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An “image enhancement engineer” explains how he cleans up images of outer space so we can make out the details. His most common challenge? Photobombers. -via Buzzfeed
This is not the first picture you’ve seen of the Helix Nebula, but it’s the best image so far. The Helix Nebula is a cloud of gas that was left when a star expired 700 light years away from us.
This image is in the near-infrared, taken using the European Southern Observatory’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA), a 4.1 meter telescope in Chile. Equipped with a whopping 67 megapixel camera it can take pictures of large areas of the sky. The Helix nebula fits that bill: it’s close enough to us that it’s nearly the size of the full Moon in the sky.
You are right, this would make an awesome desktop wallpaper! You can download the huge version if you like, and get more details about the Eye of Sauron Helix Nebula at Bad Astronomy. Link
(Image credit: ESO/VISTA/J. Emerson/Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit)
The semi-annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society was held in Austin recently, and many space images were shared. Dr. Phil Plait was not at the meeting, so the other astronomers sent him pictures, which he put into a gallery at Bad Astronomy. Each has a link to more information about the picture. The image shown here is a high-energy gamma-ray map from NASA’s Fermi telescope. Shiny! Link
(Image credit: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration)
This photograph of Saturn was taken by the Cassini spacecraft in December. The rings are completely horizontal, and appear as a razor-thin line in the middle. The shadows of those rings are evident on the planet. And that tiny little ball underneath the plane of the rings? That’s Tethys, a moon of Saturn that is over a thousand kilometers wide. Yes, Saturn is immense, but it takes good pictures. Link
Last week, Phil Plait posted his year-end gallery of the best pictures taken from space. Now you can see his picks for the best pictures of deep space, really deep, like these galaxies that are 300 million light years away.
Because they’re big, sometimes galaxies get close together. Too close. Close enough that their gravity can affect each other, drawing out long arms of gas and stars, distorting each other into weird and beautiful shapes. It happens a lot.
Such is Arp 273, seen here in a Hubble image taken to celebrate the observatory’s 20th anniversary in space. These two big galaxies passed each other in the recent past (like, a few million years ago). Both were probably normal enough before the encounter, but are now twisted and asymmetric.
See the other 23 images at Bad Astronomy. Link
(Image credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team)
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On July 14, 2015, the spacecraft New Horizons will come within 7,767 miles of (former planet) Pluto. The probe has been traveling for six years already, covering a million kilometers every day, and broke a record on Friday by becoming the closet spacecraft to Pluto ever. The previous record was 1.58 billion kilometers, when Voyager I came its closest to Pluto in 1986.
“We’ve come a long way across the solar system,” says Glen Fountain, New Horizons project manager at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. “When we launched [on Jan. 19, 2006] it seemed like our 10-year journey would take forever, but those years have been passing us quickly. We’re almost six years in flight, and it’s just about three years until our encounter begins.”
From New Horizons’ current distance to Pluto – about as far as Earth is from Saturn – Pluto remains just a faint point of light. But by the time New Horizons sails through the Pluto system in mid-2015, the planet and its moons will be so close that the spacecraft’s cameras will spot features as small as a football field.
Get ready for your closeups, Pluto! Link
The following is an article from the book Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into the Universe.
Astronomy wasn’t invented a couple of hundred years ago. The study of stars is almost as old as humanity itself.
(Image credit: Wikipedia member Prof saxx)
The oldest and most famous cave paintings (16,000 to 20,000 years old) are in Lascaux, France. The animals and human figures in the cave were long thought to be symbols of magic or worship to help hunters. Eventually someone noticed that the dots of paint that decorate the animals are actually diagrams of groups of stars. Most constellations have different symbols today, but the giant bull (possibly the best-known image in cave art) is actually the constellation we still call Taurus -the bull. His eye is the star Aldebaran, and a V-shaped decoration of dots around it represents the Pleides star cluster.
