วันพฤหัสบดีที่ 23 กรกฎาคม พ.ศ. 2552

Longest Solar Eclipse

The longest solar eclipse of the century


Earlier today, the moon passed directly in front of the sun, causing a total solar eclipse that crossed nearly half the Earth - through India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar and China. Today's was the longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century, lasting as much as 6 minutes and 39 seconds in a few areas. Despite cloudy skies in many of the populated areas in the path, millions of people gathered outside to gaze up and view this rare event. Collected here are a few images of the eclipse, and those people who came out to watch. (33 photos total)


People watch the solar eclipse on the peak of Malu Mountain in Liuzhou, China on July 22, 2009. A total solar eclipse covered a narrow path across Asia, where it darkened skies for millions of people for more than six minutes in some places. (REUTERS/China Daily)



A man reacts while watching the solar eclipse with a pair of protective glasses in Taipei, taiwan on July 22, 2009. (REUTERS/Pichi Chuang) #


An aircraft flies past the sun during a solar eclipse above New Delhi, India on July 22, 2009. (REUTERS/B Mathur) #

Hindu devotees observe a solar eclipse through specially-designed viewing glasses as they take holy dips in the Sangam, the confluence of the Ganges, Yamuna and the mythical Sarawati River, in Allahabad, India, Wednesday, July 22, 2009. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh) #

A partial solar eclipse is seen as an internally displaced man loads his belongings onto the back of a truck before departing from the UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) Yar Hussain camp in pakistan's Swabi district, about 120 km (75 mi) northwest of Islamabad on July 22, 2009. (REUTERS/Faisal Mahmood) #

Hindu devotees gather along the banks of the River Ganges to watch the total solar eclipse in the northern Indian city of Varanasi July 22, 2009. (REUTERS/Jayanta Shaw) #

A partial solar eclipse is seen near the minaret of a mosque in Rawalpindi, Pakistan on Wednesday, July 22, 2009. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed) #

Children watch a solar eclipse through protective glasses outside a planetarium in Taipei, Taiwan on July 22, 2009. (PATRICK LIN/AFP/Getty Images) #

The roof of the Yellow Crane Tower is silhouetted below a partial solar eclipse in Wuhan, Hubei province, China on July 22, 2009. (REUTERS/Stringer) #

Taiwanese spectators spell out a message made from tiny pinhole projections of the partial solar eclipse outside the astrological museum in Taipei, Taiwan on July 22, 2009. (AP Photo/Wally Santana) #

A partial solar eclipse is seen beyond a statue of Mahatma Gandhi in the southern Indian city of Chennai, India on July 22, 2009. (REUTERS/Babu) #

South Korean student Jo Sang-young watches the solar eclipse through a stack of sunglasses at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, July 22, 2009. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon) #

The moon passes between the sun and the earth, nearing a total solar eclipse, as seen in Changsha, Hunan province, China on July 22, 2009. (REUTERS/Stringer) #

A man continues his chore - emptying a rubbish bin in front of the world's largest stone Buddha statue - despite the darkness of the total solar eclipse above the city of Leshan, Sichuan province, China on July 22, 2009. (REUTERS/David Gray) #

The sun's edge, or limb, peeks out from behind the moon during a total solar eclipse above Varanasi, India on Wednesday, July 22, 2009. (AP Photo/Saurabh Das) #

People congregate on the banks of the River Ganges watching a total solar eclipse in Varanasi, India, Wednesday, July 22, 2009. (AP Photo/Saurabh Das) #

A red crescent of sun is visible during a total solar eclipse seen above Varanasi, India on Wednesday, July 22, 2009. (AP Photo/Saurabh Das) #

Much of the sun's corona becomes visible as the moon passes between the sun and the earth during a total solar eclipse, seen above Varanasi, India, Wednesday, July 22, 2009. (AP Photo/Saurabh Das) #

Buildings in the Shanghai Bund, seen on the banks of the Huangpu River just before a total solar eclipse on July 22, 2009. A few minutes later, Shanghai was plunged into darkness in the shadow of the moon. (REUTERS/Aly Song) #

Click on the image above to watch an animated fade to darkness.

