Telescope. You can watch video footage of the Earth that was recorded from the International Space Station. We are living in an age of science fiction! And the best part is that a lot of these images coming back to us from the nether regions of the galaxy are doing more than merely living up to expectations–these images of black stars, meteors, exploding nebula, hurtling comet-glaciers, and more are actually some of the most inspirational sh** on the internet EVER. Let us take a closer look.

1.

Merging galaxies break radio silence. A team of astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope found an unambiguous link between the presence of supermassive black holes that power high-speed, radio-signal-emitting jets and the merger history of their host galaxies. Almost all galaxies with the jets were found to be merging with another galaxy, or to have done so recently. Credit: NASA/ESA/STScI #nasagoddard #Hubble #space #BlackHole #galaxy

Une photo publiée par NASA Goddard (@nasagoddard) le 28 Mai 2015 à 10h47 PDT

2.

Hubble Catches Stellar Exodus in Action Using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have captured for the first time snapshots of fledging white dwarf stars beginning their slow-paced, 40-million-year migration from the crowded center of an ancient star cluster to the less populated suburbs. White dwarfs are the burned-out relics of stars that rapidly lose mass, cool down and shut off their nuclear furnaces. As these glowing carcasses age and shed weight, their orbits begin to expand outward from the star cluster’s packed downtown. This migration is caused by a gravitational tussle among stars inside the cluster. Globular star clusters sort out stars according to their mass, governed by a gravitational billiard ball game where lower mass stars rob momentum from more massive stars. The result is that heavier stars slow down and sink to the cluster’s core, while lighter stars pick up speed and move across the cluster to the edge. This process is known as “mass segregation.” Until these Hubble observations, astronomers had never definitively seen the dynamical conveyor belt in action. Astronomers used Hubble to watch the white-dwarf exodus in the globular star cluster 47 Tucanae, a dense swarm of hundreds of thousands of stars in our Milky Way galaxy. The cluster resides 16,700 light-years away in the southern constellation Tucana. Credits: NASA, ESA, and H. Richer and J. Heyl (University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada); acknowledgement: J. Mack (STScI) and G. Piotto (University of Padova, Italy) #nasagoddard #space #Hubble

Une photo publiée par NASA Goddard (@nasagoddard) le 14 Mai 2015 à 10h31 PDT

3.

The next three decades will see an end of the era of big ozone holes. In a new study, scientists from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center say that the ozone hole will be consistently smaller than 12 million square miles by the year 2040. Ozone-depleting chemicals in the atmosphere cause an ozone hole to form over Antarctica during the winter months in the Southern Hemisphere. Since the Montreal Protocol agreement in 1987, emissions have been regulated and chemical levels have been declining. However, the ozone hole has still remained bigger than 12 million square miles since the early 1990s, with exact sizes varying from year to year. The size of the ozone hole varies due to both temperature and levels of ozone-depleting chemicals in the atmosphere. In order to get a more accurate picture of the future size of the ozone hole, scientists used NASA’s AURA satellite to determine how much the levels of these chemicals in the atmosphere varied each year. With this new knowledge, scientists can confidently say that the ozone hole will be consistently smaller than 12 million square miles by the year 2040. Scientists will continue to use satellites to monitor the recovery of the ozone hole and they hope to see its full recovery by the end of the century. Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center #nasagoddard #earth

Une vidéo publiée par NASA Goddard (@nasagoddard) le 6 Mai 2015 à 9h43 PDT

4.

The smudge of stars at the center of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is a galaxy known as UGC 5797. UGC 5797 is an emission line galaxy, meaning that it is currently undergoing active star formation. The result is a stellar population that is constantly being refurbished as massive bright blue stars form. Galaxies with prolific star formation are not only veiled in a blue tint, but are key to the continuation of a stellar cycle. In this image UGC 5797 appears in front of a background of spiral galaxies. Spiral galaxies have copious amounts of dust and gas — the main ingredient for stars — and therefore often also belong to the class of emission line galaxies. Spiral galaxies have disk-like shapes that drastically vary in appearance depending on the angle at which they are observed. The collection of spiral galaxies in this frame exhibits this attribute acutely: Some are viewed face-on, revealing the structure of the spiral arms, while the two in the bottom left are seen edge-on, appearing as plain streaks in the sky. There are many spiral galaxies, with varying colors and at different angles, sprinkled across this image — just take a look. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA #🌌 #🔭 #nasagoddard #Hubble

Une photo publiée par NASA Goddard (@nasagoddard) le 30 Avril 2015 à 9h05 PDT

5.

