Don’t Say “Bye, Bye, Bye” To Your Vision: Solar Eclipse Safety Tips

Time for some Sun salutations 🧘

Flow through 133 days of the Sun's activity from Aug. 12 to Dec. 22, 2022, as captured by our Solar Dynamics Observatory. From its orbit around Earth, SDO has steadily imaged the Sun in 4K resolution for nearly 13 years.

Video description: Mellow music plays as compiled images taken every 108 seconds condenses 133 days of solar observations into an hour-long video. The video shows bright active regions passing across the face of the Sun as it rotates.

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Scott Wiessinger (Lead Producer and editor), Tom Bridgman (Lead Visualizer), Lars Leonhard (music)

Whilst practicing solar distancing, Parker Solar Probe caught this rare glimpse of the twin tails on comet NEOWISE.☄

The twin tails are seen more clearly in this WISPR instrument processed image, which increased contrast and removed excess brightness from scattered sunlight, revealing more de-"tails". C/2020 F3 NEOWISE was discovered by our Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE), on March 27. Since it's discovery the comet has been spotted by several NASA spacecraft, including Parker Solar Probe, NASA’s Solar and Terrestrial Relations Observatory, the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, and astronauts aboard the International Space Station.

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NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly shared this incredible video tonight, August 11, showing "our galactic home" with the stars of the Milky Way. Kelly is living and working off the Earth, for the Earth aboard the station for a yearlong mission. Traveling the world more than 220 miles above the Earth, and at 17,500 mph, he circumnavigates the globe more than a dozen times a day conducting research about how the body adapts and changes to living in space for a long duration.

Video credit: NASA

Top Study Tips from NASA

Study smarter this school year! We asked scientists, engineers, astronauts, and experts from across NASA about their favorite study tips – and they delivered. Here are a few of our favorites:

Study with friends

Find friends that are like-minded and work together to understand the material better. Trading ideas with a friend on how to tackle a problem can help you both strengthen your understanding.

Create a study environment

Find a quiet space or put on headphones so you can focus. You might not be able to get to the International Space Station yet, but a library, a study room, or a spot outside can be a good place to study. If it’s noisy around you, try using headphones to block out distractions.

Take breaks

Don’t burn yourself out! Take a break, go for a walk, get some water, and come back to it.

Looking for more study tips? Check out this video for all ten tips to start your school year off on the right foot!

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Vote While You float: An Astronaut Voting Story

With the excitement of getting to the polls on Election Day many people will have a hard time keeping their feet on the ground, but astronauts who vote literally have to strap themselves down so they don’t float away.

Astronauts orbit the Earth at 17,000 miles per hour, but thanks to a bill passed by Texas legislatures in 1997 that put in place technical voting procedure for astronauts – nearly all of whom live in Texas – they also have the ability to vote from space!

Image Kjell Lindgren released on social media of the US flag floating in the Cupola module (11/12/2015) 

For astronauts, the voting process starts a year before launch, when astronauts are able to select which elections (local/state/federal) that they want to participate in while in space. Then, six months before the election, astronauts are provided with a standard form: the “Voter Registration and Absentee Ballot Request – Federal Post Card Application.”

 ‘Space voting’ was first used the same year it was implemented in 1997. NASA astronaut David Wolf became the first American to vote in space while on the Russian Mir Space Station. 

STS-86 crewmember David Wolf, the first American to vote in space, relaxes in the Spacehab module while Space Shuttle Atlantis was docked to Mir (10/16/1997) 

While astronauts don’t have to wait in line for his ballot like the rest of us, there is one disadvantage to voting in space: they miss out on the highly coveted “I Voted” sticker.

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NASA’s 60th Anniversary: Humans in Space

It is part of the human spirit to explore. During 60 years, we have selected 350 people as astronauts to lead the way. For nearly two decades, humans have been living and working aboard the International Space Station in low-Earth orbit to enable future missions forward to the Moon and on to Mars while also leading discoveries that improve life on Earth. Since we opened for business on Oct. 1, 1958, our history tells a story of exploration, innovation and discoveries. The next 60 years, that story continues. Learn more: https://www.nasa.gov/60

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Hey! I was wondering how everyone on the ISS adjusts to each other’s culture and language. It seems like it might be hard with language barriers and other factors, to live in a confined space with people from another country. Do others try to teach you their language? Does everyone mostly speak English, or do some people speak Russian?

Hey, Kate! What would you say/what advice would you give to your younger self? ✨

Hi ! What's your music playlist when you're on a mission ? :)

Luckily I have a lot of friends that already make amazing mixes for me already down here on Earth, so I’m counting on them to set me up well for my first mission.  My favorite genre is Indie rock, though I’m also a fan of jazz and classical music (I grew up playing the piano, flute, piccolo, and saxophone in various bands, wind symphonies, and jazz bands).  Music always succeeds in transforming my mood, I’m continually amazed at its power!  It will definitely be integral to my psychological well-being on a space mission.

The James Webb Space Telescope has just completed a successful first year of science. Let’s celebrate by seeing the birth of Sun-like stars in this brand-new image from the Webb telescope!

This is a small star-forming region in the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex. At 390 light-years away, it's the closest star-forming region to Earth. There are around 50 young stars here, all of them similar in mass to the Sun, or smaller. The darkest areas are the densest, where thick dust cocoons still-forming protostars. Huge red bipolar jets of molecular hydrogen dominate the image, appearing horizontally across the upper third and vertically on the right. These occur when a star first bursts through its natal envelope of cosmic dust, shooting out a pair of opposing jets into space like a newborn first stretching her arms out into the world. In contrast, the star S1 has carved out a glowing cave of dust in the lower half of the image. It is the only star in the image that is significantly more massive than the Sun.

Thanks to Webb’s sensitive instruments, we get to witness moments like this at the beginning of a star’s life. One year in, Webb’s science mission is only just getting started. The second year of observations has already been selected, with plans to build on an exciting first year that exceeded expectations. Here’s to many more years of scientific discovery with Webb.

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Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Klaus Pontoppidan (STScI)