You’ve seen time-lapse videos of the night sky here before, but this one is particularly beautiful, awe-inspiring, and soothing. It’s even more impressive in full-screen mode. Randy Halverson shot the scenes in South Dakota, Utah, Colorado, and Wisconsin. You have to get way out beyond the light pollution to see the stars this way! The music was specially composed for the project by Bear McCreary, who does the music for the TV shows The Walking Dead, Battlestar Galactica, and more. You can learn more about the video at Halverson’s website. Link -via Geeks Are Sexy

See also: Bad Astronomy’s post about the astronomical events in the video. Link

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)

“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

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

The star Sirius was worshiped by a whole range of ancient peoples, from the Arabs and ancient Egyptians to the West African tribes of the Dogon and the Bozo (don’t laugh; they’re real). The Egyptians built whole rows of temples pointing at the spot on the horizon where Sirius would rise each year. This was the beginning of their calendar year and marked the flooding of the Nile. For them, Sirius was the resting place of the dead and the most important star in the sky.

THE INVISIBLE SUPERSTAR

Among the Arabs and some tribes in Mali,  there was a belief that Sirius had a companion, which the tribesmen called the Eye Star, and which was supposed to have supernatural qualities. Sirius really does have a companion: a small white dwarf star called Sirius B, which is not visible to the naked eye. So how did these primitive people know about it? The Dogon have precise astronomical information about its movements, which they celebrate with rituals, even though they admit that it’s invisible. (We don’t know about you, but we’ve got chills.) They even had a story about a third star, the Star of Women, which was also invisible. And guess what? In 1995, it was discovered that there really is a third star, a red dwarf that’s been named Sirius C.

PYRAMID SCHEME

(Image credit: Wikipedia member Sybz)

Because questions remain about the alignment of ancient monuments, the field is wide open for speculation. New Agers (who speculate wildly at least three times before breakfast) will tell you that the Egyptian pyramids are time machines, UFO bases, or gates to other dimensions. Thank heavens (no pun intended) for the Mayans of Mexico, who left detailed written documents to explain the astronomy behind the construction of their pyramids. It turns out that the Mayans had a highly developed calendar system, using astronomical events to fix magical dates for sacrifices and other rituals. Their pyramids were built on alignments that pointed toward the positions of the Sun, the Moon, planets, and stars at these special dates. It can’t be definitely proven that the Egyptian pyramids, or the similar ziggurats of Mesopotamia, were built on the same kind of idea, but the astronomical alignments are similar, and so far no one have come up with a better explanation.

A FEW OF MAYAN FAVORITE THINGS

For the Mayans, the two most interesting objects in the sky were the planet Venus and the Sun. While Stonehenge and other ancient sites fixed the position of the midsummer sun at dawn, the Mayans used the moment when it directly overhead. Venus dips below the horizon at a variable date in the year and rises about 50 days later. The Mayans were able to calculate this period, and they were also able to predict eclipses. They marked these occasions with human sacrifice and chose days to go to war by consulting their astronomical calendars.

STONEHENGE, U.S.A.

In the hills of Wyoming, there’s an ancient stone construction called the Big Horn Medicine Wheel, which some have called the American Stonehenge. A similar construction is the Moose Mountain Wheel in Alberta, Canada. Both were sacred sites for local Native Americans, but archaeologists date them from before the Plains Indians arrived to some unknown indigenous people.

The Big Horn Wheel has been dated to AD 1000-1400, and Moose Mountain to about 2,000 years ago. The markers -this time neat piles of stone-  pick out important events in the sky: the summer solstice and the rising of the bright stars Aldebaran, Rigel, Sirius, and Fomalhaut. there are lots of other medicine wheels and similar constructions in North America, many of which are so damaged that it’s impossible to reconstruct their original alignments. But since the positions of dawn and the rising of the stars have changed a little over the centuries, it’s possible to date the construction of them (and all the others) by accurate scientific methods.

KEEPING AN EYE ON THE SKY

It’s not surprising that great civilizations like the Egyptians and the Mayans could develop a kind of astronomy. What’s amazing is that people from the Stone Age -or people still living Stone Age lifestyles- also had detailed knowledge of astronomy. Native Americans, nomads in the Sahara desert, and even genuine cavemen were doing the math and measuring the angles. How many people today could build an astronomical observatory out of lumps of rock?