NOT JUST A PILE OF STONES
The first ancient monument to be identified as an astronomical observatory was England’s Stonehenge. It’s attracted a lot of interest from wanna-be Druids over the years, but current researchers think it was built and rebuilt by three separate cultures between 5,000 and 3,000 years ago. While it’s not clear exactly what it was used for, the astronomical alignments of the stones are unquestionable. The stones mark out the sunrise at midsummer and midwinter, and the rising and setting of the moon (which repeats in a cycle of 8.6 years). Some people claim to have found many more significant alignments and have suggested that Stonehenge could have been used to predict eclipses -pretty sophisticated stuff. But did the Druids actually make these calculations? We’ll probably never know, darn it.
STONEHENGE SOUTH
(Image credit: Wikipedia member Raymbetz)
Just as mysterious is the recently discovered stone circle of Nabta, Egypt, which at 7,000 year old is the oldest astronomical observatory of its kind so far discovered. Like Stonehenge, it marks sunrise and sunset at midsummer, but other than that, no one knows who built it or what else it might be for. The site was abandoned after 2,000 years, just before the rise of the Egyptian Old Kingdom. Did the ancient Egyptians get their astronomical knowledge from an older civilization in the Sahara?
SERIOUS ABOUT SIRIUS
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What does astronomy have to do with Halloween? You’d be surprised!
Halloween is coming, and while people are out trick or treating or enjoying a costume party, the Universe will continue to go about its business.
The business of DEATH, that is. Black holes will continue to tear apart stars and gorge themselves on the tasty, gooey insides; galaxies will erupt with high-energy radiation, blasting out killer rays for hundreds of thousands of light years; giant clouds of gas will collapse, form stars, and promptly have their interiors eaten out from within.
Bad Astronomy Blog has a gallery of creepy astronomy pictures that appear to have sprung from our nightmares, but are actually things that exist in our universe. The picture here is of the flaming skull of Perseus: actually Perseus A, a huge galaxy that blasts out x-rays. Link -Thanks, Phil!
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This unusual nebula, officially and rather dully named HH-222, stretches across ten light years of space. What caused its shape to form? NASA officials say, “One hypothesis is that the gas filament results from the wind from a young star impacting a nearby molecular cloud.”
Link | Photo: Zoltan G. Levay, NASA
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Don’t worry, the Earth isn’t that close! It was just inserted into the picture so you could get a sense of the size of this huge solar flare that emerged last Thursday. It was spat out by sunspot AR 1302, which is so big that you can see it with the naked eye.
Link | Photo: JP Brahic
Astronomers studying exoplanets have found one with a very odd system. It orbits two stars! There have been planets discovered that orbit one of two binary stars, or that orbit a star and a burned-out star, but this one actually orbits around two real stars. The planet is named Kepler-16, meaning it was discovered by data gathered from the orbiting Kepler observatory. However, astronomers have already nicknamed it Tattooine, after the double-sun planet where Luke Skywalker grew up.
And while there are two stars involved in heating the planet, their light is pretty feeble. Even at its distance of a little over 100 million kilometers (65 million miles) from the pair — roughly the same distance at which Venus orbits the Sun — Kepler-16b is cold: the temperature at its cloud tops (assuming it’s a gas giant like Saturn) would be at best -70°C (-100°F).
So any visions you have of Luke Skywalker standing in the desert with his leg resting on a rock while he wistfully watches the two suns set in the west may have to wait. Even if the planet has a big moon (which these observations cannot yet detect) conditions there would be a bit chillier than on Tatooine. More like Hoth.
Read more about it, including more Star Wars puns, at Bad Astronomy Blog. Link
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This image was selected as the Astronomy Picture of the Day last weekend. It was taken by the Cassini probe in 2006 from the shadow of Saturn.
First, the night side of Saturn is seen to be partly lit by light reflected from its own majestic ring system. Next, the rings themselves appear dark when silhouetted against Saturn, but quite bright when viewed away from Saturn, slightly scattering sunlight, in this exaggerated color image. Saturn’s rings light up so much that new rings were discovered, although they are hard to see in the image. Seen in spectacular detail, however, is Saturn’s E ring, the ring created by the newly discovered ice-fountains of the moon Enceladus and the outermost ring visible above. Far in the distance, at the left, just above the bright main rings, is the almost ignorable pale blue dot of Earth.
