saturn's aurora

the spacecraft cassini continues to explore saturn's environment and captured this lovely timelapse of saturn's aurora between october 5th and 8th, 2009.


auroras (aurori? aurorae?) occur because energetic particles coming from the sun react with a planet's magnetic field. magnetic fields naturally have directional field lines which act as "traffic lanes" that guide the electrically charged solar wind particles to the north and south magnetic poles.

once concentrated at the poles, the particles begin to react with the gas in the planet's upper atmosphere. the atoms and molecules of the atmospheric gas absorb some of the energy of the foreign particles and become "excited." when they get exhausted from being excited, they return to their relaxed state by sending off a photon of light which we see collectively as the glow of an aurora.

the type of gas in the atmosphere that reacts with the solar particles determines the color of the aurora we see. on earth, the gas is mostly atomic oxygen (which produces a red glow), molecular nitrogen (blue), and molecular oxygen (green).

the animated image of saturn's aurora is almost as mesmerizing as voyager's approaching view of jupiter in the late 1970s.

here's lookin at you, kid.

by karen roe at flickr

perspective

via

sixty symbols: foam physics

what is the connection between giraffes, wine corks, and the distribution of galaxies in the universe? watch the newest sixty symbols video to find out! i found this one really interesting...

how do you "go" in space?

astronaut mike massimino, who was on the mission to fix the hubble space telescope, teaches us the process of how one uses the toilet while in the weightless atmosphere of space. the astronauts discuss their individual techniques (not in too much detail, dont worry), and they also reveal the dirty little secret of NASA space flight: the "alignment camera."

astronomy and pornography

is it bad that i feel proud after reading this opening phrase from a blog post by professional astronomer peter coles?

"I started thinking about the analogy between astronomy and pornography after seeing a hilarious blog post by Amanda Bauer..."


astropixie: because astronomy is the pornography of science

wait, what?

i dont know.... back to work.

crescent moon and venus tonight!

if you have clear skies today, look for the tiny crescent moon and try to spot venus nearby! its rare (and exciting, i think) to see another planet during the day.


the pair will be brilliant in the evening sky as well!

leaf tie

leaf ties* provide a clever and super cute way to organize and decorate!



found at lufdesign via tywkiwdbi.


*fyi: my birthday is at the end of may

crazy clouds from space

wired science has a nice gallery of clouds from space. the image below was taken by the Landsat 7 satellite in September 1999 and shows a pattern known as a von Kármán vortex street.


the spiral pattern is caused by processes of fluid dynamics. if you look to the lower left of the image, you see a little island just where the vortices start. as wind blows from the lower left to the upper right, it runs into the island and starts spinning into vortices, which are only visible because the clouds are there.

the same process happens when you stand in the ocean and a receding wave forms vortices as the water rushes past your ankles.