| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 20 album su 2 pagina(e) |
1 |
|
| Immagini a caso - SOLAR SYSTEM |
Streamers-PIA08294.jpgUnbelievable "Streamers"...73 visiteCaption NASA originale:"This close-up view of the core of Saturn's narrow outlying F-Ring provides an unprecedented look at the fine scale structure of this highly perturbed Ring.
The structure seen here could be further evidence of the gravitational effects of small moons orbiting in the F-Ring Region. The moons could produce the basic structure which then starts to shear - the inner/lower part of the F-Ring core orbits Saturn faster than the outer/upper part - giving rise to the slanted features.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 25, 2006 at a distance of approx. 254.000 Km (about 158.000 miles) from Saturn and at a phase angle of 28°. Scale in the original image was roughly 1 Km (3.845 feet) per pixel. The image has been magnified by a factor of two and contrast enhanced".
|
|
Olympus Mons.jpgThe Olympus Mons and the Great Ocean of Mars194 visiteUna splendida visione artistica di Marte (reperita sul Sito "The Enterprise Mission" - laddove essa funge da visual introduction" per un articolo redatto dal Collega Mike Bara) nel tempo - remoto? - in cui un Oceano "liquido" occupava buona parte delle sue aree equatoriali. Si tratta di un'Opera, a nostro parere, davvero molto bella e di grande impatto visivo.
Per quanto riguarda l'articolo di Mr Bara, preferiamo evitare ogni commento ed invitarVi a leggerlo direttamente e quindi a maturare le Vostre convinzioni in completa autonomia e senza 'imbeccate'...
|
|
Rhea-N00090987.jpgThe Mountains of Rhea (natural colors; elab. Lunexit)62 visiteCaption NASA:"N00090987.jpg was taken on August 30, 2007 and received on Earth August 30, 2007.
The camera was pointing toward RHEA that, at the time, was approx. 8.263 Km away, and the image was taken using the CL1 and CL2 filters.
This image has not been validated or calibratedMareKromium
|
|
Saturn-PIA08151.jpgSaturn's Southern Restlesness62 visiteThis view of high Southern Latitudes on Saturn shows very linear clouds at top, usually indicative of stable prevailing winds, and two turbulent, swirling features farther South. It is possible that these features merged some time after this image was taken.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on March 6, 2006, using a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 750 nnmts. The image was acquired at a distance of approximately 2,8 MKM (about 1,8 MMs) from Saturn. The image scale is approx. 16 Km (roughly 10 miles) per pixel.
|
|
Volcanoes-Sapas_Mons-01.jpgMagellan Probe: radio image of Sapas Mons Volcano123 visiteIl 12 Ottobre 1994, infatti, dopo 4 anni di orbite, di preziose osservazioni e di raccolta dati relativi al Pianeta, il contatto radio con la Terra si interrompeva bruscamente e, neppure 24 ore dopo, il Centro Controllo Missione dichiarava la (presunta) perdita definitiva della Navicella.
|
|
Jupiter-033007.jpgStorm Spectra66 visiteThese images, taken with the LEISA infrared camera on the New Horizons Ralph instrument, show fine details in Jupiter's turbulent atmosphere using light that can only be seen using infrared sensors. These are "false color" pictures made by assigning infrared wavelengths to the colors red, green and blue. LEISA (Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array) takes images across 250 IR wavelengths in the range from 1.25 to 2.5 microns, allowing scientists to obtain an infrared spectrum at every location on Jupiter. A micron is one millionth of a meter.
These pictures were taken at 05:58 UT on February 27, 2007, from a distance of 2.9 million kilometers (1.6 million miles). They are centered at 8 degrees south, 32 degrees east in Jupiter "System III" coordinates. The large oval-shaped feature is the well-known Great Red Spot. The resolution of each pixel in these images is about 175 kilometers (110 miles); Jupiter's diameter is approximately 145,000 kilometers (97,000 miles).