You over there. Yes, you. Wanna give it a try?

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The article above was reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into the Universe.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

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!

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

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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)

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.

Figure 1. Planet Count Versus Year

As can be seen, the number of observed planets in the solar system has varied somewhat over time. A plot of the data in table 1 is shown in figure 1. Points are the noted observations. The bold line is a fourth-order polynomial best-fit curve through the data. This curve shows an alarming downward trend beginning in the mid-second millennium resulting in an estimated zero planets remaining in the solar system by the end of the third millennium. Solving the equation of the curve produces a date of Friday, April 13, 3703 as the expected date at which there will be no more planets observed in the solar system. This will likely cause a significant decline in funding for planetary science and the loss of many promising young researchers to other fields. Action is needed now to address this problem.

The Need for Urgency

We are currently losing planetary exploration opportunities. The ill-fated New Horizons mission was launched in 2006 to the planet Pluto, but sadly, there will be no planet there in 2015 when it arrives. It was simply delayed too long and we forever lost the opportunity to explore the ninth planet of our solar system. Although the end of the solar system is predicted to occur nearly 1700 years from now, we cannot assume that Earth will be the last planet to disappear. The current analysis does not indicate the order of planetary disappearance, though the data suggest that small planets and planets further from the sun (and hence more weakly held by gravity) are more susceptible to loss. As a result, we expect that Mercury, Venus, and Mars are the most vulnerable, followed by Earth. Of course, we have no data at present to predict the order of planetary loss, and hence risk to Earth. Investigations must start immediately to determine the process of planetary loss, in order to determine the risk and to develop counter-measures.

Further Research

Migration Theory
One explanation for planetary loss is related to the increase in the number of extra-solar planets reported in the literature (see figure 2).  The migration theory states that solar-system planets are being lost to neighboring solar systems. This theory is supported by the most recent and most-documented loss, Pluto [Green 2006]. Pluto was the furthest from the sun and the most weakly held by the sun’s gravity, hence the most likely to be captured by another star.

Figure 2. Extrasolar Planet Count. Data from Schneider 2009

Interstellar planetary migration is very difficult to observe. The Kepler mission is searching nearby stars for planetary transits. There is a possibility that it could detect the transit of a migrating planet in the foreground, but this probability is very low.

High-speed planetary migration may be detectable by a sky survey for red-shifted cold bodies. These are admittedly difficult to observe, but since they are relatively nearby, they should be detectable with a large telescope. Unfortunately, present-day IR-wavelength telescopes were built for cosmology, so they have very narrow field of view. This limits their ability to survey for these fast-moving bodies. Further, existing infrared telescopes do not have the collecting area required for observations of fast-moving cold bodies leaving the solar system. New instruments are needed.

“Any attempt to place humans on Mars should be postponed until it can be determined that such a landing is indeed safe and that the explorers will not encounter an empty spot in space, or, worse yet, disappear with the planet.”

Breakup Theory
The planetary migration theory cannot entirely explain the order of planetary loss. While most known extrasolar planets are larger than Jupiter, the lost planets of the solar system seem to be rather small in size. An alternate explanation for their disappearance stems from the rise in the number of minor planets observed in the past two centuries. The breakup theory states that major planets are disintegrating, forming minor planets. This explanation may help explain the planetary losses in the 19th century [Encke 1852], as well as the recent loss of Pluto [Green 2006], both of which correlate well with a huge increase in the observed number of minor planets. It is possible that the recent decade’s tremendous increase in the number of observed minor planets is a result of the crumbling of Pluto. It may be a precursor to another major planetary loss.

Mars

Continuous observation of the remaining major planets, particularly Mercury, Venus, and Mars, is recommended to determine if they are indeed breaking up. Observations should be conducted from a distance for safety reasons. These observations will require a dedicated telescope in Earth orbit for each remaining planet in the solar system. It is recommended that each planet also be under continuous observation by an orbiter, capable of measuring planetary mass to detect imminent breakup.

