Stars, Mercury, And Solar Corona

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot from Voyager 1 Color Inverted

What will become of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot? Recorded as shrinking since the 1930s, the rate of the Great Red Spot’s size appears to have accelerated just in the past few years. A hurricane larger than Earth, the Great Red Spot has been raging at least as long as telescopes could see it. Like most astronomical phenomena, the Great Red Spot was neither predicted nor immediately understood after its discovery. Although small eddies that feed into the storm system seem to play a role, a more full understanding of the gigantic storm cloud remains a topic of continued research, and may result in a better understanding of weather here on Earth. The above image is a digital enhancement of an image of Jupiter taken in 1979 by the Voyager 1 spacecraft as it zoomed by the Solar System’s largest planet. NASA’s Juno spacecraft is currently heading toward Jupiter and will arrive in 2016.

Image Credit: NASA, JPL; Digital processing: Björn Jónsson (IAAA), Color: thedemon-hauntedworld

The orbit of Jupiter protects the Earth from asteroids.

*Those razor-like shadows, they’re so black they look photoshopped

Comet 67P/C-G is framed by one of Rosetta’s solar wings, which is 46 feet long. A stream of gas and dust extends from an active area of the comet’s neck, about 10 miles away. (via NY Times)

1959 Radio Man

RMC 136a1 is a Wolf–Rayet star located at the center of R136, the central condensation of stars of the large NGC 2070 open cluster in the Tarantula Nebula. 

Comets may hold the secret to the origin of life on Earth

We’ve studied life on Earth extensively, but we still have no idea where it came from. Some scientists think it may have spontaneously arisen on Earth by some unknown process. Others think the ingredients for life were delivered here by comets crashing into Earth in the early days of the solar system. The latter theory just got a huge boost.

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Last space shuttle External Tank arrives at California Science Center.

ET-94 paraded its way through the Los Angeles suburbs today, May 21, as it journeyed to its final home at the California Science Center.

The last surviving flight-worthy space shuttle external tank, ET-94 left the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans April 12, where it has been since it was fabricated in the early 2000′s. It traversed the Panama Canal April 25-27, and arrived at Marina Del Rey in Los Angeles last Wednesday, May 19, after a 36-day sea voyage.

Leaving Marina Del Rey at 12:01am PDT with a New Orleans jazz band, the tank encountered more obstacles than expected during its 15.5 mile trek through the city, arriving at the CSC at 7:13pm PDT.

Towed through the streets of Inglewood, the last time space hardware shut down traffic was in October 2012, when space shuttle Endeavour was towed from Los Angeles International Airport to the CSC.

P/c: LA Times, California Science Center.