The image on the left is an altitude map made by assigning the color red to 1.60 microns, green to 1.89 microns and blue to 2.04 microns. Because Jupiter's atmosphere absorbs light strongly at 2.04 microns, only clouds at very high altitude will reflect light at this wavelength. Light at 1.89 microns can go deeper in the atmosphere and light at 1.6 microns can go deeper still. In this map, bluish colors indicate high clouds and reddish colors indicate lower clouds. This picture shows, for example, that the Great Red Spot extends far up into the atmosphere.
In the image at right, red equals 1.28 microns, green equals 1.30 microns and blue equals 1.36 microns, a range of wavelengths that similarly probes different altitudes in the atmosphere. This choice of wavelengths highlights Jupiter's high-altitude south polar hood of haze. The edge of Jupiter's disk at the bottom of the panel appears slightly non-circular because the left-hand portion is the true edge of the disk, while the right portion is defined by the day/night boundary (known as the terminator).
These two images illustrate only a small fraction of the information contained in a single LEISA scan, highlighting just one aspect of the power of infrared spectra for atmospheric studies.
|
|
Sky-W00041672.jpgSaturnian Sky65 visitenessun commentoMareKromium
|
|
Enceladus-N00036991.jpgEnceladus fly-by (7) - from approx. 54.000 Km76 visitenessun commento
|
|
| Ultimi arrivi - SOLAR SYSTEM |
000-1-Ceres.gifCeres on sight (GIF-Movie)133 visiteIt is the largest asteroid in the asteroid belt - what secrets does it hold? To find out, NASA has sent the robotic Dawn Spacecraft to explore and map this cryptic 1,000-Km wide world: Ceres. Orbiting between Mars and Jupiter, 1-Ceres is officially categorized as a dwarf planet but has never been imaged in detail.
Featured here is a 20-frame video that rivals the best images of Ceres ever taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The video shows enough surface definition to discern its 9-hour rotation period.
On target to reach 1-Ceres in early March, Dawn will match speeds and attempt to orbit this previously unexplored body, taking images and data that may help humanity better understand not only the nature and history of Ceres but also the early history of our entire Solar System.MareKromiumMag 23, 2026
|
|
ZZ-ZZ-ZZ-ZZ-ZZ-ZZ-ZZ-ZZ-Pluto-nh_01_stern_05_pluto_hazenew-PCF-LXTT-IPF-2.jpgA "Blue-rayed" Farewell to Pluto177 visiteNew Horizons is a NASA mission to study the dwarf planet Pluto, its moons, and other objects in the Kuiper Belt, a region of the solar system that extends from about 30 AU, near the orbit of Neptune, to about 50 AU from the Sun.
It was the first mission in NASA’s New Frontiers program, a medium-class, competitively selected, and principal investigator-led series of missions. (The program also includes Juno and OSIRIS-REx.)
New Horizons was the first spacecraft to encounter Pluto, a relic from the formation of the solar system. By the time it reached the Pluto system, the spacecraft had traveled farther away and for a longer time period (more than nine years) than any previous deep space spacecraft ever launched.
The design of the spacecraft was based on a lineage traced back to the CONTOUR and TIMED spacecraft, both also built by the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University.
Besides its suite of scientific instruments, New Horizons carries a cylindrical radioisotope thermoelectric generator (a spare from the Cassini mission) that provided about 250 watts of power at launch (decaying to 200 watts by the time of the Pluto encounter).
After reaching initial Earth orbit at about 105 × 130 miles (167 × 213 kilometers), the Centaur upper stage fired (for a second time) for nine minutes to boost the payload to an elliptical orbit that stretched to the asteroid belt.
A second firing of the Star 48B solid rocket accelerated the spacecraft to a velocity of about 36,400 miles per hour (58,536 kilometers per hour), the highest launch velocity attained by a human-made object relative to Earth. The spacecraft was now set on a trajectory to the outer reaches of the solar system.
Controllers implemented course corrections on Jan. 28, Jan. 30, and March 9, 2006. A month later, on April 7, 2006, New Horizons passed the orbit of Mars.
