What’s Up For March 2016?

What’s Up for March 2016?

In March, Jupiter, it’s moons and moon shadows will all be visible in the sky. Find out when and where to look up:

Jupiter dominates the evening sky this month, rising at sunset and setting at dawn. On March 8, Jupiter reaches what is called “opposition”. Imagine that Jupiter and the sun are at opposite ends of a straight line, with the Earth in between. This brings Jupiter its closest to Earth, so it shines brighter and appears larger in telescopes.

On the nights of March 14 – 15, March 21 – 22 and March 29, two of Jupiter’s moons will cross the planet’s disk.

When the planet is at opposition and the sun shines on Jupiter’s moons, we can see the moon’s shadow crossing the planet. There are actually 11 of these double shadow transits in March!

The next six months will be awesome times for you to image Jupiter when it’s highest in the sky; near midnight now, and a little earlier each night through the late summer.

Even through the smallest telescopes or binoculars, you should be able to see the two prominent belts on each side of Jupiter’s equator made up of the four Galilean moons: Io, Europa Ganymede and Calisto. If you have a good enough view, you may even see Jupiter’s Red Spot!

Our Juno spacecraft will arrive at Jupiter on July 4th of this year and will go into orbit around the giant planet. Right now, the Juno mission science team is actively seeking amateur and professional images of the planet. These images are uploaded to a Juno website, and the public is invited to discuss points of interest in Jupiter’s atmosphere.

Locations will later be voted on and the favorites will be targets for JunoCam, the spacecraft’s imaging camera. Once JunoCam has taken the images, they’ll be posted online. Imaging participants can then process these raw mission images and re-upload them for others to view.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Colors of Earth

When we think of our globe from a distance, we generally visualize two colors: blue and green. Water and land. Mostly water, consequently, our planet’s nickname of the blue marble.

Traveling around the globe every 90 minutes covering millions of miles with a focused lens on our beautiful planet from 250 miles above, I’ve captured many beautiful colors beyond blue and green that showcase Earth in new and interesting ways. Some colors are indicative of nature like desert sands and weather like snow. Other colors tell stories of Earth’s climate in bright splashes of yellows and greens of pollen and muted grey tones and clouded filters of pollution.

Blue and green still remain vivid and beautiful colors on Earth from the vantage point of the International Space Station, but here are some other colors that have caught my eye from my orbital perspective.

African violet

Bahamas blues

Tropical in Africa

Yellow desert

Orange in Egypt

Red surprise

Snow white

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intergalacticnerd

9 years ago

Dying star IC 4406

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intergalacticnerd

9 years ago

Views Of The Space Shuttle Atlantis Undocking From The Mir Space Station On July 4, 1995. Cosmonauts

Views of the Space Shuttle Atlantis undocking from the Mir space station on July 4, 1995. Cosmonauts Anotoliy Slovyev and Nikolai Budarin unparked the Soyuz spacecraft from Mir to perform a short fly-around when they snapped these astonishing photos. (NASA)

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intergalacticnerd

9 years ago

It was just discovered that there is a large ocean of water deep within the surface of Saturn’s icy moon, Enceladus.

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intergalacticnerd

9 years ago

Saturn’s hexagonal storm system in it’s north pole

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intergalacticnerd

9 years ago

Psychedelic Pluto : New Horizons scientists made this false color image of Pluto using a technique called principal component analysis to highlight the many subtle color differences between Plutos distinct regions.

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