You should take a look at the larger version at NASA. Link -via Laughing Squid
(Image credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA)
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This photograph of a meteor burning up in our atmosphere was taken by astronaut Ron Garan from the International Space Station. Dr. Phil Plait brings us the picture and a little math to explain how many more meteors you could see from the ISS than from the planet’s surface, which leads to the question of meteors hitting the ISS. What are the odds? Find out at Bad Astronomy Blog. Link
Astronomers have discovered a new source of meteor showers, very likely from a comet, that may be coming to an Earth near you. While explaining why we shouldn’t panic at the news, Dr. Phil Plait gives us a great analogy for understanding meteor showers.
If the path of the comet intersects the orbit of the Earth, we plow through that material at the same time every year. Think of it this way: imagine a racetrack, and you are driving around it. Now also imagine a long line of gnats flying across the racetrack. You would drive through that line of bugs at the same point on the racetrack every time, right? OK, replace you with the Earth, the racetrack with the Earth’s orbit, and the bugs with debris shed off a comet. Since the Earth returns to the same point in its orbit every year, if there is cometary debris there, we’ll smack into it at roughly the same calendar day every year.
This loose stuff from the comet burns up in our atmosphere, and we get a meteor shower.
Find out more about the specific new information from the Cameras for Allsky Meteor Surveillance, or CAMS. at Bad Astronomy Blog. Link
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These abandoned kilns in Nevada were made in the 1870s to turn wood into charcoal. Tom McEwan snapped this amazing picture of the night sky over them:
Visible above the unusual kilns is a colorful star field, highlighted by the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy appearing along a diagonal toward the lower right. Many famous sites in our Galaxy are visible, including the Pipe Nebula and the Dark River to Antares, seen to the right of the Milky Way. The origin of the green mist on the lower left, however, is currently unexplained.
Click on the link to see a much larger version. Link -via Marginal Revolution
The planet Neptune was first observed by telescope on September 24, 1846, although astronomers knew of its existence by other evidence, namely the effect it had on the orbit of Uranus. Since that discovery, Neptune has traveled exactly once around the sun. Today, Neptune is back at the same point in orbit as it was when it was first seen in 1846. That’s one Neptunian year, or 164.79 Earth years.
Once Neptune was discovered, it took just seventeen days for William Lassell to find its moon Triton. None of its other 12 moons were found until the 20th century. Neptune is the fourth-largest planet in diameter and the third largest in terms of mass — 17 times that of Earth — in the solar system. It is also the farthest planet from the Sun since Pluto’s demotion in 2006.
The gas giant is often lumped together with Uranus under the label “ice giants” due to the fact that they are smaller and have a higher proportion of “ices” (such as water, ammonia and methane) then Jupiter and Saturn. Its atmosphere is composed primarily of hydrogen and helium and it’s pretty chilly, with temperatures approaching -218 degrees C. It’s also pretty windy, with gusts reaching speeds of up to 1,200 miles per hour.
So, although Neptune is a rather inhospitable place, we wish the planet a happy birthday. Link
(Image credit: NASA)
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Recent news reports about a predicted decline in the sun’s magnetic activity pose the question, asking if the earth will be cooling off because of it. Let’s ask the Bad Astronomer, Dr. Phil Plait.
The answer — spoiler alert! — is almost certainly “no”. I want to make sure that’s clear, because I will bet essentially any amount of money that some climate change denial sites will run with this story and claim that we don’t need to worry about global warming. That’s baloney, and what follows is why. The reasons take a minute to explain, but of course that’s where the cool stuff (haha!) is. So let’s take this one step at a time. And if you have the attention span of an E. coli bacterium, you can skip down to the conclusion section.
