[neilep]

All-Sky Milky Way Panorama
Credit & Copyright: Axel Mellinger (Central Mich. U)


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If you could go far away from the Earth and look around the entire sky -- what would you see? Such was the goal of the All-Sky Milky Way Panorama 2.0 project of Axel Mellinger. Presented above is the result: a digital compilation of over 3,000 images comprising the highest resolution digital panorama of the entire night sky yet created. An interactive zoom version, featuring over 500 million pixels, can be found here. Every fixed astronomical object visible to the unaided eye has been imaged, including every constellation, every nebula, and every star cluster. Moreover, millions of individual stars are also visible, all in our Milky Way Galaxy, and many a thousand times fainter than a human can see. Dark filaments of dust lace the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy, visible across the image center. The satellite galaxies Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are visible on the lower right

[neilep]

Dust Sculptures in the Rosette Nebula
Credit & Copyright: John Ebersole


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Nice biggy piccy HERE

 What creates the cosmic dust sculptures in the Rosette Nebula? Noted for the common beauty of its overall shape, parts of the Rosette Nebula, also known as NGC 2237, show beauty even when viewed up close. Visible above are globules of dark dust and gas that are slowly being eroded away by the energetic light and winds by nearby massive stars. Left alone long enough, the molecular-cloud globules would likely form stars and planets. The above image was taken in very specific colors of Sulfur (shaded red), Hydrogen (green), and Oxygen (blue). The Rosette Nebula spans about 50 light-years across, lies about 4,500 light-years away, and can be seen with a small telescope towards the constellation of the Unicorn (Monoceros).

[Eric A. Taylor]

"Residents of Tainan learned a lesson in whale biology after the decomposing remains of a 60-ton sperm whale exploded on a busy street, showering nearby cars and shops with blood and organs and stopping traffic for hours."

Source : MSNBC

 [ Invalid Attachment ]

Links : Naked Scientists Radio Show coverage of this story 1st February 2004 http://www.thenakedscientists.com/html/shows/2004.02.01.htm

This is not the only exploding whale in history. It happened in 1970 on a beach in Oregon. Paul Lynnman can still be found as a radio talk show host in Portland. He stated that he and his camera man smelled so bad the pilot hired to fly them back to Portland refused to let them aboard his plane. Several videos can be seen on youtube. I liked the quote "The blast blew blubber beyond all believable bounds."

[neilep]

A Graceful Arc
Credit & Copyright: Tony Hallas



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BIG PICCY HERE (It's worth it !)

 The graceful arc of the Milky Way begins and ends at two mountain peaks in this solemn night sky panorama. Created from a 24 frame mosaic, exposures tracking Earth and sky were made separately, with northern California's Mount Lassen at the left and Mount Shasta at the far right, just below the star and dust clouds of the galactic center. Lassen and Shasta are volcanoes in the Cascade Mountain Range of North America, an arc of the volcanic Pacific Ring of Fire. In the dim, snow-capped peaks, planet Earth seems to echo the subtle glow of the Milky Way's own faint, unresolved starlight.

[neilep]

A Force from Empty Space: The Casimir Effect
Credit & Copyright: Umar Mohideen (U. California at Riverside)




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 This tiny ball provides evidence that the universe will expand forever. Measuring slightly over one tenth of a millimeter, the ball moves toward a smooth plate in response to energy fluctuations in the vacuum of empty space. The attraction is known as the Casimir Effect, named for its discoverer, who, 50 years ago, was trying to understand why fluids like mayonnaise move so slowly. Today, evidence is accumulating that most of the energy density in the universe is in an unknown form dubbed dark energy. The form and genesis of dark energy is almost completely unknown, but postulated as related to vacuum fluctuations similar to the Casimir Effect but generated somehow by space itself. This vast and mysterious dark energy appears to gravitationally repel all matter and hence will likely cause the universe to expand forever. Understanding vacuum fluctuations is on the forefront of research not only to better understand our universe but also for stopping micro-mechanical machine parts from sticking together.