Any attempt to place humans on Mars should be postponed until it can be determined that such a landing is indeed safe and that the explorers will not encounter an empty spot in space, or, worse yet, disappear with the planet. Mars is one of the smaller remaining planets, and though it is larger than Mercury, it is farther from the sun, so we suspect it is more vulnerable. In addition, it is near a region of space where several planets disappeared in the middle of the nineteenth century, the so-called “Bermuda Triangle semi-major axis.”

Conclusion
The last major planet in the solar system is predicted to disappear in the year 3703. Lost planets may be pulled to other stars or may be disintegrating. Further research and rapid expansion of planetary science education is needed immediately to address this issue. The expense may be large, but it is dwarfed by the risk of losing not only Earth, but the entire solar system.

References
Hilton, James L. “When Did the Asteroids Become Minor Planets?” November 16, 2007, viewed April 8, 2009.

Alfraganus, Elements of Astronomy, 833.

Al-Khwarizimi, Zij al-Sindh (Persian), 830.

Copernicus, Nicolaus, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, 1543.

Encke, Berliner, Astronomisches Jahrbuch, 1854.

Gray, Vincent R., “Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide,” Greenhouse Bulletin No. 120, February 1999.

Green, Daniel W. E., “(134340) PLUTO, (136199) ERIS, AND (136199) ERIS I (DYSNOMIA),” Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams, IAU Circular No. 8747, September 13, 2006.

Hatchard. First Steps to Astronomy and Geography, Hatchard & Son: Piccadilly, London, 1828.

Herschel, W. 1802, Phil. Trans. Royal Society.

Marsden, B., “The Asteroid Discovery Rate: Historical Perspective and Future Outlook,”
Asteroids 2001, http://www.astropa.unipa.it/Asteroids2001/Abstracts/Talks/, 2001.

Schneider, Jean, The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia, viewed April 4, 2009.

Steele, L. P., P. B. Krummel and R. L. Langenfelds, “Atmospheric CO2 concentrations from sites in the CSIRO Atmospheric Research GASLAB air sampling network (August 2007 version)”, Trends: A Compendium of Data on Global Change, Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, Oak Ridge, TN, U.S.A., December 2007.

Tholen, D.J., Ed., “Asteroid Names and Discovery V12.0. EAR-A-5-DDR-ASTNAMES- DISCOVERY-V12.0,” NASA Planetary Data System, 2008.

Toomer, G.J.(ed. and trans.), Ptolemy’s Amalgest, Springer, 1984.

Wright, M.R., Cosmology in Antiquity, 1994. Data from http://www.psi.edu/pds/resource/discover.html

Title image by Chris Murphy, available on a t-shirt from the NeatoShop.

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This article is republished with permission from the September-October 2009 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!

Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.

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

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.

A NOSE FOR TROUBLE

In 1562, Tycho left Copenhagen to study at the University of Leipzig, and it wasn’t long before he started making good on his promise of becoming astronomy’s newest superstar. On August 17, 1563, he recorded a “conjunction,” or close encounter, of Jupiter and Saturn -a discovery that contradicted existing Copernican and Alfonsine tables of planetary positions. Our brash hero promptly declared the charts wholly inaccurate and set out to accumulate and record new data on the location and movement of everything in the heavens. It was the kind of goal that would take a lifetime to achieve, and that’s precisely how long he intended to devote to his efforts.

After his stint at Leipzig, Tycho attended the University of Rostock to undertake further studies in math and astronomy. There, the 20-year-old famously fought a duel with fellow student Manderup Parsbjerg. And while this wouldn’t have been out of the ordinary if the object of contention had been a bright-eyed lass (or even how to pronounce Manderup Parsbjerg), the two men actually drew swords over who was the better mathematician. It’s likely both were quite brilliant, but they were also equally lacking in common sense. Turns out, the genius combatants dueled like fools -in the dark of night. It took only a few minutes of flailing about before Parsbjerg’s sword sliced off the bridge of Tycho’s nose. Fortunately, it wasn’t too much of a setback for Tycho. Being crafty and rich, he simply created a replacement schnoz molded from gold and copper.