People use their mobile phones to take photos as they join thousands of people along the Ganges river to watch a solar eclipse in the Indian city of Varanasi on July 22, 2009. (PEDRO UGARTE/AFP/Getty Images) #

In this handout image provided by National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, the sun's corona is clearly visible during the solar eclipse on July 22, 2009, seen near Iwojima Island, Tokyo, Japan. (Hideo Fukushima/National Astronomical Observatory of Japan via Getty Images) #

People watch the solar eclipse at Dhulia Gach village, 57 km (35 mi) south of the eastern Indian city of Siliguri, July 22, 2009. (REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri) #

A statue of Chairman Mao Zedong is silhouetted against a partial solar eclipse in Wuhan, Hubei province, China on July 22, 2009. (REUTERS/Stringer) #

A partial solar eclipse is seen behind the Taj Mahal in the northern Indian city of Agra on July 22, 2009. (REUTERS/Brijesh Singh) #

A boy uses a piece of smoked glass to observe a solar eclipse in Tianjin municipality, China on July 22, 2009. (REUTERS/Vincent Du) #

A dinosaur sculpture situated outside a themed restaurant is silhouetted against a partial solar eclipse in Taipei, Taiwan on July 22, 2009. (REUTERS/Pichi Chuang) #

A family tries to capture a solar eclipse with their mobile phone cameras at the national parliament complex in Dhaka, Bangladesh on July 22, 2009. (REUTERS/Andrew Biraj) #

A bird flies past a partial solar eclipse, seen behind one of the domes of the Golden Temple - the Sikhs holiest shrine - in Amritsar, India on July 22, 2009. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri) #

A photographer takes pictures of a solar eclipse through exposed X-ray film during sunrise in New Delhi on July 22, 2009. (TENGKU BAHAR/AFP/Getty Images) #

A partial solar eclipse is seen through the window panels of the Taoyuan International Airport in Taoyuan, Taiwan on July 22, 2009. (REUTERS/Nicky Loh) #

Residents listen to an expert from a science and technology museum give a talk during a partial eclipse in Liuzhou, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, China on July 22, 2009. (REUTERS/Stringer) #

Girls try out a pair of protective eyewear during a solar eclipse viewing event at the national parliament complex in Dhaka, Bangladesh on July 22, 2009. (REUTERS/Andrew Biraj) #

A partial solar eclipse is seen through clouds in Hyderabad, Pakistan on Wednesday, July 22, 2009. (AP Photo/Shakil Adil) #

วันจันทร์ที่ 20 กรกฎาคม พ.ศ. 2552

Views of Jupiter

SOURCE :  http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/07/views_of_jupiter.html


Jupiter is in the news again, this time because its "Baby Red Spot" - a storm less than a year old - appears to have been swallowed up by the massive storm known as the Great Red Spot. This is good occasion to share some of the best photographs of Jupiter and its larger system of rings and moons, as seen by various probes and telescopes over the past 30 years. 



Jupiter's moon Io floats above the cloudtops of Jupiter in this image captured January 1, 2001. The image is deceiving: there are 350,000 kilometers - roughly 2.5 Jupiters - between Io and Jupiter's clouds. Io is about the size of our own moon (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)


This image of Jupiter's moon Europa rising above Jupiter was captured by the New Horizons spacecraft in February just after it passed Jupiter on its way to Pluto and the outer Solar System. (NASA, Johns Hopkins U. APL, SWRI)


The gibbous phase of Jupiter's moon Europa. The robot spacecraft Galileo captured this image mosaic during its mission orbiting Jupiter from 1995 - 2003. Evidence and images from the Galileo spacecraft, indicated that liquid oceans might exist below the icy surface. (Galileo Project, JPL, NASA; reprocessed by Ted Stryk)


This view of the icy surface of Jupiter's moon, Europa, is a mosaic of two pictures taken by the Solid State Imaging system on board the Galileo spacecraft during a close flyby of Europa on February 20, 1997. The area shown is about 14 kilometers by 17 kilometers (8.7 miles by 10.6 miles), and has a resolution of 20 meters (22 yards) per pixel. One of the youngest features seen in this area is the double ridge cutting across the picture from the lower left to the upper right. This double ridge is about 2.6 kilometers (1.6 miles) wide and stands some 300 meters (330 yards) high. (NASA/JPL/ASU)


A composite of several images taken in several colors by the New Horizons Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera, or MVIC, illustrating the diversity of structures in Jupiter's atmosphere, in colors similar to what someone "riding" on New Horizons would see. It was taken near the terminator, the boundary between day and night, and shows relatively small-scale, turbulent, whirlpool-like structures near the south pole of the planet. The dark "holes" in this region are actually places where there is very little cloud cover, so sunlight is not reflected back to the camera. (NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute)


