NASA Unveils Amazing Cosmic Views as Chandra X-Ray Observatory Turns 20: https://www.space.com/chandra-xray-telescope-turns-20.html.
Originally posted on Twitter.
LightSale 2 Unfurls
LightSail 2 Unfurls, Takes Next Step Toward Space Travel by Solar Sail: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/23/science/lightsail-solar-sail.html. The Planetary Society crowd-funded and deployed LightSail 2 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, aiming to further demonstrate the potential of the technology for space propulsion.
“The ability to sail across the cosmos, powered by the energy of the sun, is finally becoming a reality.
Engineers in California pressed a button on Tuesday that unfurled the sails on a satellite that can be steered around Earth, advancing long held hopes for an inexhaustible form of spaceflight and expanding the possibilities for navigating the voids between worlds.”
Originally posted on Twitter.
Villeneuve's Dune Wraps Production
Set expectations to Ludicrously High! With an all-star cast and a director in Denis Villeneuve who's demonstrated his finesse with both Big Ideas and Big Settings, what could possibly go wrong this time?
https://movieweb.com/dune-remake-2020-production-wrap-denis-villeneuve/
Originally posted on Facebook.
The Expanse
Continuum Is, In Fact, Being Written
It's the return of the word count meter! Sorry it was a bit delayed in appearing - I've had a lot going on.🙄
Where you can follow the book's progress? On the main page of my website, right-hand column, below the "New Releases" section. https://www.gsjennsen.com/
Originally posted on Facebook.
The View From LightSail 2
Crowdfunded spacecraft LightSail 2 snaps amazing photos ahead of solar sail deployment: https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/17/crowdfunded-spacecraft-lightsail-2-snaps-amazing-photos-ahead-of-solar-sail-deployment/.
LightSail 2’s development was funded in part via a successful crowdfunding campaign run by the Bill Nye-led Planetary Society. Its goal is to test a spacecraft’s ability to fly powered only by the force of photons from the Sun striking a solar sail constructed of Mylar. This method of space-based transportation is extremely slow to get started, but thanks to the inertia-free medium of outer space, it could be an extremely energy-efficient way for research craft to travel long distances.
It launched on June 25 as part of the shared payload of SpaceX’s most recent Falcon Heavy launch.
Originally posted on Twitter.
ISS Crossing a Spotless Sun
The Space Station Crosses a Spotless Sun (by Rainee Colacurcio): https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap190715.html
I saw this image yesterday morning, and I continue to be transfixed by it. Obviously, there is one heck of a visual illusion going on here, as the ISS is in low Earth orbit and the sun is 93 million miles away, but it's powerful nonetheless.😯
Map of 4,000+ Exoplanets
NASA has dropped an insane map of 4,000 planets outside our solar system: https://www.cnet.com/…/nasa-drops-insane-map-of-4000-plane…/
The video is absolutely worth watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=8&v=aiFD_LBx2nM. It's only a minute long and is a great visualization of how exoplanet discovery just exploded in the last decade (go Kepler!📡✨).
New Lease on Life for the Voyagers
Voyagers 1 and 2 have the distinction of being in space for 42 years and still operating. And even though they’re 18 billion km (11 billion miles) from the Sun, they’re still valuable scientifically. But they’re running out of energy, and NASA has been working on how to stretch their remaining power for as long as possible.
Originally posted on Twitter.
Galactic Center in Radio
Stunning visual of the center of the Milky Way in the radio band, courtesy of MeerKAT radio telescope array.
Originally posted on Twitter.
New Hubble Eta Carinae Image
4th of July fireworks courtesy of Hubble and the future supernova Eta Carinae: https://www.universetoday.com/142734/hubble-has-a-brand-new-picture-of-the-massive-star-eta-carinae-it-could-detonate-as-a-supernova-any-day-now/
Originally posted on Facebook.
