Posts tagged solar system

Felix Baumgartner, the professional daredevil, became on Sunday the first sky diver to break the speed of sound.

Brian Utley of the FAI, the international federation that certifies aerospace records, told reporters at a news conference that according to a preliminary analysis, Mr. Baumgartner reached a maximum speed of 833.9 mph during his jump from more than 24 miles over the New Mexico desert. That is a speed of Mach 1.24.

Mr. Utley, who was here to independently evaluate data from Mr. Baumgartner’s suit, said the final figures might be slightly different after a thorough analysis of the data over the next several weeks, but that there was no doubt Mr. Baumgartner reached a record-breaking supersonic speed. 

The speed was even higher than what was predicted by Red Bull Stratos engineers. They had expected Mr. Baumgartner to reach perhaps 720 m.p.h., or Mach 1.1, in a region of the stratosphere where the speed of sound is close to 690 m.p.h. 

Mr. Utley found that the jump began from an altitude of 128,100 feet, or 24.2 miles, and that the free fall extended for 119,846 feet  both records.

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A spacecraft orbiting Mars has detected carbon dioxide snow falling on the Red Planet, making Mars the only body in the solar system known to host this weird weather phenomenon.

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Death Star: Eta Carinae, one of the closest stars to Earth is huge and unstable and will likely explode in a supernova in the relatively ‘near future’ (On an astronomical timeline this could be a million years from now). via NASA

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This image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope shows what lies near the sword of the constellation Orion an active stellar nursery containing thousands of young stars and developing protostars. Many will turn out like our sun. Some are even more massive. These massive stars light up the Orion nebula, which is seen here as the bright region near the center of the image. To the north of the Orion nebula is a dark filamentary cloud of cold dust and gas, over 5 light-years in length

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http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120609.html

Instruments on the spacecraft measure the high-energy particles, accelerated to near-light speed by distant supernovas and black holes, that make up the cosmic rays seeping into the solar system from the interstellar region of the galaxy as well as the lower-energy particles within our solar system.

It is these measurements that help scientists determine how close to the edge of the solar system Voyager 1 is.

“The particles from inside [the solar system], they’ve been pretty steady for the last seven years, and then on July 28, in a matter of about 12 hours, their intensity dropped to half, and it remained at that lower level until Aug. 1,” Stone said.

“That was the first time in seven years that we’ve seen anything like that. It was very dramatic.”

Voyager 1 was launched from Earth on Sept. 5, 1977, and is now about 18 billion kilometres from Earth and 121 times as far from the sun as Earth is, the only human-made object to have travelled that far into space.

(Source: futurenow321)

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