[Spacetalk] https://www.nasa.gov

Tue Jan 29 23:12:10 CST 2019

Hi all,

 I hope everything is going well…everything is great here…last week I was at Sally Ride Elementary school, it was awesome with the school recently being renamed in honor of Sally…the school has many ties to the shuttle missions Sally flew and i couldn’t think of a better environment to learn than being surrounded by the wonders of spece…tomorrow I will be at Stowers Elementary School…it is so great to get to US schools, it is so much more difficult now that I don’t have access to speakers requests to NASA…International travel is still going fun speed..next week is Brazil, the Norway, Mexico, and Back to Brazil, with sweden and Norway which pits me through April…please let me know if  you would like me to visit your school…
I hope you were able to see the eclipse…it was awesome from here, perfectly clear sky, seats everywhere, and the eclipse was amazing…so happy I stayed up to watch it…

We have to remember to always do our best, enjoy everything we do, believe in ourselves, and let those we care about most know…hugs & smiles…:-) :-)  love ya, Gabe

Super Blood Wolf Moon Eclipse Stuns Viewers

Gorgeous lunar show

The super blood wolf moon lunar eclipse (yes, a mouthful) graced the skies late-night on Jan. 20, 2019, as our lone satellite began its trek into Earth's outer shadow or penumbra, at 9:36 p.m. EST (6:36 p.m. PST). At 10:34 p.m. EST (7:34 p.m. PST), the partial phase of the eclipse began as the moon inched into the umbra, the darkest part of Earth's shadow. At that point, a reddish orb of darkness appeared to creep across the moon's face. The pinnacle of the show, the total eclipse, happened between 11:41 p.m. EST (8:41 p.m. PST) and 12:43 p.m. EST (9:43 p.m. PST), when Earth's umbra had entirely engulfed the moon. Here's a look at the gorgeous eclipse, seen by millions across North and South America, parts of western Europe and north Africa. 

Curiosity Snaps Epic 'Selfie' on Mars as It Moves On to New Martian Sight

The Curiosity rover on Mars captured 57 images of itself, which NASA personnel stitched together 
into this "selfie.” Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
We all edit our selfies to capture our best side, and the Curiosity rover on Mars <https://www.space.com/17963-mars-curiosity.html> is no different, as shown in a new "selfie" NASA released to mark the rover's last days at Vera Rubin Ridge.

Curiosity's favorite selfie trick isn't a matter of choosing the most flattering filter; instead, the robotic explorer favors stitching together shots to build a composite image, creating the illusion that a companion took the picture. The rover has used this approach for "selfies" before <https://www.space.com/39575-mars-rover-curiosity-selfie-vera-rubin-ridge.html> to stunning effect.

In the case of this new image, captured Jan. 15, the final product is built from 57 different individual photographs <https://www.space.com/41743-mars-rover-curiosity-panoramic-selfie.html> snapped by the rover using its Mars Hand Lens Imager. That instrument is located on the end of Curiosity's arm. [The Top 10 Space Robot 'Selfies' of All Time! <https://www.space.com/24021-space-robot-selfies-photos-top-10.html>]

Earth Swallowed Another Planet and (Maybe) That's Why Life Exists

A new theory holds that Earth might have received the elements it needed for life to form from a massive collision with a Mars-sized planet. 
Credit: Image courtesy of Rice University
The ancient collision that formed the moon may also have brought with it all the ingredients needed for life, a new study finds.

Over 4.4 billion years ago, a Mars-size body smashed into a primitive Earth, launching our moon into permanent orbit around our planet.

But a new study finds that this event could have had a much larger impact than previously thought. The collision could also have imbued our planet with the carbon <https://www.livescience.com/28698-facts-about-carbon.html>, nitrogen <https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.livescience.com/28726-nitrogen.html&sa=U&ved=0ahUKEwjF4K-z6oTgAhWSNd8KHcCyCXAQFggFMAA&client=internal-uds-cse&cx=partner-pub-1894578950532504:qaei7k190hq&usg=AOvVaw174SduxFdIPzcZ0EWjALgs> and sulfur <https://www.livescience.com/28939-sulfur.html> needed for life to form, scientists reported today (Jan. 23) in the journal Science Advances <http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaau3669>.

