Sunday, February 15, 2015

WOW Exploring the Antennae

Exploring the Antennae:

Exploring the Antennae

Some 60 million light-years away in the southerly
constellation
Corvus, two large galaxies are
colliding.

The stars in the two galaxies, cataloged as
NGC 4038
and NGC 4039, very rarely collide in the course of the
ponderous cataclysm,
lasting hundreds of millions of years.

But their large clouds of
molecular
gas and dust often do, triggering furious
episodes of star formation near the center of the
cosmic wreckage.

Spanning about 500 thousand light-years, this

stunning composited view also reveals new star clusters and
matter flung far from the scene
of the accident by
gravitational
tidal forces.

The remarkable collaborative image is a mosaic constructed
using data from
small and large ground-based telescopes to bring out large-scale
and faint tidal streams, composited with the
bright cores
imaged in extreme detail by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Of course,
the suggestive visual appearance of the extended arcing structures
gives the galaxy pair its popular name - The Antennae.




Tomorrow's picture: pixels in space

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Authors & editors:
Robert Nemiroff
(MTU) &
Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
NASA Official: Phillip Newman
Specific rights apply.
NASA Web
Privacy Policy and Important Notices
A service of:
ASD at
NASA /
GSFC

& Michigan Tech. U.
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 10:50 AM 0 comments

WOW Aurora on Ice

Aurora on Ice:

Aurora on Ice

Not from a snowglobe, this expansive fisheye
view of ice and sky was captured on February 1, from
Jökulsárlón Beach,
southeast Iceland, planet Earth.

Chunks of glacial ice on the black sand beach glisten in the
light of a nearly full moon surrounded by
a shining halo.

The 22 degree lunar halo itself is created by ice crystals in
high, thin clouds refracting the moonlight.

Despite the bright moonlight, curtains of aurora still
dance through the surreal scene.

In early February,
their activity was triggered by Earth's restless magnetosphere
and the energetic wind from a
coronal hole
near the Sun's south pole.

Bright Jupiter, also near opposition, is visible at the
left, beyond the icy lunar halo.




Tomorrow's picture: light-weekend

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Authors & editors:
Robert Nemiroff
(MTU) &
Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
NASA Official: Phillip Newman
Specific rights apply.
NASA Web
Privacy Policy and Important Notices
A service of:
ASD at
NASA /
GSFC

& Michigan Tech. U.
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 10:48 AM 0 comments

Saturday, February 14, 2015

Ice ages made Earth's ocean crust thicker

Ice ages made Earth's ocean crust thicker:





Signatures of climate cycles spotted in hillocks on the sea floor.

Nature News doi: 10.1038/nature.2015.16856

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 1:03 PM 0 comments

Light fantastic

Light fantastic:





Scientists are pushing the properties of light to new extremes. A special issue explores these frontiers.

Nature 518 153 doi: 10.1038/518153a

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 1:02 PM 0 comments

The Milky Way over the Seven Strong Men Rock Formations

The Milky Way over the Seven Strong Men Rock Formations:

The Milky Way over the Seven Strong Men Rock Formations <br>


Posted by Nelio Inacio at 12:55 PM 0 comments

Titan Beyond the Rings

Titan Beyond the Rings: APOD: 2014 November 2 - Titan Beyond the Rings


Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2014 November 2



See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available.
Explanation: When orbiting Saturn, be sure to watch for breathtaking superpositions of moons and rings. One such picturesque vista was visible recently to the robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn. In 2006 April, Cassini captured Saturn's A and F rings stretching in front of cloud-shrouded Titan. Near the rings and appearing just above Titan was Epimetheus, a moon which orbits just outside the F ring. The dark space in the A ring is called the Encke Gap, although several thin knotted ringlets and even the small moon Pan orbit there.

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 12:43 PM 0 comments

Infrared Orion from WISE

Infrared Orion from WISE: APOD: 2013 February 13 - Infrared Orion from WISE


Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2013 February 13


See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available.
Explanation: The Great Nebula in Orion is a intriguing place. Visible to the unaided eye, it appears as a small fuzzy patch in the constellation of Orion. But this image, an illusory-color composite of four colors of infrared light taken with the Earth orbiting WISE observatory, shows the Orion Nebula to be a bustling neighborhood or recently formed stars, hot gas, and dark dust. The power behind much of the Orion Nebula (M42) is the stars of the Trapezium star cluster, seen near the center of the above wide field image. The eerie green glow surrounding the bright stars pictured here is their own starlight reflected by intricate dust filaments that cover much of the region. The current Orion Nebula cloud complex, which includes the Horsehead Nebula, will slowly disperse over the next 100,000 years.

