The folks at NASA might not be able to pull off a handshake, but when it comes to new ways of looking at space, they just keep getting better.
Their latest gift to the world is an image of the entire sky, taken using the Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer, known as NICER.
The arcs in the image below are actually tracing X-rays, and was done using 22 months worth of data.
Here’s CNN with more:
NICER acts as a detector of cosmic sources from the International Space Station, which orbits the Earth every 93 minutes. NICER keeps tracking those sources, even at night.
This map of our sky represents the first 22 months of NICER’s work, taking data from its nighttime observations. The arcs follow X-rays and energetic particle strikes. The most traveled pathways tracked by NICER reveal the brightest and most prominent arcs.
Feast your eyes on this:
One of NICER’s goals is to determine the size of neutron stars (the remains of dense stars).
Determining the size of those remains with precision could unravel the mystery of what form matter takes in their dense cores. Pulsars, or rapidly spinning neutron stars that look like they’re pulsing with light, serve as targets for NICER.
NICER also studies pulsar X-rays, which determine the detector’s speed and position for itself. In other words, it’s a kind of galactic GPS system.
If the image above wasn’t enough of a space fix for you, NASA astronaut Nick Hague recorded a time-lapse video of the earth from the International Space Station:
Keep it coming, NASA.
[source:cnn]