[neilep]

A Roll Cloud Over Uruguay
Credit & Copyright: Daniela Mirner Eberl



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PHEW !!


What kind of cloud is this? A roll cloud. These rare long clouds may form near advancing cold fronts. In particular, a downdraft from an advancing storm front can cause moist warm air to rise, cool below its dew point, and so form a cloud. When this happens uniformly along an extended front, a roll cloud may form. Roll clouds may actually have air circulating along the long horizontal axis of the cloud. A roll cloud is not thought to be able to morph into a tornado. Unlike a similar shelf cloud, a roll cloud, a type of Arcus cloud, is completely detached from their parent cumulonimbus cloud. Pictured above, a roll cloud extends far into the distance in 2009 January above Las Olas Beach in Maldonado, Uruguay.

[neilep]

Unusual Asteroid Tail Implies Powerful Collision
Credit: NASA, ESA, D. Jewitt (UCLA)


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 What is this strange object? First discovered on ground based LINEAR images on January 6, the object appeared unusual enough to investigate further with the Hubble Space Telescope last week. Pictured above, what Hubble saw indicates that P/2010 A2 is unlike any object ever seen before. At first glance, the object appears to have the tail of a comet. Close inspection, however, shows a 140-meter nucleus offset from the tail center, very unusual structure near the nucleus, and no discernable gas in the tail. Knowing that the object orbits in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, a preliminary hypothesis that appears to explain all of the known clues is that P/2010 A2 is the debris left over from a recent collision between two small asteroids. If true, the collision likely occurred at over 15,000 kilometers per hour -- five times the speed of a rifle bullet -- and liberated energy in excess of a nuclear bomb. Pressure from sunlight would then spread out the debris into a trailing tail. Future study of P/2010 A2 may better indicate the nature of the progenitor collision and may help humanity better understand the early years of our Solar System, when many similar collisions occurred.

[neilep]

Cassini Spacecraft Crosses Saturn's Ring Plane
Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, ISS, JPL, ESA, NASA

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 If this is Saturn, where are the rings? When Saturn's "appendages" disappeared in 1612, Galileo did not understand why. Later that century, it became understood that Saturn's unusual protrusions were rings and that when the Earth crosses the ring plane, the edge-on rings will appear to disappear. This is because Saturn's rings are confined to a plane many times thinner, in proportion, than a razor blade. In modern times, the robot Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn now also crosses Saturn's ring plane. A series of plane crossing images from 2005 February was dug out of the vast online Cassini raw image archive by interested Spanish amateur Fernando Garcia Navarro. Pictured above, digitally cropped and set in representative colours, is the striking result. Saturn's thin ring plane appears in blue, bands and clouds in Saturn's upper atmosphere appear in gold. Since Saturn just passed its equinox, today the ring plane is pointed close to the Sun and the rings could not cast the high dark shadows seen across the top of this image, taken back in 2005. Moons appear as bumps in the rings.

[RD]

Allegedly this a NASA image of Mars ...


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http://www.presidiacreative.com/21-unbelievable-photographs-of-mars/

[neilep]

NGC 2440: Cocoon of a New White Dwarf
Credit: H. Bond (STScI), R. Ciardullo (PSU), WFPC2, HST, NASA




Like a butterfly, a white dwarf star begins its life by casting off a cocoon that enclosed its former self. In this analogy, however, the Sun would be a caterpillar and the ejected shell of gas would become the prettiest of all! In the above cocoon, the planetary nebula designated NGC 2440, contains one of the hottest white dwarf stars known. The white dwarf can be seen as the bright dot near the photo's center. Our Sun will eventually become a white dwarf butterfly but not for another 5 billion years. The above false color image was post-processed by Forrest Hamilton.

