Monday, February 6, 2012

Astrophoto: Jupiter and Venus at the Beach by Brendan Alexander

Astrophoto: Jupiter and Venus at the Beach by Brendan Alexander:



Venus and Jupiter at the beach. Credit: Brendan Alexander

Brendan Alexander took this beautiful photo showing the two brightest planets currently in our night skies, over Flacarragh County, Donegal, Ireland. Here are the specs:

Canon 1000D (modded), 18-55mm kit lens (18mm), Fixed Tripod

Exposure: 20sec, ISO 800, F3.5 (two panels)

Brendan took the image on February 1, 2012. Check out his “Donegal Skies” Flickr feed.

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Supernova G350 Kicks Up Some X-Ray Dust

Supernova G350 Kicks Up Some X-Ray Dust:



Vital clues about the devastating ends to the lives of massive stars can be found by studying the aftermath of their explosions. In its more than twelve years of science operations, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has studied many of these supernova remnants sprinkled across the Galaxy. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/I.Lovchinsky et al, IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Located some 14,700 light years from the Earth toward the center of our galaxy, a newly photographed supernova remnant cataloged as G350.1+0.3 is making astronomers scratch their heads. The star which created this unusual visage is suspected to have blown its top some 600 to 1,200 years ago. Although it would have been as bright as the event which created the “Crab”, chances are no one saw it due to the massive amounts of gas and dust at the Milky Way’s heart. Now NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the ESA’s XMM-Newton telescope has drawn back the curtain and we’re able to marvel at what happens when a supernova imparts a powerful X-ray “kick” to a neutron star! (...)
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Armadillo Launches a STIG-A Rocket; Captures Awesome Image of ‘Ballute’

Armadillo Launches a STIG-A Rocket; Captures Awesome Image of ‘Ballute’:



View of parachute ballute deployment at apogee during Armadillo Aerospace’s STIG-A III rocket launched from Spaceport America, taken January 28, 2012. Image courtesy of Armadillo Aerospace

Over the weekend, Armadillo Aerospace launched one of their STIG-A rockets and captured a unique image of their recovery system. A ballute is a cross between a balloon and a parachute, and are braking devices that are usually used at high altitudes and high supersonic velocities. The one used by Armadillo looks very reminiscent of space capsule of the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo eras.

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Getting to the Core of Earth’s Falling Snow

Getting to the Core of Earth’s Falling Snow:



Visualization of the GPM Core Observatory and Partner Satellites (NASA)

An international plan is unfolding that will launch satellites into orbit to study global snowfall precipitation with unprecedented detail. With the upcoming Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) satellites, for the first time we will know when, where and how much snow falls on Earth, allowing greater understanding of energy cycles and how best to predict extreme weather.

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Hubble Captures Giant Lensed Galaxy Arc

Hubble Captures Giant Lensed Galaxy Arc:



Thanks to the presence of a natural "zoom lens" in space, this is a close-up look at the brightest distant "magnified" galaxy in the universe known to date. Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Rigby (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), K. Sharon (Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, University of Chicago), and M. Gladders and E. Wuyts (University of Chicago)

Less than a year ago, the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 captured a very unique image – a giant lensed galaxy arc. Gravitational lensing produces a natural “zoom” to observations and this is a look at one of the brightest distant galaxies so far known. Located some 10 billion light years away, the galaxy has been magnified as a nearly 90-degree arc of light against the galaxy cluster RCS2 032727-132623 – which is only half the distance. In this unusual case, the background galaxy is over three times brighter than typically lensed galaxies… and a unique look back in time as to what a powerful star-forming galaxy looked like when the Universe was only about one third its present age. (...)
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Hubble Captures a Classic Barred Spiral Galaxy

Hubble Captures a Classic Barred Spiral Galaxy:



The barred spiral galaxy NGC 1073, which is found in the constellation of Cetus (The Sea Monster). Credit: NASA & ESA



Is this what we look like? Astronomers don’t know for sure exactly what the Milky Way looks like, but searching out other barred spiral galaxies like this one is helping scientists to learn more about our home. Galaxy NGC 1073 is located in the constellation of Cetus (The Sea Monster).Most of the known spiral galaxies have a bar structure in their center, and this new image offer a stunning, if not clear view of one of these types of galaxies.

