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    SOFIA tagged posts

    NASA Telescopes take a close look at the Brightest Comet of 2018

    December 23, 2018, Categories  Astronomy/Space


    NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope photographed comet 46P/Wirtanen on Dec. 13, when the comet was 7.4 million miles (12 million kilometers) from Earth. In this visible light image, the comet’s nucleus is hidden in the center of a fuzzy glow from the comet’s coma. The coma is a cloud of gas and dust that the comet has ejected during its pass through the inner solar system due to heating from the Sun. To make this composite image, the color blue was applied to high-resolution grayscale exposures acquired from the spacecraft’s WFC3 instrument.
    Credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Bodewits (Auburn University), and J.-Y. Li (Planetary Science Institute)

    As the brilliant comet 46P/Wirtanen streaked across the sky, NASA telescopes caught it on camera from multiple angles...

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    Don’t Judge an Asteroid by its Cover: Mid-infrared Data from SOFIA Shows Ceres’ True Composition

    January 22, 2017, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    The column of material at and just below the surface of dwarf planet Ceres (box) – the top layer contains anhydrous (dry) pyroxene dust accumulated from space mixed in with native hydrous (wet) dust, carbonates, and water ice. (Bottom) Cross section of Ceres showing the surface layers that are the subject of this study plus a watery mantle and a rocky-metallic core. Credits: Pierre Vernazza, LAM–CNRS/AMU

    The column of material at and just below the surface of dwarf planet Ceres (box) – the top layer contains anhydrous (dry) pyroxene dust accumulated from space mixed in with native hydrous (wet) dust, carbonates, and water ice. (Bottom) Cross section of Ceres showing the surface layers that are the subject of this study plus a watery mantle and a rocky-metallic core. Credits: Pierre Vernazza, LAM–CNRS/AMU

    New observations show that Ceres, the largest body in the asteroid belt, does not appear to have the carbon-rich surface composition that space- and ground-based telescopes previously indicated...

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    NASA Selects Next Generation Spectrometer for SOFIA Flying Observatory

    September 11, 2016, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    HIRMES will help researchers determine the location of the raw materials that are the building blocks of life and how their position within the interstellar medium helps planetary systems, like our own solar system, evolve

    HIRMES will help researchers determine the location of the raw materials that are the building blocks of life and how their position within the interstellar medium helps planetary systems, like our own solar system, evolve

    A team from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, has been selected to develop a new, third-generation facility science instrument for the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, SOFIA. The principal investigator, Samuel Harvey Moseley will lead the team to develop the High Resolution Mid-InfrarEd Spectrometer (HIRMES).

    Moseley and his team will construct HIRMES over the next two and one-half years with flights on board SOFIA slated for spring 2019...

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    SOFIA Releases New Map of Orion’s Horsehead Nebula

    March 27, 2016, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Animation of SOFIA's Horsehead Nebula Map

    Animated map of Orion’s Horsehead Nebula showing 100 separate views in sequence. The yellow and white areas have the most intense radiation from carbon atoms. Credits: NASA/DLR/USRA/DSI/SOFIA/GREAT Consortium

    NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, has released a new map of the interstellar cloud called the Horsehead Nebula, in constellation Orion. This map is made of 100 separate views of the nebula, each mapping carbon atoms at different velocities. When combined, these different views create a multi-faceted representation of the nebula. Each location on this new SOFIA map of the nebula contains a far-infrared spectrum of the gas and dust there, allowing astronomers to examine the dynamics, chemistry, temperatures, and velocity within the nebula...

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