An amazing image of a star (Zeta Oph) plowing its way through interstellar space at 24 km/s. The stellar wind it creates as is pushing the interstellar dust and compressing it into something akin to a shockwave.
Zeta Oph punching through the interstellar medium. Image credit: APOD
This stunning image is a composite of three separate images of Tycho’s Supernova remnant.
The image is the remnant of a supernova first discovered over four hundred years ago. The composite is made up of an x-ray image, an infrared image and a telescope photo. Check out the APOD site for more info.
Occasionally on the blog I like to post an image from APOD which gets my attention in some way. I used to do this far more regularly, but things have gotten in the way the last couple of years. I’m going to make an effort to post at least one of these per month.
I’m already late with the January entry, but here it is nonetheless:
Simeis 147: Supernova Remnant
Looking at this nebulous form gives you some idea of the power generated by a star as it collapses in on itself and sends matter spewing off in all directions toward parts unknown of our universe.
The width of this monstrous formation is 150 light years, or over 9.8 Million times the distance between our Sun and the earth. Kinda makes you think… When the light you see from this nebula this year began it’s journey toward Earth it was the year 1859 and the following notable activities took place:
So give a thought to history the next time you stare out at the cosmos.
Thanks to BrainyHistory.com for the historical factoids.
I missed this one, mainly because I wasn’t going to be able to see it, but there was a total solar eclipse yesterday visible in parts of the world.
Flickr has come through once again with an astounding round up of eclipse photos.
Thankfully, my favourite photo has been released under Creative Commons.
Photo credit: n0ll on Flickr
Go have a look through Flickr and check out some absolutely abazing shots.
Earlier this week the Mars Phoenix rover made an astounding discovery. It was finally able to confirm the presence of water ice. The find in and of itself marks the first time that water has been confirmed for certain on any heavenly body other than our own azure sphere.
The Phoenix rover uncovered ice crystals and after NASA officials discovered that the crystals had sublimated in a matter of a few days, they decided to run more detailed tests on them — mainly to try melting the ice.
The University of Arizona also put up a good piece on their involvement with the project.
This means that there could, potentially, be organisms in that water if it can stay in liquid form long enough… really that’s the biggest barrier to life on Mars, the water ice sublimates so quickly in the direct heat of Martian daylight that organisms don’t have much chance to develop.
NASA’s official Mars Phoenix mission website has even stated that the mission will be extended by about a month due to the discovery. It’s now slated to complete at the end of September.
The news is indeed exciting. It wasn’t a complete surprise to find the ice on Mars as there had been previous evidence from satellite flybys of the Martian arctic. Space.com has a more complete article on this story including quotes from officials involved in the project.
It’s remarkable to think that to entities as large as galaxies could actually collide, but it does happen. It has happened in the past, as far as we can tell.
Photo Credit: NASA, APOD
The image above is of the Mice Galaxies taken by Hubble two large spiral galaxies which are circling each other and passing through one another until they finally coallesce a few billion years from now.
There were some great views of the Lunar Eclipse this past week. I had the opportunity to take a break from a class I’m taking and watch the eclipse reach totality. The event lasted quite a bit longer than I had anticipated (admittedly, I’ve never spent the time to watch a full eclipse event before.
Photo Credit: Helpman 77 on Flickr
Our partly cloudy skies gave us an interesting view of the event through the cloud and occasionally directly at the moon.
I’ve been meaning to post this one up for a couple of weeks now, its a shot of the International Space Station taken from the Shuttle Orbiter Atlantis on STS-117. It’s a great shot of the station which looks much more symmetrical now that it has a second set of solar panels providing additional power for all of its modules.
Download Full Size (1.9 MB)
Found the original image on the APOD website for June 25th. You can read more about the photo in their article.
In addition, while poking around the Internet I found some amazing shots taken by Tom over on CollectSpace. These were taken from his backyard using a telescope. Quite remarkable.
Enjoy!
It’s time to Bum Rush The Charts!
Though it’s not really a big news story, the image just looked too cool to pass up. The image is of galactic cluster Abell s0740 which lies some 450 Million Light years from our little rock. What’s amazing to me in this picture is the level of detail that the Hubble telescope is able to resolve. The more enlarged image shows an amazing level of detail, particularly with the large galaxy in the lower corner.