Astronomy

Yaylanın yıldızlarıyla metropollerinkiler farklıymış... - Koleksiyoner Ali

"WHY DID WE MAKE THIS? To be blunt: Science, technology, and education are important to us. But we live in a world where the little news we hear of schools, research, and the arts is when they're laying their heads on the chopping block. We live in a world where celebrity and "reality" entertainment is winning the war for our attention. Though this may just seem like it's playing off a funny trope, we do need superheroes in our world. Super men, women (and puppets), like those actualized by PBS, who inspire young generations to be scientists, teachers, and artists. But those heroes will not appear unless we create them." - Joe Silence from Bookmarklet

So very awesome. - MoTO #TeamMonique

"Astronomers have found a planetary system orbiting the star Kepler-62. This five-planet system has two worlds in the habitable zone — the distance from their star at which they receive enough light and warmth for liquid water to theoretically exist on their surfaces. (...) Kepler-62e is 60 percent larger than Earth, while Kepler-62f is about 40 percent larger, making both of them “super-Earths.” They are too small for their masses to be measured, but astronomers expect them to be composed of rock and water, without a significant gaseous envelope. As the warmer of the two worlds, Kepler-62e would have a bit more clouds than Earth, according to computer models. More distant Kepler-62f would need the greenhouse effect from plenty of carbon dioxide to warm it enough to host an ocean. Otherwise, it might become an ice-covered snowball. “Kepler-62e probably has a very cloudy sky and is warm and humid all the way to the polar regions. Kepler-62f would be cooler, but still potentially life-friendly,” said Harvard astronomer and co-author Dimitar Sasselov." - Amira from Bookmarklet

Thank you, @Amira!! :) - Harold Cabezas

"While drifting through the cosmos, a magnificent interstellar dust cloud became sculpted by stellar winds and radiation to assume a recognizable shape. Fittingly named the Horsehead Nebula, it is embedded in the vast and complex Orion Nebula (M42). A potentially rewarding but difficult object to view personally with a small telescope, the above gorgeously detailed image was recently taken in infrared light by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope in honor of the 23rd anniversary of Hubble's launch. The dark molecular cloud, roughly 1,500 light years distant, is cataloged as Barnard 33 and is seen above primarily because it is backlit by the nearby massive star Sigma Orionis. The Horsehead Nebula will slowly shift its apparent shape over the next few million years and will eventually be destroyed by the high energy starlight." - Imabug from Bookmarklet

"NASA’s Great Observatories — the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and the Spitzer Infrared Telescope — have combined forces to create this new image of the Small Magellanic Cloud. The SMC is one of the Milky Way’s closest galactic neighbors. Even though it is a small, or so-called dwarf galaxy, the SMC is so bright that it is visible to the unaided eye from the Southern Hemisphere and near the equator." - Mark H from Bookmarklet

"The various colors represent wavelengths of light across a broad spectrum. X-rays from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory are shown in purple; visible-light from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is colored red, green and blue; and infrared observations from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope are also represented in red. " - Mark H

"The football-shaped elliptical galaxy near the center of this image hosted a surprising supernova last year. PS1-12sk, the yellow dot at image center, is classified as a very rare Type Ibn supernova - only the sixth such example found out of thousands of supernovae. A Type Ibn supernova is thought to come from the explosion of a young, massive star. However, the site of the explosion shows no signs of recent star formation, and a supernova from a massive star has never before been seen in a galaxy of this type." - Mark H from Bookmarklet

"The finding suggests that the host galaxy might be hiding a star factory, allowing it to form massive stars where none were expected. Alternatively, PS1-12sk might have an entirely different origin such as a collision of two white dwarfs, one of which was helium-rich. "This supernova is one-of-a-kind," said Nathan Sanders of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), lead... more... - Mark H

"A new discovery could rewrite the history books on the Milky Way. According to a new study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, our galaxy absorbed a smaller satellite galaxy several million years ago. But more than that, it was a celestial event that culminated in the meeting of each galaxy's central black holes. The ensuing collision resulted in a cataclysmic event that blasted a swath of old stars straight out of the core region at hypervelocity speeds. The theory, put forth by Georgia Institute of Technology's Kelly Holley-Bockelmann and Tamara Bogdanović, suggests that our galaxy has had a violent past — and it may not have been the only encounter like it over the course of its history." - Joe Silence from Bookmarklet

