#Astronomy Activities

[techdriveplay]

Lonely Planet's Top 10 Camping Destinations for This Easter

Discover the untold beauty of Australia’s most enchanting hidden gems, from the haunting allure of Yerranderie Ghost Town to the luxurious solitude of Faraway Domes in Glen Innes. Venture into the heart of nature with Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary’s star-studded skies, immerse yourself in the off-grid elegance of Aquila Glamping, or find serene isolation at Bruny Island Hideaway. Each…

[mochablogger]

OMG OMG HIHI HI IM AM UR FAN

CAN I REQUEST??

CAN YOU MAKE UMBRIEL DOODLES PLESSE I LOVE HER SO MUCH :3

Here's the girl herself !! Sorry it took me a while; I had to decide what colors I should give to her hat and muffles which took me like 45 mins until I couldn't take it anymore and just searched for a cap online 😬😬

And I just caught a cold due to the weather yay 👍👍 but I'll keep posting more 😼😼

[sixoclocker]

hi (makes starlo a red giant star early)

hey lol (steals all of his hydrogen EARLY so he’s FUCKED UP and RED instead of a MAIN SEQUENCE STAR and he can’t NUCLEAR FISSION!!!!)

here’s an extra doodle

he can talk in full sentences but a lot of the time it’s just too taxing along with everything else he has to worry about

[mecheyethe3rd]

Étoile et toi - bluecloud

[eziojensenthe3rd]

82,970 so far. Go a sign it already

[adastra-sf]

Sun Reaches Solar Maximum

watch the full NASA YouTube video: X

The Sun is stirring from its latest slumber.

As sunspots and flares bubble from the Sun’s surface, representatives from NASA, NOAA, and the Solar Cycle Prediction Panel announced that the Sun has reached its solar maximum period.

The solar cycle is a natural cycle the Sun goes through as it transitions between low and high magnetic activity and back again. Roughly every 11 years, at the height of the solar cycle, the Sun’s magnetic poles flip (on Earth, that’d be like the North and South poles swapping places every decade), and the Sun goes from calm to an active and stormy state.

During this most active part of the cycle (solar maximum), the Sun shows many more sunspots and often unleashes immense explosions of light, energy, and solar radiation, creating "space weather" which affects satellites and astronauts in space, as well as communications systems and power grids down here on Earth.

NASA and NOAA track sunspots to determine and predict the progress of the solar cycle - and ultimately solar activity. Sunspots are cooler regions on the Sun caused by a concentration of magnetic field lines. They're the visible component of active regions, areas of intense and complex magnetic fields on the Sun and the source of solar eruptions.

“During solar maximum, the number of sunspots, and therefore the amount of solar activity, increases,” says Jamie Favors of the NASA Space Weather Program. “This increase in activity provides an exciting opportunity to learn about our closest star, but also causes real effects at Earth and throughout our solar system.”

Solar activity has led to increased auroral activity and impacts on satellites and electronic infrastructure this year. During 2024, barrages of huge solar flares and coronal mass ejections launched clouds of charged particles toward Earth, creating the strongest geomagnetic storms we've experienced in decades, and possibly the strongest auroras visible in the past 500 years.

This is a great time to watch the Sun (via the internet or a properly filtered telescope only - never view the Sun without certified safe solar filters made for your instrument) and catch some auroras. Even here at Ad Astra headquarters in Kansas (which almost never sees an aurora), we've been able to enjoy a few nighttime light shows this year!

This solar maximum could last for many more months, so stay tuned!

[thefirststarr]

Boom!! There goes another one! One of Jupiters many moons, Io, is about the size of Earth's moon, but its surface is full of volcanic activity. This is due to gravitational flexing by Jupiter and other moons. The process heats the moons interior, covering the surface with volcanoes. The featured image is from NASA’s robotic June spacecrafts fly by last week, passing within 12,000 kilometers above the dangerously active world. The surface of Io is covered with sulfur and frozen sulfur dioxide, making it appear yellow, orange and brown. As hoped, Juno flew by just as a volcano was erupting -- with its faint plume visible near the top of the featured image. Studying Io's volcanoes and plumes helps scientists better understand how Jupiter's complex system of moons, rings, and auroras interact. Juno is scheduled to make two flybys of Io during the coming months that are almost 10 times closer: one in December and another in February 2024.

