Voyage To The Planets

The Trifid Nebula. A ‘stellar nursery’, 9,000 light...

artolocalsonly — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 21:04:01 +0800

The Trifid Nebula. A ‘stellar nursery’, 9,000 light years from here, it is where new stars are being born

Orionid Meteor Photograph by Jeffrey Berkes, My Shot The annual...

artolocalsonly — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 21:03:51 +0800

Orionid Meteor

Photograph by Jeffrey Berkes, My Shot

The annual Orionid meteor shower peaked in activity in the early morning hours of October 22, as tiny remnants shed from Halley’s comet plummeted through Earth’s atmosphere. From dark locations, up to two dozen shooting stars an hour were visible during the peak.

Jeffrey Berkes of West Chester, Pennsylvania, managed to frame an Orionid streaking above a country lake, keeping the glare from a waning crescent moon in check behind autumn foliage.

“The moon beginning its ascent around 2:15 a.m. worried me a little bit, but the Orionids were streaking bright, and I counted a couple dozen during the night,” Berkes wrote in his caption for the image, which he submitted to National Geographic’s My Shot website.

Milky Way Mountain Photograph by Anton Jankovoy, My Shot A river...

artolocalsonly — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 21:02:46 +0800

Milky Way Mountain

Photograph by Anton Jankovoy, My Shot

A river of stars flows over the Mardi Khola Valley in the Himalaya, as seen in a long-exposure picture taken in Nepal and submitted to National Geographic’s My Shot website in August.

Lunar Eclipse Photograph by Babak Tafreshi, TWAN The totally...

artolocalsonly — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 15:03:15 +0800

Lunar Eclipse

Photograph by Babak Tafreshi, TWAN

The totally eclipsed moon shines amid the dense stars of our Milky Way galaxy in a stitched panorama picture taken in June from the Alborz Mountains of Iran. The eclipsed moon glows orange-red due to indirect light from the sun, which becomes reddish as it passes through Earth’s atmosphere.

The June lunar eclipse was the longest and deepest total lunar eclipse seen in more than a decade. The best viewing locations were in eastern Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and the western tip of Australia.

The glowering eyes from 114 million light years away are the...

artolocalsonly — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 08:41:13 +0800

The glowering eyes from 114 million light years away are the swirling cores of two merging galaxies called NGC 2207 and IC 2163 in the distant Canis Major constellation

At four is the Cat’s Eye Nebula, which looks like the eye...

artolocalsonly — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 20:53:50 +0800

At four is the Cat’s Eye Nebula, which looks like the eye of disembodied sorcerer Sauron from Lord of the Rings

The Hourglass Nebula, 8,000 light years away, has a ...

artolocalsonly — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 09:51:09 +0800

The Hourglass Nebula, 8,000 light years away, has a pinched-in-the-middle look because the winds that shape it are weaker at the centre

Star Death in 3-D Image courtesy ESO The hourglass shape of the...

artolocalsonly — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 22:11:37 +0800

Star Death in 3-D

Image courtesy ESO

The hourglass shape of the supernova remnant SN 1987A isn’t as well balanced as thought, according to an August picture of the exploded star.

Using data on the remnant from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile, astronomers were able to confirm that, when massive stars explode, some of the ejected material gets shot into space faster than other debris, as predicted by computer models.

The Helix Nebula: a Gaseous Envelope Expelled By a Dying Star

artolocalsonly — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 18:03:20 +0800

The Helix Nebula: a Gaseous Envelope Expelled By a Dying Star

The bipolar star-forming region, called Sharpless 2-106, or S106...

artolocalsonly — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 17:49:42 +0800

The bipolar star-forming region, called Sharpless 2-106, or S106 for short, looks like a soaring, celestial snow angel. The outstretched “wings” of the nebula record the contrasting imprint of heat and motion against the backdrop of a colder medium. Twin lobes of super-hot gas, glowing blue in this image, stretch outward from the central star. This hot gas creates the “wings” of our angel. A ring of dust and gas orbiting the star acts like a belt, cinching the expanding nebula into an “hourglass” shape.

kateoplis: Reuters’ Best Photos of 2011: Carlos Gutierrez,...

artolocalsonly — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 14:45:24 +0800

kateoplis:

Reuters’ Best Photos of 2011: Carlos Gutierrez, Chile

Solar Loop Image courtesy SDO/NASA When a loop of plasma erupted...

artolocalsonly — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 12:55:21 +0800

Solar Loop

Image courtesy SDO/NASA

When a loop of plasma erupted from the sun in March, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft was there to capture the action.

Known as a prominence, the escaping cloud of charged gas is pictured tethered to the sun at two ends by magnetic forces, but it eventually became unstable and broke free, twisting away into space.