STAR SEARCH

The ambitious Tycho put his new nose to the grindstone and continued meticulously recording the movements of objects in the sky. After so much time looking to the heavens, he was stunned to walk outside on the night of November 11, 1572, and see something he’s never laid eyes on before. A bright light appeared in the constellation Cassiopeia, where no star had existed previously. Tycho observed the star (now known to be a supernova) during the next several nights and discovered the location of the object never changed, thus proving the object was far beyond the realm of the planets. He determined this using a phenomenon called parrallax -a technique whereby the nearness of a heavenly object can be determined in relation to more distant stars. Discovering a new star was a big deal in the 16th century, as most of the intellectual community held to the Aristotelian doctrine that the starts belonged to a fixed and unchanging firmament that had existed since Creation. For Tycho to insist that the stars could change so drastically was on par with announcing the sky was falling. Almost single-handedly, he lowered the stars from their divine podium into the realm of human study.

TEMPTATION ISLAND

The astronomer’s newfound fame spread, and soon, European monarchies began lining up to secure his services. King Frederick II of Denmark persuaded Tycho stay in his native land by granting him the title to the island of Hven, located in Copenhagen Sound. He also offered Tycho the financial backing necessary to build the greatest observatory of his era -a giant astronomy complex Tycho christened “Uraniborg” after Urania, the Greek muse of the heavens.

A year after taking possession of Hven, Tycho made another landmark discovery. In 1577, he observed a comet in the sky and was able to prove (using parralax, of course) that its orbit existed beyond that of the Moon. This meant comets were not, as everyone thought, burning masses of gas trapped in Earth’s atmosphere -yet another observation that shook the Aristotelian belief in a static sky.

Uraniborg quickly became a haven for scientists and intellectuals wishing to look over Tycho’s shoulder. Consequently, he soon outgrew the space and built a second observatory, called Stjerneborg (literally “Castle of the Stars”) next door. By the time it was done, Hven was home to a sprawling collection of buildings and instruments of Tycho’s design -all for the purpose of making the most precise celestial measurements anyone had ever seen.

(Image credit: Flickr user Olli Wilkman)

NERDS GONE WILD

Not all of Tycho’s nocturnal activities at Hven were scientific, though. In fact, Tycho’s life there was more “Animal House” than Harvard Observatory. He was notorious for drinking copious amounts of alcohol, throwing huge parties, and keeping a little person around the house as his court jester. But Tycho’s charmed life on Hven was too good to last. After King Frederick died, the astronomer’s self-indulgent behavior forced him out of favor with the royal family and off the island.

Looking for his next benefactor, Tycho landed a job in Prague as Imperial Mathematician to Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. There, with the help of his assistant, the soon-to-be-famous Johannes Kepler, he began compiling his star charts into a work called the Rudolfine Tables, named in honor of his new patron.

(Image credit: Flickr user Gauis Caecilius)

This was the final phase of Tycho’s career, and it was short-lived. While attending a banquet in 1601, he followed his custom of drinking to excess. But, bound by the etiquette of the day, Tycho couldn’t leave the table until his host did -not even to go to the bathroom. Unfortunately, the master of ceremonies was in a talkative mood, and no amount of squirming could save the brilliant astronomer. Tycho braved it out until his bladder burst, and a fatal infection soon followed. He died eleven days after the party, on October 24. Shortly before he passed away, Tycho Brahe reportedly suggested his own epitaph: “He lived like a sage and died like a fool.”

(Image credit: Wikpedia user Robert Scarth)

In 1991, scientists began examining hair acquired from a 1901 exhumation of Tycho’s remains and determined that signs of mercury poisoning were present. Investigators originally assumed the mercury was due to his alchemical studies, but further examination proved the substance had been ingested. This may have resulted from a futile attempt to cure Tycho’s conditions, but a few historians believe that Johannes Kepler poisoned his mentor in an attempt to get his hands on the old man’s peerless charts.

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This article by William S. Kirby is reprinted with permission from the March/April 2005 issue of mental_floss magazine.

Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ entertaining website and blog for more fun stuff!

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

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

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

Yes, that’s the Pillars of Creation. Find more of Jim’s artwork on Craftzine: Link

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

Whenever a new type of instrument is used to examine the skies, surprises are guaranteed. And when the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) started scanning the heavens in 2010, it returned one amazing view after another. My favorite by far is this one, showing NGC 1514, a dying star shedding material.

