NASA Flying Observatory Makes Observations of Jupiter Previously Only Possible from Space
https://www.nasa.gov/...bservatory-makes-observations-of-jupiter-previously-only-possible-from-space

For the first time since the twin Voyager spacecraft missions in 1979, scientists have produced far-infrared maps of Jupiter using NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory
for Infrared Astronomy, SOFIA. These maps were created from the researchers’ studies of the circulation of gases within the gas giant planet’s atmosphere.

Infrared observations provide details not possible at other wavelengths. When gas planets like Jupiter are studied with visible light, they can only see the light
reflecting from the top of the gas clouds that make up the atmosphere. Using infrared light allows scientists to see past the clouds and into the deep layers of
the atmosphere, providing a three-dimensional view of the planet and the ability to study how gasses circulate within the atmosphere.

Začíná tiskovka apačů z APOGEE!

How Far Away is That Galaxy? Vast Catalog Has Answers
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/how-far-away-is-that-galaxy-vast-catalog-has-answers

A team of researchers has compiled a special catalog to help astronomers figure out the true distances to tens of thousands of galaxies beyond our own Milky Way.

The catalog, called NED-D, is a critical resource, not only for studying these galaxies, but also for determining the distances to billions of other galaxies strewn
throughout the universe. As the catalog continues to grow, astronomers can increasingly rely on it for ever-greater precision in calculating both how big the universe is
and how fast it is expanding. NED-D is part of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), an online repository containing information on more than 100 million galaxies.

NEBULA: Zhusta!

VIRGO: Massive Arecibo Study Subtracts The Galaxy; Reveals A Pristine Universe
http://www.forbes.com/...recibo-study-subtracts-the-galaxy-reveals-a-pristine-universe/#42def3e31d0d

There's a big problem with measuring CMB radiation: no matter where we look, there's intervening matter in the way. It's true that the hotter something is, the more energy
and light it radiates away. The Big Bang's leftover glow is so cold - just 2.725 K, with fluctuations on the scale of 10s or 100s of µK - that even the coldest interstellar
gas and dust can cause foreground contamination. Even when observed with the Planck satellite, the most advanced, sophisticated mapping tool every constructed for this
leftover glow, the foreground emissions from the Milky Way are still a terrible source of pollution and noise.

The smallest-scale features in light of very particular frequencies (between 22 and 90 GHz) are where some of the most intricate information about the pristine Universe lies.
The overdense regions (which correspond to blue, cold spots in the fancy image of the CMB) will someday grow into galaxies, clusters and even larger structures. But in order
to understand how this works in our Universe, we need a full-sky map, not merely a map of the sky except where the galactic plane is. The key, and the hard problem, is to
properly account for the full suite of the galactic foregrounds. After years of work by hundreds of people, we thought we had done it properly. Yet continued observations
showed that problems remained, and that the galactic subtraction was incomplete.

In particular, there were two key puzzles that needed to be solved:

Why are the magnetic field lines of the galaxy aligned with the orientation of neutral hydrogen? (Which is puzzling, because only charged particles, not neutral ones,
should be aligned with a magnetic field.)

And why is that neutral hydrogen associated with the polarization of the CMB? (Which is puzzling because the hydrogen is only hundreds of light years away, but the CMB is
billions of light years away, and they shouldn't affect each other.)

The answer is, of course, that these can't be the full story. The leftover glow from the Big Bang can't just randomly align with something happening in our own galaxy; there
has to be something additional in the galaxy responsible for it! And that means, unfortunately, that our previous calculations for what the Universe looked like behind
the Milky Way was flawed in a very fundamental way.

Thankfully, a new study by Gerrit Verschuur and Joan Schmelz using the Arecibo radio telescope was able to study the galactic plane in great detail, in an attempt to uncover
the cause of the radiation. By viewing a number of foreground, galactic sources at a variety of frequencies, they were able to compare what the radio data showed with what
the theory predicted. Quite clearly, there was a terrible fit, showing that the previously introduced model of the galaxy was missing a component.

But if you added in a population of free electrons at relatively warm temperatures (100-300 K), everything gets resolved. The magnetic field lines are aligned with galactic
hydrogen because there are free, charged particles influencing the neutral hydrogen. The neutral hydrogen isn't aligned with the polarization of the CMB; the free electrons
are aligned with the electromagnetic radiation's polarization, and they in turn interact with neutral hydrogen. And in the graph above, rather than a downward-sloping line,
there ought to be a straight, horizontal line that the data follows. You will notice the data doesn't follow it perfectly, and that's good! The leftover signal on top of
that - the up-and-down wiggles - ought to correspond to the actual fluctuations in the CMB: the Big Bang's leftover glow.