In sixth place is the Cone Nebula. The part pictured here is 2.5...

artolocalsonly — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 20:49:13 +0800

In sixth place is the Cone Nebula. The part pictured here is 2.5 light years in length (the equivalent of 23 million return trips to the Moon)

Starry Night, so named because it reminded astronomers of the...

artolocalsonly — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 20:18:29 +0800

Starry Night, so named because it reminded astronomers of the Van Gogh painting. It is a halo of light around a star in the Milky Way

uferlos: The Hubble telescope has snapped this remarkable view...

artolocalsonly — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 18:50:11 +0800

uferlos:

The Hubble telescope has snapped this remarkable view of a perfectly ‘edge-on’ galaxy, NGC 4013. This new Hubble picture reveals with exquisite detail huge clouds of dust and gas extending along, as well as far above, the galaxy’s main disk. NGC 4013 is a spiral galaxy, similar to our Milky Way, lying some 55 million light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Ursa Major.

Viewed face-on, it would look like a nearly circular pinwheel, but NGC 4013 happens to be seen edge-on from our vantage point. Even at 55 million light-years, the galaxy is larger than Hubble’s field of view, and the image shows only a little more than half of the object, albeit with unprecedented detail.

Antennae Galaxies Image courtesy ALMA/ESO/NAOJ/NRAO/ESA/NASA The...

artolocalsonly — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 18:19:19 +0800

Antennae Galaxies

Image courtesy ALMA/ESO/NAOJ/NRAO/ESA/NASA

The Antennae Galaxies glow with psychedelic colors in the first publicly distributed picture—released in October—to use data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array, or ALMA, a new telescope high in Chile’s northern desert.

The internationally funded ALMA project is being hailed as the most complex ground-based observatory yet built. When construction is complete in 2013, the array will feature 66 antennas spread across 9.9 miles (16 kilometers). The antennas will be linked with fiber optics to function as a single telescope.

“We’ve been waiting a very long time to get to the point where ALMA is really able to do science. Some people have been working on this project for more than 20 years,” project scientist Richard Hills told the AFP news service. “So it has been a long road, but all the bits and pieces that we need to make this telescope work now [are coming] together.”

Speeding Star Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA Seen in...

artolocalsonly — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 18:16:46 +0800

Speeding Star

Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

Seen in visible light, the star known as Zeta Ophiuchi is dim, red, and surrounded by inky blackness. But in infrared, the star becomes a bright blue ball of fire topped with a glowing “mustache” of interstellar dust, as seen in a picture, released in January, from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, telescope.

Astronomers think Zeta Ophiuchi was once part of a stellar duo known as a binary pair. Then Zeta Ophiuchi’s companion star exploded, releasing Zeta Ophiuchi to go flying away on a fast-tracked solo act through space.

The star is now plowing through a cloud of dust and gas at 15 miles (24 kilometers) a second. As Zeta Ophiuchi moves, its powerful radiation is compressing the gas and dust in its path, creating a bow shock that shines in infrared.

Warped Galaxy Image courtesy ESA/NASA A galaxy slightly smaller...

artolocalsonly — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 18:15:02 +0800

Warped Galaxy

Image courtesy ESA/NASA

A galaxy slightly smaller than our own Milky Way is getting its arm twisted, and a cosmic bully may be to blame.

As seen in a picture released in August by scientists with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, one of galaxy NGC 2146’s arms is bent at a 45-degree angle, such that the dense limb has looped in front of the galaxy’s core, as seen from Earth.

The most likely explanation is that the gravity of an unidentified nearby galaxy is disturbing NGC 2146’s arm, causing the galaxy to warp.

discoverynews: Newly Found Alien Planet Could Host Life The...

artolocalsonly — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 18:04:25 +0800

discoverynews:

Newly Found Alien Planet Could Host Life

The newly confirmed planet, Kepler-22b, orbits smack in the middle of the habitable zone of a star similar to our own.

Previous research had hinted at the existence of such Earth-like planets, where liquid water could exist, but this is the first time such a life-friendly alien planet has been confirmed.

The planet is about 2.4 times wider around than Earth. It’s still unknown whether Kepler-22b has a rocky, gaseous or liquid composition, but its discovery is a milestone to finding Earth-like planets.

“This is a major milestone on the road to finding Earth’s twin,” Douglas Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington said

Read more

discoverynews: Measuring A Tiny, But Mighty, Black Hole One...

artolocalsonly — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 18:04:01 +0800

discoverynews:

Measuring A Tiny, But Mighty, Black Hole

One topic that people always ask astronomers about is black holes. These seemingly mysterious and bizarre objects are known to gobble up everything around them, even light, and physics as we know it cannot accurately describe what goes on inside.

From the outside, however, we consider black holes to be pretty simple objects, described completely by their mass, or size, spin and charge. This is often called the “no-hair” theorem of black holes.

For the most part, something that massive is almost certainly neutral, so astronomers really only care about how big a black hole is and how fast it is spinning.

As you might imagine, actually measuring these quantities can be a bit tricky.

As news of the biggest black hole found yet hits, Nicole Gugliucci explains how they are measured.