(...)
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How Plants May Have Helped Create Earth’s Unique Landscapes

How Plants May Have Helped Create Earth’s Unique Landscapes:



Early plants on Earth may have helped create the rivers and fertile soil which later allowed forests and farmlands to thrive. Credit: Wikimedia Commons



According to conventional thinking, plant life first took hold on Earth after oceans and rivers formed; the soil produced by liquid water breaking down bare rock provided an ideal medium for plants to grow in. It certainly sounds logical, but a new study is challenging that view – the theory is that vascular plants, those containing a transport system for water and nutrients, actually created a cycle of glaciation and melting, conditions which led to the formation of rivers and mud which allowed forests and farmland to later develop. In short, they helped actually create the landscapes we see today.


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Incredible 3-D View Inside a Martian Crater

Incredible 3-D View Inside a Martian Crater:



A 3-d view of a well-preserved and unnamed impact crater on Mars, as seen by the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona. Click for high-resolution version.



This is why I always keep a pair of 3-D glasses by my computer. This well-preserved crater on Mars may look like just your average, run-of-the-mill impact crater in 2-D, but in 3-D, the sharply raised rim, the deep, cavernous crater body, and especially the steep crater walls will have you grabbing your armchairs so you don’t fall in. The image is courtesy of the HiRISE camera team from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This unnamed crater is about 6 or 7 kilometers wide from rim to rim. HiRISE took the image on New Year’s Eve 2011.

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Cities at Night Panorama of Millions of US East Coast Earthlings

Cities at Night Panorama of Millions of US East Coast Earthlings:

Night time Panorama of US East Coast from the ISS
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) captured this stunning nighttime panorama of the major cities along the East Coast of the United States on Jan. 29, 2012. Credit: NASA

Do you live here?

Tens of millions of Earthlings live and work in the bustling and seemingly intertwined American mega-metropolis of the Philadelphia-New York City-Boston corridor (bottom-center splotch) captured in this stunning “Cities at Night” panorama of the East Coast of the United States along the Atlantic seaboard (image above).

Look northward and you’ll see the home to millions more Earthlings inhabiting the brilliantly lit Canadian cities of Toronto (launch site for “Lego Man in Space“) and Montreal to the west of Lake Ontario (dark oval at left-center).
(...)
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Beautiful Conjunction: Comet Garradd Meets M92

Beautiful Conjunction: Comet Garradd Meets M92:

This lovely image of Comet Garradd (C/2009 PI) as it passes by the globular cluster M92 in the constellation Hercules, was taken remotely from the Tzek Maun Observatory in New Mexico by our friends Giovanni Sostero, Ernest Guido and Nick Howes. While the two objects look like they are right next to each other, M92 is over 25,000 light-years away while Comet Garradd is 12.5 light-minutes away from Earth! The comet looks almost like a bird or winged starship in flight with the dust tail and ion tail shooting off on either side. Comet Garradd is still on show in the northern hemisphere, although you’ll at least need binoculars to see it. The comet is around magnitude 7 now, and is heading north, so over the course of the next few weeks, it should become a little easier to see. For now, you need to get up early to see it, (around 5:30 to 6:30 am), but by the end of the month it should be visible all night long.

You can see another image of Garradd on today’s APOD (but personally I really like the one right here!)
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New Study Shows How Trace Elements Affect Stars’ Habitable Zones

New Study Shows How Trace Elements Affect Stars’ Habitable Zones:

Comparison of the habitable zone around the Sun in our solar system and around the star Gliese 581. Credit: ESO

Habitable zones are the regions around stars, including our own Sun, where conditions are the most favourable for the development of life on any rocky planets that happen to orbit within them. Generally, they are regions where temperatures allow for liquid water to exist on the surface of these planets and are ideal for “life as we know it.” Specific conditions, due to the kind of atmosphere, geological conditions, etc. must also be taken into consideration, on a case-by-case basis.

Now, by examining trace elements in the host stars, researchers have found clues as to how the habitable zones evolve, and how those elements also influence them. To determine what elements are in a star, scientists study the wavelengths of its light. These trace elements are heavier than the hydrogen and helium gases which the star is primarily composed of. Variations in the composition of these stars are now thought to affect the habitable zones around them.

