Bioluminescence in waves lapping at a beach in this 1.5 hour exposure on the Gippsland Lakes.

]]> http://www.nightsky.ie/2011/03/bioluminescence-and-star-trails/feed/ 0 http://www.nightsky.ie/2011/02/video-of-the-solar-system/ http://www.nightsky.ie/2011/02/video-of-the-solar-system/#comments Mon, 21 Feb 2011 09:54:53 +0000 admin http://www.nightsky.ie/?p=1979

The Solar System

When I heard that Kepler had some candidate planets in the habitable zone of their stars I wondered what it would be like in those distant solar systems. This got me interested in looking at some of the best images of our own planetary system and from that came this video. Please feel free to forward and share. This is a journey through our solar system throught the eyes of the spaceprobes whe have sent into space over the last 30-40 years.

• APOD: NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
• Jan-Erik Ovaldsen: Acclaimed Norewegian astrophysicist, author and astronomy evangelist
• The Universe Today: Great news and photos on a daily basis
• Astronomy Online: Ricky Leon Murphy’s first stop astronomy resource site
• Wide Field DSS2 Images: Charles Shahar’s stunning renditions of imagery exposed through the 48-inch Oschin Schmidt Telescope on Palomar Mountain
• San Francisco Amateur Astronomers: A great group of enthusiastic astronomers!
• Cosmotography: Presenting images of interesting astronomical subjects obtained with modest, commercially available telescopes and CCD cameras
• The Bad Astronomy: Skeptic, lecturer, and author
• Stéphane Guisard : Fantastic images!
• Robert Gendler: The universe in colour
• AstroPhotography Tonight: astrophotographic news, reviews and tutorials

Jupiter Over the Mediterranean Credit & Copyright: Tunç Tezel (TWAN)

A colony of hot, young stars is stirring up the cosmic scene in this new picture from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. The image shows the Orion nebula.  The young stars dip and peak in brightness due to a variety of reasons. Shifting cold and hot spots on the stars’ surfaces cause brightness levels to change, in addition to surrounding disks of lumpy planet-forming material, which can obstruct starlight. Spitzer is keeping tabs on the young stars, providing data on their changing ways.

Credit NASA/JPL-Caltech/J. Stauffer (SSC/Caltech)

The European Southern Observatory consortium’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) in Paranal, Chile released the view of young stars in the Orion Nebula to demonstrate the compatibilities of the new telescope’s 13.5-foot-wide mirror.

Credit: ESO

This infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Orion nebula, our closest massive star-making factory, 1,450 light-years from Earth. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Toledo

One of VISTA's first images shows the Flame Nebula, a spectacular star-forming cloud of gas and dust in the constellation of Orion Photo: EPA

This arcing, graceful structure is actually a bow shock about half a light-year across, created from the wind from the star L.L. Orionis colliding with the Orion Nebula flow. For more information on this image, see HubbleSite. Credit: NASA, The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

M27: Not a Comet Credit & Copyright: Matthew T. Russell

While hunting for comets in the skies above 18th century France, astronomer Charles Messier diligently kept a list of the things he encountered that were definitely not comets. This is number 27 on his now famous not-a-comet list. In fact, 21st century astronomers would identify it as a planetary nebula, but it’s not a planet either, even though it may appear round and planet-like in a small telescope. Messier 27 (M27) is an excellent example of a gaseous emission nebula created as a sun-like star runs out of nuclear fuel in its core. The nebula forms as the star’s outer layers are expelled into space, with a visible glow generated by atoms excited by the dying star’s intense but invisible ultraviolet light. Known by the popular name of the Dumbbell Nebula, the beautifully symmetric interstellar gas cloud is over 2.5 light-years across and about 1,200 light-years away in the constellation Vulpecula. This impressive color composite highlights details within the well-studied central region and fainter, seldom imaged features in the nebula’s outer halo. It includes narrowband images recorded using filters sensitive to emission from oxygen atoms, shown in blue-green hues, and hydrogen atoms in red.

Jupiter Swirls Date: 5 Mar 1979 This close-up of swirling clouds around Jupiter's Great Red Spot was taken by Voyager 1. It was assembled from three black and white negatives. Credit: NASA/JPL

These color maps of Jupiter were constructed from images taken by the narrow-angle camera onboard NASA’s Cassini spacecraft on Dec. 11 and 12, 2000, as the spacecraft neared Jupiter during its flyby of the giant planet. Cassini was on its way to Saturn. They are the most detailed global color maps of Jupiter ever produced. The smallest visible features are about 120 kilometers (75 miles) across.

North Polar: Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

South Pole: Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Jupiter Globe: Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

This true-color simulated view of Jupiter is composed of four images taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. These images were combined and the cylindrical map projected onto a globe in order to illustrate what Jupiter would look like if the cameras used to image this planet had a field-of-view large enough to capture the entire planet. The resolution is about 144 kilometers (89 miles) per pixel. Jupiter’s moon Europa is casting the shadow on the planet.