On April 29 at 06:35 UTC (2:35 a.m. EDT), the MODIS instrument aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this visible image of Tropical Cyclone Quang in the Southern Indian Ocean. On April 29, when Aqua passed over Quang, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument data provided a visible picture of Quang that showed a concentration of strong thunderstorms around the center of circulation and a band of thunderstorms winding into the center from the south. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology forecast calls for Quang to move southeast over the next couple of days. Quang’s center is forecast to approach Coral Bay around 8 p.m. local time on Saturday, May 2. Currently, there are no warnings in effect because the storm is not yet close to land. Credits: NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team #nasagoddard #💨 #🌊

Une photo publiée par NASA Goddard (@nasagoddard) le 29 Avril 2015 à 13h51 PDT

6.

For five years, Jeremy Harbeck has worked as a support scientist for NASA’s Operation IceBridge, an airborne mission to study polar ice. The data processing that he does typically takes place in an office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. However, to speed the process of delivering data to the Arctic sea ice forecasting community, Harbeck traveled to Greenland for the first time in spring 2015. He had just arrived at Greenland’s Thule Air Base on March 20 when a mechanical issue grounded the aircraft. No science flight could happen for a few days. As teams in the United States and Greenland scrambled to locate and deliver a replacement part, researchers on the ground waited. Some of them hiked to what was locally known as “the iceberg.” The unnamed berg pictured above has been frozen in place by sea ice in North Star Bay. Harbeck shot the photograph—a composite of four 49-second images—on March 21 at about 2:30 a.m. local time. The sun never fully sets at this time of year in the Arctic, so sunlight appears on the left side of the image. Lights from Thule are visible on the right side. Look for the Milky Way (top left) and a few very faint meteors visible in the early morning sky. Credit: Photograph by Jeremy Harbeck, support scientist for NASA’s Operation IceBridge mission. Caption by Kathryn Hansen. Via NASA’s Earth Observatory #nasagoddard #earth #Ice #Thule #greenland

Une photo publiée par NASA Goddard (@nasagoddard) le 29 Avril 2015 à 12h49 PDT

7.

A new window to the universe opened for humanity on the morning of April 24, 1990, when NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope was lofted into space, riding atop a Promethean flame from the space shuttle Discovery. NASA and ESA are celebrating the Hubble Space Telescope’s silver anniversary of 25 years in space by unveiling some of nature’s own fireworks — a giant cluster of about 3,000 stars called Westerlund 2. The cluster resides inside a vibrant stellar breeding ground known as Gum 29, located 20,000 light-years away in the constellation Carina. #Hubble25

Une photo publiée par NASA Goddard (@nasagoddard) le 25 Avril 2015 à 8h14 PDT

8.

In Leo Minor, NGC 3021 is more than meets the eye #Hubble25 This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the spiral galaxy NGC 3021 which lies about 100 million light-years away in the constellation of Leo Minor (The Little Lion). Among many other types of stars, this galaxy contains Cepheid variable stars, which can be used work out the distance to the galaxy. These stars pulsate at a rate that is closely related to their intrinsic brightness, so measurements of their rate of pulsation and their observed brightness give astronomers enough information to calculate the distance to the galaxy itself. Cepheids are also used to calibrate an even brighter distance marker that can be used over greater distances: Type Ia supernovae. One of these bright exploding stars was observed in NGC 3021, back in 1995. In addition, the supernova in NGC 3021 was also used to refine the measurement of what is known as the Hubble constant. The value of this constant defines how fast the Universe is expanding and the more accurately we know it the more we can understand about the evolution of the Universe in the past as well as in the future. So, there is much more to this galaxy than just a pretty spiral. European Space Agency

Une photo publiée par NASA Goddard (@nasagoddard) le 3 Avril 2015 à 7h20 PDT