#ITER DG Bernard Bigot Opened #IBF2019 This Morning, Urging ITER’s Industrial Partners To Continue

hot

ig: studylustre

Be Glad You Don’t Have to Dust in Space!

Throw open the windows and break out the feather duster, because spring is here and it’s time to do a little cleaning! Fortunately, no one has to tidy up the dust in space — because there’s a lot of it — around 100 tons rain down on Earth alone every day! And there’s even more swirling around the solar system, our Milky Way galaxy, other galaxies and the spaces in between. 

By studying the contents of the dust in your house — which can include skin cells, pet fur, furniture fibers, pollen, concrete particles and more — scientists learn a lot about your environment. In the same way, scientists can learn a lot by looking at space dust. Also called cosmic dust, a fleck of space dust is usually smaller than a grain of sand and is made of rock, ice, minerals or organic compounds. Scientists can study cosmic dust to learn about how it formed and how the universe recycles material.

“We are made of star-stuff,” Carl Sagan famously said. And it’s true! When a star dies, it sheds clouds of gas in strong stellar winds or in an explosion called a supernova. As the gas cools, minerals condense. Recent observations by our SOFIA mission suggest that in the wake of a supernova shockwave, dust may form more rapidly than scientists previously thought. These clouds of gas and dust created by the deaths of stars can sprawl across light-years and form new stars — like the Horsehead Nebula pictured above. Disks of dust and gas form around new stars and produce planets, moons, asteroids and comets. Here on Earth, some of that space dust eventually became included in living organisms — like us! Billions of years from now, our Sun will die too. The gas and dust it sheds will be recycled into new stars and planets and so on and so forth, in perpetuity!

Astronomers originally thought dust was a nuisance that got in the way of seeing the objects it surrounded. Dust scatters and absorbs light from stars and emits heat as infrared light. Once we started using infrared telescopes, we began to understand just how important dust is in the universe and how beautiful it can be. The picture of the Andromeda galaxy above was taken in the infrared by our Spitzer Space Telescope and reveals detailed spirals of dust that we can’t see in an optical image.

We also see plenty of dust right here in our solar system. Saturn’s rings are made of mostly ice particles and some dust, but scientists think that dust from meteorites may be darkening the rings over time. Jupiter also has faint dusty rings, although they’re hard to see — Voyager 1 only discovered them when it saw them backlit by the Sun. Astronomers think the rings formed when meteorite impacts on Jupiter’s moons released dust into orbit. The Juno spacecraft took the above picture in 2016 from inside the rings, looking out at the bright star Betelgeuse.

Copyright Josh Calcino, used with permission

And some space dust you can see from right here on Earth! In spring or autumn, right before sunrise or after sunset, you may be able to catch a glimpse of a hazy cone of light above the horizon created when the Sun’s rays are scattered by dust in the inner solar system. You can see an example in the image above, extending from above the tree on the horizon toward a spectacular view of the Milky Way. This phenomenon is called zodiacal light — and the dust that’s reflecting the sunlight probably comes from icy comets. Those comets were created by the same dusty disk that that formed our planets and eventually you and the dust under your couch!

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Good Omens meets Sherlock?

There is a little bit of RF for fusion in the latest @ANSYS magazine Advantage ;)

https://t.co/SlhzaxPXsh

The trickster “Blinking Planetary”

Planetary nebula NGC 6826 is located about 4,200 light years from Earth in Cygnus. When observers look directly at it through a small telescope, they typically see only the nebula’s sparkling-white central star. However, by averting one’s gaze, glancing away from the central star, the nebula’s bulbous dust clouds come into view. This optical trickery earned this planetary nebula the name the “Blinking Planetary.” 

Over the next several thousand years, the nebula will gradually disperse into space, and then the central star will slowly cool as it radiates its energy for billions of years as a white dwarf. 

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Want to have an immersive experience of #ITER? Come and visit our stand at the #IBF19 put on those goggles and enjoy the view... #WeAreITER https://t.co/78DAMOlPgy

🔎 Lava Lake Discovery 

🌋 Raikoke Volcano Eruption

🔥 Uptick in Amazon Fire Activity 

2019 brought many memorable events on Planet Earth, and NASA satellites and astronauts captured a lot of the action! From new discoveries to tracking natural events and capturing amazing scenery, here are a few highlights from around the globe. 

Read more about the images in this video, here. 

Ok I’m gonna try and sculpt Donald Duck without looking at it and bake and paint the result

The Pale Blue Dot and the Golden Record

Almost thirty years ago, on Feb. 14, 1990, our Voyager 1 spacecraft turned back toward its home for one last look. 40 astronomical units (almost 4 billion miles) from the Sun, Voyager snapped the first-ever “family portrait” of our solar system.

One image in particular highlights our own planet’s fragility in the vast cosmic arena that we call home. This image of Earth, a tiny point of light, is contained in a camera artifact that resembles a beam of sunlight.

The late Carl Sagan referred to this image of Earth in the title of his 1994 book, Pale Blue Dot. Sagan wrote: “That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. … There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

We placed a message aboard Voyager 1 and 2 — a kind of time capsule intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials. The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record: a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth.

The Golden Record includes 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind and thunder, birds, whales and other animals. Musical selections from different cultures and eras were also added, as well as spoken greetings from Earth-people in fifty-five languages and printed messages from President Carter.

The Golden Record represents the whole of humanity, mounted to a feat of human engineering on a long voyage through interstellar space. 

You can listen to the sounds of Earth on the golden record here and take a moment to appreciate our pale blue dot. 

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com