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20 Nov 2009 02:44
2009 November 20
Meteor between the Clouds Victor van Wulfen This bright meteor streaked through dark night skies over Sutherland, South Africa on November 15. Potentially part of the annual Leonid meteor shower, its sudden, brilliant appearance, likened to a camera's flash, was captured by chance as it passed between two clouds. Of course, the two clouds are also visible to the eye in dark southern skies - the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds - satellite galaxies of our own Milky Way. This year's peaked on November 17 as the Earth passed through the stream of dust from periodic comet Tempel-Tuttle
light-weekend -
19 Nov 2009 06:11
2009 November 19
Leonid over Mono Lake Credit & Copyright: Tony Rowell Eerie spires of rock rise from shore of Mono Lake in the foreground of this early morning skyscape. The salty, mineral-laden lake is located in California's eastern Sierra Nevada mountain range and the spindly rock formations are naturally formed limestone towers called tufa. In the scene, recorded near the peak of the annual Leonid meteor shower (now subsiding) on November 17th, a meteor trails through the frigid predawn sky. Arcturus is the brightest star to the right of the meteor streak, while the constellation Leo and the shower's radiant point lie well above the field of view. Reports for this year's Leonids suggest the peak activity briefly exceeded 120 meteors per hour, but rates were typically much lower for many locations
between the clouds -
18 Nov 2009 12:35
2009 November 18
Water Discovered in Moon Shadow Credit: LCROSS, Why is there water on the Moon? Last month, the LCROSS mission crashed a large impactor into a permanently shadowed crater near the Moon's South Pole. A plume of dust rose that was visible to the satellite, although hard to discern from Earth. The plume is shown above in visible light. Last week, the results of a preliminary chemical analysis gave a clear indication that the dust plume contained water. Such water is of importance not only for understanding the history of the Moon, but as a possible reservoir for future astronauts trying to live on the Moon for long periods. The source of the lunar water is now a topic of debate. Possible origins include many small meteorites, a comet, or primordial moon soil
dark tomorrow -
17 Nov 2009 04:22
2009 November 17
Dawn Before Nova Illustration Credit & Copyright: Mark A. Garlick (Space-art.co.uk) Will this dawn bring another nova? Such dilemmas might be pondered one day by future humans living on a planet orbiting a cataclysmic variablebinary star system. Cataclysmic variables involve gas falling from a large star onto an accretion disk surrounding a massive but compact white dwarf star. Explosive cataclysmic events such as a dwarf nova can occur when a clump of gas in the interior of the accretion disk heats up past a certain temperature. At that point, the clump will fall more quickly onto the white dwarf and land with a bright flash. Such dwarf novas will not destroy either star, and may occur irregularly on time scales from a few days to tens of years. Although a nova is much less energetic than a supernova, if recurrent novas are not violent enough to expel more gas than is falling in, mass will accumulate onto the white dwarf star until it passes its Chandrasekhar limit. At that point, a foreground cave may provide little protection, as the entire white dwarf star will explode in a tremendous supernova
moon water -
16 Nov 2009 13:00
nova dawn -
15 Nov 2009 21:31
2009 November 16
M83's Center from Refurbished Hubble , ESA, and the ); Acknowledgement: R. O'ConnellU. Virginia What's happening at the center of spiral galaxy M83? Just about everything, from the looks of it. M83 is one of the closest spiral galaxies to our own Milky Way Galaxy and from a distance of 15 million light-years, appears to be relatively normal. Zooming in on M83's nucleus with the latest telescopes, however, shows the center to be an energetic and busy place. Visible in the above image -- from the newly installed Wide Field Camera 3 pointing through the recently refurbished Hubble Space Telescope -- are bright newly formed stars and giant lanes of dark dust. An image with similar perspective from the Chandra X-ray Observatory shows the region is also rich in very hot gas and small bright sources. The remnants of about 60 supernova blasts can be found in the above image
open space -
15 Nov 2009 06:11
2009 November 15
M57: The Ring Nebula Credit: H. Bond et al., Hubble Heritage TeamSTScIAURA), It looks like a ring on the sky. Hundreds of years ago astronomers noticed a nebula with a most unusual shape. Now known as M57 or NGC 6720, the gas cloud became popularly known as the Ring Nebula. It is now known to be a planetary nebula, a gas cloud emitted at the end of a Sun-like star's existence. As one of the brightest planetary nebula on the sky, the Ring Nebula can be seen with a small telescope in the constellation of Lyra. The Ring Nebula lies about 4,000 light years away, and is roughly 500 times the diameter of our Solar System. In this picture by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1998, dust filaments and globules are visible far from the central star. This helps indicate that the Ring Nebula is not spherical, but cylindrical
galaxy 83 -
14 Nov 2009 12:23
2009 November 14
DIA Sunrise Credit & Copyright: Neal Ulevich What's 93 million miles away and still hurts your eyes when you look at it? The answer is not the Denver International Airport, known to some travelers as DIA. But DIA does appear in dramatic silhouette in the foreground of this telephoto image. The view looks east toward the airport terminal's characteristic multi-peaked roof and the rising October Sun. The roof's appearance suggests the snow-capped peaks of the region's Rocky Mountains to the west. As winter approaches for denizens of Denver and the northern hemisphere in general, the rising Sun will continue to move south (image right) in the coming days. Of course, the Sun is 93 million miles away ...
Sunday's Childe -
13 Nov 2009 02:48
2009 November 13
Young Stars in the Rho Ophiuchi Cloud Credit: JPL-Caltech, Harvard-Smithsonian CfA Cosmic dust clouds and embedded newborn stars glow at infrared wavelengths in this tantalizing false-color view from the Spitzer Space Telescope. Pictured is of one of the closest star forming regions, part of the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex some 400 light-years distant near the southern edge of the pronounceable constellation Ophiuchus. The view spans about 5 light-years at that estimated distance. After forming along a large cloud of cold molecular hydrogen gas, newborn stars heat the surrounding dust to produce the infrared glow. An exploration of the region in penetrating infrared light has detected some 300 emerging and newly formed stars whose average age is estimated to be a mere 300,000 years -- extremely young compared to the Sun's age of 5 billion years.
93 million miles -
12 Nov 2009 09:10
2009 November 12
Art and Science in NGC 981 Credit & Copyright: Joseph Brimacombe This beautiful telescopic skyscape features spiral galaxy NGC 981. The island universe is about 50,000 light-years across and lies some 60 million light-years away toward the constellation Aries. An artistic presentation, the image shows spiky foreground stars in our own Milky Way Galaxy and convoluted dust clouds that hang above our galactic plane, dimly reflecting starlight. It also captures NGC 981 in a cosmic moment important to astrophysicists on planet Earth. Light from supernova SN2009js, absent in previous images, is indicated by the two lines just below and left of the galaxy's center. The supernova itself is the death explosion of a massive star within the plane of galaxy NGC 981. It was just discovered in October by supernova search teams in Japan and the US.
Rho Oph
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