NASA国際宇宙ステーションから見る夜の地球！必見の高画質HDタイムラプス映像
同種の動画は過去にも紹介したことがありますが、今回のは見逃すと後悔します。オーロラもばっちり写ってます。２０１１年８月から１０月にかけて撮影され、見やすいように修復・補整が施されているそうです。
Earth | Time Lapse View from Space | Fly Over | Nasa, ISS
‘Time lapse sequences of photographs taken with a special low-light 4K-camera
by the crew of expedition 28 & 29 onboard the International Space Station from
August to October, 2011.’
China and Europe Both Have Plans To Prevent Deadly Asteroid Apophis from Hitting Earth in 2029 (or 2036)
Apophis is a 46 million tonne asteroid that will pass within a hair’s breath of Earth in 2029. However, Apophis’s trajectory is likely to take it through a region of space near Earth known as a keyhole that will ensure the asteroid returns in 2036.
Nobody knows how close Apophis will come on that pass. But if there’s a chance of a collision, we’ll have only 7 years to work out how to avoid catastrophe.
Researchers at Tsinghua University in Beijing say their preference is to use a solar sail to place a small spacecraft into a retrograde orbit and on collision course with Apophis. The retrograde orbit will give it an impact velocity of 90km/s which, if they do this well enough in advance, should lead to a collision large enough to do the trick.In 2002, the European Space Agency began a program called Don Quijote to find out how best to perform such a deflection.
Don Quijote involves sending two spacecraft to a near Earth asteroid; one to smash into it and the other to watch while in orbit above the impact crater. The goal is to change the asteroid’s semimajor axis by more than 100 metres and to measure the change with an accuracy greater than 1 per cent.
新発見のクエーサーULAS J1120+0641 は初期宇宙で最も明るい天体。観測史上、最も離れた場所にあるクエーサー。ちなみにクエーサーとは、非常に離れた距離において極めて明るく輝いているために、光学望遠鏡では内部構造が見えず、恒星のような点光源に見える天体のこと。
A night view of the Nile River winding up through the Egyptian desert toward the Mediterranean Sea, and Cairo in the river delta. Such a stark contrast between the dark desolate lifeless desert of northern Africa and the Nile River teeming with life along its shores. In the distance, the eastern Mediterranean on a beautiful autumn evening.
Photo taken by astronaut Douglas Wheelock, aboard the ISS, on Saturday.
Source: Gizmodo.com.
HCG 87: A Small Group of Galaxies
Credit: Sally Hunsberger (Lowell Obs.), Jane Charlton (Penn State) et al.;
Data: Hubble Legacy Archive; Processing: Robert Gendler(via APOD)
