*** The Official Astronomy & Universe Thread ***

Today's Cassini's T-119 Titan flyby:


During Cassini's T-119 Titan flyby on May 6, the Radio Science Subsystem, or RSS, will observe an atmospheric occultation, in which Cassini appears to go behind Titan's atmosphere as seen from Earth. This is the last RSS Titan occultation in the Cassini mission. The way the atmosphere modifies Cassini's radio signal will be used to profile the thermal structure of the atmosphere and learn more about how it varies with Titan’s seasons. RSS continues with a short bistatic scattering observation, with the radio signal's ground track possibly crossing small lakes on Titan. Data from this observation may yield information about Titan’s surface (including reflectivity, roughness, and dielectric constant) that will improve our understanding of the moon's composition.

Scientists have found that Titan’s upper atmosphere and ionosphere change depending on a variety of factors, including Titan’s location in its orbit through Saturn’s magnetosphere, timing with respect to the 11-year solar cycle, and the geometry with respect to Titan and orientation with respect to the Sun of the closest approach. The only way to understand the influence of each of these factors on Titan’s upper atmosphere and ionosphere is to make observations over a wide range of varying geometries.

During the flyby, the Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer, or INMS, will make measurements of Titan’s atmosphere when the nightside receives the smallest possible infusion of energy from the sun. This helps scientists understand how the sun drives Titan’s upper atmospheric chemistry, while density observations provide insight on how quickly Titan’s atmosphere responds to inputs, relative to the length of Titan’s day.

The Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument, or MIMI, will measure the energetic ion and electron environment during the flyby. MIMI data will be used to estimate the energetic particle input from the magnetosphere into Titan’s atmosphere and ionosphere. This will help interpret the atmospheric characteristics (the ionization layers and scale heights) observed by RSS. Cassini's observations have demonstrated that the magnetospheric environment near Titan is much more variable and complex than scientists could ever have anticipated.
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We've seen the James Webb Space Telescope mirrors revealed and raised now in this great timelapse we get to see it lifted and turned so that the team can begin to prepare to install the telescope's science instruments to the back of the mirrors:


:cool:
 
Glaucus said:
some good pics cosimo
, they yours I take it? what did you use?#
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Thanks :)

Yes, they are mine and only used this:

CkTLgrs.jpg

Pentax K-3 II DSLR with a F* 300mm F4.5 ED[IF] lens and a Euro EMC SF100 solar filter Size 3: 69mm to 85mm.

Tripod mounted, mirror locked up, manual setting (F 13 1/640 ISO 200), infrared camera remote control, APSC camera so lens is 450mm.

Lots of luck with the clouds! :D
 
ESO's La Silla observatory high up in the Chilean mountains:


The telescopes appear in order of size, from the largest, the 3.6-metre telescope, to the smallest, the 0.6-metre TRAPPIST telescope. The last telescope shown is the Swedish-ESO Submillimetre telescope, which was decommissioned in 2003
 
A complete month of solar activity as captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).

SDO captures an image every 12 seconds in multiple wavelengths. This video shows wavelength 304 and shows every image taken by the satellite during the month of March 2016:

 
Looking over the horizon towards the centre of the Milky Way from the ISS:

cS4IBi4.jpg

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) see the world at night on every orbit — that’s 16 times each crew day. An astronaut took this broad, short-lens photograph of Earth’s night lights while looking out over the remote reaches of the central equatorial Pacific Ocean. ISS was passing over the island nation of Kiribati at the time, about 2600 kilometers (1,600 miles) south of Hawaii.

Knowing the exact time and the location of the ISS, scientists were able to match the star field in the photo to charts describing which stars should have been visible at that moment. They identified the pattern of stars in the photo as our Milky Way galaxy (looking toward its center). The dark patches are dense dust clouds in an inner spiral arm of our galaxy; such clouds can block our view of stars toward the center.

The curvature of the Earth crosses the center of the image and is illuminated by a variety of airglow layers in orange, green, and red. Setting stars are visible even through the dense orange-green airglow.

The brightest light in the image is a lightning flash that illuminated a large mass of clouds. The flash reflected off the shiny solar arrays of the ISS and back to the camera. The dim equatorial cloud sheet is so extensive that it covers most of the sea surface in this view.

Astronaut photograph ISS044-E-45215 was acquired on August 9, 2015 by a member of the Expedition 44 crew, with a Nikon D4 digital camera using a 28 millimeter lens, and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Johnson Space Center.

Annotated image: NASA's Earth Observatory

Image Credit: NASA
Caption: M. Justin Wilkinson, Texas State U., Jacobs Contract at NASA-JSC and Mark Matney, NASA-JSC
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