Southern Hemisphere Solar Eclipse
I missed it here in the Northern Hemisphere, but perhaps you caught a glimpse, or a shadow. Photographer Joaquin Baldwin certainly did: “Here is one shot from today’s total solar eclipse in Chile! Amazing spectacle, we picked a risky location using lots of planning and scouting, and it paid off.”
Originally posted on Twitter.
Fun With Acronyms
One of the fun(?) aspects of spinning up a new series is giving new names to things. I have found myself in need of an acronym this morning. Without disclosing the purpose of the entity behind the acronym, so far I have such candidates as:
- HUG
- HARD
- CHUMP
- MUSE (I actually like this one 😉)
- CHUG
- LEAP
- LAME
- HUMID
- HALP
...I'm not sure I remember how to do this right.🤔
*
Originally posted on Facebook.
Website Redesign FTW
The website got a minor (visual) and fairly major (structural) redesign this week. If poking around webpages, menus and links is your idea of fun - or if you just want to check it out 😁 - feel free to look around and let me know if anything is broken or wonky: https://www.gsjennsen.com.
Visually, the redesign is not as dramatic as the one I did 2 years ago. But it should be (a) easier to navigate, with clear pointers to important information, (b) less overwhelming for newcomers, and (c) perhaps most importantly, look great on mobile devices. Hopefully, all those things are true. 😋
Originally posted on Facebook.
Falcon Heavy Fireworks
The good kind ;). From the hugely difficult - and - hugely successful - SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch this week, an incredible image by astrophotographer Erik Kuna. In the photographer’s own words: “Cannot believe this happened just above the earth on the edge of the Mesosphere and Thermosphere around 85-120km in altitude yet it looks like something from a deep space Hubble telescope image.”
Initially posted on Twitter.
Tumultuous Clouds of Jupiter
This stunning image of Jupiter's stormy northern hemisphere was captured by NASA's Juno spacecraft as it performed a close pass of the gas giant planet. Some bright-white clouds can be seen popping up to high altitudes on the right side of Jupiter's disk.
Juno took the four images used to produce this color-enhanced view on May 29, 2019, as the spacecraft performed its 20th science pass of Jupiter. At the time the images were taken, the spacecraft was between 11,600 miles (18,600 kilometers) and 5,400 miles (8,600 kilometers) above Jupiter's cloud tops.
https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/tumultuous-clouds-of-jupiter/
Initially posted on Twitter.
2 Earth-mass Planets Orbit Teegarden's Star a Mere 12.5 Light-years Away
Astronomers have found two Earth-sized and *potentially Earth-like* planets orbiting a star just 12.5 light years away. The planets were found using an instrument called CARMENES, which stands for Calar Alto high-Resolution search for M dwarfs with Exoearths with Near-infrared and optical Échelle Spectrographs). That's a mouthful, but it means an extremely sensitive detector mounted on a telescope at the Calar Alto observatory in Spain that looks for alien worlds like Earth orbiting very cool red dwarfs.
http://edit.syfy.com/syfywire/two-earth-sized-planets-found-in-a-nearby-stars-habitable-zone
Originally posted on Twitter.
In the Wild
Stunning Close-Up of Asteroid Bennu
NASA's OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft Takes Stunning Photo of Asteroid Bennu From Just 0.4 Miles Away. This image of asteroid Bennu was captured on Jun. 13, 2019, shortly after NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft executed its second orbital insertion maneuver. From the spacecraft’s vantage point in orbit, half of Bennu is sunlit and half is in shadow. At this distance, details as small as 1.6 ft (0.5 m) across can be resolved in the center of the image.
https://gizmodo.com/nasas-osiris-rex-spacecraft-takes-stunning-photo-of-ast-1835601275
Originally posted on Twitter.
Bam! Fresh Crater Spied on Mars — and It Looks Spectacular
A small space rock crashed into the Red Planet's surface recently, producing a fresh crater that researchers estimate is 49 feet to 53 feet (15 to 16 meters) wide. The dramatic feature is clearly visible in a newly released image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
https://www.space.com/mars-fresh-crater-nasa-mro-photo-2019.html
Originally posted on Twitter.