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Zoom into a New VISTA of the Sculptor Galaxy

paul — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 22:37:44 +0000

The new VISTA telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile (the Visible and InfraredSurvey Telescope for Astronomy) has captured a great new image of the Sculptor Galaxy(NGC 253), and this video allows you to zoom in for a closer look. The sequence starts with a wide view of the southern sky far from the Milky Way. Only a few stars are visible, but then VISTA brings us in closer where the view shifts to the very detailed new infrared image of NGC 253 provided by the new telescope at Paranal. By observing in infrared light VISTA’s view is less affected by dust and reveals a myriad of cooler stars as well as a prominent bar of stars across the central region. The VISTA image provides much new information on the history and development of the galaxy.

Young Star Cluster Westerlund 2

admin — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 15:47:12 +0000

Dusty stellar nursery RCW 49 surrounds young star cluster Westerlund 2 in this remarkable composite skyscape from beyond the visible spectrum of light. Infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope is shown in black and white, complimenting the Chandra X-ray image data (in false color) of the hot energetic stars within the cluster’s central region. Looking toward the grand southern constellation Centaurus, both views reveal stars and structures hidden from optical telescopes by obscuring dust. Westerlund 2 itself is a mere 2 million years old or less, and contains some of our galaxy’s most luminous, massive and therefore short-lived stars. The infrared signatures of proto-planetary disks have also been identified in the intense star forming region. At the cluster’s estimated distance of 20,000 light-years, the square marking the Chandra field of view would be about 50 light-years on a side.Credit: X-ray; Y.Nazé, G.Rauw, J.Manfroid (Université de Liège), CXC, NASA

Starry Night of Alamut

paul — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 21:18:07 +0000

A meteor’s streak and the arc of the Milky Way hang over the imposing mountain fortress of Alamut in this starry scene. Found in the central Alborz Mountains of Iran, Alamut Castle was built into the rock in the 9th century. The name means Eagle’s Nest. Home of the legendary Assassins featured in the adventure movie Prince of Persia, Alamut was also historically a center for libraries and education. For a time, it was the residence of important 13th century Persian scholar and astronomer Nasir al-Din al-Tusi. To identify the stars in a night sky Tusi certainly pondered, just slide your cursor over the image. Highlights include bright white stars Deneb (in Cygnus), Vega, and Altair, nebulae near the Galactic Center, and the dark obscuring dust clouds of the Milky Way also known as the Great Rift. Lights at the lower right are from small villages and the capital Tehran, over 100 kilometers away to the southwest.

Image Credit & Copyright: Babak Tafreshi (TWAN)

Hydrogen in M51

paul — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 22:02:40 +0000

This is perhaps the clearest image of M51 that I have yet seen. “M51 is a large galaxy, over 60,000 light-years across, with a readily apparent spiral structure. Also cataloged as NGC 5194, M51 is a part of a well-known interacting galaxy pair, its spiral arms and dust lanes clearly sweeping in front of companion galaxy NGC 5195 (top). This dramatically processed color composite combines M51 image data from the Calar Alto Observatory’s 1.2 meter telescope. The data include long exposures through a narrow hydrogen alpha filter that trace emission from atomic hydrogen. Reddish hydrogen emission regions, called HII regions, are the regions of intense star formation seen to lie mainly along M51’s bright spiral arms. Intriguingly, this composite also shows red hydrogen emission structures in the faint features extending even beyond NGC 5195, toward the top of the frame.”

Credit & Copyright: CAHA, Descubre Foundation, DSA, OAUV, Vicent Peris (OAUV / PixInsight), Jack Harvey (SSRO),
Steven Mazlin (SSRO), Carlos Sonnenstein (Valkanik), Juan Conejero (PixInsight).

Hydrogen in M51

“Data” Narrates Hubble Documentary

paul — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 21:42:54 +0000

Brent Spiner (Data from Star Trek) is the narrator in this documentary movie “Hubble: Twenty Years of Discovery” in celebration of the Hubble twenty-year milestone, as NASA looks back at the contributions of this extraordinary scientific tool, and the scientists who created it.

: Credit: NASA, ESA, The Hubble Key Project Team, and The High-Z Supernova Search Team

Wide Angle: The Cat’s Paw Nebula

paul — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 21:36:53 +0000

Nebulae are perhaps as famous for being identified with familiar shapes as perhaps cats are for getting into trouble. Still, no known cat could have created the vast Cat’s Paw Nebula visible in Scorpius. At 5,500 light years distant, Cat’s Paw is an emission nebula with a red color that originates from an abundance of ionized hydrogen atoms. Alternatively known as the Bear Claw Nebula or NGC 6334, stars nearly ten times the mass of our Sun have been born there in only the past few million years. Pictured above, a wide angle, deep field image of the Cat’s Paw nebula was culled from the second Digitized Sky Survey.

Wide Angle: The Cat's Paw Nebula

Hubble Celebrates 20 Years of Awe and Discovery

paul — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 21:35:03 +0000

NASA’s most prolific space observatory has past the 20 years mark this month. Hard to believe that it was on April 24, 1990, when the space shuttle and crew of STS-31 were launched to deploy the Hubble Space Telescope into a low Earth orbit. Hubble’s capabilities have made it one of the most embraced science instrument ever built. Hubble discoveries revolutionized nearly all areas of current astronomical research, from planetary science to cosmology. Nasa have released a brand new Hubble photo of a small portion of one of the largest seen star-birth regions in the galaxy, the Carina Nebula.

