An active region of the Sun just rotating into the view of NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory gives a profile view of coronal loops over about a two-day period, from Feb. 8-10, 2014. Coronal loops are found around sunspots and in active regions. These structures are associated with the closed magnetic field lines that connect magnetic regions on the solar surface. Many coronal loops last for days or weeks, but most change quite rapidly. This image was taken in extreme ultraviolet light.

Your star name will be on board the Sunjammer solar sail that will provide early warning against the dangers of solar storms heading Earth’s way.

Check out the NASA video of the rotating Sun and these festooning loops!

Image Credit: NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory

One of the ways Name A Star Live makes the symbolic gesture of naming a star real is by offering our customers Virtual Planetarium™ astronomy and space software.  We include this software in our in our Deluxe, Framed and Ultimate Gift Sets, as well as one of our Instant Gift Sets.  The software includes a library of stunning astronomy imagery; information about the sky, the solar system and the latest space events; and space weather reports about sun spots, auroras and more.

With an Internet connection hundreds of images can be updated with live satellite data at the click of a button. The software was developed by Rice University and the Houston Museum of Natural Science.

We recently made several very significant upgrades to the software, which we outline below with screenshots from the software.  You can purchase Virtual Planetarium separately.  If you already have Virtual Planetarium, you can easily update your software yourself. Continue reading “Our Astronomy Sofware is Better Than Ever!”

 

There will be a beautiful Full Moon out the night of Valentine’s Day this year.  So take your Valentine outside that moonlit night and wish upon your star!

The stars are bright, and the night is still, and the river is singing by,
And many a face is upward turned to gaze at the moon’s bright eye.
North and south, from the forest deeps to the heart of the silver plain,
There’s many an eye will see no sleep till the east grows bright again;
There’s many a hand will toil to-night by shining land and sea.
O moonlight, bear my message of love to the heart that beats for me.
From “In the Moonlight” by David McKee Wright

While you’re looking at the Moon, look for the brightest ‘star’ you’ll see in the eastern sky after sunset.  That’s the planet Jupiter, which is in the Name A Star Live constellation Gemini this month. Continue reading “February’s Stars and Planets”

In this new Hubble Space Telescope image two objects are clearly visible, shining brightly. When they were first discovered in 1979, they were thought to be separate objects — however, astronomers soon realized that these twins are a little too identical! They are close together, lie at the same distance from us, and have surprisingly similar properties. The reason they are so similar is not some bizarre coincidence; they are in fact the same object.

Continue reading “Seeing Double in Space”

Your star name will fly on board the Sunjammer solar sail, which will monitor the Sun for dangerous space weather events that can impact us here on Earth.  Meanwhile, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO is checking space weather from its orbit around the Moon, and feeding its results to an Internet radio station.

Continue reading “Musical Space Weather Reports from NASA Moon Mission”

This long-exposure Hubble Space Telescope image of massive galaxy cluster Abell 2744 (foreground) is the deepest ever made of any cluster of galaxies. It shows some of the faintest and youngest galaxies ever detected in space.

Continue reading “Hubble Eyes a Beautiful Cluster of Galaxies!”

This new Hubble Space Telescope image shows spiral galaxy ESO 373-8, which is located some 25 million light-years away. Together with at least seven of its galactic neighbors, this galaxy is a member of the NGC 2997 group. We see it side-on as a thin, glittering streak across the sky, with all its contents neatly aligned in the same plane. Continue reading “Hubble Eyes Galaxy as Flat as a Pancake”

Here are some beautiful space photos and videos that have been posted on the Internet recently. Enjoy!

Here’s a beautiful, new video from NASA: “The World Outside My Window – Time Lapse of Earth from the International Space Station”

Newborn stars, hidden behind thick dust, are revealed in this image of a section of the Christmas Tree Cluster from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. The newly revealed infant stars appear as pink and red specks toward the center and appear to have formed in regularly spaced intervals along linear structures in a configuration that resembles the spokes of a wheel or the pattern of a snowflake. Hence, astronomers have nicknamed this the “Snowflake Cluster.”

Star-forming clouds like this one are dynamic and evolving structures. Since the stars trace the straight line pattern of spokes of a wheel, scientists believe that these are newborn stars, or “protostars.” At a mere 100,000 years old, these infant structures have yet to “crawl” away from their location of birth. Over time, the natural drifting motions of each star will break this order, and the snowflake design will be no more.

While most of the visible-light stars that give the Christmas Tree Cluster its name and triangular shape do not shine brightly in Spitzer’s infrared eyes, all of the stars forming from this dusty cloud are considered part of the cluster.

Like a dusty cosmic finger pointing up to the newborn clusters, Spitzer also illuminates the optically dark and dense Cone Nebula, the tip of which can be seen towards the bottom left corner of the image.