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Recycling Pulsars – The Millisecond Matters…

Recycling Pulsars – The Millisecond Matters…:

An artist's impression of an accreting X-ray millisecond pulsar. The flowing material from the companion star forms a disk around the neutron star which is truncated at the edge of the pulsar magnetosphere. Credit: NASA / Goddard Space Flight Center / Dana Berry

It’s a millisecond pulsar… a rapidly rotating neutron star and it’s about to reach the end of its mass gathering phase. For ages the vampire of this binary system has been sucking matter from a donor star. It has been busy, spinning at incredibly high rotational speeds of about 1 to 10 milliseconds and shooting off X-rays. Now, something is about to happen. It is going to lose a whole lot of energy and age very quickly. (...)
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The Milky Way’s Magnetic Personality

The Milky Way’s Magnetic Personality:

The sky map of the Faraday effect caused by the magnetic fields of the Milky Way. Red and blue colors indicate regions of the sky where the magnetic field points toward and away from the observer, respectively. The band of the Milky Way (the plane of the Galactic disk) extends horizontally in this panoramic view. The center of the Milky Way lies in the middle of the image. The North celestial pole is at the top left and the South Pole is at the bottom right. (Image Credit: Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics)

Recently we took a look at a very unusual type of map – the Faraday Sky. Now an international team of scientists, including those at the Naval Research Laboratory, have pooled their information and created one of the most high precision maps to date of the Milky Way’s magnetic fields. Like all galaxies, ours has a magnetic “personality”, but just where these fields come from and how they are created is a genuine mystery. Researchers have always simply assumed they were created by mechanical processes like those which occur in Earth’s interior and the Sun. Now a new study will give scientists an even better understanding about the structure of galactic magnetic fields as seen throughout our galaxy. (...)
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Super Bowl Cities Seen From Space

Super Bowl Cities Seen From Space:

Satellite image of RI and portions of southeastern Massachusetts. Credit: NASA/GSFC/Landsat 7

If you live in or are from the US, you probably know that today is Super Bowl Sunday. Whatever you happen to be doing, be it tailgating in Indianapolis, getting together with friends and family (and plenty of hot wings and nachos) in your living room or just waiting for all the fuss to be over, remember that, high above, NASA Earth-observing satellites are working hard doing what they do best: observing the Earth. Chances are they’ve imaged your home town many times.

Whichever team you’re rooting for, here’s a little bit of space science fun: the folks over at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, have shared some Landsat images of the home cities of this year’s big game.

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Asteroid Vesta Floats in Space in High Resolution 3-D

Asteroid Vesta Floats in Space in High Resolution 3-D:

Vesta’s Eastern Hemisphere Floats in Space in 3-D
This anaglyph shows the varied topography of Vesta’s eastern hemisphere from craters in the north, the equatorial troughs and the huge mountain protruding out the Rheasilvia impact basin (lower left) at the South Pole.
Does water ice lurk beneath the South Pole ?
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA.
More eye-popping 3-D images below

The giant Asteroid Vesta literally floats in space in a new high resolution 3-D image of the battered bodies Eastern Hemisphere taken by NASA’s Dawn Asteroid Orbiter.

Haul out your red-cyan 3-D anaglyph glasses and lets go whirling around Vesta and sledding down mountains to greet the alien Snowman! The sights are fabulous !

The Dawn imaging group based at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), in Berlin, Germany and led by team member Ralf Jaumann has released a trio of new high resolution 3-D images that are the most vivid anaglyphs yet published by the international science team. (...)

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600 Million Year Drought Makes Life on Surface of Mars Unlikely

600 Million Year Drought Makes Life on Surface of Mars Unlikely:

View of Mars' surface near the north pole from the Phoenix lander. Credit: NASA/JPL-Calech/University of Arizona

Mars is often referred to as a desert world, and for good reason – its surface is barren, dry and cold. While water was abundant in the distant past, it has long since disappeared from the surface, although ice, snow, frost and fog are still common. Other than liquid brines possibly trickling at times, all of Mars’ remaining water is now frozen in permafrost and in the polar ice caps. It has long been thought that the harsh conditions would make current life unlikely at best, and now a new study reaffirms that view.

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The Milky Way Galactic Disk – Forever Blowing Bubbles

The Milky Way Galactic Disk – Forever Blowing Bubbles:

Ten Milky Way Project images most-favourited by volunteers, in no particular order. Coordinates are image centres, image sizes are indicated by the zoom level (zoom).