This image, in the far-infrared, is very different than optical shots of the nebula, which show it looking more like a disk. It’s not certain just why this object has these two rings, but it’s likely that dust ejected from the dying star is slamming into gas previously thrown off. That older gas is most likely in an hourglass shape, common in such objects. Perhaps the dust is hitting the inside of that hourglass figure, making the rings. Maybe it’s a different reason entirely. We don’t know!

See also 14 at Bad Astronomy Blog. Link -Thanks, Phil!

This is a cloud that has broken off the Carina Nebula. It’s about 8,000 light years away and has a nasty attitude. Or did, at least 8,000 years ago. Did we do something offensive at the time?

Link via Geekologie | Photo: NASA

We know of nearly 500 other planets orbiting other stars. However, the methods of finding these exoplanets  are indirect. We measure their affect on their parent stars, but we didn’t directly see the planets themselves… until 2005, when the first image of an actual world orbiting another star was announced.

As of October 2010, only 7 such planets have been imaged, but we’ll soon have more. This gallery shows the best of these images, including the first alien solar system to have its picture taken.

The picture shown here is the star HR 8799 with three planets revolving around it! See a much larger image in the gallery. Link -Thanks, Phil!

(Image credit: Gemini Observatory)

A two-year-old boy is fascinated with outer space and all it contains. And he knows more about it than most adults! Watch this cute video submitted to a contest which asked people how scientific discovery impacted their lives, at NeatoBambino. Link

In the past few years, astronomers have detected many planets orbiting other stars. This led some to wonder what our solar system would look like to alien astronomers on the same quest, using similar technology. They concluded that the key to finding planets around our sun at a distance would be Neptune. This planet’s gravity has significant effects on the Kuiper Belt — the region of gas and dust surrounding the outer limits of our solar system. Christopher Stark of the Carnegie Institution for Science explained:

Through gravitational effects called resonances, Neptune wrangles nearby particles into preferred orbits. This is what creates the clear zone near the planet as well as dust enhancements that precede and follow it around the Sun.

“One thing we’ve learned is that, even in the present-day solar system, collisions play an important role in the Kuiper Belt’s structure,” Stark explained. That’s because collisions tend to destroy large particles before they can drift too far from where they’re made.

Link via Geekosystem

The gorgeous pyramid of light above is called the zodiacal light. Andrew Fazekas of the National Geographic News explains the elusive celestial phenomenon:

Unlike the stars and gases of the Milky Way, which stretch away from Earth for light-years, the source of the zodiacal light lies between the inner planets of our solar system.

There, billions of dust grains orbit the sun in a flattened disk spread out along the ecliptic—the plane of the solar system, which also contains the paths of the 12 constellations of the zodiac.

The dusty disk, also called the zodiacal cloud, radiates from near the sun out beyond the orbit of Mars, toward Jupiter. The dust reflects and scatters sunlight in such a way that it creates a visible glow for observers on Earth.

"Because the dust in the solar system is concentrated along the ecliptic plane, the zodiacal light is likewise concentrated," Gyuk said.

Link

Every year, the National Maritime Museum of Britain gives awards in the field of astronomical photography. Prizes are awarded in five categories: Earth and Space, People and Space, Our Solar System, Deep Space, Young Astronomy Photographer and Best Newcomer. Pictured above is the grand prize-winning Blazing Bristlecone by Tom Lowe.

Link via The Agitator

This is an image taken by the Hubble telescope of a binary star system (named AFGL 3068) in which one star is a a carbon star, a dying red giant, which throws off material in which appears to us to be a spiral pattern. The explanation of this very strange star system is at Bad Astronomy. Link -via Monkeyfilter

This time-lapse video by YouTube user szyzyg shows asteroids in our solar system as they have been discovered since 1980:

Notice now the pattern of discovery follows the Earth around its orbit, most discoveries are made in the region directly opposite the Sun. You’ll also notice some clusters of discoveries on the line between Earth and Jupiter, these are the result of surveys looking for Jovian moons. Similar clusters of discoveries can be tied to the other outer planets, but those are not visible in this video.

