Below is a selection of the best of images from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory collected by nasa1fan/MSFC on Flickr. The observatory, launched and deployed by Space Shuttle Columbia on July 23, 1999, is the most sophisticated X-ray observatory built to date. It is a part of NASA’s fleet of “Great Observatories” along with the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope and the now deorbited Compton Gamma Ray Observatory.
Chandra Greatest Hits - Image Credits: NASA/CXC
Chandra is helping scientists better understand the hot, turbulent regions of space and answer fundamental questions about origin, evolution, and destiny of the Universe. The images Chandra makes are twenty-five times sharper than the best previous X-ray telescope.
This Chandra X-ray Observatory image shows Westerlund 2, a young star cluster with an estimated age of about one or two million years that contains some of the hottest, brightest, and most massive stars known - Credit: NASA/CXC/Univ. de Liège/Y. Naze et al
In this image, low-energy X-rays are colored red, intermediate-energy X-rays in green, and high-energy X-rays in blue. The image shows a very high density of massive stars that are bright in X-rays, plus diffuse X-ray emission. An incredibly massive double star system called WR20a is visible as the bright yellow point just below and to the right of the cluster’s center.
Originally, I planned to continue my ISS above London series although now it would be renamed to ISS above Amsterdam. Unfortunately, I missed tonight’s fly over between 17:41:57 and 17:48:47 GMT when the ISS passed only a few degrees south of the Moon.
Fortunately, freezing out on the roof terrace wasn’t a complete waste of time as I managed to take the following shot of the crescent Moon [click to embiggen].
Photo of waxing crescent Moon taken tonight through a refractor ATC Monar (D=70mm f/4.6) with Canon 450D, exp. 1/50s
In the photo above, 25% of the surface is illuminated. At the time, the Moon was at the distance of 400,438 km only a few hours after reaching the apogee (January 20, 2010 at 14:55 GMT). Chromatic aberration, caused by the failure of the primary lens to focus all colors to the same point due to different refractive index for different wavelengths of light, is noticeable on the edges (green in the bottom left, red in bottom right, and blue in top right) but quite obvious in the original (uncropped) image [~2mb] with the resolution of 4272px x 2848px.
As there is no need for colors in lunar images, I was quite happy to “correct” the chromatic aberration by setting the image [click to embiggen] to gray-scale:
Grayscale photo of waxing crescent Moon taken tonight (eq and exp. details same as above)
Update 1: Here is a video of the eclipse captured with a miniDV camera.
Witnessing the longest of this millennium annular solar eclipse in Varkala town, Kerala state, South of India - Credit: www.FollowTheRoad.com
Update 2: This is what people in Africa, the Maldives and India saw on Friday as they looked skyward.
This is what people in Africa, the Maldives and India saw on Friday as they looked skyward - Credit: ITN News
Update 3: NASA Earth Observatory posted this photo of India and the Bay or Bengal from space. The shot was taken at 07:15 GMT by Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite. The shadow spans a north-south distance of about 300 kilometers on the surface, with the darkest part near the mid-point of the span.
The Moon's shadow falling on India and the Bay of Bengal during the January 15 annular solar eclipse - Credit: NASA/Aqua - Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center
After the longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century on July 22 last year (the longest until Jun 13, 2132), today’s annular solar eclipse is another record holder. Its duration will be unmatched until December 23, 3043.
The eclipse was visible from within a 300-km-wide track that traversed half of Earth. The path of the Moon’s antumbral shadow began in Africa and passed through Chad, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Kenya, and Somalia. After leaving Africa, the path crossed the Indian Ocean where the maximum duration of annularity reached 11 min 07.8 s.. The central path then continued into Asia through Bangladesh, India, Burma (Myanmar), and China. A partial eclipse was seen within the much broader path of the Moon’s penumbral shadow, which includes eastern Europe, most of Africa, Asia, and Indonesia.
The narrow stretch of 300 km width across Central Africa, Maldives, South Kerala (India), South Tamil Nadu (India), North Sri Lanka, parts of Burma and parts of China from which an annular solar eclipse was observed - Credit: NASA/GSFC - F. Espenak
One of many expeditions that traveled around the world to observed the first annular eclipse of this decade chose a coastal city of Varkala in India as the observation site. Below are a few selected shots from a larger collection of some truly amazing photos.
