[Spacetalk] http://www.nasa.gov/index.html

Fri May 15 06:21:08 CDT 2015

Good morning all,
  Hope you have had a wonderful week and will look forward to a relaxing weekend, of course, after we have enjoyed today ...on Sunday I will be leaving for Missouri for two days of school presentations on Monday & Tuesday, then get back early Wed morning to be at work on Wed...it will be crazy but going to Missouri is so very special...not only because I get to see great friends but also all my school interface started there....with one very young teacher, who is like a little sister, and I sent some poster and pictures...that was probably about 15 years ago...it is hard to imagine how this has grown...over 400 schools now and hundreds of visits all over the US and Internationally...but I couldn't do it without you and hope you know I appreciate all the positive feedback and continued sharing of info...visiting schools has become such a major part of my life, meeting so many wonderful teachers, making friends with so many kids, and sharing the magic of the space program as well as optimism with life....it is so much fun and the magical connection with the kids is amazing in every way....something I don't understand but feel so fortunate because of their innocence and trust....I think these pictures are amazing in so many ways...I hope you will find a few second to share them with the kids...wishing you a wonderful day...we have to remember to always do our best, enjoy everything we do, live in the present, make each day special, let those we care about most know, be thankful for the good in our lives, smile & have fun... Gabe

Black Hole Friday
 <http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/592260main_blackhole-outflow.jpg>
In this artist's illustration, turbulent winds of gas swirl around a black hole. Some of the gas is spiraling inward toward the black hole, but another part is blown away.
A black hole is a place in space where gravity pulls so much that even light cannot get out. The gravity is so strong because matter has been squeezed into a tiny space. This can happen when a star is dying.
Because no light can get out, people can't see black holes. They are invisible. Space telescopes with special tools can help find black holes. The special tools can see how stars that are very close to black holes act differently than other stars.
How Big Are Black Holes? Black holes can be big or small. Scientists think the smallest black holes are as small as just one atom. These black holes are very tiny but have the mass of a large mountain. Mass is the amount of matter, or "stuff," in an object.
More information on black holes.<http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/k-4/stories/what-is-a-black-hole-k4.html>

Fifteen Years of NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory
 <http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/0087_xray.jpg>
Back to Gallery<http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/iotd.html>
This Chandra X-ray Observatory image of the Hydra A galaxy cluster was taken on Oct. 30, 1999<http://chandra.si.edu/photo/1999/0087/>, with the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS) in an observation that lasted about six hours. Hydra A is a galaxy cluster that is 840 million light years from Earth. The cluster gets its name from the strong radio source, Hydra A, that originates in a galaxy near the center of the cluster. Optical observations show a few hundred galaxies in the cluster. Chandra X-ray observations reveal a large cloud of hot gas that extends throughout the cluster. The gas cloud is several million light years across and has a temperature of about 40 million degrees in the outer parts decreasing to about 35 million degrees in the inner region.
NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory was launched into space fifteen years ago<http://www.nasa.gov/chandra/news/chandra-15th-anniversary.html> aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia. Since its deployment on July 23, 1999, Chandra has helped revolutionize our understanding of the universe through its unrivaled X-ray vision. Chandra, one of NASA's current "Great Observatories," along with the Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Space Telescope, is specially designed to detect X-ray emission from hot and energetic regions of the universe.