What follows is a pretty comprehensive but simply written explanation of the sun’s magnetic cyle and its effect on Earth’s temperature. Link
One thing we should always remember is that the the earth is spinning around while the stars stay relatively constant in the sky. YouTube member bulletpeople took a beautiful existing time-lapse video of the stars and edited it to show the stars as static in the sky, which highlights the rotation of the earth. -via reddit
The following is an article from the science humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research.
by Steve Trimberger
With the loss of Pluto, the number of major planets in our solar system has dropped to eight. If the current trend continues, then come April 13, 3703 the solar system will no longer have any major planets. My analysis, below, suggests several possible causes, for the loss of major planets.
The Solar System’s Major Planets
Major planets have been the objects of study for thousands of years. Their positions and numbers have been accurately reported and have been subject of numerous observations by literally billions of observers. In this study, we analyzed published reports of the number of major planets and used statistical analysis software to identify trends in the data. These trends show a disturbing result, specifically, that the number of planets in the solar system has been decreasing since the middle of the nineteenth century. Extrapolation leads to the conclusion that the solar system will have no planets by the end of the next millennium.
Table 1. Reported Numbers of Planets in the Solar System
Historical Observed Planet Count
Table 1 shows the number of reported planets by various researchers. The reports in table 1 are selected from the literature and are representative. The planet counts have been confirmed extensively in numerous publications as well as by huge numbers of anecdotal accounts. The data are irrefutable, although, as noted in table 1, the dates of some of the early data points are estimates. Sensitivity analysis shows that the conclusions in this paper are not particularly sensitive to variations in these dates.
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I just learned a lot about sunspots from Dr. Phil Plait. He’s quite excited about NASA footage that shows the formation of a cluster of sunspots earlier this year.
Sunspots are actually regions of slightly cooler material at the Sun’s surface. Hot plasma (ionized gas, stripped of one electron or more) rises from the solar interior, reaches the surface, cools off, and sinks back down. This is called convection, and is the same process you see in a pot of boiling water. But at the surface, the tortured and twisted magnetic field of the Sun can suppress convection, preventing the cooler material from sinking. Since the brightness of the plasma depends on the temperature, this cooler stuff is darker. Boom! Sunspot.
Or, in this case, sunspots. You can see five of the suckers here, changing and mutating as the plasma interacts with the magnetic field. I recognize these spots, too: they were responsible for the first X-class flare of the season on March 15th. There’s dramatic footage of that as well which I posted on my blog at the time. They’re busy spots; they blew out a lower energy flare a few days earlier, too.
And here I am calling them cute and little when they’re actually comfortably bigger than the Earth and exploded with the energy equivalent of millions — millions! — of nuclear bombs.
Now I’m excited, too! Watch the video at Bad Astronomy. Link
(Image credit: NASA/SDO)
Steve D took an offhand comment from Twitter and ran with it, creating an actual box of Astronom O’s, “The Breakfast of People Who Stay Up All Night”. The oat cereal contains marshmallow moons and stars, and the box features Carl Sagan on the front and star facts on the back. He also made a single-serving size! Do you think General Mills might find this idea worth marketing? Link -via the Presurfer
I knew this, but only because I recall the approximate the number of miles to the moon, and the circumference of the earth. Those near my age might also remember that a fast rocket ship takes three days to get to the moon. -via reddit
This magnificent photo taken in Switzerland shows the expanse of the Milky Way galaxy across the heavens. This small size really doesn’t do it justice; click on the link to view a much larger image. Hovering over the photo at the link will also point out major star clusters and nebulae.
Link via io9 | Photo: Stephane Vetter
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Like most trust-fund party boys, astronomer Tycho Brahe came fully outfitted with a less-than-endearing arrogant side. Of course, that’s not to say his hubris was totally misplaced. As a child, it didn’t take Tycho very long to realize that he possessed not only a lot more mental power than most of his peers, but also a lot more money. His genius came naturally, of course, but his privileged upbringing was a bit more contrived … to say the least.