IT WILL KILL AGAIN. :P - Joe Silence

"A comet near Mars may strike it in a powerful impact, potentially making the planet much warmer. The Red Planet is luring many entrepreneurs, including billionaire Dennis Tito, who aims to beat other nations by sending a man and a woman to Mars. The make-or-break window for this possible game-changer is October 2014. At that time, an Oort cloud comet called C/2013 A1, first discovered last month, will approach Mars, missing it by about 35,000 km, which is quite close. However the comet’s trajectory is still uncertain, which leaves a small chance it could impact the planet, said Russian astronomer Leonid Elenin, who worked on calculating the course of the celestial body. The comet will be travelling at a speed of 56 kilometers per second relative to Mars when it passes; if they do collide, the resulting explosion would be equal to a 20,000-gigaton bomb blast – powerful enough to leave a 50-kilometer crater on the planetary surface The event would trigger a major change of the Martian... more... - Bluesun 2600 from Bookmarklet

"There is an outside chance that a newly discovered comet might be on a collision course with Mars. Astronomers are still determining the trajectory of the comet, named C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring), but at the very least, it is going to come fairly close to the Red Planet in October of 2014. "Even if it doesn’t impact, it will look pretty good from Earth, and spectacular from Mars, probably a magnitude -4 comet as seen from Mars' surface," Australian amateur astronomer Ian Musgrave wrote. The comet was discovered in the beginning of 2013 by comet-hunter Robert McNaught at the Siding Spring Observatory in New South Wales, Australia. According to a discussion on the IceInSpace amateur astronomy forum, when the discovery was initially made, astronomers at the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona looked back over their observations to find "pre-recovery" images of the comet dating back to Dec. 8, 2012. These observations placed the orbital trajectory of comet C/2013 A1 right through Mars orbit on Oct. 19, 2014." - Bluesun 2600 from Bookmarklet

"The meteorite that struck central Russia last week, which injured around 1,000 people as it broke apart over a section of the Ural Mountains and sent shockwaves across the ground below, was but one of thousands that have impacted our planet over the past four millennia. Now you can see the location of every recorded meteorite impact on Earth going back to 2,300 BCE all in one heat map created by Javier de la Torre, cofounder of geo software companies Vizzuality and CartoDB. De la Torre created the map using CartoDB's mapping software, which relies on the free crowdsourced OpenStreetMap for its base layer. The meteorite impact site data — 34,513 individual points of impact in total — came from the Meteorological Society, an international nonprofit scientific collaboration. De La Torre was inspired by a map The Guardian newspaper created on its website using the same data." - Bluesun 2600 from Bookmarklet

"This incredibly detailed image comes from the one and only Robert Gendler and was assembled from three separate data sources. The detail for the nebula is from Hubble Space Telescope data, the background starfield from the Gemini Observatory/AURA and the color data from his own equipment. Here we see fanciful gas clouds with thick clumps decorating them. Intense radiation and gas streams from the central dying star in waves, fashioning out hollows and caves in the enveloping clouds. While these clumps in the clouds may appear as wispy details, each serves as a reminder of just how vast space can be… for each an every one of them is about the same size as our Solar System." - Mark H from Bookmarklet

"At the heart of NGC 5189 shines the tiny light of its central star… no bigger than Earth. It wobbles its way through time, rotating rapidly and spewing material into space like a runaway fire hydrant. Astronomers speculate there might be a binary star hidden inside, since usually planetary nebulae of this type have them. However, only one star has been found at the nebula’s center and it might be one very big, very bad wolf." - Mark H

On another Valentine's Day (February 14, 1990), cruising four billion miles from the Sun, the Voyager 1 spacecraft looked back to make this first ever family portrait of our Solar System. The complete portrait is a 60 frame mosaic made from a vantage point 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane. In it, Voyager's wide angle camera frames sweep through the inner Solar System at the left, linking up with gas giant Neptune, at the time the Solar System's outermost planet, at the far right. Positions for Venus, Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are indicated by letters, while the Sun is the bright spot near the center of the circle of frames. The inset frames for each of the planets are from Voyager's narrow field camera. Unseen in the portrait are Mercury, too close to the Sun to be detected, and Mars, unfortunately hidden by sunlight scattered in the camera's optical system. Small, faint Pluto's position was not covered. - Imabug from Bookmarklet