A fortuitous chance to test some of the spacecraft’s instruments – especially Ralph (the visible and infrared imager and spectrometer) – occurred June 13, 2006, when New Horizons passed by a tiny asteroid named 132524 APL at a range of about 63,300 miles (101,867 kilometers).
The spacecraft flew by the solar system’s largest planet, Jupiter, for a gravity assist maneuver on Feb. 28, 2007, with the closest approach at 05:43:40 UT. The encounter increased the spacecraft’s velocity by about 9,000 miles per hour (14,000 kilometers per hour), shortening its trip to Pluto by three years.
During the flyby, New Horizons carried out a detailed set of observations over a period of four months in early 2007. These observations were designed to gather new data on Jupiter’s atmosphere, ring system, and moons (building on research from Galileo) and to test out New Horizon’s instruments.
Although observing the moons from distances much farther than Galileo, New Horizons was still able to return impressive pictures of Io (including eruptions on its surface), Europa, and Ganymede.
After the Jupiter encounter, New Horizons sped toward the Kuiper Belt, performing a course correction on Sept. 25, 2007.
The spacecraft was put in hibernation mode starting June 28, 2007, during which time the spacecraft’s onboard computer kept tabs on mission systems, transmitting special codes indicating that operations were either nominal or anomalous. During hibernation, most major systems of New Horizons were deactivated and revived only about two months every year. The second, third, and fourth hibernation cycles were Dec. 16, 2008, Aug. 27, 2009, and Aug. 29, 2014.
New Horizons passed the halfway point to Pluto on Feb. 25, 2010.
The discovery of new Pluto moons Kerberos and Styx during the mission added to concerns that there might be debris or dust around Pluto. Mission planners devised two possible contingency plans in case debris increased as the spacecraft approached Pluto, either using its antenna facing the incoming particles as a shield or flying closer to Pluto where there might be less debris.
On Dec. 6, 2014, ground controllers revived New Horizons from hibernation for the last time to initiate its active encounter with Pluto. At that time, it took four hours and 25 minutes for a signal to reach Earth from the spacecraft.
The spacecraft began its approach phase toward Pluto on Jan. 15, 2015, and its trajectory was adjusted with a 93-second thruster burn on March 10. Two days later, with about four months remaining before its close encounter, New Horizons finally became closer to Pluto than Earth is to the Sun.
Pictures of Pluto began to reveal distinct features by April 29, 2015, with detail increasing week by week into the approach. A final 23-second engine burn on June 29, 2015, accelerated New Horizons toward its target by about 11 inches per second (27 centimeters per second) and fine-tuned its trajectory.
There was concern on July 4, 2015, when New Horizons entered safe mode due to a timing flaw in the spacecraft command sequence. Fortunately, the spacecraft returned to normal science operations by July 7.
Three days later, data from New Horizons was used to conclusively answer one of the most basic mysteries about Pluto: its size. Mission scientists concluded that Pluto is about 1,470 miles (2,370 kilometers) in diameter, slightly larger than prior estimates. Its moon Charon was confirmed to be about 750 miles (1,208 kilometers) in diameter.MareKromiumMag 20, 2026
|
|
ZZ-ZZ-ZZ-ZZ-ZZ-Z-New_Horizons_Proxima-2025_28129_gifH_Interstellar_v2.jpgInterstellar Navigation113 visiteSince its launch in 2006, New Horizons has been on a trajectory that brought it past Pluto and then Kuiper Belt object Arrokoth and will eventually take it out of the solar system, into interstellar space over the next decade. In 2020, the New Horizons science team, in an effort led by Lauer, obtained images of the star fields around the nearby stars Proxima Centauri and Wolf 359 simultaneously from New Horizons and Earth. This program vividly demonstrated New Horizons’ change in perspective as it ventured from the inner to the outer solar system.
But more recent and sophisticated analyses of the exact positions of the two stars in those 2020 images allowed Lauer, working with retired Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researcher David Munro, as well as members of the New Horizons team and external collaborators, to deduce New Horizons’ three-dimensional position relative to nearby stars – accomplishing the first use of stars imaged directly from a spacecraft to provide its navigational fix, and the first demonstration of interstellar navigation by any spacecraft on an interstellar trajectory.