As the video moves into the mid 1990′s we see much higher discovery rates as automated sky scanning systems come online. Most of the surveys are imaging the sky directly opposite the sun and you’ll see a region of high discovery rates aligned in this manner.

At the beginning of 2010 a new discovery pattern becomes evident, with discovery zones in a line perpendicular to the Sun-Earth vector. These new observations are the result of the WISE (Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer) which is a space mission that’s tasked with imaging the entire sky in infrared wavelengths.

Astronomers have so far found about half a million minor planets in our solar system.

via Popular Science

Binary solar systems — systems consisting of two stars orbiting each other — are quite common. Astronomers using the Spitzer Space Telescope have observed that many of them have a lot of dust and debris, leading to the hypothesis that the dust clouds were originally planets that collided with each other.

Geophysically, what would it be like if two planets hit each other? Phil Plait of Discover writes:

The energy in such a collision would dwarf the sweatiest nightmares of any Hollywood writer — or religiously-motivated apocalyptic preacher, for that matter. The two planets, each massing sextillions of tons, would ram each other at speeds of 20 or more kilometers per second. The energy released would be trillions of times that of all our nuclear weapons combined.

Link via Sci Fi Wire | Image: NASA

Although Neptune is oblivious of this special time in its orbit, next year will be a special year for astronomy. It will be the first time for nearly 150 years that a planet has completed its first full orbit after its discovery.

Uranus, a planet discovered by Herschel in 1781 — approximately 10 AU closer to the sun than Neptune — completed its first orbit after discovery in the year 1865 (it completes one orbit of the sun every 84 years). And Pluto, the newly designated dwarf planet discovered by U.S. astronomer Clyde Tombaugh in 1930 — approximately 10 AU further away from the sun than Neptune — won’t complete its first orbit for another 168 years. We’ll have to wait until 2178 to see Pluto complete its first 248 year orbit around the sun.

Link | Photo: NASA

Galaxy M87 is an enormous collection of heavenly bodies, but astronomers who have studied the effects of its black hole see similarities to the recent volcanic eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland, and have dubbed it a galactic super-volcano. We covered the shockwaves associated with the Earth mountain previously, and parallels can actually be seen in the distant galaxy.

In the analogy with Eyjafjallajökull, the energetic particles produced in the vicinity of the black hole rise through the X-ray emitting atmosphere of the cluster, lifting up the coolest gas near the center of M87 in their wake, much like the hot volcanic gases drag up the clouds of dark ash. And just like the volcano here on Earth, shockwaves can be seen when the black hole pumps energetic particles into the cluster gas.

“This analogy shows that even though astronomical phenomena can occur in exotic settings and over vast scales, the physics can be very similar to events on Earth,” said co-author Aurora Simionescu also of the Kavli Institute.

Chandra X-Ray Observatory has much more info on this and other astronomical wonders.

Link – and here’s just the X-Ray version of the phenomenon.

(Image credit: NASA/CXC/KIPAC/N. Werner, E. Million et al); Radio (NRAO/AUI/NSF/F. Owen)

Artist Franceska McCullough makes toothpick sculptures that are inspired by geometric forms and astrophysical patterns. Pictured above is “Ganymede and Callisto Pod”, in reference to the two largest moons of Jupiter:

This is Ganymede Callisto Pod – or more directly the orbital pattern of the two largest moons of Jupiter. I chose Ganymede and Callisto because they are the two ice covered potentials to life, they are simply beautiful in the photo’s I’ve seen and their orbital dance is exquisite. If you are ever close enough to my sculpture that you can see inside to the core then you will see the orbital pattern very clearly.

Link via Make | Photo: Franceska McCullough, used with permission.

Researchers led by Paul Crowther, professor of Astrophysics at the University of Sheffield, UK, have discovered a cluster of young stars that are about twice as big as the maximum size that astrophysicists thought could exist. Each is about 300 times the size of our sun:

In the study, the researchers estimated the maximum possible mass for stars within the two clusters, and the relative number of the most massive stars. Their findings have caused them to reevaluate current estimates for how large these stars can be.

