Around the world – Views from Space

Time lapse sequences of photographs taken by the crew of expeditions 28 & 29 onboard the International Space Station from August to October, 2011, who to my knowledge shot these pictures at an altitude of around 350 km. Music: Jan Jelinek, Image Courtesy of the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center, The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Editing: Michael König.

Cosmic Journey

A Collection of space images taken by telescopes such as the Hubble, Spitzer and the VLT (Very Large Telescope). Image Credits: NASA, ESA & ESO. Edited by R. Smittenaar. Music: by John Serrie – Tingri Maiden.

The Seeker’s Journey

This beautiful new video brings you the secrets for a seeker of the spiritual truth to reach his goal…  Text by Sri Chinmoy ; Narration by Kaivalya Torpy;  Music by Kamalakanta; Photos by NASA and miscellaneous;   Edited by kedarvideo, Switzerland; Length: 8:45 min. Watch also my film “Inner and outer Harmony” here: vimeo.com/​2205845?ab

New space radiation-storm warning service planned in Europe

International boffins are meeting in Blighty today with the aim of setting up a European solar radiation-storm warning service. With the Sun expected to belch forth increasing amounts of bad “space weather” in coming years, the scientists warn that billions of pounds’ worth of damage could be done to satellites in orbit. The new warning setup is to be called SPACECAST. “Space weather is a serious natural hazard and better forecasting is a priority for Europe,” says Professor Richard Horne of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), leading on the project for the UK. “This is especially important as we approach maximum levels of solar activity and increased numbers of magnetic storms. SPACECAST will provide forecasts of disruptive space weather events and issue warnings and alerts for periods of high risk.” According to Horne and his colleagues, the solar sunspot cycle is to peak over the next few years: however, the actual storms which affect electronic equipment in the vicinity of Earth don’t quite match this cycle and the storm peak is expected to lag about two years behind the sunspot maximum. The years 2013 to 2015 are expected to be especially stormy in space – with perhaps as many as 60 events per year that could cause serious problems. The European Union is especially keen to get a rad-storm service up and running as its new Galileo nav-sat constellation is set to come into service (at initial levels of capability) just as the storm cycle peaks. SPACECAST, which has EU funding of €2.5m so far, is to be up and running from 2012.

The risk to satellites has already been proven, with a particularly violent 2003 storm affecting some 47 spacecraft – and totally writing off one which had cost a cool $640m. Modern assessments of the famous Carrington super-storm of 1859 have suggested that another such monster would cause as much as $30bn of satellite damage should it strike today’s civilisation rather than the electronically primitive one of the mid-19th century. NASA, which has itself warned in recent times of the hazard of a devastating “space Katrina”, is involved with SPACECAST. Boffins from Finland, France, Belgium and Spain will also join the BAS on the project. (Source: http://www.sott.net)

A spectacular view on M13

In 1716, English astronomer Edmond Halley noted, “This is but a little Patch, but it shews itself to the naked Eye, when the Sky is serene and the Moon absent.” Of course, M13 is now modestly recognized as the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules, one of the brightest globular star clusters in the northern sky. Telescopic views reveal the spectacular cluster’s hundreds of thousands of stars. At a distance of 25,000 light-years, the cluster stars crowd into a region 150 light-years in diameter, but approaching the cluster core upwards of 100 stars could be contained in a cube just 3 light-years on a side. For comparison, the closest star to the Sun is over 4 light-years away. Along with the cluster’s dense core, the outer reaches of M13 are highlighted in this sharp color image. The cluster’s evolved red and blue giant stars show up in yellowish and blue tints. Image Credit & Copyright: Marco Burali, Tiziano Capecchi, Marco Mancini (Osservatorio MTM)

Strange Sounds of Saturn

Saturn is a source of intense radio emissions, which have been monitored by the Cassini spacecraft. The radio waves are closely related to the auroras near the poles of the planet. These auroras are similar to Earth’s northern and southern lights. This is an audio file of radio emissions from Saturn. The Cassini spacecraft began detecting these radio emissions in April 2002, when Cassini was 374 million kilometers (234 million miles) from the planet, using the Cassini radio and plasma wave science instrument. The radio and plasma wave instrument has now provided the first high resolution observations of these emissions, showing an amazing array of variations in frequency and time. The complex radio spectrum with rising and falling tones, is very similar to Earth’s auroral radio emissions. These structures indicate that there are numerous small radio sources moving along magnetic field lines threading the auroral region. Time on this recording has been compressed, so that 73 seconds corresponds to 27 minutes. Since the frequencies of these emissions are well above the audio frequency range, we have shifted them downward by a factor of 44. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radio and plasma wave science team is based at the University of Iowa, Iowa City. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the instrument team’s home page, http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/cassini/ .Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Iowa