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 10:22 AM 0 comments

Spin up of a Supermassive Black Hole

Spin up of a Supermassive Black Hole:

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2013 March 12


See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available.
Explanation: How fast can a black hole spin? If any object made of regular matter spins too fast -- it breaks apart. But a black hole might not be able to break apart -- and its maximum spin rate is really unknown. Theorists usually model rapidly rotating black holes with the Kerr solution to Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, which predicts several amazing and unusual things. Perhaps its most easily testable prediction, though, is that matter entering a maximally rotating black hole should be last seen orbiting at near the speed of light, as seen from far away. This prediction was tested recently by NASA's NuSTAR and ESA's XMM satellites by observing the supermassive black hole at the center of spiral galaxy NGC 1365. The near light-speed limit was confirmed by measuring the heating and spectral line broadening of nuclear emissions at the inner edge of the surrounding accretion disk. Pictured above is an artist's illustration depicting an accretion disk of normal matter swirling around a black hole, with a jet emanating from the top. Since matter randomly falling into the black hole should not spin up a black hole this much, the NuSTAR and XMM measurements also validate the existence of the surrounding accretion disk.

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 9:51 AM 0 comments

A Year on the Sun

A Year on the Sun: APOD: 2013 April 26 - A Year on the Sun


Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2013 April 26


See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available.
Explanation: Our solar system's miasma of incandescent plasma, the Sun may look a little scary here. The picture is a composite of 25 images recorded in extreme ultraviolet light by the orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory between April 16, 2012 and April 15, 2013. The particular wavelength of light, 171 angstroms, shows emission from highly ionized iron atoms in the solar corona at a characteristic temperatures of about 600,000 kelvins (about 1 million degrees F). Girdling both sides of the equator during approach to maximum in the 11-year solar cycle, the solar active regions are laced with bright loops and arcs along magnetic field lines. Of course, a more familiar visible light view would show the bright active regions as groups of dark sunspots. Three years of Solar Dynamics Observatory images are compressed into this short video.

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 9:47 AM 0 comments

NGC 6960: The Witch s Broom Nebula

NGC 6960: The Witch s Broom Nebula: APOD: 2013 May 29 - NGC 6960: The Witch's Broom Nebula


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2013 May 29


See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available.
Explanation: Ten thousand years ago, before the dawn of recorded human history, a new light would have suddenly have appeared in the night sky and faded after a few weeks. Today we know this light was from a supernova, or exploding star, and record the expanding debris cloud as the Veil Nebula, a supernova remnant. This sharp telescopic view is centered on a western segment of the Veil Nebula cataloged as NGC 6960 but less formally known as the Witch's Broom Nebula. Blasted out in the cataclysmic explosion, the interstellar shock wave plows through space sweeping up and exciting interstellar material. Imaged with narrow band filters, the glowing filaments are like long ripples in a sheet seen almost edge on, remarkably well separated into atomic hydrogen (red) and oxygen (blue-green) gas. The complete supernova remnant lies about 1400 light-years away towards the constellation Cygnus. This Witch's Broom actually spans about 35 light-years. The bright star in the frame is 52 Cygni, visible with the unaided eye from a dark location but unrelated to the ancient supernova remnant.

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 9:44 AM 0 comments

The Milky Trail

The Milky Trail: APOD: 2013 June 1 - The Milky Trail


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2013 June 1


See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available.
Explanation: Have you ever hiked the Queen's Garden trail in Bryce Canyon, Utah, USA, planet Earth? Walking along that path in this dark night skyscape, you can almost imagine your journey continues along the pale, luminous Milky Way. Of course, the name for our galaxy, the Milky Way (in Latin, Via Lactea), does refer to its appearance as a milky band or path in the sky. In fact, the word galaxy itself derives from the Greek for milk. Visible on moonless nights from dark sky areas, though not so bright or quite so colorful as in this image, the glowing celestial band is due to the collective light of myriad stars along the plane of our galaxy, too faint to be distinguished individually. The diffuse starlight is cut by dark swaths of obscuring galactic dust clouds. Four hundred years ago, Galileo turned his telescope on the Milky Way and announced it to be "... a congeries of innumerable stars ..."