Image credit: NASA

[wayti-blog]

"Using seismic activity to probe the interior of Mars, geophysicists have found evidence for a large underground reservoir of liquid water—enough to fill oceans on the planet's surface.

The data from NASA's Insight lander allowed the scientists to estimate that the amount of groundwater could cover the entire planet to a depth of between 1 and 2 kilometers, or about a mile."

""Understanding the Martian water cycle is critical for understanding the evolution of the climate, surface and interior," said Vashan Wright, a former UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow who is now an assistant professor at UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography. "A useful starting point is to identify where water is and how much is there.""

continue reading

[mindblowingscience]

In a spectacular discovery, scientists have detected aurora-like emission in the atmosphere of the Sun. At an altitude of some 40,000 kilometers (25,000 miles) above a burgeoning sunspot growing in the solar photosphere, a team of astronomers led by Sijie Yu of the New Jersey Institute of Technology recorded a never-before-seen type of long-lasting radio emission. The Sun emits all kinds of radiation as it goes about its business, but this, the team says, resembled nothing so much as an aurora. "We've detected a peculiar type of long-lasting polarized radio bursts emanating from a sunspot, persisting for over a week," Yu says. "This is quite unlike the typical, transient solar radio bursts typically lasting minutes or hours. It's an exciting discovery that has the potential to alter our comprehension of stellar magnetic processes."

Continue Reading.

[quiltofstars]

A rare arched prominence on the Sun on June 24, 2024 // AstroHawk

[netmassimo]

An article published in the journal "Nature" reports the observation of very strong winds coming from the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy Cosmos-11142 which inhibited star formation within it. A team of researchers led by Professor Sirio Belli of the University of Bologna, Italy, used the James Webb Space Telescope to detect the movement of cold neutral gas pushed at such a speed that it swept away the gas in the galaxy and thus prevented the formation of new stars. This is the first evidence of how a supermassive black hole can have that effect on a galaxy.

[paeinovis]

Hi, our observatory is currently under threat of a sand mine being built 500 ft away from it. I'm going to a city council meeting tomorrow and it'd be very cool to have a petition with Numbers associated to point at saying "don't fucking do this", so if you wouldn't mind signing/sharing, I'd appreciate it!

There are a couple of glaring problems with the proposal that I'll list under the read more if you're interested:

Telescopes have mirrors. Sand + mirrors = Bad, since it will cover them and possibly cause scratches (on the mirrors that we've just replaced which cost millions of dollars and years to do)

Sand in the air will scatter light, which makes images blurry when taken by the telescope

It might also get in gears and such, ruining hardware

This observatory has been around for 60 years and is used for citizen/student outreach, including K-12

The mine would be threatening gopher tortoise environment when they are already endangered

The water coalition is also against this due to the possibility of pollution of the Suwannee river

Air quality will drop, making it dangerous for telescope faculty (including myself because I have asthma) and residents

The sand mine is trying to get an exception to be built in a residential zone. You know, where people live?

Noise pollution will bother residents and vibrations could affect instrumentation

Light pollution in one of the few remaining dark skies of Florida will negatively affect observing and residents

[actualsunflower]

hold on I just started crying because I stared at this pic of the Earth from the moon. The Earthrise photo from the Apollo 8 mission.

Not only was this pic taken in 1968 but it's from the fucking moon. There's so many people in this picture. And animals. And plants. And everything. Everything is right there all in one picture. There are people in this picture who've passed away and are forever immortalized from the moon. FROM SPACE. taken by a Human FROM that planet ..well I guess not every human is in that pic cause some of em are on the moon lol

[huginsmemory]

My focus is shit in my astronomy lab section when we're going through the PowerPoint because my ta is after a second glance clearly into vamp play and I'm totally not distracted by how his canines are like. Actually rather sharp. 👀😳

[dragons-in-spaceee]

The Moon and Venus together from this evening (+ random one of the stars I took to get the focus right)

I love seeing the earthglow on the moon!

[astrxealis]

hiii :333 i think i am alive !! ( small update in da tags )