Hubble Sees an Ancient Globular Cluster

This image captures the stunning NGC 6535, a globular cluster 22,000 light-years away in the constellation of Serpens (The Serpent) that measures one light-year across.

Globular clusters are tightly bound groups of stars which orbit galaxies. The large mass in the rich stellar centre of the globular cluster pulls the stars inward to form a ball of stars. The word globulus, from which these clusters take their name, is Latin for small sphere.

Globular clusters are generally very ancient objects formed around the same time as their host galaxy. To date, no new star formation has been observed within a globular cluster, which explains the abundance of aging yellow stars in this image, most of them containing very few heavy elements.

NGC 6535 was first discovered in 1852 by English astronomer John Russell Hind. The cluster would have appeared to Hind as a small, faint smudge through his telescope. Now, over 160 years later, instruments like the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) on the NASA/ European Space Agency (ESA) Hubble Space Telescope allow us to marvel at the cluster and its contents in greater detail.

European Space Agency

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Gilles Chapdelaine via NASA http://ift.tt/1vsB3tl

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Space Simulation Chamber Prepared for Testing Webb Telescope

This photo was captured from outside the enormous mouth of NASA’s giant thermal vacuum chamber, called Chamber A, at Johnson Space Center in Houston. Previously used for manned spaceflight missions, this historic chamber is now filled with engineers and technicians preparing a lift system that will be used to hold the James Webb Space Telescope during testing.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the scientific successor to NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. It will be the most powerful space telescope ever built. Webb is an international project led by NASA with its partners, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.

> Related: Amazing View of Engineers Preparing NASA’s Gigantic Space Simulation Chamber for Massive Test

Image Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn via NASA http://www.nasa.gov/content/space-simulation-chamber-prepared-for-testing-webb-telescope

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View of the Alps From Space

Expedition 42 Flight Engineer Samantha Cristoforetti of the European Space Agency (ESA) took this photograph of the Alps from the International Space Station, and posted it to social media on Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2014. She wrote, “I’m biased, but aren’t the Alps from space spectacular? What a foggy day on the Po plane, though! #Italy”

Image Credit: NASA/ESA/Samantha Cristoforetti via NASA http://www.nasa.gov/content/view-of-the-alps-from-space

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China’s November Industrial Profits Suffer Sharpest Fall in 27 Months by REUTERS

By REUTERS

Chinese industrial profits dropped 4.2 percent in November to 676.12 billion yuan ($108.85 billion), official data showed on Saturday, the biggest annual decline since August 2012 as the economy hit major unexpected headwinds in the second half.

Published: December 26, 2014 at 07:19PM

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Frosty Slopes on Mars

This image of an area on the surface of Mars, approximately 1.5 by 3 kilometers in size, shows frosted gullies on a south-facing slope within a crater.

At this time of year, only south-facing slopes retain the frost, while the north-facing slopes have melted. Gullies are not the only active geologic process going on here. A small crater is visible at the bottom of the slope.

The image was acquired on Nov. 30, 2014, by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera, one of six instruments on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colorado. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

> More information and image products

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Caption: Livio Tornabene, Ryan Hopkins, Kayle Hansen and Eric Pilles via NASA http://ift.tt/1zfflLr

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National Coal Mining Deaths by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

National coal mining deaths dropped by more than half the year after the 2010 Upper Big Branch mine explosion in West Virginia, from 48 to 21, and there were 20 each in 2012 and 2013, and a record low of 15 so far in 2014. The U.S. averaged about 30…

Published: December 21, 2014 at 06:56AM

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US Coal Mines Nearing Record Low in Worker Deaths by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Less than five years after an explosion fueled by excess coal dust killed 29 men deep inside a West Virginia underground mine, the nation’s coal mines are on pace for an all-time low in work-related deaths.

Published: December 21, 2014 at 06:50AM

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Hubble Sweeps a Messy Star Factory

This sprinkle of cosmic glitter is a blue compact dwarf galaxy known as Markarian 209. Galaxies of this type are blue-hued, compact in size, gas-rich, and low in heavy elements. They are often used by astronomers to study star formation, as their conditions are similar to those thought to exist in the early Universe.

Markarian 209 in particular has been studied extensively. It is filled with diffuse gas and peppered with star-forming regions towards its core. This image captures it undergoing a particularly dramatic burst of star formation, visible as the lighter blue cloudy region towards the top right of the galaxy. This clump is filled with very young and hot newborn stars.

This galaxy was initially thought to be a young galaxy undergoing its very first episode of star formation, but later research showed that Markarian 209 is actually very old, with an almost continuous history of forming new stars. It is thought to have never had a dormant period — a period during which no stars were formed — lasting longer than 100 million years.

The dominant population of stars in Markarian 209 is still quite young, in stellar terms, with ages of under 3 million years. For comparison, the sun is some 4.6 billion years old, and is roughly halfway through its expected lifespan.

The observations used to make this image were taken using Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys, and span the ultraviolet, visible, and infrared parts of the spectrum. A scattering of other bright galaxies can be seen across the frame, including the bright golden oval that could, due to a trick of perspective, be mistaken as part of Markarian 209 but is in fact a background galaxy.

