![]() ![]() ![]() The space bat is just one of several cosmic phenomena that Hanson has filmed over the years. But now his surveillance and photography equipment is in El Sauce, Chile, which he controls remotely. At first he took his photos from Wisconsin, then moved to New Mexico, where the sky is darker. Hanson is an astrophotographer for the space agency and says he has been pointing his camera into space for 25 years. This thread of gas and dust 12 light-years long is not a harbinger of death, but in fact a stellar nursery. ![]() It is dense enough to block light not only from background stars, but also gas streams illuminated by the neighboring reflective nebula LBN 7. This is a molecular cloud located at a distance of about 1400 light-years from us in the constellation Ophiuchus. An extended view of the nebula from astrophotographer Jim Thommes Inside the dark nebula LDN 43 (consisting of parts LDN43, B, D and E) are two more nebulae GN 16.31.3 and GN 16.31.7. The energy emitted by nearby stars is not strong enough to ionize the nebula’s gas, which could create an emission nebula, but it is strong enough to scatter light and make dust visible to telescopes. “What is the scariest nebula in the galaxy? One of the contenders is LDN 43, which is surprisingly similar to a huge space bat flying among the stars on a dark Halloween night,” says NASA.Ī reflective nebula is an astronomical term for clouds of interstellar dust that may reflect the light of a nearby star or stars. The image was taken and processed in July last year, but given its creepy theme, NASA chose Halloween to share it as a themed astronomical photo of the day. The most interesting thing is that the shape of the two nebulae resembles a giant space bat. Elves form when electromagnetic pulses released during a thunderstorm slam into the ionosphere.Astrophotographer Mark Hanson recorded the bright reflective nebula LDN 7 and the dark nebula LDN 43, consisting of very dense material and blocking light from surrounding stars. They occur around 62 miles (100 km) above the ground, reaching diameters up to 300 miles (480 km) wide. This, in turn, triggers activity in the atmosphere above the storm: a sprite.Įlves, on the other hand, look more like expanding doughnuts or rings. Sprites occur when lightning bolts funnel positive charge from cloud to ground, leaving the cloud negatively charged. Sprites typically have a round, blobby center that sprouts tendrils of light reaching upward or downward. These strange phenomena, which only last milliseconds, are occasionally seen above thunderstorms. Stunning, evanescent events called sprites and elves have been observed from NASA’s Juno spacecraft in the stormy clouds of Jupiter - marking the first time they’ve been observed on another planet.īoth sprites (which stands for Stratospheric/mesospheric Perturbations Resulting from Intense Thunderstorm Electrification) and elves (Emission of Light and Very Low Frequency perturbations due to Electromagnetic Pulse Sources) are a type of transient luminous event, or TLE. Sprites and Elves frolic in Jupiter’s clouds The temperature would get hotter and hotter as you kept diving - up to about 20,000 kelvins (35,000 degrees Fahrenheit).Ģ. ![]() And if you could weigh yourself down, you could keep sinking and enter a thick layer of metallic hydrogen, where electrons and protons move separately from one another. You would probably even begin to float when the density of the gas around you matched that of your body. You would pass through layers of ammonia clouds, sulfide clouds, and then water clouds. For example, if you could somehow endure the high temperatures, pressures, and radiation levels and survive a dive into Jupiter, you would first swim through a stormy atmosphere of hydrogen. So, if you dropped a penny from the cloud tops, it would never land with a “clink.” These bodies are mostly composed of hydrogen at temperatures above the “critical point” for hydrogen, meaning there is no sharp boundary between solid, liquid, and gas regions.īut gas giants do have layers. Gas giants like Jupiter do not have solid surfaces. Jupiter does not have a traditional “surface” ![]()
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