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 9:42 AM 0 comments

Delphinid Meteor Mystery

Delphinid Meteor Mystery: APOD: 2013 June 15 - Delphinid Meteor Mystery


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2013 June 15


See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available.
Explanation: Over a five hour period last Tuesday morning, exposures captured this tantalizing view of meteor streaks and the Milky Way in dark skies above Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. During that time, astronomers had hoped to see an outburst from the gamma Delphinid meteor shower as Earth swept through the dust trail left by an unknown comet. Named for the shower's radiant point in the constellation Delphinus, a brief but strong outburst was reported in bright, moonlit skies on June 10, 1930. While no strong Delphinid meteor activity was reported since, an outburst was tentatively predicted to occur again in 2013. But even though Tuesday's skies were dark, the overall rate of meteors in this field is low, and only the three lower meteor streaks seem to point back to the shower's estimated radiant.

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 9:41 AM 0 comments

A Waterspout in Florida

A Waterspout in Florida: APOD: 2013 July 17 - A Waterspout in Florida


Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2013 July 17


See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available.
A Waterspout in Florida

Image Credit & Copyright: Joey Mole
Explanation: What's happening over the water? Pictured above is one of the better images yet recorded of a waterspout, a type of tornado that occurs over water. Waterspouts are spinning columns of rising moist air that typically form over warm water. Waterspouts can be as dangerous as tornadoes and can feature wind speeds over 200 kilometers per hour. Some waterspouts form away from thunderstorms and even during relatively fair weather. Waterspouts may be relatively transparent and initially visible only by an unusual pattern they create on the water. The above image was taken earlier this month near Tampa Bay, Florida. The Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida is arguably the most active area in the world for waterspouts, with hundreds forming each year. Some people speculate that waterspouts are responsible for some of the losses recorded in the Bermuda Triangle.

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 9:39 AM 0 comments

Moon, Venus, and Planet Earth

Moon, Venus, and Planet Earth: APOD: 2013 September 19 - Moon, Venus, and Planet Earth


Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2013 September 19


See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available.
Explanation: In this engaging scene from planet Earth, the Moon shines through cloudy skies following sunset on the evening of September 8. Despite the fading light, the camera's long exposure still recorded a colorful, detailed view of a shoreline and western horizon looking toward the island San Gabriel from Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay. Lights from Buenos Aires, Argentina are along the horizon on the left, across the broad Rio de la Plata estuary. The long exposure strongly overexposed the Moon and sky around it, though. So the photographer quickly snapped a shorter one to merge with the first image in the area around the bright lunar disk. As the the second image was made with a telephoto setting, the digital merger captures both Earth and sky, exaggerating the young Moon's slender crescent shape in relation to the two nearby bright stars. The more distant is bluish Spica, alpha star of the constellation Virgo. Closest to the Moon is Earth's evening star, planet Venus, emerging from a lunar occultation.

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 9:36 AM 0 comments

The Antennae Galaxies in Collision

The Antennae Galaxies in Collision: APOD: 2014 March 16 - The Antennae Galaxies in Collision


Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2014 March 16


See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available.
Explanation: Two galaxies are squaring off in Corvus and here are the latest pictures. When two galaxies collide, the stars that compose them usually do not. That's because galaxies are mostly empty space and, however bright, stars only take up only a small amount of that space. During the slow, hundred million year collision, one galaxy can still rip the other apart gravitationally, and dust and gas common to both galaxies does collide. In this clash of the titans, dark dust pillars mark massive molecular clouds are being compressed during the galactic encounter, causing the rapid birth of millions of stars, some of which are gravitationally bound together in massive star clusters.

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 9:31 AM 0 comments

The Cone Nebula from Hubble

The Cone Nebula from Hubble: APOD: 2014 May 28 - The Cone Nebula from Hubble


Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2014 May 28
See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available.
Explanation: Stars are forming in the gigantic dust pillar called the Cone Nebula. Cones, pillars, and majestic flowing shapes abound in stellar nurseries where natal clouds of gas and dust are buffeted by energetic winds from newborn stars. The Cone Nebula, a well-known example, lies within the bright galactic star-forming region NGC 2264. The Cone was captured in unprecedented detail in this close-up composite of several observations from the Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. While the Cone Nebula, about 2,500 light-years away in Monoceros, is around 7 light-years long, the region pictured here surrounding the cone's blunted head is a mere 2.5 light-years across. In our neck of the galaxy that distance is just over half way from the Sun to its nearest stellar neighbor, the Alpha Centauri star system. The massive star NGC 2264 IRS, seen by Hubble's infrared camera in 1997, is the likely source of the wind sculpting the Cone Nebula and lies off the top of the image. The Cone Nebula's reddish veil is produced by glowing hydrogen gas.