This image, acquired during Galileo's ninth orbit around Jupiter, shows two volcanic plumes on Io. One plume was captured on the bright limb or edge of the moon, erupting over a caldera (volcanic depression) named Pillan Patera. The plume seen by Galileo is 140 kilometers (86 miles) high, and was also detected by the Hubble Space Telescope. The second plume, seen near the terminator, the boundary between day and night, is called Prometheus. The shadow of the airborne plume can be seen extending to the right of the eruption vent. (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)


A part of the southern hemisphere of Io, seen by the spacecraft Voyager at a range of 74,675 km. In the foreground is gently undulating topography, while in the back-ground are two mountains with their near faces brightly illuminated by the sun. The mountain in the right is approximately 150 km across at its base and its height is probably in excess of 15 km which would make it higher than any mountain on Earth. (NASA/JPL)


This five-frame sequence of New Horizons images captures the giant plume from Io's Tvashtar volcano. Snapped by the probe's Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) as the spacecraft flew past Jupiter earlier this year, this first-ever "movie" of an Io plume clearly shows motion in the cloud of volcanic debris, which extends 330 kilometers (200 miles) above the moon's surface. Only the upper part of the plume is visible from this vantage point - the plume's source is 130 kilometers (80 miles) below the edge of Io's disk, on the far side of the moon. (NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute)


A volcanic plume rises over 300 kilometers above the horizon of Jupiter's moon Io in this image from cameras onboard the New Horizons spacecraft. The volcano, Tvashtar, is marked by the bright glow (about 1 o'clock) at the moon's edge, beyond the terminator or night/day shadow line. The shadow of Io cuts across the plume itself. Also capturing stunning details on the dayside surface, the high resolution image was recorded when the spacecraft was 2.3 million kilometers from Io. Later it was combined with lower resolution color data by astro-imager Sean Walker to produce this sharp portrait of the solar system's most active moon. (NASA, JHU/APL, SwRI - Additional Processing: Sean Walker)


Jupiter's moon Io, seen by NASA's Galileo spacecraft against a backdrop of Jupiter's cloud tops, which appear blue in this false-color composite. (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)


A mosaic of Jupiter's ring system, acquired by NASA's Galileo spacecraft when the Sun was behind the planet, and the spacecraft was in Jupiter's shadow peering back toward the Sun. (NASA/JPL/Cornell University)


The first color movie of Jupiter from NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows what it would look like to peel the entire globe of Jupiter, stretch it out on a wall into the form of a rectangular map, and watch its atmosphere evolve with time. The brief movie clip spans 24 Jupiter rotations between Oct. 31 and Nov. 9, 2000. The darker blips that appear are several moons and their shadows. (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)


An image of the leading hemisphere of Ganymede seen by NASA's Galileo spacecraft. Many fragmented regions of dark terrain split by lanes of bright grooved terrain cover the surface. Several bright young craters can be seen, including a linear chain of craters near the center of the image which may have resulted from the impact of a fragmented comet, similar to comet Shoemaker-Levy/9 which hit Jupiter in 1994. (NASA/JPL/Brown University)


The area of Nicholson Regio and Arbela Sulcus illustrates many of the diverse terrain types on Jupiter's moon Ganymede, as seen in this image taken by NASA's Galileo spacecraft. The image covers an area approximately 89 by 26 kilometers (55by 16 miles). (NASA/JPL/Brown University)


Jupiter's Great Red seen by NASA's Voyager spacecraft. July, 1979 Around the northern boundary a white cloud is seen, which extends to east of the region. The presence of this cloud prevents small cloud vortices from circling the spot in the manner seen in the Voyager 1 encounter. Another white oval cloud (different from the one present in this position three months ago) is seen south of the Great Red Spot. This image was taken on July 6, 1979 from a range of 2,633,003 kilometers. The Red Spot is 20,000 km across. (NASA/JPL)


This true color mosaic of Jupiter was constructed from images taken by the narrow angle camera onboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft on December 29, 2000, as the spacecraft neared Jupiter during its flyby of the giant planet. It is the most detailed global color portrait of Jupiter ever produced. Although Cassini's camera can see more colors than humans can, Jupiter here looks the way that the human eye would see it. (NASA/JPL/SSI)