“The smallest stars are limited to more than about 80 times more than Jupiter, below which they are ‘failed stars’ or brown dwarfs,” said Olivier Schnurr, a research team member from the Astrophysikalisches Institut Potsdam in Germany. “Our new finding supports the previous view that there is also an upper limit to how big stars can get, although it raises the limit by a factor of two, to about 300 solar masses.”

Link via Geekosystem | Photo of NGC 3603 courtesy of NASA

The sun is about 93 million miles away from Earth, and if we think of that distance as a football field, a person starting at one end zone could get about 95 yards before burning up.

That said, an astronaut so close to the sun is way, way out of position. “The technology in our current space suits really isn’t designed to withstand deep space,” says Ralph McNutt, an engineer working on the heat shielding for NASA’s Messenger, a new robotic Mercury probe. The standard space suit will keep an astronaut relatively comfortable at external temperatures reaching up to 248°. Heat coming off the sun dissipates over distance, but a person drifting in space would begin encountering that kind of heat (the five-yard line) some three million miles from the sun. “It would then be a matter of time before the astronaut died,” McNutt says.

The space shuttle, however, has greater heat resistance than a spacesuit, so it could get to the two-yard line before cooking its crew.

Link | Photo: the Sun seen from Skylab, courtesy of NASA

Heroically sized even for a Norse god, Thor’s Helmet is about 30 light-years across. In fact, the helmet is actually more like an interstellar bubble, blown as a fast wind from the bright, massive star near the bubble’s center sweeps through a surrounding molecular cloud. Known as a Wolf-Rayet star, the central star is an extremely hot giant thought to be in a brief, pre-supernova stage of evolution. Cataloged as NGC 2359, the nebula is located about 15,000 light-years away in the constellation Canis Major.

Link -via Digg

(Image credit: Star Shadows Remote Observatory and PROMPT/UNC/Steve Mazlin, Jack Harvey, Rick Gilbert, and Daniel Verschatse)

Video Link (Courtesy NASA/Berkeley)

In this quick image compilation, assembled from para-Earth-orbiting spacecraft, a comet can be seen diving into the Sun’s lower atmosphere.

The video above is a compilation of images from the two STEREO spacecraft that orbit with the Earth, one ahead of the planet and the other behind. The configuration allows for nearly full, continuous coverage of the sun, increasing the chance of witnessing something like the kamikaze comet that they spotted in March.

Seeing comets and other small objects approach the sun is difficult because the objects are overwhelmed by the sun’s brightness. Scientists were able to track this one closer to the sun than ever, before it it burned up in the sun’s lower atmosphere.

“We believe this is the first time a comet has been tracked in 3-D space this low down in the solar corona,” Claire Raftery of the University of California, Berkeley said in a press release. The images were presented at the American Astronomical Meeting in Miami May 24.

It’s doubtful the Solar Dynamics Observatory got any footage, but at least we can view a noteworthy event such as this.

Link

Leonardo Da Vinci is primarily associated with his artistic creations and his oddly inspired mechanical contraptions. However many people are unaware of his astronomical endeavors, more importantly his discovery of earthshine.

Already during the 16th century, Leonardo da Vinci had correctly gathered enough information and drawings to explain the nature of earthshine. In Da Vinci’s Codex Leicester, published in the early 16th century, he states his belief that the Moon possessed an atmosphere and oceans, and that it was a fine reflector of light because it was covered with so much water. He also speculated about how storms on Earth could cause the earthshine to become brighter or dimmer, which is indeed observable with modern instrumentation.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by lannaxe96.

One of my favorite brain-benders is the Ponzo Illusion. You’ve seen it: the simplest case is with two short horizontal lines, one above the other, between two slanting but near-vertical lines. The upper line looks longer than the lower line, even though they’re the same length.

The illusion works because our brains are a bit wonky. The slanted lines make us think that anything near the top is farther away; the lines force our brain to think those lines are parallel but receding in the distance (like railroad tracks). The two horizontal lines are physically the same length, but our brain thinks the upper one is farther away. If it’s farther away, then duh, our brain says to itself, it must be bigger than the lower one. So we perceive it that way.

See examples of how this works at Bad Astronomy Blog. Link