Score another one for citizen science! In a study released just days ago, a new catalog containing over five thousand infrared bubbles entries was added through the “Milky Way Project” website. The work was done independently by at least five participants who measured parameters for position, radius, thickness, eccentricity and position angle. Not only did their work focus on these areas, but the non-professionals were responsible for recovering the locations of at least 86% of additional bubble and HII catalogs. Cool stuff? You bet. Almost one third of the Milky Way Project’s studied bubbles are located at the edge of an even larger bubble – or have more lodged inside. This opens the door to further understanding the dynamics of triggered star formation! (...)
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New Avalanche in Action on Mars Captured by HiRISE

New Avalanche in Action on Mars Captured by HiRISE:

An avalanche on Mars captured by the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on November 27, 2011. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona. Image cropped and edited by Nancy Atkinson.

Its avalanche season on Mars! And once again the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured an avalanche taking place on a steep cliff or scarp in Mars’ north polar region. Back in 2008, the HiRISE team created quite a sensation when it captured an avalanche in action on Mars. The high resolution camera did it again in 2010 when springtime arrived once more. Now, another Mars year later, the team has been monitoring specific areas, looking for evidence of avalanches and they hit pay dirt – literally. This image of an avalanche taking place is from a large image “strip” from HiRISE taken in the extreme northern latitude of Mars, about 85 degrees north.
(...)
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Friday, January 20, 2012

Aurora Borealis, the colored lights seen in the skies around the North Pole, the Northern Lights, from Bear Lake, Alaska

Aurora Borealis, the colored lights seen in the skies around the North Pole, the Northern Lights, from Bear Lake, Alaska

Aurora Borealis, the colored lights seen in the skies around the North Pole, the Northern Lights, from Bear Lake, Alaska, a beautiful Christmas scene of the winter star filled skies.

For gifts with this image on them, visit www.zazzle.com/beverlytazangel/aurora+over+alaska+gifts?r... Gifts Available: Iphone 4 Skins, Iphone 3 Case, Ipad Case, Greeting Cards, Postcards, Mouse Pads, Coffee Mug, Magnets, Keychains, Pins, Postage Stamps, Calendar, Posters, canvas,

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Mondo sulle spalle ti porto - Monde je te porte sur les épaules (Biagia Marniti)

Mondo sulle spalle ti porto - Monde je te porte sur les épaules (Biagia Marniti)

Memoria dell'occhio - Memory of the eye. Foto Viviane Ciampi.
S’incontrano passanti d’ogni genere. Vi sono coloro che non guardano attorno a sé e hanno fretta d’arrivare in un luogo preciso e coloro che distrattamente attraversano il mondo o da lui si lasciano attraversare. Ma preferiremmo far parte di coloro che si soffermano sulle cose, sui luoghi in continua metamorfosi dove ci si perde per meglio ritrovarsi. Perché siamo consapevoli di vivere nella “multifonia” del nostro immaginario, sotto il sole delle fresche mattine di primavera e contemporaneamente sull’orlo dell’abisso. L’occhio, nei momenti d’ozio creativo, cercherà non la forma perfetta delle cose ma la bellezza della sua imperfezione, la sua complessità, la “sbavatura”, per usare un termine caro al filosofo Merleau-Ponty.

On rencontre des passants de tout genre. Il y a ceux qui ne regardent rien autour d’eux et n’ont qu’ un désir, celui d’arriver vite à un endroit précis et ceux qui traversent distraitement le monde où se laissent traverser par le monde. Mais nous préférons faire partie de ceux qui s’arrêtent sur les choses, sur les lieux en perpétuelle métamorphose, là où l’on se perd pour mieux se retrouver. Car nous sommes conscients de vivre dans la « multiphonie » de notre imaginaire, sous le soleil des frais matins de printemps ainsi qu’au bord de l’abîme. L’œil, dans les moments d’oisiveté créative cherchera non pas la forme parfaite des choses mais la beauté dans ce qu’elle a d’imparfait, dans sa complexité, dans la « bavure », comme dirait le philosophe Merleau-Ponty.

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Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Picasa Web - Fantasy Angel Wallpaper By Takaki Google Images Google Pictures


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Picasa Web - Cosmo the Universe Wallpaper


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Picasa Web - Across The Universe Nasa Spazio Google Images


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Picasa Web - 3D Star in The Universe


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Picasa Web - The Universe Ring Wallpaper


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Picasa Web - The Universe Google Images Wallpaper


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Picasa - Starry Night Google Images Wallpaper


Picasa - Starry Night Google Images Wallpaper
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Picasa - Dawn Vesta Google Images The Universe


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The Universe Cosmo Wallpaper Google Images at Picasa



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Picasa - Halo Solar Distrito Federal Brasilia 2011


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