Comet PanSTARRS And A Crescent Moon

Pluto in Enhanced Color : Pluto is more colorful than we can see. Color data and images of our Solar System’s most famous dwarf planet, taken by the robotic New Horizons spacecraft during its flyby in July, have been digitally combined to give an enhanced view of this ancient world sporting an unexpectedly young surface. The featured enhanced color image is not only esthetically pretty but scientifically useful, making surface regions of differing chemical composition visually distinct. For example, the light-colored heart-shaped Tombaugh Regio on the lower right is clearly shown here to be divisible into two regions that are geologically different, with the leftmost lobe Sputnik Planum also appearing unusually smooth. New Horizons now continues on beyond Pluto, will continue to beam back more images and data, and will soon be directed to change course so that it can fly past asteroid 2014 MU69 in 2019 January. via NASA

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Sea Level Rise

For thousands of years, sea level has remained relatively stable. But now, Earth’s seas are rising. Since the beginning of the 20th century, they have risen about eight inches, and more than two inches in the last 20 years alone!

As water warms, it expands and takes up more space. That means that when oceans warm, the sea level rises. This summer, we’ve been researching exactly how global warming has impacted Greenland’s ice sheet. Our ICESat-2 mission will use a laser to measure the height of the planet’s surface. Over time, we will be able to provide a record of elevation change, and estimate how much water has melted into the ocean from land ice change.

So how much ice are we actually losing? Great question, but the answer might shock you. In Greenland alone, 303 gigatons of ice was lost in 2014!

Since we know that ice is melting, we’re working to gain a better understanding of how much and how fast. We’re using everything from planes, probes and boats, to satellites and lasers to determine the impact of global warming on the Earth’s ice.

Follow along for updates and information: http://climate.nasa.gov/

nature | Night Life | by Joshwallace | http://ift.tt/1IeKeUi

A photo of Saturn. Took by Cassini with COISS on May 22, 2008 at 13:31:01. Detail page on OPUS database.

Hubble Space Telescope

You’ve probably heard of our Hubble Space Telescope, but have you had the chance to actually take a look at the amazing images it has captured for us over the years? Since Hubble launched in April 1990,  it has made more than 1.2 million observations, some to locations more than 13.4 billion light years from Earth!

Hubble can see astronomical objects with an angular size of 0.05 arc seconds, which is like seeing a pair of fireflies in Tokyo from your home in Maryland…yea, that’s pretty far! This accuracy allows us to see images like this one of Little Gem Nebula, roughly 6,000 light-years away from us.

Images from Hubble are regularly released to the public, and are some of the most breathtaking views in the Universe. Images like this one of Lagoon Nebula, in the constellation of Sagittarius, not only make for amazing desktop screen-savers, but provide us with valuable scientific information about distant stars and galaxies, as well as the planets in our solar system.

We recently celebrated Hubble’s 25th Anniversary, and look forward to many more years of discovery and captivating images.

“Saturn’s Largest Ring” by, Cosmic Funnies

http://cosmicfunnies.tumblr.com/post/126663811188/the-second-week-of-assorted-planets-month-this

New video! Dark nebulae in a nutshell!

Follow Evanthorizon for more astronomy posts!

Summer Triangles over Japan by Shingo Takei

Welcome to the new, official NASA Tumblr. We’re going to be giving you a regular dose of space here. Follow along and join us as we share information, images and video about our mission of exploration and discovery. First up, check out the moon photobombing Earth in this new animated gif. The far side of the moon, illuminated by the sun, is seen as it crosses between our ‘EPIC’ camera on the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite, and the Earth - one million miles away. Check it out: http://go.nasa.gov/1Dq0IO9

M22 globular cluster

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