kdmurray.blog » Astronomy

Star in Motion

kdmurray — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 07:30:36 +0000

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

Tycho’s Echos

kdmurray — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 05:16:16 +0000

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.

What Does a Supernova Look Like? — 1859!

kdmurray — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 08:39:13 +0000

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:

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is born
Ground was broken on the Suez canal
A Tale of Two Cities is published
Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species

So give a thought to history the next time you stare out at the cosmos.

Thanks to BrainyHistory.com for the historical factoids.

Total Solar Eclipse – August 1, 2008

kdmurray — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 08:16:41 +0000

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.

Mars Phoenix Confirms Water on Red Planet

kdmurray — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 05:47:13 +0000

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.

Galactic Collisions: Mice Galaxies

kdmurray — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 08:09:22 +0000

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.

Lunar Eclipse 2008 – Amazing Perspectives

kdmurray — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 21:29:25 +0000

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.

ISS Gets a New Set of Wings

kdmurray — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 07:57:37 +0000

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!

Bum Rush The Charts — NOW!

kdmurray — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 05:38:29 +0000

It’s time to Bum Rush The Charts!

Hubble Spies Galactic Cluster

kdmurray — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 04:44:32 +0000

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.

Hawking: Warp Drive the Key to Survival

kdmurray — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 01:20:17 +0000

Speaking after being awarded the Copley medal in England last week Prof. Steven Hawking spoke out about the need for mankind to extend its footprint outside the Sol system. His proposed method for making this happen: matter/antimatter annihilation to propel a craft to near-light speeds. This is the method popularized in the television (and movie) series’ Star Trek.

The key difference between Hawking’s proposal and the Warp Drive technology used in the Star Trek universe is the degree of speed. Star Trek uses matter/antimatter annihilation to move a craft at many times the speed of light, something which Hawking and most other theoretical physicists consider to be impossible based on the physical universe as we understand it. In Hawking’s proposal this technology would be used to reach sublight speeds which are very close to the speed of light.

His estimate is that with the ability to travel just below the speed of light, a craft could reach the next nearest star in about 6 years. A vast improvement from the 50,000 years it would have taken the Apollo rocket series (assuming it could ever carry enough fuel). As far as organizations like NASA are concerned, faster-than-light travel is speculative at best.

Maybe this is yet another one of Gene Roddenberry‘s visions coming one step closer to reality.

A “little” perspective…

kdmurray — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 07:13:56 +0000

I friend of mine sent me a link to this YouTube video recently, his intent I’m sure was for me to marvel at how large some of the entities in our universe are. What happened, is that I realized without any hesitation something else: how small we are.

Most of us have a pretty good idea how much larger Jupiter and the other Gas Giants are than our humble little blue globe. But seeing how much larger the Sun is in comparison to our world can come as something of a surprise to people, particularly those who haven’t studied much astronomy. Sure we all know that the sun is a very long distance from us, and that on average it takes its light a full 8 minutes to reach us… but the scale is still incredible.

So how then do we react when we find out that the largest known star in our galaxy is proportionally larger to our sun than our sun is to Pluto? Watch the movie. Be amazed. Feel small.

Amazing Starfield

kdmurray — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 08:02:42 +0000

This image was up on the APOD site today and I found it amazing. Not only because of the densely packed region of stars shown (these are near the galactic core), but because the SWEEPS project is intended to search for stars with planetary systems outside our own solar system.

Total Solar Eclipse

kdmurray — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 23:09:58 +0000

Last week astronomers all over the world captured pictures of the Total Solar Eclipse. The link points to the APOD for April 4th, which shows an image compiled of the view of the eclipse over Turkey.

The next chance to see a total Solar Eclipse will be August, 2008.

Doomed Star Eta Carinae

kdmurray — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 21:08:53 +0000

There’s no good reason for this post except to show a really cool picture of Eta Carinae. This was taken in 1996 and shows the two-bulb nebula attached to the star Eta Carinae. Astronomers feel that this star is a really good candidate for a full-blown supernova.

Sources: APOD

UB313 – Planet ‘X’?

kdmurray — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 08:24:41 +0000

For many years rumours of a tenth planet in our solar system have been the stuff of tabloids and science-fiction writers. In 2003 a new planetoid was discovered beyond the orbit of Pluto. Officially named 2003 UB313 this small chunk of rock and ice is about 30% more massive than Pluto.

Now that it has been discovered, the real controversy begins. There is great debate around whether UB313 should be classified as a planet. Since it’s even larger than Pluto, some have even called into question Pluto’s status as a planet. One suggestion is that anything orbiting further out than Neptune and against the regular plane of the solar system be classified a Kuiper Belt Planet.

The final decision on whether or not to classify UB313 as a planet rests with the International Astronomical Union and is expected to be made in September 2006.

Sources: APOD, Wikipedia, Space.com

Water on Enceladus

kdmurray — Sun, 12 Mar 2006 07:38:31 +0000

The Cassini space-probe has recently completed a fly-by of Saturn and its moon Enceladus. Early indications are that the moon contains pockets of liquid water only tens of metres below the surface. The stunning image from the APOD site shows the “tiger-stripe” crevasses from which plumes of debris are being emitted. The suspected cause: liquid water. If the discovery pans out it will certainly be exciting, but it isn’t the first instance of liquid water detected outside of Earth.