Wired Space Photo of the Day

[longknife]

Cloud in Serpens

As the realm of galaxies slowly slides past it prime, the dim and dusty clouds that float above the plane of our galaxy harbingers the rise of galactic center. Here then is one of those clouds in Serpens that is punctuated by the dazzle of embedded and breakout stars.

The *only* thing that came to my mind while working on this data was the Electric Company (or Sesame Street) animated short that begins with the name of this object (e.g. 123...) This is most certainly an American (me) generational thing. Be forewarned, it might stick in your mind for a while.
From 0

 

[longknife]

Green Flash on the Moon

On Cerro Paranal, the 2600-metre-high mountain in Chile’s Atacama Desert that is home to ESO’s Very Large Telescope, the atmospheric conditions are so exceptional that fleeting events such as the green flash of the setting Sun are seen relatively frequently. Now, however, ESO Photo Ambassador Gerhard Hüdepohl has captured an even rarer sight: a green flash from the Moon, instead of the Sun. The photographs are very probably the best ever taken of the Moon’s green flash. More @ Wired Space Photo of the Day | Wired Science | Wired.com

 

[longknife]

Spirograph Nebula

Glowing like a multi-faceted jewel, the planetary nebula IC 418 lies about 2, 000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lepus. In this picture, the Hubble telescope reveals some remarkable textures weaving through the nebula. Their origin, however, is still uncertain.

 

[longknife]

Wired Space Photo of the Day:

Galaxy Crash
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has produced this vivid image of a pair of interacting galaxies known as Arp 142. When two galaxies stray too close to each other they begin to interact, causing spectacular changes in both objects. In some cases the two can merge — but in others, they are ripped apart.
Read more @ Wired Space Photo of the Day | Wired Science | Wired.com

 

[longknife]

Bright Young Supernova

While performing an extensive X-ray survey of our galaxy's central regions, NASA's Swift satellite has uncovered the previously unknown remains of a shattered star. Designated G306.3–0.9 after the coordinates of its sky position, the new object ranks among the youngest-known supernova remnants in our Milky Way galaxy. More @ Wired Space Photo of the Day | Wired Science | Wired.com

 

[Surfer]

Space is fascinating and I love all the new discoveries.

 

[longknife]

Saturn's Colorful Rings

Images taken during the Cassini spacecraft's orbital insertion on June 30 show definite compositional variation within the rings. This image shows, from left to right, the outer portion of the C ring and inner portion of the B ring. The B ring begins a little more than halfway across the image. The general pattern is from "dirty" particles indicated by red to cleaner ice particles shown in turquoise in the outer parts of the rings. Read more @ Wired Space Photo of the Day | Wired Science | Wired.com

 

[freedombecki]

Saturn's Colorful Rings

Images taken during the Cassini spacecraft's orbital insertion on June 30 show definite compositional variation within the rings. This image shows, from left to right, the outer portion of the C ring and inner portion of the B ring. The B ring begins a little more than halfway across the image. The general pattern is from "dirty" particles indicated by red to cleaner ice particles shown in turquoise in the outer parts of the rings. Read more @ Wired Space Photo of the Day | Wired Science | Wired.com

Lovely colors, Longknife. Thanks.

 

[longknife]

Gravity on the Moon

This map shows the gravity field of the moon as measured by NASA's GRAIL mission. The viewing perspective, known as a Mercator projection, shows the far side of the moon in the center and the nearside (as viewed from Earth) at either side. Units are milliGalileos where 1 Galileo is 1 centimeter per second squared. Reds correspond to mass excesses which create areas of higher local gravity, and blues correspond to mass deficits which create areas of lower local gravity.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the GRAIL mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, is home to the mission's principal investigator, Maria Zuber. GRAIL is part of the Discovery Program managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the spacecraft. The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

 

[longknife]

Near the Habitable Exoplanets @ Wired Space Photo of the Day | Wired Science | Wired.com

This picture shows the sky around multiple star Gliese 667. The bright star at the centre is Gliese 667 A and B, the two main components of the system, which cannot be separated in this image. Explanation @ link

 

[longknife]

Mercury's Terminator

The terminator returns! This color image portrays the striking separation of night and day on Mercury, evident in the change from dark to light. On Mercury, a solar day (the time it takes for the Sun to return to the same spot in the sky) is equal to 176 Earth days! Check out this animation of a day on Mercury!

