Enthusiasm for science...

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I am often amazed at how much more capability and enthusiasm for science there is among elementary school youngsters than among college students.  -- Carl Sagan

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Passing Jupiter

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Here comes Jupiter! NASA's robotic spacecraft Juno is continuing on its 53-day, highly-elongated orbits around our Solar System's largest planet. The featured video is from perijove 11, the eleventh time Juno has passed near Jupiter since it arrived in mid-2016. This time-lapse, color-enhanced movie covers about four hours and morphs between 36 JunoCam images. The video begins with Jupiter rising as Juno approaches from the north. As Juno reaches its closest view -- from about 3,500 kilometers over Jupiter's cloud tops -- the spacecraft captures the great planet in tremendous detail. Juno passes light zones and dark belt of clouds that circle the planet, as well as numerous swirling circular storms, many of which are larger than hurricanes on Earth. After the perijove, Jupiter recedes into the distance, now displaying the unusual clouds that appear over Jupiter's south. To get desired science data, Juno swoops so close to Jupiter that its instruments may soon fail due …
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The Lunar X

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The striking X in this lunarscape is easily visible in binoculars or a small telescope, but not too many have seen it. The catch is, this lunar X is fleeting and only apparent in the hours before the Moon's first quarter phase. Along the shadow line between lunar day and night, the X illusion is produced by a configuration of craters seen here toward the left, Blanchinus, La Caille and Purbach. Near the Moon's first quarter phase, an astronaut standing close to the craters' position would see the slowly rising Sun very near the horizon. Temporarily, crater walls would be in sunlight while crater floors would still be in darkness. Seen from planet Earth, contrasting sections of bright walls against the dark floors by chance look remarkably like an X. This sharp image of the Lunar X was captured on February 22nd. For extra credit, sweep your gaze along the lunar terminator and you can also spot the Lunar V. via NASA http://ift.tt/2HSh71Q
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Southwest Mare Fecunditatis

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Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders journeyed from Earth to the Moon and back again in December of 1968. From lunar orbit, their view of craters in southwest Mare Fecunditatis is featured in this stereo anaglyph, best experienced from armchairs on planet Earth with red/blue glasses. Goclenius is the large impact crater in the foreground. About 70 kilometers (45 miles) in diameter its lava-flooded floor is scarred by rilles or grooves, long, narrow depressions in the surface. Crossing the crater walls and central peaks the rilles were likely formed after the crater itself. In the background, the two large craters with smooth floors are Colombo A (top) and Magelhaens. Magelhaens A, the background crater with the irregular floor, is about 35 kilometers (20 miles) in diameter. via NASA http://ift.tt/2oMkChI
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