Color the Moon! • Posts Tagged ‘astronomy’

Making a Black Hole

This illustration depicts the creation and almost instant evaporation of a tiny black hole in one of the instruments of the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. Some theories say the collider should be able to produce such tiny black holes, which would have been created en masse in the Big Bang. But such black holes would last only a tiny fraction of a second, leaving Earth unscathed. [Joao Pequenao/ATLAS/CERN]

What’s up with all the weird meteors lately?

The meteors this month have been acting a little strange — they’re particularly fiery, and they take a very long time to burn out. It turns out this is not an isolated incident; speculation over the strangeness of February meteors goes back at least half a century.

Now that we have the technology to keep close tabs on their activity, the data actually suggests there may be some truth to the rumors: February’s fireballs are a bit different from those of other months, and that, say scientists, is very puzzling.

Back in the sixties and seventies, a group of amateur astronomers came up with something called the “Fireballs of February.” The phrase was used to describe what they claimed was higher-than-average fireball activity during the shortest month of the year.

Illuminating the Darkness

An artist’s concept shows a vast halo of dark matter surrounding the disk of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. Dark matter produces no detectable energy but reveals its presence by tugging on visible stars, gas, and other matter. Dark matter, which may take the form of heavy subatomic particles, far outweighs all the visible matter in the Milky Way and the rest of the universe. [ESO/L. Calçada]

Andromeda’s Colorful Rings

Image credit: ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech/NHSC

The ring-like swirls of dust filling the Andromeda galaxy stand out colorfully in this new image from the Herschel Space Observatory, a European Space Agency mission with important NASA participation.

The glow seen here comes from the longer-wavelength, or far, end of the infrared spectrum, giving astronomers the chance to identify the very coldest dust in our galactic neighbor. These light wavelengths span from 250 to 500 microns, which are a quarter to half of a millimeter in size. Herschel’s ability to detect the light allows astronomers to see clouds of dust at temperatures of only a few tens of degrees above absolute zero. These clouds are dark and opaque at shorter wavelengths. The Herschel view also highlights spokes of dust between the concentric rings.

The colors in this image have been enhanced to make them easier to see, but they do reflect real variations in the data. The very coldest clouds are brightest in the longest wavelengths, and colored red here, while the warmer ones take on a bluish tinge.

These data, together with those from other observatories, reveal that other dust properties, beyond just temperature, are affecting the infrared color of the image. Clumping of dust grains, or growth of icy mantles on the grains towards the outskirts of the galaxy, appear to contribute to these subtle color variations.

These observations were made by Herschel’s spectral and photometric imaging receiver (SPIRE) instrument. The data were processed as part of a project to improve methods for assembling mosaics from SPIRE observations. Light with a wavelength of 250 microns is rendered as blue, 350-micron is green, and 500-micron light is red. Color saturation has been enhanced to bring out the small differences at these wavelengths.

NASA’s GALEX Reveals the Largest-Known Spiral Galaxy

This composite of the giant barred spiral galaxy NGC 6872 combines visible light images from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope with far-ultraviolet (1,528 angstroms) data from NASA’s GALEX and 3.6-micron infrared data acquired by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. A previously unsuspected tidal dwarf galaxy candidate (circled) appears only in the ultraviolet, indicating the presence of many hot young stars. IC 4970, the small disk galaxy interacting with NGC 6872, is located above the spiral’s central region. The spiral is 522,000 light-years across from the tip of one outstretched arm to the tip of the other, which makes it about 5 times the size of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. Images of lower resolution from the Digital Sky Survey were used to fill in marginal areas not covered by the other data. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/ESO/JPL-Caltech/DSS

Forecast for Exotic Weather

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

This artist’s conception illustrates the brown dwarf named 2MASSJ22282889-431026. NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes observed the object to learn more about its turbulent atmosphere. Brown dwarfs are more massive and hotter than planets but lack the mass required to become sizzling stars. Their atmospheres can be similar to the giant planet Jupiter’s.

Spitzer and Hubble simultaneously observed the object as it rotated every 1.4 hours. The results suggest wind-driven, planet-size clouds.

INCREASING CHANCE OF FLARES

The sun is peppered with spots: There are now more than a dozen numbered active regions scattered around the solar disk. As the sunspot count increases so does the chance of flares. NOAA forecasters estimate a 25% chance of M-class eruptions and a 5% chance of X-flares during the next 24 hours.

Stars Galore

A Hubble Space Telescope image shows the core of M2, a globular cluster that is about 35,000 light-years from Earth. The cluster contains perhaps 150,000 stars, which are packed into a spherical region of space only about 200 light-years across. From a planet inside the cluster, the sky would abound with so many brilliant stars that there would be no true “night.” The cluster’s stars are about 12 billion years old, which makes them some of the oldest stars in the entire galaxy. [NASA/STScI]

A Splendor Seldom Seen

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has delivered a glorious view of Saturn, taken while the spacecraft was in Saturn’s shadow. The cameras were turned toward Saturn and the sun so that the planet and rings are backlit. (The sun is behind the planet, which is shielding the cameras from direct sunlight.) In addition to the visual splendor, this special, very-high-phase viewing geometry lets scientists study ring and atmosphere phenomena not easily seen at a lower phase.

Since images like this can only be taken while the sun is behind the planet, this beautiful view is all the more precious for its rarity. The last time Cassini captured a view like this was in Sept. 2006, when it captured a mosaic processed to look like natural color, entitled “In Saturn’s Shadow.” In that mosaic, planet Earth put in a special appearance, making “In Saturn’s Shadow” one of the most popular Cassini images to date. Earth does not appear in this mosaic as it is hidden behind the planet.

Powerhouse

This illustration shows the layers of the Sun. It generates energy through nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The energy follows a long, torturous path before reaching the Sun’s visible surface, the photosphere. The corona is the Sun’s million-degree outer atmosphere. [NASA]

#astronomy

Posts I Like

About:

Page you might like:

I'm also in:

Ask me anything!