 

[longknife]

Sun in Different Wavelengths

The images of this Sun (Dec. 7, 2011) taken at almost the same time are shown in various wavelengths in various temperatures and layers of the Sun. In addition, we superimposed an illustration of the Sun's magnetic field lines to the view. We start off looking at the 6,000 degrees C. photosphere that shows the various sunspots on the "surface" of the Sun. Then we transition into the region between the chromosphere and the corona, at about 1 million degrees C. where, in extreme UV light, the active regions appear lighter. We phase in a composite of three different wavelengths showing temperatures up to 2 million degrees C. To top it off, we overlay a science-based estimation of the complex magnetic field lines (partly made visible in the first UV image) extending from and connecting the active regions before going back to the sunspot image. Who says the Sun is boring?

 

[longknife]

Hockey Stick Galaxy

This image was obtained with the wide-field view of the Mosaic camera on the Mayall 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory. NGC 4656, also known informally as the "hockey stick galaxy," is a distorted edge-on spiral galaxy. Its distinctive shape is due to a recent gravitational interaction with the galaxy NGC 4631. It is not yet certain, but these two galaxies may be in the early stages of merging. The faint object in the upper-left corner may not be part of the galaxy, but instead be a dwarf galaxy in the process of merging with NGC 4656. The image was generated with observations in the B (blue), V (green), I (orange) and Hydrogen-Alpha (red) filters. In this image, North is up, East is to the left.

 

[longknife]

Colorful Star Formation

NGC 281 is a bustling hub of star formation about 10,000 light years away. This composite image of optical and X-ray emission includes regions where new stars are forming and older regions containing stars about 3 million years old.
More explanation @ Wired Space Photo of the Day | Wired Science | Wired.com

 

[longknife]

Something Wicked in the Trifid Nebula?

Three huge intersecting dark lanes of interstellar dust make the Trifid Nebula one of the most recognizable and striking star birth regions in the night sky. The dust, silhouetted against glowing gas and illuminated by starlight, cradles the bright stars at the heart of the Trifid Nebula. This nebula, also known as Messier 20 and NGC 6514, lies within our own Milky Way Galaxy about 9,000 light-years (2,700 parsecs) from Earth, in the constellation Sagittarius. This image from the Hubble Space Telescope offers a close-up view of the center of the Trifid Nebula, near the intersection of the dust bands, where a group of recently formed, massive, bright stars is easily visible.

 

[justoffal]

That is something of a wake up call

Not only would we have global warming should that thing come our way we would have global melt down.

JO

 

[longknife]

Galactic Twins

Looking towards the constellation of Triangulum (The Triangle), in the northern sky, lies the galaxy pair MRK 1034. The two very similar galaxies, named PGC 9074 and PGC 9071, are close enough to one another to be bound together by gravity, although no gravitational disturbance can yet be seen in the image. These objects are probably only just beginning to interact gravitationally

Read more @ Wired Space Photo of the Day | Wired Science | Wired.com

 

[longknife]

Lava Flows on Io read explanation @ Wired Space Photo of the Day | Wired Science | Wired.com

 

[longknife]

Outflow in Carina

This image from the Blanco 4-meter telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile was used to discover an extremely large outflow in the Carina Nebula, known as Herbig-Haro 666 (HH 666). Ionized gas squirts out along the polar axis of the hidden young star in this jet-like outflow at speeds up to 500,000 mph.

Read more @ Wired Space Photo of the Day | Wired Science | Wired.com

 

[longknife]

Starburst Ejecta on the Moon

This small crater displays a beautiful ejecta pattern resembling a starburst. Looking at this image you can almost imagine the shower of ejecta falling to the ground. The pattern formed out of high and low reflectance areas is due to the freshness of the ejecta. Notice in the second image that as you move away from the center of the crater, the overall reflectance of the ejecta gets lower (darker). This is because the ejecta is less continuous as you get further away from the crater.

Fresh ejecta blanket of an unnamed 1 km diameter crater. Image number M154813223R, incidence angle 13°, image is 750 meters across.