Eta Carinae: Our Neighboring Superstars
 <http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/etacar.jpg>
Back to Gallery<http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/multimedia/index.html>
The Eta Carinae star system does not lack for superlatives. Not only does it contain one of the biggest and brightest stars in our galaxy, weighing at least 90 times the mass of the sun, it is also extremely volatile and is expected to have at least one supernova explosion in the future.
As one of the first objects observed by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory after its launch some 15 years ago, this double star system continues to reveal new clues about its nature through the X-rays it generates.
Astronomers reported extremely volatile behavior from Eta Carinae in the 19th century, when it became very bright for two decades, outshining nearly every star in the entire sky. This event became known as the "Great Eruption." Data from modern telescopes reveal that Eta Carinae threw off about ten times the sun's mass during that time. Surprisingly, the star survived this tumultuous expulsion of material, adding "extremely hardy" to its list of attributes.
Today, astronomers are trying to learn more about the two stars in the Eta Carinae system and how they interact with each other. The heavier of the two stars is quickly losing mass through  wind streaming away from its surface at over a million miles per hour. While not the giant purge of the Great Eruption, this star is still losing mass at a very high rate that will add up to the sun's mass in about a millennium.
Though smaller than its partner, the companion star in Eta Carinae is also massive, weighing in at about 30 times the mass of the sun. It is losing matter at a rate that is about a hundred times lower than its partner, but still a prodigious weight loss compared to most other stars. The companion star beats the bigger star in wind speed, with its wind clocking in almost ten times faster.
When these two speedy and powerful winds collide, they form a bow shock - similar to the sonic boom from a supersonic airplane - that then heats the gas between the stars. The temperature of the gas reaches about ten million degrees, producing X-rays that Chandra detects.
The Chandra image of Eta Carinae shows low energy X-rays in red, medium energy X-rays in green, and high energy X-rays in blue. Most of the emission comes from low and high energy X-rays. The blue point source is generated by the colliding winds, and the diffuse blue emission is produced when the material that was purged during the Great Eruption reflects these X-rays. The low energy X-rays further out show where the winds from the two stars, or perhaps material from the Great Eruption, are striking surrounding material. This surrounding material might consist of gas that was ejected before the Great Eruption.
An interesting feature of the Eta Carinae system is that the two stars travel around each other along highly elliptical paths during their five-and-a-half-year long orbit. Depending on where each star is on its oval-shaped trajectory, the distance between the two stars changes by a factor of twenty. These oval-shaped trajectories give astronomers a chance to study what happens to the winds from these stars when they collide at different distances from one another.
Throughout most of the system's orbit, the X-rays are stronger at the apex, the region where the winds collide head-on. However, when the two stars are at their closest during their orbit (a point that astronomers call "periastron"), the X-ray emission dips unexpectedly
To understand the cause of this dip, astronomers observed Eta Carinae with Chandra at periastron in early 2009. The results provided the first detailed picture of X-ray emission from the colliding winds in Eta Carinae. The study suggests that part of the reason for the dip at periastron is that X-rays from the apex are blocked by the dense wind from the more massive star in Eta Carinae, or perhaps by the surface of the star itself.
Another factor responsible for the X-ray dip is that the shock wave appears to be disrupted near periastron, possibly because of faster cooling of the gas due to increased density, and/or a decrease in the strength of the companion star's wind because of extra ultraviolet radiation from the massive star reaching it. Researchers are hoping that Chandra observations of the latest periastron in August 2014 will help them determine the true explanation.
These results were published in the April 1, 2014 issue of The Astrophysical Journal and are available online. The first author of the paper is Kenji Hamaguchi of Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, and his co-authors are Michael Corcoran of Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC); Christopher Russell of University of Delaware in Newark, DE; A. Pollock from the European Space Agency in Madrid, Spain; Theodore Gull, Mairan Teodoro, and Thomas I. Madura from GSFC; Augusto Damineli from Universidade de Sao Paulo in Sao Paulo, Brazil and Julian Pittard from the University of Leeds in the UK.

May 13, 1992, Record-Setting Spacewalk on Shuttle Endeavour's First Mission<http://links.govdelivery.com:80/track?type=click&enid=ZWFzPTEmbWFpbGluZ2lkPTIwMTUwNTEzLjQ0OTU0NjYxJm1lc3NhZ2VpZD1NREItUFJELUJVTC0yMDE1MDUxMy40NDk1NDY2MSZkYXRhYmFzZWlkPTEwMDEmc2VyaWFsPTE3MTI2Njg0JmVtYWlsaWQ9Zm9yZGdhYmVAbmV0emVyby5jb20mdXNlcmlkPWZvcmRnYWJlQG5ldHplcm8uY29tJmZsPSZleHRyYT1NdWx0aXZhcmlhdGVJZD0mJiY=&&&100&&&http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/may-13-1992-record-setting-spacewalk-on-shuttle-endeavours-first-mission>
05/13/2015 11:20 AM EDT
[http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/s49-91-029.jpg]
On May 13, 1992, following the successful capture of the Intelsat VI satellite, three astronauts continue moving the 4.5 ton communications satellite into the space shuttle Endeavour's cargo bay. The sections of Earth which form the backdrop for the scene are blanketed with thousands of square miles of clouds.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://educatemotivate.com/pipermail/spacetalk_educatemotivate.com/attachments/20150515/f05fd436/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Picture (Device Independent Bitmap) 1.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 49990 bytes
Desc: Picture (Device Independent Bitmap) 1.jpg
URL: <http://educatemotivate.com/pipermail/spacetalk_educatemotivate.com/attachments/20150515/f05fd436/attachment.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Picture (Device Independent Bitmap) 2.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 52706 bytes
Desc: Picture (Device Independent Bitmap) 2.jpg
URL: <http://educatemotivate.com/pipermail/spacetalk_educatemotivate.com/attachments/20150515/f05fd436/attachment-0001.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Picture (Device Independent Bitmap) 3.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 41808 bytes
Desc: Picture (Device Independent Bitmap) 3.jpg
URL: <http://educatemotivate.com/pipermail/spacetalk_educatemotivate.com/attachments/20150515/f05fd436/attachment-0002.jpg>