Sunday, February 15, 2015

See The Light from Cygnus A

Light from Cygnus A:

Light from Cygnus A

Celebrating astronomy in this
International
Year of Light,
the detailed image reveals spectacular active galaxy
Cygnus A
in light across the electromagnetic spectrum.

Incorporating X-ray data
(
blue) from the orbiting Chandra Observatory,
Cygnus A is seen to be a prodigious source of
high energy x-rays.

But it is actually more
famous
at the low energy end of
the electromagnetic
spectrum.

One of the brightest celestial sources visible to radio telescopes,
at 600 million light-years distant
Cygnus A is the closest powerful radio galaxy.

Radio emission
(
red) extends to either side along the same axis for
nearly 300,000 light-years powered by jets of relativistic particles
emanating from the galaxy's central supermassive black hole.

Hot spots likely mark the ends of the jets impacting surrounding cool,
dense material.

Confined to

yellow hues, optical wavelength data
of the galaxy from Hubble and the surrounding field
in the Digital Sky Survey complete a
remarkable multiwavelength view.




Tomorrow's picture: twisted sun

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Posted by Nelio Inacio at 11:07 AM 0 comments

GIF - A Twisted Solar Eruptive Prominence

A Twisted Solar Eruptive Prominence:

A Twisted Solar Eruptive Prominence

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 11:04 AM 0 comments

Watch Comet Lovejoy in a Winter Sky

Comet Lovejoy in a Winter Sky:

Comet Lovejoy in a Winter Sky

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 11:02 AM 0 comments

WATCH A Night at Poker Flat

A Night at Poker Flat:

A Night at Poker Flat

Four NASA suborbital
sounding rockets leapt
into the night on January 26,
from the University of Alaska's
Poker Flat Research Range.

This time lapse composite image follows all
four launches of the small, multi-stage rockets to explore
winter's mesmerizing,
aurora-filled skies.

During the exposures, stars trailed around the North Celestial Pole,
high above the horizon at the site 30 miles north of Fairbanks, Alaska.

Lidar, beams of pulsed green lasers,
also left traces through the scene.

Operating successfully, the payloads lofted were two
Mesosphere-Lower Thermosphere Turbulence Experiments
(M-TeX)
and two Mesospheric Inversion-layer Stratified Turbulence
(MIST)
experiments,
creating vapor trails
at high altitudes to be tracked by ground-based
observations.




Tomorrow's picture: citizen science

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Authors & editors:
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Posted by Nelio Inacio at 11:00 AM 0 comments

SPACE Yellow Balls in W33

Yellow Balls in W33:

Yellow Balls in W33Infrared
wavelengths of 3.6, 8.0, and 24.0 microns
observed by the Spitzer Space Telescope are mapped
into visible colors red, green, and blue in this striking image.

The cosmic cloud of gas and dust is W33, a massive starforming
complex some 13,000 light-years
distant, near the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy.

So what are all those yellow balls?

Citizen scientists of the web-based
Milky Way Project
found the features they called yellow balls as
they scanned many Spitzer images and persistently asked that question
of researchers.

Now there is an answer.

The yellow balls in Spitzer images
are identified as an early stage of massive star formation.

They appear yellow because they are overlapping regions of
red and green, the assigned colors that correspond to
dust and organic molecules known as PAHs at Spitzer wavelengths.

Yellow balls represent the stage before newborn massive
stars clear out cavities in their surrounding gas and dust
and appear as green-rimmed bubbles with red centers in the Spitzer
image.

Of course, the astronomical crowdsourcing success story is only part of
the Zooniverse.

The Spitzer image spans 0.5 degrees
or about 100 light-years at the estimated distance of W33.




Tomorrow's picture: of mice and galaxies

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Posted by Nelio Inacio at 10:59 AM 0 comments

COLLISION NGC 4676: When Mice Collide

NGC 4676: When Mice Collide:

NGC 4676: When Mice Collide

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 10:58 AM 0 comments

WOW Titan Seas Reflect Sunlight

Titan Seas Reflect Sunlight:

Titan Seas Reflect Sunlight

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 10:57 AM 0 comments

Stars, Sprites, Clouds, Auroras

Stars, Sprites, Clouds, Auroras:

Stars, Sprites, Clouds, Auroras

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 10:56 AM 0 comments

M104: The Sombrero Galaxy - UFO ?

M104: The Sombrero Galaxy:
M104: The Sombrero Galaxy

The striking spiral galaxy
M104 is famous
for its nearly edge-on
profile featuring a broad ring of obscuring dust lanes.

Seen in silhouette against an extensive bulge of stars, the swath of
cosmic dust lends a
broad brimmed hat-like
appearance to the galaxy suggesting
the more popular moniker, The Sombrero Galaxy.

Hubble Space Telescope
and ground-based Subaru data have been
reprocessed with amateur color image data to
create this sharp view of
the well-known galaxy.

The processing results in a natural color appearance
and preserves details often lost in overwhelming glare of M104's
bright central bulge when viewed with smaller ground-based
instruments.

Also known as NGC 4594, the Sombrero galaxy can be seen
across the spectrum
and is thought to host a central
supermassive
black hole.

About 50,000 light-years across and 28 million light-years away,
M104 is one of the largest galaxies at the southern edge of the
Virgo
Galaxy Cluster.




Tomorrow's picture: all the marbles

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Posted by Nelio Inacio at 10:55 AM 0 comments

Jupiter Triple-Moon Conjunction

Jupiter Triple-Moon Conjunction:

Jupiter Triple-Moon Conjunction

Our solar system's ruling giant planet Jupiter and 3 of its 4
large Galilean moons are captured in this single
Hubble snapshot
from January 24.

Crossing in front of Jupiter's banded cloud tops
Europa, Callisto, and Io
are framed from lower left to
upper right in a rare triple-moon conjunction.

Distinguishable by colors alone
icy Europa is almost white,
Callisto's ancient cratered surface looks dark brown,
and volcanic Io appears yellowish.

The transiting moons and
moon shadows can be identified by
sliding your cursor over the image, or following
this link.

Remarkably, two small, inner Jovian moons,
Amalthea and Thebe, along with
their shadows,
can
also be found in the sharp
Hubble view.

The Galilean moons have diameters of 3,000 to 5,000 kilometers or so,
comparable in size to Earth's moon.

But odd-shaped Amalthea and Thebe are only about 260 and 100
kilometers across respectively.




Tomorrow's picture: all the marbles

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Posted by Nelio Inacio at 10:54 AM 0 comments

An Extremely Long Filament on the Sun

An Extremely Long Filament on the Sun:

An Extremely Long Filament on the Sun

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 10:52 AM 0 comments

M100: A Grand Design Spiral Galaxy

M100: A Grand Design Spiral Galaxy:

M100: A Grand Design Spiral Galaxy

Posted by Nelio Inacio at 10:51 AM 0 comments

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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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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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


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 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


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 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


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 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
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