TYB
I'll never forget the first time I stumbled across one of her videos.
I was blown away that this sweet old lady was dropping major red pills.
She has a channel with a ton of content for anyone interested
https://www.youtube.com/@dolorescannon2012
Chip ~~Roy~~ Soy
Hubble Spots a Galaxy with Tendrils
Apr 14, 2023
This image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows JO204, a ‘jellyfish galaxy’ so named for the bright tendrils of gas that appear in this image as drifting lazily below JO204’s bright central bulk. The galaxy lies almost 600 million light-years away in the constellation Sextans. Hubble observed JO204 as part of a survey performed with the intention of better understanding star formation under extreme conditions.
While the delicate ribbons of gas beneath JO204 may look like floating jellyfish tentacles, they are in fact the outcome of an intense astronomical process known as ram pressure stripping. Ram pressure is a particular type of pressure exerted on a body when it moves relative to a fluid. An intuitive example is the sensation of pressure you experience when you are standing in an intense gust of wind – the wind is a moving fluid, and your body feels pressure from it. An extension of this analogy is that your body will remain whole and coherent, but the more loosely bound things – like your hair and your clothes – will flap in the wind. The same is true for jellyfish galaxies. They experience ram pressure because of their movement against the intergalactic medium that fills the spaces between galaxies in a galaxy cluster. The galaxies experience intense pressure from that movement, and as a result their more loosely bound gas is stripped away. This gas is mostly the colder and denser gas in the galaxy – gas which, when stirred and compressed by the ram pressure, collapses and forms new stars in the jellyfish’s beautiful tendrils.
https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2023/hubble-spots-a-galaxy-with-tendrils
Bada bing bada bang
Lift off! NASA’s Super Pressure Balloon Takes Flight from New Zealand
Apr 15, 2023
NASA’s Scientific Balloon Program successfully launched its football-stadium-sized, heavy-lift super pressure balloon (SPB) from Wānaka Airport, New Zealand, at 11:42 a.m., Sunday, April 16 (7:42 p.m.. April 15 in U.S. Eastern Time), on a mission planned for 100 or more days.
“Mother Nature shined down beautifully today giving us the perfect conditions for a brilliant launch,” said Debbie Fairbrother, NASA’s Scientific Balloon Program chief. “I’m excited for this mission and the cutting-edge science it will perform.”
The balloon will float at 110,000 feet (33.5 km) with the winds carrying it about the southern hemisphere's mid-latitude band.
NASA invites the public to follow these missions as they fly on their globetrotting journeys about the Southern Hemisphere’s mid-latitudes, said Fairbrother. A balloon’s flight path is controlled by the wind speed and direction at float altitude. The missions will spend most of their time over water, and for any land crossings, NASA works with the U.S. State Department to coordinate country overflight approvals. Real-time tracking of these flights is publicly available here. In addition, NASA publicizes balloon launch and tracking information via the web at www.nasa.gov/balloons and across NASA’s social media platforms.
While validating the super pressure balloon technology is the main flight objective, the balloon is also carryingthe Super Pressure Balloon Imaging Telescope (SuperBIT), from Princeton University, which uses a wide field of view to image large galaxy clusters from a balloon platform in a near-space environment. By measuring the way these massive objects warp the space around them, also called “weak gravitational lensing,” SuperBIT will be able to map the dark matter present in these clusters.
A second SPB flight is planned and will fly the Extreme Universe Space Observatory 2 (EUSO-2), a mission from the University of Chicago that aims to build on data collected during a 2017 mission. EUSO-2 will detect ultra-high energy cosmic-ray particles from beyond our galaxy as they penetrate Earth’s atmosphere. The origins of these particles are not well known, so the data collected from EUSO-2 will help solve this science mystery.
Maintaining a constant float altitude in the stratosphere is a formidable challenge for airborne systems, including balloons. Most standard heavy-lift zero pressure balloons can vary in altitudes as much as 45,000 feet (13.7 km) due to the alternating warming and cooling of the day-night cycle. In response, mission operators typically release excess weight in the form of ballast to maintain altitude. The SPB, in contrast, is designed to maintain a positive internal pressure and shape irrespective of its environment, which keeps the balloon at a stable float altitude without dropping ballast.
The 18.8-million-cubic-foot (532,000-cubic-meter) balloon is helium-filled and about the size of a football stadium when fully inflated at its operational float altitude of 110,000 feet (33.5 kilometers). Wānaka is NASA’s dedicated launch site for mid-latitude, long-duration balloon missions.
NASA conducts SPB launches from New Zealand in collaboration with the Queenstown Airport Corporation, Queenstown Lake District Council, New Zealand Space Agency, and Airways New Zealand.
NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia manages the agency’s scientific balloon flight program with 10 to 15 flights each year from launch sites worldwide. Peraton, which operates NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility (CSBF) in Texas, provides mission planning, engineering services, and field operations for NASA’s scientific balloon program. The CSBF team has launched more than 1,700 scientific balloons over some 40 years of operations. NASA’s balloons are fabricated by Aerostar. The NASA Scientific Balloon Program is funded by the NASA Headquarters Science Mission Directorate Astrophysics Division.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/wallops/2023/lift-off-nasa-s-super-pressure-balloon-takes-flight-from-new-zealand
Webb Captures the Spectacular Galactic Merger Arp 220
Apr 17, 2023
Shining like a brilliant beacon amidst a sea of galaxies, Arp 220 lights up the night sky in this view from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Actually two spiral galaxies in the process of merging, Arp 220 glows brightest in infrared light, making it an ideal target for Webb. It is an ultra-luminous infrared galaxy (ULIRG) with a luminosity of more than a trillion suns. In comparison, our Milky Way galaxy has a much more modest luminosity of about ten billion suns.
Located 250 million light-years away in the constellation of Serpens, the Serpent, Arp 220 is the 220th object in Halton Arp’s Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies. It is the nearest ULIRG and the brightest of the three galactic mergers closest to Earth.
The collision of the two spiral galaxies began about 700 million years ago. It sparked an enormous burst of star formation. About 200 huge star clusters reside in a packed, dusty region about 5,000 light-years across (about 5 percent of the Milky Way's diameter). The amount of gas in this tiny region is equal to all of the gas in the entire Milky Way galaxy.
Previous radio telescope observations revealed about 100 supernova remnants in an area of less than 500 light-years. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope uncovered the cores of the parent galaxies 1,200 light-years apart. Each of the cores has a rotating, star-forming ring blasting out the dazzling infrared light so apparent in this Webb view. This glaring light creates diffraction spikes — the starburst feature that dominates this image.
On the outskirts of this merger, Webb reveals faint tidal tails, or material drawn off the galaxies by gravity, represented in blue — evidence of the galactic dance that is occurring. Organic material represented in reddish-orange appears in streams and filaments across Arp 220.
Webb viewed Arp 220 with its Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI).
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2023/webb-captures-the-spectacular-galactic-merger-arp-220
Would that enable us to insert ourselves back into certain situations, perhaps maybe even all situations, to play around with pathways and outcomes?
Take off my chains and let me loose, I've got a destiny to carve out!