Classic Texts From NASA

Classic Texts From NASA

Welcome home Expedition 41

Classic Texts From NASA

Classic Texts From NASA

Classic Texts From NASA

135 in 135

STS-51-J

Orbiter: OV-104, Atlantis.  Atlantis was the fourth operational spacecraft in the Space Shuttle program.  She was built by Rockwell International in 1983, and would go on to spend 306 days, carrying 156 astronauts into orbit.  Atlantis performed the final mission of the Space Shuttle program, STS-135, in 2011.

Mission: STS-51-J, the first flight of the Space Shuttle Atlantis.  This mission was also a dedicated mission for the Department of Defense.  Declassified information suggests that two military communications satellites were deployed into orbit. 

Launch Date/Location: October 3, 1985.  Kennedy Space Center, Launch Complex 39A.

Crew: Karol J. Bobko (STS-6, STS-51-D,), Ronald Grabe (first flight), David Hilmers (first flight), Robert Stewart (STS-41-B), William Pailes (first flight)

Payload:  USA-11 and USA-12, two Department of Defense satellites providing the military with secure voice and data communications.

Landing Date/Location: October 7, 1985 (4d 1h 44m 38s).  Runway 23, Edwards Air Force Base, California

This new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the super-rich galaxy cluster Abell 1413. Located between the constellations of Leo (The Lion) and Coma Berenices, the cluster is over 2 billion light-years from Earth. This image is dominated by a large and highly elliptical galaxy called MCG+04-28-097, with a halo of stars extending for more than 6.5 million light-years.

The galaxies at the center of Abell 1413 are found to be very highly elliptical whereas those at the periphery are more spherical.

Abell 1413 is part of the Abell catalog, a collection of over 4,000 rich clusters of galaxies fairly close to Earth — at least from a cosmological perspective — their light took less than 3 billion years to reach us. The clusters are called rich due to the huge number of galaxies they play host to. Abell 1413 is observed to contain more than 300 galaxies held together by the immense gravity of the cluster.

The strong interactions between these galaxies cause the material in the cluster to be heated to extremely high temperatures of almost 100 million degrees. Because of this, the cluster emits very strong X-ray radiation.

Visible distortions in the image can be seen in the form of arcs, caused by gravitational lensing. Gravitational lensing occurs when the intense gravity of the cluster bends space-time around it, causing a range of bizarre and beautiful optical phenomena for galaxies located in the background.

This image was created from optical and near-infrared exposures taken with the Wide Field Channel of Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS).

Classic Texts From NASA

Watch: Incredible video shows why girls avoid science and tech — and how we can change it

<3

This is fucking important.

Classic Texts From NASA

‪#‎WomenYouShouldHaveHeardOf‬ ‪#‎InternationalWomensDay‬

X-Rays from our Sun

High-energy solar emissions can be seen in blue and green protruding from solar gasses. NASA has been studying these solar X-rays in detail with it’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array sense 2012. In this image, NuSTAR data was combined with NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory to better understand the structures of solar arches.

Credit: NASA/JPL/NuSTAR

Happy National Puppy Day, science lovers! 

The space shuttle on the cover of Time magazine through the years.

Solar eclipse. March 20th 2015 as seen from Leicester, UK

Now as a .gif,  because this is Tumblr

ay from my hometown and everythinggg