“Towers of cool hydrogen laced with dust rise from the wall of the nebula. The scene is reminiscent of Hubble’s classic “Pillars of Creation” photo from 1995, but is even more striking in appearance. The image captures the top of a three-light-year-tall pillar of gas and dust that is being eaten away by the brilliant light from nearby bright stars. The pillar is also being pushed apart from within, as infant stars buried inside it fire off jets of gas that can be seen streaming from towering peaks like arrows sailing through the air.”

Stunning Timescape from Tom Lowe

paul — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 22:59:46 +0000

Here is a fantastic video and audio timlapse of the night sky from Tom Lowe astronomy timelapse. It is well worth a watch.

Timescapes: “Death is the Road to Awe”

Timescapes: “Death is the Road to Awe” from Tom Lowe @ Timescapes on Vimeo.

M31-Milky Way simulated collision

paul — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 22:55:03 +0000

It may be a few billion years away(about 4.5), but it is believed that the two largest galaxies in our local group will merge. The radial velocity of the Andromeda galaxy with respect to the Milky Way can be measured by examining the Doppler shift of spectral lines from stars in the galaxy, but the transverse velocity cannot be directly measured. Thus, while it is known that the Andromeda galaxy is getting closer to the Milky Way by about 120 km/s, there is no way to tell whether it is going to collide or miss. There are lots of examples from Hubble of galaxy collision as shown below.

Galaxy Collision: Picture Source: NASA, Hubble Space Telescope

You can get a much closer look using a zoomable image of the Antenna Galaxies at the NASA website.

There is also a cool simulation of what the Andromeda and Milky Way merge might actually look like.

Images of the Eyjafjallajokull Volcano in Iceland

paul — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 22:28:46 +0000

I was on a train to Cork in the south of Ireland this Thursday morning when I heard about canceled flights across the UK and Ireland. I never imagined that the cloud of ash responsible was so large or so significant in size. Reports that flights would reopen by Thursday evening were clearly optimistic. I have looked around and here are some images and reports from the eruption.

Scientists said the eruption under the ice cap was 10 to 20 times more powerful than an eruption from the Eyjafjallajokullin Volcano late last month. “This is a very much more violent eruption because it’s interacting with ice and water,” said Andy Russell, an expert in glacial flooding at the University of Newcastle in northern England, in an article on the CBC website.

Photograph credit: Árni Sæberg, Icelandic Coast Guard

Steam explodes from a glacier-topped Iceland volcano in an aerial picture taken April 14, 2010, by the Icelandic Coast Guard.

Dramatic footage has been released of the erupting volcano from ITN.

NASA’s EO-1 Satellite took this image on April 1, 2010. NASA image by Robert Simmon, using ALI data from the EO-1 team

Credit NASA

A man looks at part of Iceland’s main coastal road, which was broken following floods on April 14, 2010.

Photograph by Brynjar Gauti, AP

The MODIS instrument on NASA’s Terra satellite captured an Ash plume from Eyjafjallajokull Volcano over the North Atlantic at 11:35 UTC (7:35 a.m. EDT) on April 15, 2010. Credit: NASA/MODIS Rapid Response Team

The MODIS instrument on NASA's Terra satellite captured an Ash plume from Eyjafjallajokull Volcano over the North Atlantic at 11:35 UTC (7:35 a.m. EDT) on April 15, 2010. Credit: NASA/MODIS Rapid Response Team

Never before seen stars in the Rosette Nebula

paul — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 20:46:45 +0000

Another stunning image from Herschel reveals the formation of previously unseen large stars, each one up to ten times the mass of our Sun. These are the stars that will influence where and how the next generation of stars are formed. The image is a new release of ‘OSHI’, ESA’s Online Showcase of Herschel Images.

The Rosette Nebula resides some 5000 light-years from Earth and is associated with a larger cloud that contains enough dust and gas to make the equivalent of 10 000 Sun-like stars. The Herschel image shows half of the nebula and most of the Rosette cloud. The massive stars powering the nebula lie to the right of the image but are invisible at these wavelengths. Each colour represents a different temperature of dust, from –263ºC (only 10ºC above absolute zero) in the red emission to –233ºC in the blue. The bright smudges are dusty cocoons hiding massive protostars. These will eventually become stars containing around ten times the mass of the Sun. The small spots near the centre and in the redder regions of the image are lower mass protostars, similar in mass to the Sun.

Infrared image of the Rosette molecular cloud by the Herschel space observatory. Credits: ESA/PACS & SPIRE Consortium/HOBYS Key Programme Consortia

Spitzer’s Orion

paul — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 22:06:59 +0000

Few cosmic vistas excite the imagination like the Orion Nebula, an immense stellar nursery some 1,500 light-years away. Spanning about 40 light-years across the region, this new infrared image from the Spitzer Space Telescope was constructed from data intended to monitor the brightness of the nebula’s young stars, many still surrounded by dusty, planet-forming disks. Orion’s young stars are only about 1 million years old, compared to the Sun’s age of 4.6 billion years. The region’s hottest stars are found in the Trapezium Cluster, the brightest cluster near picture center. Spitzer’s liquid helium coolant ran out in May 2009, so this false color view is from two channels that still remain sensitive to infrared light at warmer operating temperatures.