[neilep]

Galaxy Group Hickson 31
Credit: NASA, ESA, J. English (U. Manitoba), and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA);
Acknowledgement: S. Gallagher (U. Western Ontario)






 Will the result of these galactic collisions be one big elliptical galaxy? Quite possibly, but not for another billion years. Pictured above, several of the dwarf galaxies of in the Hickson Compact Group 31 are seen slowly merging. Two of the brighter galaxies are colliding on the far left, while an elongated galaxy above is connected to them by an unusual bridge of stars. Inspection of the above image further indicates that the bright duo trail a rope of stars pointing to the spiral galaxy on the far right. Most assuredly, the pictured galaxies of Hickson Compact Group 31 will pass through and destroy each other, millions of stars will form and explode, and thousands of nebula will form and dissipate before the dust settles and the final galaxy emerges about one billion years from now. The above image is a composite of images taken in infrared light by the Spitzer Space Telescope, ultraviolet light by the GALEX space telescope, and visible light by the Hubble Space Telescope. Hickson Compact Group 31 spans about 150 thousand light years and lies about 150 million light years away toward the constellation of Eridanus.

[neilep]

M78 and Reflecting Dust Clouds in Orion
Credit & Copyright: Ignacio de la Cueva Torregrosa



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Super Big Piccy here

 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. The same type of scattering that colors the daytime sky further enhances the blue color. M78 is about five light-years across and visible through a small telescope. M78 appears above only as it was 1600 years ago, however, because that is how long it takes light to go from there to here. M78 belongs to the larger Orion Molecular Cloud Complex that contains the Great Nebula in Orion and the Horsehead Nebula.

[neilep]

Centaurus A
Image Credit & Copyright: Tim Carruthers





Only 11 million light-years away, Centaurus A is the closest active galaxy to planet Earth. Spanning over 60,000 light-years, the peculiar elliptical galaxy, also known as NGC 5128, is featured in this sharp color image. Centaurus A is apparently the result of a collision of two otherwise normal galaxies resulting in a fantastic jumble of star clusters and imposing dark dust lanes. Near the galaxy's center, left over cosmic debris is steadily being consumed by a central black hole with a billion times the mass of the Sun. As in other active galaxies, that process likely generates the radio, X-ray, and gamma-ray energy radiated by Centaurus A.

[neilep]

Evidence Mounts for Water on the Moon
Image Courtesy: George Dalisay


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In 2009, space missions revealed tantalizing signs of water on or near the lunar surface, once thought of as a dry and desolate environment. But researchers are now offering this archival picture as further evidence that humans might one day be able to use the Moon's newly discovered resource to directly quench their thirst. Found in a pile of old Apollo lunar surface photographs, the picture reveals an object at the far left of the frame that appears to be a drinking fountain, surprisingly close to one of the Lunar Module landing struts. When asked why no mention of the object was in their reports, the astronauts replied that they discovered their spacesuit gloves were too bulky to allow them to activate the fountain, so they had simply ignored it during their stay on the lunar surface. Perhaps not coincidentally, this picture was taken exactly 40 years ago, on April Fools Day ...

[djdave]

<font size="4">Ultraviolet pictures hint at origin of Saturn's rings</font id="size4">

The best view ever of Saturn's rings in the ultraviolet indicates there is more ice toward the outer part of the rings, hinting at ring origin and evolution, say two University of Colorado at Boulder researchers involved in the Cassini mission.

<font size="1">From the inside out, the "Cassini division" in faint red at left is followed
by the A ring in its entirety. The A ring begins with a "dirty" interior of red
followed by a general pattern of more turquoise as it spreads away from the planet,
 which indicates denser material made up of ice. The red band roughly three-fourths of
the way outward in the A ring is known as the Encke gap.</font id="size1">

<font size="1">This image shows the outer C and inner B rings respectively from left to right,
 with the inner B ring beginning a little more than halfway across the image. The general pattern
is from "dirty" red particles to the denser ice shown in turquoise as the ringlets spread outward.</font id="size1">
The ring system begins from the inside out with the D, C, B and A rings followed by
the F, G and E rings. The red in both images indicates sparser ringlets likely made of "dirty," and possibly smaller, particles than in the denser,
 icier turquoise ringlets.