The 21st Century – Poems by Sri Chinmoy

Inspiring and revealing poems by Sri Chinmoy on the 21st Century, narrated by Mukuli and combined with pictures from the cosmos (Hubble) and artwork by the master himself. Length: 12:40 min. Edit: Mandu Trummer & Kedar Misani; Solo: “Lord of the Universe” by Sri Chinmoy, sang by Chintamani. Enjoy!

First large-scale images of the Andromeda Galaxy released by NASA

The immense Andromeda galaxy, also known as Messier 31 or simply M31, is captured in full in this new image from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The mosaic covers an area equivalent to more than 100 full moons, or five degrees across the sky. WISE used all four of its infrared detectors to capture this picture (3.4- and 4.6-micron light is colored blue; 12-micron light is green; and 22-micron light is red). Blue highlights mature stars, while yellow and red show dust heated by newborn, massive stars. Andromeda is the closest large galaxy to our Milky Way galaxy, and is located 2.5 million light-years from our sun. It is close enough for telescopes to spy the details of its ringed arms of new stars and hazy blue backbone of older stars. Also seen in the mosaic are two satellite galaxies, known as M32, located just a bit above Andromeda to the left of center, and the fuzzy blue M110, located below the center of the great spiral arms. These satellites are the largest of several that are gravitationally bound to Andromeda. The Andromeda galaxy is larger than our Milky Way and contains more stars, but the Milky Way is thought to perhaps have more mass due to its larger proportion of a mysterious substance called dark matter. Both galaxies belong to our so-called Local Group, a collection of more than 50 galaxies, most of which are tiny dwarf systems. In its quest to map the whole sky, WISE will capture the entire Local Group. The picture below highlights the Andromeda galaxy’s older stellar population in blue. It was taken by the shortest-wavelength camera on WISE, which detects infrared light of 3.4 microns. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA. Watch the pictures in large size on my HD Photo Blog.

Hubble Ultra Deep Field Movie in 3D

I’ve recently discovered an animation that was rendered using the measured redshift of all 10,000 galaxies in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image on YouTube with a quick history of both deep field images and a fly-through of the Ultra Deep Field at the end. Every galaxy in the image is in its proper distance as viewed from the telescope line of sight.

Blue moon lunar eclipse on December 31, 2009

Partial Lunar Eclipse photographed in Switzerland on December 31, 2009 (Photo by Kedar Misani) -  A short video is available here.

It was a Full Moon on New Year’s Eve 2009 and it was also a Blue Moon. (A Blue Moon is the 2nd Full moon in a single calendar month – on 2nd and 31st December 2009). This was the 13th Full Moon of 2009. The same night to a new decade begins. The next Blue Moon NYE will be on December 31, 2028.

This minor partial lunar eclipse takes place in Gemini, and is visible primarily from the Eastern Hemisphere. The origin of the term “blue moon” is steeped in folklore, and its meaning has changed and acquired new nuances over time. Some folktales say that when there is a full blue moon, the moon had a face and talked to those in its light. This year has been designated International Year of Astronomy by the United Nations to highlight 400 years of astronomy since 1609 when Galileo first viewed the heavens with a telescope. It was also 400 years ago when Galileo turned his telescope toward the moon and discovered that the moon “is uneven, rough and full of cavities and prominences.” As it is widely known, we tend to be more emotionally expressive during a Full Moon. This emotional and sometimes unstable environment occurs because there is change in the electromagnetic energy that affects us mentally and neurologically. There will be some stress as blockages will begin to crumble and then there will be a feeling of freedom. The good news is that creative and artistic qualities will be discovered as you let go of beliefs that don’t correspond with your current reality! As many spiritual fugures expect, this is the most important New Years Eve we have ever been gifted in a long time. It asks us to ‘flash forward’ into the next 2 years to see what we can see. No matter how much you do not believe prophecy from time and earth, it will still affect your energy field and your choices.

The first penumbral contact occured at 18:17:08 CET. The ecliptic conjunction occured at about 20:12:45 CET and greatest eclipse took place at 20:22:39 CET when the eclipse magnitude was reached 0.0763. The eclipse ended at about 22:28:11 CET. It was only a partial eclipse, but was beautifully visible all over Europe.