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 9:28 AM 0 comments

Halo of the Cats Eye

Halo of the Cats Eye: APOD: 2014 June 1 - Halo of the Cat's Eye


Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2014 June 1


See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available.
Explanation: The Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) is one of the best known planetary nebulae in the sky. Its haunting symmetries are seen in the very central region of this stunning false-color picture, processed to reveal the enormous but extremely faint halo of gaseous material, over three light-years across, which surrounds the brighter, familiar planetary nebula. Made with data from the Nordic Optical Telescope in the Canary Islands, the composite picture shows extended emission from the nebula. Planetary nebulae have long been appreciated as a final phase in the life of a sun-like star. Only much more recently however, have some planetaries been found to have halos like this one, likely formed of material shrugged off during earlier active episodes in the star's evolution. While the planetary nebula phase is thought to last for around 10,000 years, astronomers estimate the age of the outer filamentary portions of this halo to be 50,000 to 90,000 years.

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 9:27 AM 0 comments

WR 104: A Pinwheel Star System

WR 104: A Pinwheel Star System: APOD: 2014 June 3 - WR 104: A Pinwheel Star System


Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2014 June 3


See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available.
Explanation: Might this giant pinwheel one-day destroy us? Probably not, but investigation of the unusual star system Wolf-Rayet 104 has turned up an unexpected threat. The unusual pinwheel pattern has been found to be created by energetic winds of gas and dust that are expelled and intertwine as two massive stars orbit each other. One system component is a Wolf-Rayet star, a tumultuous orb in the last stage of evolution before it explodes in a supernova -- an event possible anytime in the next million years. Research into the spiral pattern of the emitted dust, however, indicates the we are looking nearly straight down the spin axis of the system -- possibly the same axis along which a powerful jet would emerge were the supernova accompanied by a gamma-ray burst. Now the WR 104 supernova itself will likely be an impressive but harmless spectacle. Conversely, were Earth really near the center of the powerful GRB beam, even the explosion's 8,000 light year distance might not be far enough to protect us. Currently, neither WR 104 nor GRB beams are understood well enough to know the real level of danger.

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 9:26 AM 0 comments

Lightning Arizona USA

Lightning Arizona USA ( Source : Stumbleupon )
#Lightning #Arizona   #USA   #photography  :



PLUS-Lightning-Arizona.jpg
Date: May 19, 2014, 3:31 AM

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Posted by Nelio Inacio at 9:22 AM 0 comments

We ‘Hype’ Alien World Findings Amid Little Data, Exoplanet Scientist Says

We ‘Hype’ Alien World Findings Amid Little Data, Exoplanet Scientist Says
:



PLUS-extrasolar_star-580x574.jpg
Date: Mar 12, 2014, 9:45 PM

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Posted by Nelio Inacio at 9:20 AM 0 comments

ALIEN PLANET - Mega Discovery! 715 Alien Planets Confirmed Using A New Trick On Old Kepler Data

ALIEN PLANET - Mega Discovery! 715 Alien Planets Confirmed Using A New Trick On Old Kepler Data.:



PLUS-ALIEN-PLANET-607694main_Kepler22bArtwork_full-580x435.jpg
Date: Mar 12, 2014, 9:38 PM

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Posted by Nelio Inacio at 9:19 AM 0 comments

SOLAR HALO

SOLAR HALO:



PLUS-SOLAR-HALO_20140302155740-4738cdad-580x387.jpg
Date: Mar 12, 2014, 9:33 PM

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Posted by Nelio Inacio at 9:17 AM 0 comments

Red-Sky-black-tree FOR MOBILE

Red-Sky-black-tree FOR Mobile :



PLUS-Red-Sky-black-tree.jpg
Date: Feb 25, 2014, 8:44 PM

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Posted by Nelio Inacio at 9:15 AM 0 comments

QUALITY GALAXY WALLPAPER FOR MOBILE

QUALITY GALAXY WALLPAPER FOR MOBILE :



PLUS-40404_Description-Download-quality-animated-galaxy-wallpapers_640x960.jpg
Date: Feb 23, 2014, 5:04 PM

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Posted by Nelio Inacio at 9:14 AM 0 comments

SPRING NIGHT & Animated Gif

SPRING NIGHT & Animated Gif
http://goo.gl/4oFCdh:



GIF-spring-night_2213.gif
Date: Feb 17, 2014, 5:32 PM

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Posted by Nelio Inacio at 9:12 AM 0 comments

MOONLIT BEACH WAVES

MOONLIT BEACH WAVES
http://goo.gl/4oFCdh:



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Date: Feb 17, 2014, 2:32 PM

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Posted by Nelio Inacio at 9:10 AM 0 comments
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