<u>SOURCE: SPACEFLIGHTNOW.COM</u>

<font color="blue">'Men are the same as women...just inside out !'</font id="blue">

This is like a Optical Illusion.

[neilep]

Full Moon Aureole Over Toronto


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Photographer: Andrew Yee
Summary Author: Andrew Yee

On December 1, 2009 as the full Moon ascended over Toronto, Canada, a layer of altostratus clouds moved in and produced a remarkable aureole. Water droplets in these clouds, perhaps along with ice crystals, scattered and diffracted the moonlight. The interference of the diffracted light waves formed the aureole, which sports a bluish inner ring and an orange-yellow outer ring.

A full Moon is so bright that normally an image showing rings or arcs about it would have the Moon itself overexposed. However, the cloud layer on this occasion was just thick enough to greatly reduce the brightness of the moonlight, offering an unusual opportunity to photograph the aureole and the full Moon in a single exposure.

[neilep]

Islands of Four Mountains from Above

Credit & Copyright: Earth Observatory, NASA, Terra satellite, ASTER; Processing by: Jesse Allen & Robert Simmon

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 Our Earth is covered by volcanoes. Volcanoes are breaks in the Earth's cool surface where hot liquid rock from the interior comes out -- sometimes suddenly. In the above image from the ASTER camera aboard NASA's orbiting Terra satellite, snow-capped volcanoes are seen from overhead that compose the picturesque Islands of the Four Mountains in the Aleutian Islands, Alaska, USA. The islands contain restless Mt. Cleveland, an active volcano currently being watched to see if it emits an ash cloud that could affect air travel over parts of North America. A close look at Mt. Cleveland, seen near the image center, shows a red rocky base, a white snow-covered peak, a light plume of gas and ash, and dark lanes where ash and debris fell or flowed. Millions of volcanoes have likely been active over the turbulent history of the Earth's surface, while about 20 volcanoes are erupting even today, at any given time.

[neilep]

Microwave Milky Way
Credit: ESA, Planck HFI & LFI Consortia




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 Seen from our edge-on perspective, the Milky Way Galaxy sprawls across the middle of this false-color, all sky view. The expansive microwave map is based on 1 year's worth of data from instruments onboard the sky-surveying Planck spacecraft. Remarkably, the bright stripe of gas and dust clouds along the galactic plane and the galaxy's enormous arcing structures seen at microwave energies are hundreds or thousands of light-years away, while the mottled regions at the top and bottom represent the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation, some 13.7 billion light-years distant. Left over from the Big Bang, fluctuations in the CMB reflect the origins of structure in the evolving universe. Analyzing the microwave data, Planck scientists plan to separate the contributions of the Milky Way and CMB radiation. The work will ferret out the characteristics of the CMB across the entire sky and glean information about the make up of our Milky Way Galaxy.

[FuzzyUK]

I took these pictures in the City of Cambridge, UK at 11pm on the evening of 9 July 2010, and the following morning at 3 am, of a magnificent display of Noctilucent clouds.




The BBC are running some experiments involving radar at 30 Mhz. John Rowlands recently explained on 'Material World' - Thu, 15 Jul 2010 of a possible pattern to these clouds.  (check the last 7 min of the program)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00t0g9w/Material_World_15_07_2010/

If correct, it is forecast that such clouds may be visible again tonight (19 July) in Northern latitudes

[neilep]

The Crown of the Sun
Credit & Copyright: Alain Maury, Jean-Luc Dauvergne


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 During a total solar eclipse, the Sun's extensive outer atmosphere, or corona, is an inspirational sight. Subtle shades and shimmering features that engage the eye span a brightness range of over 10,000 to 1, making them notoriously difficult to capture in a single photograph. But this composite of 7 consecutive digital images over a range of exposure times comes close to revealing the crown of the Sun in all its glory. The telescopic views were recorded from the Isla de Pascua (Easter Island) during July 11's total solar eclipse and also show solar prominences extending just beyond the edge of the eclipsed sun. Remarkably, features on the dim, near side of the New Moon can also be made out, illuminated by sunlight reflected from a Full Earth.