Annular Eclipse from a coastal town of Varkala, India. Baily's Beads prior to 2nd contact - Credit: W. van Kerkhoff
Annular Eclipse from a coastal town of Varkala, India. Baily's Beads at high resolution, just before 2nd contact - Credit: T. Kampschulte
The Ring of Fire is closed, but just barely; it measures a few arc seconds only in places in this super-sharp telescopic image - Credit: T. Kampschulte
Many amateurs took beautiful photos with a great variety of equipment ranging from a simple cell phone 2-3 MP to professional cameras. The next image is a mosaic of 36 photos taken during a period of three hours by Surajram Kumaravel.
A series of 36 photos shot from Chennai during the January 15th 2009 Annular Solar Eclipse. Canon Powershot S3 IS, ISO 60, 72mm, f/7.8, 1/15 sec. Shot in Raw and converted to B&W using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, and stitched together using Adobe Photoshop - Credit: Surajram Kumaravel
Partial Eclipse at sunset - Credit: @dragonsfanatic
The photo above depicts a partially eclipsed sun touching the horizon during a sunset from Chatan, Okinawa, Japan. See this flickr photostream for the entire sunset sequence.
This composition of 26 photos displays the path of the Sun and the Moon on the sky during the annular eclipse - Credit: Sriram Ramani
Photo of partial solar eclipse also showing the Sunspot 1040 - Credit: a.M.m.a.d.z
Solar scientists track solar cycles by counting sunspots. Sunspots are caused by magnetic activity that inhibits convection regions forming “colder” areas (roughly 3,000-4,500 K) on Sun’s photosphere. They appear dark only in contrast to the surrounding area (at about 5,780 K). As the Sun’s magnetic field changes over time (back and forth from a maximum to a minimum), the number of sunspots varies. The current solar cycle (24), “officially” began with the appearance of sunspot 981 on January 4, 2008. For almost two years the cycle 24 has been quite boring (the sun has been spotless for about 260 days this year). As the expected increase of solar magnetic activity is about a year overdue, the last week’s appearance of sunspot 1034 and the active sunspot region 1035 (which grew into size of several Earth radii) finally “brightened” things a little.
Sunspot 1034 and Active Sunspot Region 1035 6 times wider than Earth - Credit: SOHO (ESA & NASA)
In the video above, the Michelson Doppler Imager (MDI) aboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) captures the appearance of the sunspot region 1035 on December 14, 2009.
Sunspot 1034 and Active Sunspot Region 1035 - Credit: David Evans
Although the maximum of the annual Geminid meteor shower has well passed, and despite that the Geminids might not have been as numerous as the summer Perseids, spectacular photos of greenish meteor trails keep surfacing every day. After Wally Pacholka’s breathtaking fireball over the Mojave Desert featured at the Astronomy Picture of the Day, another great shot of the recent meteor shower, this time from Australia, appeared today in the most famous gallery of our universe.
At least 34 meteors are included in this composite image as they rain through Australian skies during the annual Geminid Meteor shower - Credit: Phil Hart
At the end of three days of astrophotography at the Leon Mow Dark Sky Site in Victoria, Australia, Phil Hart captured about 34 Geminids in the composite image above. For two hours, Phil’s Canon 5D MKII set at 3200 ISO kept taking 8 second-long exposures through a 24mm f1.4 lens, all on a Vixen GP-DX equatorial mount. The resulting image is a composite of those 8 second shots stacked against a single 2 minute exposure capturing surrounding stars and the Milky Way through the constellation Orion and Canis Major with Sirius at the top. The image may seem to be inverted to those of us who are used to the sky viewed from the northern hemisphere. Of course, having been taken in Australia, the constellations appear upside down.
At 11:29 GMT on Monday December 14, 2009, Wally Pacholka captured one of the largest fireballs recorded during this year’s Geminid Meteor Shower in Mojave Desert in California. Seen toward the southwest over rock formations near Victorville, California, a more familiar celestial background was momentarily washed out by the meteor’s flash. The background includes bright star Sirius at the left, and Aldebaran and the Pleaides star cluster at the right side of the image. The meteor itself blazes through the constellation Orion. Its greenish trail begins just left of a yellow-tinted Betelgeuse and points back to the shower’s radiant in Gemini, just off the top of the frame.