A paper describing the results was accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal. The preprint is available on the server arXiv.
“This pioneering interstellar navigation demonstration and its accompanying publication show that a deep-space mission can use its onboard imaging system to find its way among the stars,” said Alan Stern, principal investigator for New Horizons from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “While for New Horizons, this method isn’t as accurate as NASA’s sophisticated tracking from Earth, it could be highly useful for future deep space missions in the far reaches of the solar system and in interstellar space.”MareKromiumMag 20, 2026
|
|
ZZ-ZZ-ZZ-ZZ-ZZ-Z-New_Horizons_Proxima-2025_28129.gif131 visiteWhile spacecraft can use stars to get a sense of direction, figuring out how far and where a spacecraft has traveled from home usually requires accurate radio tracking from Earth. But members of NASA’s New Horizons team – using the mission’s spacecraft, now more than five billion miles from Earth – have demonstrated for the first time that it’s possible to determine direction and distance just by examining images the spacecraft snaps of star fields.
“As a spacecraft travels deeper into space, the positions of the stars seen from its location begin to shift from where they are seen from Earth,” explained Tod Lauer, an astrophysicist and New Horizons science team member from the National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory in Tucson, Arizona. “A spacecraft voyaging out into the Milky Way can measure these shifts, due to an effect called parallax, to locate where it is with respect to nearby stars. New Horizons has traveled far enough away that it can provide the first true demonstration of interstellar navigation.”MareKromiumMag 20, 2026
|
|
3I-ATLAS_noise_or_signal.mp33I/Atlas says "Hi!"164 visiteMaking a comment, I believe it's just useless. Enjoy it, anyway!MareKromiumMag 16, 2026
|
|
Asteroid_-_Donaldjohanson_P_Lucy_s_trajectory_around_Sun.gifLucy's race (GIF-Movie)140 visiteDonaldjohanson was visited by the Lucy Spacecraft that was launched on 16 October 2021. The Fly-By took place on 20 April 2025, with a closest approach distance of approx. 960 Km (about 600 mi) at a relative velocity of 13.4 Km (8.3 mi) per second.MareKromiumMag 12, 2026
|
|
Asteroid_-_Donaldjohanson_Offical_Names.pngAsteroid Donaldjohanson (nomenclature)166 visiteOn 27 August 2025, the International Astronomical Union announced 11 official names for Geological Features on Donaldjohanson, which follow the naming theme of archeological sites and hominin fossils. The smaller lobe of Donaldjohanson is named Afar Lobus, after the Afar Triangle in Ethiopia, and the larger lobe is named Olduvai Lobus, after Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania.
The neck connecting the two lobes is named Windover Collum, after the Windover Archeological Site in Florida, United States. The middle of Windover Collum is encircled by a ridge named Luzia Dorsum (named after the Luzia Woman), which divides the neck into Hadar Regio and Minatogawa Regio (named after Hadar, Ethiopia and the Minatogawa Man, respectively). Several craters and large boulders ("saxa") on Olduvai Lobus have been named as well.MareKromiumMag 12, 2026
|
|
000-Asteroids_-_Main_Belt.pngAsteroid Belt142 visiteThe Asteroid Belt is a torus-shaped region in the Solar System, centered on the Sun and roughly spanning the space between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars. It contains a great many solid, irregularly shaped bodies called asteroids or minor planets. The identified objects are of many sizes, but much smaller than planets, and, on average, are about one million kilometers (or six hundred thousand miles) apart. This asteroid belt is also called the main asteroid belt or main belt to distinguish it from other asteroid populations in the Solar System.
The Asteroid Belt is the innermost and smallest circumstellar disc in the Solar System. Its total mass is estimated to be 3% that of the Moon, with about 60% contained in the four largest asteroids: Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, and Hygiea. Classes of small Solar System bodies in other regions are the near-Earth objects, the Centaurs, the Kuiper Belt Objects, the scattered Disc Objects, the Sednoids, and the Oort Cloud Objects.MareKromiumMag 12, 2026
|
|
|
|
