[via APOD]
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An eerie blue glow and ominous columns of dark dust highlight M78 and other bright reflection nebula in the constellation of Orion.
The dark filamentary dust not only absorbs light, but also reflects the light of several bright blue stars that formed recently in the nebula. Of the two reflection nebulas pictured above, the more famous nebula is M78, in the image center, while NGC 2071 can be seen to its lower left.
[via sciencedaily.com]
ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory has revealed the chemical fingerprints of potential life-enabling organic molecules in the Orion Nebula, a nearby stellar nursery in our Milky Way galaxy. This detailed spectrum — obtained with the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared (HIFI), one of Herschel’s three innovative instruments — demonstrates the gold mine of information that Herschel-HIFI will provide on how organic molecules form in space.
Several German Institutes contributed essential parts to the HIFI instrument: the Universität zu Kölkn and the Max-Planck-Institute für Radioastronmie, Bonn, und für Sonnensystemforschung, Lindau.
Put a satellite in a circular orbit about 42,000 kilometres from the center of the Earth (36,000 kilometres or so above the surface) and it will orbit once in 24 hours. Because that matches Earth’s rotation period, it is known as a geosynchronous orbit. If that orbit is also in the plane of the equator, the satellite will hang in the sky over a fixed location in a geostationary orbit.
As predicted in the 1940s by futurist Arthur C. Clarke, geostationary orbits are in common use for communication and weather satellites, a scenario now well-known to astroimagers.