Month: May 2019

宇宙中很少有居民像螺旋星系那样具有标志性。这些引人注目的天体结合了旋转的旋臂、旋转的旋臂、闪烁的星星的散射、炽热的气体爆发以及黑暗的宇宙尘埃织成的车道，创造了真正令人敬畏的场景——尤其是通过美国宇航局/欧洲航天局的哈勃太空望远镜观察时。事实上，这张哈勃望远镜拍摄的图像构成了一个完美的螺旋标本:令人惊叹的NGC 2903。 NGC 2903位于离我们约3000万光年远的狮子座(狮子座)，它是哈勃对附近145个碟状星系中心区域进行调查的一部分。这项研究的目的是帮助天文学家更好地理解潜伏在这些星系核心的黑洞与星系中心的橄榄球球形状的恒星、气体和尘埃膨胀之间的关系，如图所示。 Few of the universe’s residents are as iconic as the spiral galaxy. These limelight-hogging celestial objects combine whirling, pinwheeling arms with scatterings of sparkling stars, glowing bursts of gas, and dark, weaving lanes of cosmic dust, creating truly awesome scenes — especially when viewed through a telescope such as the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. In fact, this image from Hubble frames a perfect spiral specimen: the stunning NGC 2903. NGC 2903 is located about 30 million light-years away in the constellation of Leo (the Lion), and was studied as part of a Hubble survey of the central regions of roughly 145 nearby disk galaxies. This study aimed to help astronomers better understand the relationship between the black holes that lurk at…

气象卫星每天要进行数十万次大气探测，收集数据进行预报。使用这种方法的开创性想法可以追溯到20世纪50年代末，当时地球观测卫星是一项全新的技术。 在美国国家航空航天局位于马里兰州格林贝尔特的戈达德太空飞行中心和加利福尼亚喷气推进实验室工作的科学家刘易斯卡普兰(Lewis Kaplan)开发了一种计算大气温度的方法，用于天气预报:通过测量不同海拔高度的分子振动。 快进60年,卡普兰的观点在他的具有里程碑意义的1959年的论文,题目是“远程辐射测量的大气结构推断”，保持大气探测的核心，这是一种称为探测器的仪器垂直探测天空的过程。有关温度，湿度和水蒸气的详细信息，揭示了地球大气层的微妙变化。美国国家航空航天局(NASA)和美国国家海洋和大气管理局(NOAA)在测深仪的技术开发方面处于领先地位。 这张图片是艺术家对NASA的Nimbus-3太空船的渲染。它于1969年发射，是一系列气象卫星中的第三颗。 How Atmospheric Sounding Transformed Weather Prediction Each day, weather satellites take hundreds of thousands of atmospheric soundings to gather data for forecasting. The groundbreaking idea of using this method dates to the late 1950’s, when Earth-observing satellites were a brand-new technology. Scientist Lewis Kaplan, who worked at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland and Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, developed a way to calculate temperature in the atmosphere for weather forecasting: by measuring the vibration of molecules at different altitudes. Fast forward 60 years, and the ideas that Kaplan laid out in his landmark 1959 paper entitled, “Inference of Atmospheric Structure from Remote Radiation Measurements,” remain at the heart of atmospheric sounding, the process by which instruments called…

NASA的洞察号火星探测器在2019年4月25日，也就是任务的第145个火星日，使用其机械臂末端的仪器部署摄像头(IDC)拍摄了这幅火星日落的照片。这张照片拍摄于火星当地时间下午6点半左右。 这个颜色校正版本更准确地显示了人眼所能看到的图像。查看“原始”和颜色校正图像。 第一个发回这类图像的任务是海盗1号火星探测器，它在1976年8月21日捕捉到了日落；海盗2号于1978年6月14日拍摄到了日出。从那时起，“勇气号”、“机遇号”和“好奇号”等探测器都记录了日出和日落。 美国宇航局喷气推进实验室为该机构的科学任务理事会管理洞察。洞察号火星探测器是NASA发现计划的一部分，由位于阿拉巴马州亨茨维尔的马歇尔太空飞行中心管理。洛克希德·马丁太空公司在丹佛建造了洞察号飞船，包括它的巡航器和着陆器，并支持飞船执行任务。 InSight Lander Captures a Sunset on Mars NASA’s InSight lander used the Instrument Deployment Camera (IDC) on the end of its robotic arm to image this sunset on Mars on April 25, 2019, the 145th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. This was taken around 6:30 p.m. Mars local time. This color-corrected version more accurately shows the image as the human eye would see it. See both the “raw” and color-corrected images. The first mission to send back such images was the Viking 1 lander, which captured a sunset on Aug. 21, 1976; Viking 2 captured a sunrise on June 14, 1978. Since then, both sunrises and sunsets have been recorded by the Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity rovers, among other…

轨道碳观测台3或OCO-3，位于喷气推进实验室环境测试实验室的大振动台(称为“振动台”)上。暴露的电线连接到用于动态和热真空测试的传感器。隔热层将被添加到肯尼迪航天中心的仪器上，携带OCO-3的SpaceX龙飞船计划将其发射到国际空间站。 当轨道上的碳观测站OCO-3前往国际空间站时，它将为研究地球的碳循环带来一个全新的视角。在空间站上，OCO-3将从日出后到日落前观测陆地和海洋上二氧化碳的准全球测量值。这使得它比它的前辈更加多才多艺，更加强大。 OCO-3太空仪器是OCO-2的直接继承者，后者自2014年以来一直在研究二氧化碳分布和探测排放热点和火山。 The Orbiting Carbon Observatory 3, or OCO-3, sits on the large vibration table (known as the “shaker”) in the Environmental Test Lab at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The exposed wires lead to sensors used during dynamics and thermal-vacuum testing. Thermal blankets will be added to the instrument at Kennedy Space Center, where a Space-X Dragon capsule carrying OCO-3 is slated to launch it to the International Space Station. When the Orbiting Carbon Observatory 3, OCO-3, heads to the International Space Station, it will bring a new view — literally — to studies of Earth’s carbon cycle. From its perch on the space station, OCO-3 will observe near-global measurements of carbon dioxide on land and sea, from just after sunrise to just before…