European Space Agency

ESA/Hubble & NASA Acknowledgement: Nick Rose via NASA http://ift.tt/1H01dtM

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75th Anniversary of NASA Ames

December 20, 2014 marks NASA Ames Research Center’s 75th Anniversary. The center was established in 1939 as the second laboratory of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, and was named for the chair of the NACA, Joseph S. Ames. It was located at Moffett Field in Sunnyvale, California, now at the heart of Silicon Valley. The Laboratory was renamed the NASA Ames Research Center with the formation of NASA in 1958.

This June 2, 1943 photograph shows the construction of the Ames full-scale 40- by 80-foot wind tunnel, with a side view of the entrance cone and a blimp in the background.

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West Virginia Trial of Executive Charged in Mine Disaster Delayed by REUTERS

By REUTERS

A U.S. federal judge in West Virginia on Wednesday effectively delayed the Jan. 26 start of the trial of a former coal mining company chief executive on charges of violating mine safety laws before a 2010 explosion that killed 29 workers.

Published: December 17, 2014 at 10:40AM

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City Lights Shine Brighter During the Holidays

City lights shine brighter during the holidays when compared with the rest of the year, as shown using a new analysis of daily data from the NASA-NOAA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) satellite. Dark green pixels are areas where lights are 50 percent brighter, or more, during December.

This new analysis of holiday lights uses an advanced algorithm, developed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, that filters out moonlight, clouds and airborne particles in order to isolate city lights on a daily basis. The data from this algorithm provide high-quality satellite information on light output across the globe, allowing scientists to track when – and how brightly – people illuminate the night. A daily global dynamic dataset of nighttime lights is a new way for researchers to understand the broad societal forces impacting energy decisions and to look at how people use cities, from an energy perspective.

> Full Story: NOAA/NASA Satellite Sees Holiday Lights Brighten Cities

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California Pensions Should Divest Coal Assets: State Senate Leader by REUTERS

By REUTERS

California pension plans would divest all assets related to the coal industry under a measure the leader of the state senate said he will propose to reduce support for an industry that critics blame for contributing to climate change.

Published: December 16, 2014 at 11:53AM

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Sunset Over the Gulf of Mexico

From the International Space Station, Expedition 42 Flight Engineer Terry W. Virts took this photograph of the Gulf of Mexico and U.S. Gulf Coast at sunset and posted it to social media on Dec. 14, 2014.

The space station and its crew orbit Earth from an altitude of 220 miles, traveling at a speed of approximately 17,500 miles per hour. Because the station completes each trip around the globe in about 92 minutes, the crew experiences 16 sunrises and sunsets each day.

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Super Guppy Spends a Restful Night in the NASA Langley Hangar

NASA’s Super Guppy aircraft, designed to transport extremely large cargo, rests after making a special delivery to the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The aircraft measures more than 48 feet to the top of its tail and has a wingspan of more than 156 feet with a 25-foot diameter cargo bay – the aircraft features a hinged nose that opens 110 degrees.

A representative test article of a futuristic hybrid wing body aircraft will be unloaded from the Super Guppy on Friday, Dec. 12 at Langley Research Center. The large test article, representing the uniquely shaped fuselage cross-section, is made out of a low-weight, damage-tolerant, stitched composite structural concept called Pultruded Rod Stitched Efficient Unitized Structure, or PRSEUS. Langley’s Combined Loads Test System will subject the revolutionary carbon-fiber architecture test article to conditions that simulate loads typically encountered in flight.

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Colorful and Plankton-full Patagonian Waters

Late spring and summer weather brings blooms of color to the Atlantic Ocean off of South America, at least from a satellite view. The Patagonian Shelf Break is a biologically rich patch of ocean where airborne dust from the land, iron-rich currents from the south, and upwelling currents from the depths provide a bounty of nutrients for the grass of the sea—phytoplankton. In turn, those floating sunlight harvesters become food for some of the richest fisheries in the world.

The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on Suomi NPP captured this view of phytoplankton-rich waters off of Argentina on Dec. 2, 2014. Scientists in NASA’s Ocean Color Group used three wavelengths (671, 551, and 443 nanometers) of visible and near-infrared light to highlight different plankton communities in the water. Bands of color not only reveal the location of plankton, but also the dynamic eddies and currents that carry them.

> More Information

Image Credit: Norman Kuring, NASA’s Ocean Color Group, using VIIRS data from the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership via NASA http://ift.tt/1slHCNZ

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Great Lakes and Central U.S. Viewed From the International Space Station

From the International Space Station, Expedition 42 Commander Barry Wilmore took this photograph of the Great Lakes and central U.S. on Dec. 7, 2014, and posted it to social media.

This week on the station, the Expedition 42 crew has been busy with medical science and spacesuit work while preparing for the arrival of SpaceX’s Dragon commercial cargo craft, scheduled to launch on Dec. 16 on a two day trip to the station before it is captured by the Canadarm2 and berthed to the Harmony node.

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Ukraine Says Russia Has Resumed Gas Flow by REUTERS

By REUTERS

Russia resumed gas flows to Ukraine on Tuesday after halting them six months ago in a dispute over prices and unpaid debts, Ukraine’s gas transport monopoly said.

Published: December 8, 2014 at 09:01PM

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