See what it's like to whip around Jupiter at high speed
Meteorologist/Science Writer
Friday, September 23, 2016, 5:11 PM - Watch as NASA's Juno spacecraft whips around Jupiter, see amazing images of our Sun from Japan's Hinode spacecraft and Hubble sees the colourful "last hurrah" of a sun-like star. It's Science Pics of the Week!
Whipping by dizzying Jupiter
NASA's Juno spacecraft is well into its second orbit around Jupiter, due for another close pass around the gas giant planet in a little under a month from now.
While we wait for that next flyby, though, we can enjoy this great movie, from Juno's point-of-view, as it approached and swept around Jupiter's poles.
According to Emily Lakdawalla, the Planetary Society's Senior Editor and Planetary Evangelist:
JunoCam imaged Jupiter every 15 to 30 minutes during its first two long orbits of Jupiter, capturing the motions of the moons around the planet. The frames were processed from NASA / JPL / SwRI / MSSS data through an algorithm developed by Gerald Eichstädt. The moons have been brightened where they appear against black space to make them more visible. This is a work in progress; eventually the animation should cover through October 18.
As NASA releases images from the Juno mission, they become available for anyone with the right skills to process and release to the public, like this excellent example:
Three whirling storms rage near Jupiter's south polar region. Credit : NASA/SwRI/MSSS/Roman Tkachenko
For more images from this mission, check out the Southwest Research Institute's Mission Juno website.
Happy 10 years to Hinode!
On Thursday, September 22, 2016, the joint NASA-JAXA Hinode mission celebrated its 10th year in space. Here are just a few examples of the incredible imagery of our Sun that this spacecraft has returned to us.
A composite animation of solar activity from Aug. 17, 2013, to Oct. 4, 2013, during the Sun's latest most-active period. Credit: NASA/JAXA/Hinode
An image of the filament structure of solar material that is guided and twisted by the Sun’s chaotic magnetic fields, captured Jan. 12, 2007. Credit: NASA/JAXA/Hinode
An amazing close-up view of the June 5, 2012 transit of Venus. Credit: NASA/JAXA/Hinode
For more highlights from this mission, see NASA's website.
Hubble looks at the future of our Sun
Some five billion years from now, our Sun will reach the end of its hydrogen burning, at which point it will expand to engulf the inner solar system. Roughly 100 million years later, it is expected to blow off its outer layers, sending them expanding out into space as a planetary nebula, leaving behind a small white dwarf star in its place.
While devastating for anyone or anything still in our solar system at the time, thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope, we can witness the colourful beauty that anyone in other regions of our galaxy will see when this happens.
Planetary nebula NGC 2440, about 4,000 light-years from Earth, in the southern constellation Puppis. Credit: NASA, ESA, and K. Noll (STScI), Acknowledgment: The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
According to NASA:
This image, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows the colorful "last hurrah" of a star like our sun. The star is ending its life by casting off its outer layers of gas, which formed a cocoon around the star's remaining core. Ultraviolet light from the dying star makes the material glow. The burned-out star, called a white dwarf, is the white dot in the center. Our sun will eventually burn out and shroud itself with stellar debris, but not for another 5 billion years.
Our Milky Way Galaxy is littered with these stellar relics, called planetary nebulae. The objects have nothing to do with planets. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century astronomers called them the name because through small telescopes they resembled the disks of the distant planets Uranus and Neptune. The planetary nebula in this image is called NGC 2440. The white dwarf at the center of NGC 2440 is one of the hottest known, with a surface temperature of more than 360,000 degrees Fahrenheit (200,000 degrees Celsius). The nebula's chaotic structure suggests that the star shed its mass episodically. During each outburst, the star expelled material in a different direction. This can be seen in the two bowtie-shaped lobes.
Sources: The Planetary Society | NASA/SwRI | NASA | NASA/Hubble
