Tag: Space

Hong Kong Sky

Posted by Nexus – 07/02/2010

[via APOD]

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This remarkable scene combines multiple exposures recorded on the evening of January 18th from a waterside perspective in Hong Kong, China. It follows a young crescent Moon, with brilliant planet Jupiter to its left, as they set together in the western sky. Their two luminous trails are faintly paralleled by trails of background stars.

But easier to pick out are the short, bright airplane trails converging toward the horizon and the Hong Kong International Airport that seem to offer a frenzied imitation of the celestial tracks. Of course, the reflection of city lights and boat traffic follows the water’s surface. Streaking car lights define the span of the cable-stayed Ting Kau bridge.

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There’s A “Dark Disk of Material” Hovering Out In Space

Posted by Nexus – 21/01/2010

io9.com]

Image by Nico Camargo and courtesy www.citizensky.org. Used under Creative Commons license.

Some kind of obstruction is blocking our view of Epsilon Aurigae, a star in the constellation Auriga. Its exact nature is unknown — but astronomers say that if you’ve got a telescope, you could help them figure it out.

Epsilon Aurigae is a binary system, or a star locked in a pattern of mutual orbit with a second body. It lies in the constellation Auriga, about two thousand light-years away from Earth. We like this star, because it gives us the chance to shout out to some old-school Green Day.

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The Known Universe

Posted by Nexus – 21/01/2010

[via APOD]

What would it look like to travel across the known universe? To help humanity visualize this, the American Museum of Natural History has produced a modern movie featuring many visual highlights of such a trip.

The video starts in Earth’s Himalayan Mountains and then dramatically zooms out, showing the orbits of Earth’s satellites, the Sun, the Solar System, the extent of humanities first radio signals, the Milky Way Galaxy, galaxies nearby, distant galaxies, and quasars. As the distant surface of the microwave background is finally reached, radiation is depicted that was emitted billions of light years away and less than one million years after the Big Bang.

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Atlantis to Orbit

Posted by Nexus – 18/01/2010

[via APOD]

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Birds don’t fly this high. Airplanes don’t go this fast. The Statue of Liberty weighs less. No species other than human can even comprehend what is going on, nor could any human just a millennium ago. The launch of a rocket bound for space is an event that inspires awe and challenges description.

Pictured above, the Space Shuttle Atlantis lifted off to visit the International Space Station during the early morning hours of 2001 July 12. From a standing start, the two million kilogram rocket ship left to circle the Earth where the outside air is too thin to breathe and where there is little noticeable onboard gravity. Rockets bound for space are now launched from somewhere on Earth about once a week.

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Cocaine found in shuttle work area, NASA says

Posted by Nexus – 15/01/2010

[via msnbc.com]

Workers align the space shuttle Discovery's thrusters in Orbiter Processing Facility Bay 3 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in December 2009. A small amount of cocaine was found in a restricted area of the facility on Wednesday, NASA said.

NASA has launched an extensive investigation to determine how a small amount of cocaine ended up in a space shuttle hangar at the agency’s Florida spaceport.

A bag containing a small amount of white powder residue that was later confirmed to be cocaine was discovered in the space shuttle Discovery’s hangar at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The hangar, known as the Orbiter Processing Facility, is a restricted zone for shuttle workers only.

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M94: A New Perspective

Posted by Nexus – 15/01/2010

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Beautiful island universe M94 lies a mere 15 million light-years distant in the northern constellation of the hunting dogs, Canes Venatici. A popular target for astronomers, the brighter inner part of the face-on spiral galaxy is about 30,000 light-years across.

Traditionally, deep images have been interpreted as showing M94′s inner spiral region surrounded by a faint, broad ring of stars. But a new multi-wavelength investigation has revealed previously undetected spiral arms sweeping across the outskirts of the galaxy’s disk, an outer disk actively engaged in star formation. At optical wavelengths, M94′s outer spiral arms are followed in this remarkable discovery image, processed to enhance the outer disk structure. Background galaxies are visible through the faint outer arms, while the three spiky foreground stars are in our own Milky Way galaxy.

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The Flame Nebula in Infrared

Posted by Nexus – 13/01/2010

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What lights up the Flame Nebula?

Fifteen hundred light years away towards the constellation of Orion lies a nebula which, from its glow and dark dust lanes, appears, on the left, like a billowing fire. But fire, the rapid acquisition of oxygen, is not what makes this Flame glow. Rather the bright star Alnitak, the easternmost star in the Belt of Orion visible just above the nebula, shines energetic light into the Flame that knocks electrons away from the great clouds of hydrogen gas that reside there. Much of the glow results when the electrons and ionized hydrogen recombine.

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