Magnetic field lines on the Sun, on August 20, 2010. Credit: NASA SDO/Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company

Source: Universe Today: “The Solar Dynamic Observatory shows this new image of the Sun’s magnetic field lines. This map is from data taken on August 20, 2010 by the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager instrument (HMI). White lines show fields that are closed, not releasing solar wind, and gold lines show open fields, letting solar wind escape. Understanding these magnetic fields is important because it is thought that solar storms and flares, which can affect us here on Earth, result from changes in the structure and connections of these fields.

Coronal holes are large regions in the corona that are darker, less dense and cooler than surrounding areas. The open structure of their magnetic field allows a constant flow of high-density plasma to stream out of the holes. There is an increase in the intensity of the solar wind effects on Earth when a coronal hole faces.

During a solar minimum, such as the one from which the Sun is just emerging, coronal holes are mainly found at the Sun’s polar regions, but they can be located anywhere on the sun during solar maximum. The fast-moving component of the solar wind is known to travel along open magnetic field lines that pass through coronal holes.

Scientists are finding out that much of the structure of the Sun’s corona is shaped by the magnetic field. Although it varies over time and from place to place on the Sun, the Sun’s magnetic field can be very strong. Inside sunspots, the magnetic field can be several thousand times the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field.”

This photo of a total solar eclipse was taken from the International Space Station on March 29, 2006. The photo was taken by a crew member of the Expedition 12 mission. The island of Cyprus and the coast of Turkey can be seen from the image.

Eclipsed Earth

 STS-29 Onboard photo – External Tank Separation

 This photo of the external tank after separation with the space shuttle Discovery was captured from the International Space Station during the STS-29 mission in 1989. The external tank or ET is an important component of a space shuttle flight since it supplies the fuel and oxidizer under pressure to the three space shuttle main engines.

STS-29 Onboard photo - External Tank Separation

This breathtaking photo moon and the earth’s atmosphere was taken from the International Space Station by an Expedition 10 crew member in October 2004. Expedition 10 crew members, Leroy Chiao and Salizhan Sharipov relieved the two Expedition 9 crew members, Mike Fincke and Gennady Padalka.

Moon Aglow

How similar in size are the Earth and the Moon? A dramatic visual answer to this question is found by combining photographs taken by the Mariner 10 spacecraft that headed out toward Venus and Mercury in 1973. The Moon can be seen to have a diameter over one quarter that of Earth, relatively large compared to its planetary companion. In our Solar System, only Pluto and Charon are closer together in size. Striking features of the Earth visible to the passing spacecraft include blue oceans and white clouds, showing the Earth to be truly a water world.

Earth & Moon

This amazing photo of the sunlit earth particularly portions of the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean was captured by Apollo 17 in October 20, 1968. Apollo 17 is the eleventh manned space mission of the Apollo program.

Image credit: Chandra: NASA/CXC/SAO, Spitzer: NASA/JPL-Caltech, Hubble: NASA/STScI

A new image of two tangled galaxies has been released by NASA’s Great Observatories. The Antennae galaxies, located about 62 million light-years from Earth, are shown in this composite image from the Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue), the Hubble Space Telescope (gold and brown), and the Spitzer Space Telescope (red). The Antennae galaxies take their name from the long, antenna-like arms seen in wide-angle views of the system. These features were produced in the collision.

The collision, which began more than 100 million years ago and is still occurring, has triggered the formation of millions of stars in clouds of dusts and gas in the galaxies. The most massive of these young stars have already sped through their evolution in a few million years and exploded as supernovas.

The X-ray image from Chandra shows huge clouds of hot, interstellar gas, which have been injected with rich deposits of elements from supernova explosions. This enriched gas, which includes elements such as oxygen, iron, magnesium and silicon, will be incorporated into new generations of stars and planets. The bright, point-like sources in the image are produced by material falling onto black holes and neutron stars that are remnants of the massive stars. Some of these black holes may have masses that are almost one hundred times that of the sun.

The Spitzer data show infrared light from warm dust clouds that have been heated by newborn stars, with the brightest clouds lying in the overlap region between the two galaxies. The Hubble data reveal old stars and star-forming regions in gold and white, while filaments of dust appear in brown. Many of the fainter objects in the optical image are clusters containing thousands of stars.

Named for the crescent-shaped wave made by a ship as it moves through water, a bow shock can be created in space when two streams of gas collide. LL Ori emits a vigorous solar wind, a stream of charged particles moving rapidly outward from the star. Our own Sun has a less energetic version of this wind that is responsible for auroral displays on the Earth.

The material in the fast wind from LL Ori collides with slow-moving gas evaporating away from the center of the Orion Nebula, which is located to the lower right in this Heritage image. The surface where the two winds collide is the crescent-shaped bow shock seen in the image.

Unlike a water wave made by a ship, this interstellar bow shock is a three-dimensional structure. The filamentary emission has a very distinct boundary on the side facing away from LL Ori, but is diffuse on the side closest to the star, a characteristic common to many bow shocks.

A second, fainter bow shock can be seen around a star near the upper right-hand corner of the Heritage image. Astronomers have identified numerous shock fronts in this complex star-forming region and are using this data to understand the many complex phenomena associated with the birth of stars.

This image was taken in February 1995 as part of the Hubble Orion Nebula mosaic. A close visitor in our Milky Way galaxy, the nebula is only 1,500 light-years from Earth. The filters used in this color composite represent oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen emissions.