While the Danish astronomer may be remembered as one of science’s biggest celebrities, Tycho’s parents were a few stars short of a Big Dipper. In a grand act of misplaced kindness, Mom and Pop Brahe, Beate and Otte, took pity on Otte’s childless brother, Jorgen, by promising him their first-born son. And though they changed their minds when baby Tycho came along on December 14, 1546, Jorgen kept his end of the bargain. He bided his time until Beate gave birth to a second son, then kidnapped young Tycho. Naturally, the youngster’s parents were outraged -that is, until they remembered that Jorgen was filthy rich and their erstwhile son would inherit his fortune. So, in yet another display of questionable decision-making, Tycho’s parents let Jorgen keep the boy.
This strange transaction gave Tycho an enormous edge. Not only did he grow up in a setting of great wealth, but he also had access to fantastic educational opportunities. At the urging of his uncle (er, father), Tycho studied law at the University of Copenhagen beginning at the age of 13, but his interest quickly waned. Instead of pursuing a legal career, Brahe became convinced he could predict planetary motions better than anyone had during the previous two millennia. He was, of course, correct.
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Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy Blog has a collection of astronomical images that display valentine heart shapes -which just goes to show you can find anything if you look heart, er, hard enough. This picture is of the W5 star-forming region taken by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). The gallery ends with an extremely geeky bit of graffiti. Link
Comments Off Today, for the first time in history, humans can see the entire sun.
In October 2006, NASA launched a pair of twin spacecraft into space. Called STEREO — Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory — they traveled in opposite directions, one ahead and the other behind the Earth in its orbit around the Sun. The goal was to get a wide, stereoscopic view of the Sun which would provide 3D information on our star.
Today they reached that goal. After traveling a combined 470 million kilometers (290 million miles) relative to the Earth, they are now on opposite sides of the Earth’s orbit, staring down at opposing faces of the Sun.
The full coverage observation of the sun will last for eight years. Dr. Phil Plait has an explanation of how NASA did this, and why it is important, at Bad Astronomy. Link
The Romance of Radio Astronomy – $14.95
If your lover is a star lover (no, not the celebrity kind – the massive, luminous ball of plasma kind), then here’s the perfect T-shirt for you: The Romance of Radio Astronomy from the NeatoShop by Mark Heath of Nobrow Cartoons. Perfect for Valentine’s Day gift, too!
Like that? See more: Mark Heath T-shirts | Scientists Do It T-shirts | Science T-Shirts | Funny T-Shirts
Comments Off What do you get when you combine your geeky passion for astronomy and craft? This awesome Stellar Quilts by Jimmy McBride:
Yes, that’s the Pillars of Creation. Find more of Jim’s artwork on Craftzine: Link
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Kathryn Aurora Gray knew a superstar when she saw one (and with a middle name like that, how could she not?). The 10-year-old girl from New Brunswick, Canada, just became the youngest person to ever to find a supernova (with a little help from astronomer dad):
Since a supernova can outshine millions of ordinary stars, it can be easy to spot with a modest telescope — even in a distant galaxy such as UGC 3378, which is about 240 million light-years away. The trick is to check previous images of the same location to see if there are any changes. That’s what Kathryn was doing for the images of the galaxy taken by her father.
Nancy Atkinson of Universe Today has the story: Link (Photo: David Smith/AP)
The 33-year old space probe Voyager I, now 17.4 billion miles from the Sun, has detected a major drop in the strength of solar wind in its location. This indicates that the probe is about to leave our solar system:
The event is a major milestone in Voyager 1′s passage through the heliosheath, the turbulent outer shell of the sun’s sphere of influence, and the spacecraft’s upcoming departure from our solar system.
“The solar wind has turned the corner,” said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist based at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. “Voyager 1 is getting close to interstellar space.”
Our sun gives off a stream of charged particles that form a bubble known as the heliosphere around our solar system. The solar wind travels at supersonic speed until it crosses a shockwave called the termination shock. At this point, the solar wind dramatically slows down and heats up in the heliosheath.
Link via Popular Science | Image: NASA/JPL