Supermassive Black Holes Likely Born in 'Halos' of Dark Matter <http://click.emails.purch.com/?qs=888171fc25f087688450dca5451e1a8ada5f760cc953292b53e6a70b33f6abee4daf0104d2914282d5dc4b2c3c835d0b08d76949e175c42e0496c7ea75e5618d>

A 30,000-light‐year-wide region from a supercomputer simulation called the Renaissance Simulation centered on a cluster of young galaxies that generate radiation (white) and metals (green) while heating surrounding gas. A dark matter halo just outside this heated region forms three supermassive stars (inset), each of which is over 1,000 times the mass of our sun. These giant stars quickly collapse into massive black holes and, over billions of years, eventually form supermassive black holes.
Credit: Advanced Visualization Lab, National Center for Supercomputing Applications
The birth story of the universe's first supermassive black holes <https://www.space.com/15421-black-holes-facts-formation-discovery-sdcmp.html> is getting a rethink. 

Researchers have generally thought that the seeds of these pioneering behemoths sprouted in areas awash in ultraviolet radiation streaming from neighbor galaxies <https://www.space.com/13262-65-great-galaxy-photos-space-images.html>. This radiation inhibited the formation of normal stars, freeing up material for eventual incorporation into black holes, the idea goes.

But a new study suggests that another phenomenon was perhaps more important in suppressing this type of star formation — the rapid growth of "halos" of dark matter <https://www.space.com/20930-dark-matter.html>, the mysterious stuff that makes up most of the material universe (and is so named because it neither absorbs nor reflects light). [Gallery: Dark Matter Throughout the Universe <https://www.space.com/14768-dark-matter-universe-photos.html>]

A Mirror Image of Our Universe May Have Existed Before the Big Bang

High mountain peaks glowing in the moonlight. 
Credit: Shutterstock
Like a mountain looming over a calm lake, it seems the universe may once have had a perfect mirror image. That's the conclusion a team of Canadian scientists reached after extrapolating the laws of the universe both before and after the Big Bang <https://www.livescience.com/49958-theory-no-big-bang.html>.

Physicists have a pretty good idea of the structure of the universe just a couple of seconds after the Big Bang, moving forward to today. In many ways, fundamental physics then worked as it does today. But experts have argued for decades about what happened in that first moment — when the tiny, infinitely dense speck of matter <https://www.livescience.com/32662-whats-at-the-center-of-black-holes-.html> first expanded outward — often presuming that basic physics were somehow altered.

Researchers Latham Boyle, Kieran Finn and Neil Turok at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, have turned this idea on its head by assuming the universe has always been fundamentally symmetrical and simple, then mathematically extrapolating into that first moment after the Big Bang. [Big Bang to Civilization: 10 Amazing Origin Events <https://www.livescience.com/41923-top-ten-origin-events.html>]

The Day Edwin Hubble Realized Our Universe Was Expanding

Scientists use a cosmic distance ladder to measure the expansion rate of the universe. The ladder, symbolically shown here, is a series of stars and other objects within galaxies that have known distances. By combining these distance measurements with the speeds at which objects are moving away from us, scientists can calculate that expansion rate.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
This year marks the 90th anniversary of a mind-boggling discovery: that the universe is expanding.

The discovery was spearheaded by Edwin Hubble, for whom the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope is named. As an astronomer at Mount Wilson Observatory in Los Angeles, Hubble had access to the most cutting-edge equipment of the day, particularly the 100-inch (2.5 meters) Hooker telescope. The telescope, built in 1917, was the largest on Earth until 1949.

Since 1919, Hubble had been discovering new galaxies from the observatory, according to the Carnegie Institution for Science <https://cosmology.carnegiescience.edu/timeline/1929>. In 1923, he developed a method of measuring the distance between a far-flung galaxy and the Milky Way, which involved calculating the actual brightness of stars in another galaxy and then comparing that value with how bright they appeared from Earth. [11 Fascinating Facts About Our Milky Way Galaxy <https://www.livescience.com/63847-facts-about-the-milky-way.html>]

OTD in Space – January 29: Phobos 2 Enters Orbit Around Mars
On January 29, 1989, a Soviet space probe named Phobos 2 arrived in orbit around Mars. This was the last space mission launched by the Soviet Union. Its primary purpose was to study Mars' two moons, Phobos and Deimos. Its journey to the Red Planet took about 6 and a half months, and it spent the next two months taking pictures of the two moons and gathering data on Mars' atmosphere. It brought along two small landers to drop on Phobos, but mission control lost contact with the spacecraft before those landers made it to the Martian moon.

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