On September 6th, however, the #ISS floated past the #sun on its habitual trajectory through low #Earth orbit, nearly 250 miles above. - http://clapway.com/2015/09/09/iss-sun123/

This past Sunday, the ISS sailed in front of the sun, and was captured in a fantastic display showcasing our smallness in the universe and the grandness of the center of our solar system. After sending back astounding images of the Moon, the ISS has once again shown us the beauty of the galactic bodies that surround us.

The image was released by NASA on Tuesday, and combines five different frames to depict the ISS as it cruised before the star. Moving at about five miles per second, it didn’t take long for the space station to shuffle across the sun. The image was captured by Bill Ingalls, senior NASA photographer, from Shenandoah National Park, Front Royal, Virginia. Ingalls is also responsible for taking stunning captures of the moon this past August.

The Most Experienced Space Flier Comes Home

The ISS travels about 250 miles above the Earth, carrying a crew of nine, including NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, who will return to Earth on Friday as the most experienced space flier in the world, boasting a whopping 879 days in orbit. Kelly and fellow cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will continue on their journey – a year-long mission currently halfway through its trajectory.

Missions To Mars Might Bring Even Better Data

During a press conference on Tuesday, Kelly confessed that he thought the mission might be easier if their time was spent traveling to Mars, where many space enthusiasts and experts believe the next bout of great discoveries lie. Kelly, being halfway through his journey, states that in some ways, a lot of what they’re going to be doing is similar to what has already been done. However, he expresses plenty excitement for those astronauts and cosmonauts who will get to cruise past the face of Mars one day. Other crew members of the ISS include astronaut Kjiell Lindgren, Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Sergey Volkov, as well as Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui, Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen, and Kazakhstan cosmonaut Aidyn Aimbetov.

As part of the short-term taxi crew, Padalka will return with Mogensen and Aimbetov aboard the Russian Soyuz capsule this Friday.

***Hey, amateur photographers! Try your luck and attempt to snap an image of the ISS using NASA’s Spot the Station site, which will provide updates detailing when the orbiting lab will be visible.***

---

DID SOMEONE SAY SPACE? LEARN MORE ABOUT WHAT IT’S LIKE TO BE AN ASTRONAUT WITH SPACE SCOUTS SUMMER ADVENTURE:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdcU4nKKV2E

Check Out The ISS As It Floats Pass The Sun

What if #Earth moved a mile closer to the #Sun? The concept of a #habitablezone, sometimes referred to as the “Goldilocks Zone,” is vital to life. - http://clapway.com/2015/09/06/habitable-zone123/

While NASA’s New Horizons flies by Pluto and targets new destinations farther than we can imagine, examining our relationship with the Sun could help explain why the Earth can sustain life. What if Earth moved a mile closer to the Sun? Would we all burn up? Would our atmosphere disintegrate? Would we have an extreme runaway greenhouse effect and dry up like Venus? The concept of a habitable zone, sometimes referred to as the “Goldilocks Zone,” is vital in order to explain the possibilities.

WOULD MOVING EARTH CLOSER HAVE A BIG EFFECT?

Since the Earth’s orbit is an ellipse, not a circle, its distance from the sun varies from a minimum of 147.1 million kilometers each January to a maximum of about 152.1 million kilometers each July. The range of this distance has little effect on Earth’s weather with the Northern Hemisphere’s summer occurring during the time that Earth is farthest from the Sun and winter occurring when Earth is closest to the Sun.

THE ANSWER COULD LIE IN THE HABITABLE ZONE

The habitable zone is the region around a star where the average temperature on a planet allows for liquid water, according to Universe Today. However, the concept is based off of the Earth and focused around the range at which worlds similar to Earth could exist. While we are lucky at the moment to lie within the sun’s habitable zone, future generations might not be so lucky. Since stars go through growth and decay as humans do, our sun will continue to grow warmer until our oceans boil away.

THE GOLDILOCKS ZONE ISN’T THE ONLY ANSWER

Although the habitable zone seems like an easy answer to explain why life on Earth is able to sustain itself, the goldilocks zone isn’t the only requirement for life; it also depends on the type of star in a solar system. The moon, for example, is an obvious example of this; it remains our companion without a chance for living life.

Scientists continue to search for the probability of life on Europa and Enceladus, way outside of the sun’s habitable zone. We are lucky to have our Sun because it’s neither too big to harm us with deadly solar flares nor too dim, like red dwarfs, which cannot provide us with the warmth we need.

Gaining insight on what makes Earth different from its neighboring planets could help us understand the likelihood of finding Earth-like worlds in orbit around other stars. According to the 3rd edition of Life in the Universe by Jeffrey Bennett and Seth Shostak, other stars also have their own habitable zones, meaning distances at which a world similar in size to Earth, and with a similar atmosphere, would be habitable. The sizes of these habitable zones, however, are different for varying type of stars.

---

Become a space scout and explore the universe and beyond:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdcU4nKKV2E

We Are Lucky to Live in The Habitable Zone

#ALMA has given us the ability to peer #BackInTime and learn about the #origins of the #universe. - http://clapway.com/2015/07/22/galaxies-800-million-years-after-big-bang-limned-by-alma-112/

We all know about the Big Bang, but the formation of the first galaxies has always been a mystery to scientists, until now. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope, scientists have gained the ability to peer into the depths of foggy beginnings, when hydrogen gas was just starting to collect and condense into galaxies, in the first several hundred million years following the Big Bang.

ALMA TELESCOPE IS NOT A TIME MACHINE

The thing about light is that it doesn’t travel instantaneously. Travelling at about 300 million meters per second, even the darkest patches of the sky are filled with light that’s travelled so far that it actually outlived the object it originated from. This scientific fact is why the Sun as we know it from the Earth’s surface is actually the Sun as it appeared approximately 8 minutes ago.

ALMA TELESCOPE IS A TIME MACHINE

Recently, astronomers using ALMA peered far enough back in time that they were able to view galaxies existing 800 million years after the Big Bang. Ironically, this was only made possible by the light of glowing ionized carbon, emitted from the gaseous clouds giving birth to stars.

One of these early galaxies named BDF 3299 was specifically recognized by the clear signal of glowing carbon emitting from one side of the ancient galaxy.

QUALIFYING ALMA’S FINDINGS

“This is the most distant detection ever of this kind of emission from a ‘normal galaxy (sic), seen less than one billion years after the Big Bang,” exclaimed Andrea Ferrara, co-author of these new findings. “It gives us the opportunity to watch the build-up of the first galaxies. For the first time we are seeing early galaxies not merely as tiny blobs, but as objects with internal structure!”

The reason for the above mentioned galaxies’ glowing side is that the normally brighter central clouds are being disrupted by the chaotic environment surrounding freshly born stars. Additionally, the carbon’s glow is actually tracing new, cold gas on its way into the stars from intergalactic space, and then the light is sent back out on its long journey to the ALMA’s dishes.

SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS

Ferrara explains further, “We have been trying to understand the interstellar medium and the formation of the re-ionization sources for many years…[f]inally to be able to test predictions and hypotheses on real data from ALMA is an exciting moment and opens up a new set of questions. This type of observation will clarify many of the thorny problems we have with the formation of the first stars and galaxies in the universe.”

---

Preserve your newly acquired data with Nanoform:

Galaxies 800 Million Years After Big Bang Limned By ALMA