"A meteor streaked across the sky over Russia's Ural Mountains on Friday morning, causing sharp explosions and reportedly injuring around 100 people. Fragments of the meteor fell in a thinly populated area of the Chelyabinsk region, the Emergency Ministry said in a statement. Interior Ministry spokesman Vadim Kolesnikov said 102 people had called for medical assistance following the incident, mostly for treatment of injuries from glass broken by the explosions. Kolsenikov also said about 600 square meters (6,000 square feet) of a roof at a zinc factory had collapsed. Reports conflicted on what exactly happened in the clear skies. A spokeswoman for the Emergency Ministry, Irina Rossius, told The Associated Press that there was a meteor shower, but another ministry spokeswoman, Elena Smirnikh, was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying it was a single meteorite. Amateur video broadcast on Russian television showed an object speeding across the sky about 9:20 a.m. local time (0320 GMT), leaving a thick white contrail and an intense flash." - Bluesun 2600 from Bookmarklet

"A series of explosions in the skies of Russia’s Urals region, reportedly caused by a meteor shower, has sparked panic in three major cities. Witnesses said that houses shuddered, windows were blown out and cellphones stopped working. Atmospheric phenomena have been registered in the cities of Chelyabinsk, Yekaterinburg and Tyumen. In Chelyabinsk, witnesses said the explosion was so loud that it resembled an earthquake and thunder at the same time, and that there were huge trails of smoke across the sky. Others reported seeing burning objects fall to earth. Police in the Chelyabinsk region are reportedly on high alert, and have enacted the ‘Fortress’ plan in order to protect vital infrastructure. Office buildings in downtown Chelyabinsk are being evacuated. Injuries were reported at one of the city’s secondary schools, supposedly from smashed windows. No other injuries have been reported so far. The regional Emergency Ministry said the phenomenon was a meteorite shower, but locals... more... - Bluesun 2600 from Bookmarklet

Looks like they are updating this page. And I've heard unconfirmed reports of additional fireballs being seen across the US tonight also. - Bluesun 2600

"A few years ago when I was a bright-eyed PhD student, I stumbled upon a press release making a provocative argument: a thousand year old supernova remnant in our Galaxy called W49B may have formed from a gamma-ray burst. Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are extreme supernova explosions thought to mark the end of the lives of some very massive stars, and they are the most energetic and luminous events in the Universe. Although astronomers have now found several hundred gamma-ray bursts, these explosions tend to be billions of light years away. So the claim that one may have occurred in our own Galaxy seemed astounding. It got me thinking: what would a gamma-ray burst look like after a thousand years, and what would it leave behind?" - Mark H from Bookmarklet

eccola adesso - Viditù

sto pubblicando la foto, quel poco che sono riuscito a catturare... eccola http://www.flickr.com/photos... - Viditù

"COMET LEMMON UPDATE: Glowing much brighter than expected, Comet Lemmon (C/2012 F6) is gliding through the skies of the southern hemisphere about 92 million miles (0.99 AU) from Earth. Amateur astronomer Rolf Wahl Olsen sends this picture from his backyard in Auckland, New Zealand. "I took this image of Comet Lemmon on the 28th of January," says Olsen. "It has become quite bright now and has also grown a beautiful tail." Discovered on March 23rd 2012 by the Mount Lemmon survey in Arizona, Comet Lemmon is on an elliptical orbit with a period of approximately 11,000 years. This is its first visit to the inner solar system in a very long time. The comet is brightening as it approaches the sun; light curves suggest that it will reach 2nd or 3rd magnitude, similar to the stars in the Big Dipper, in late March when it approaches the sun at about the same distance as Venus (0.7 AU). At the moment, the comet is glowing like a 7th magnitude star, just below the limit of naked-eye visibility.... more... - Bluesun 2600 from Bookmarklet

"You can see the yellowish glow of older stars in the center of the galaxy, making up its central bulge, or “hub”. Cascading out are two lovely spiral arms, glowing blue due to the fierce combined light of millions upon millions of hot, young, massive stars. Festooned across the arms are long strings of opaque dust clouds, blocking the blue light and appearing dark. So far, though spectacular, this is pretty mainstream spiral galaxy stuff." - Mark H from Bookmarklet

"Then you see those red frills, streamers of gas at odd angles to the rest of the galaxy, one each on opposite sides of the galaxy’s core. These are called its anomalous arms, because they don’t line up well at all with M106’s more obvious spiral arms. The red color is a giveaway that we’re seeing gas being warmed by an outside source; hydrogen glows at that color when excited. So... more... - Mark H

"It’s a stunning look at what is known as Thor’s Helmet. This helmet-shaped feature is an emission nebula is located in the constellation of Canis Major, about 15,000 light years from Earth. The nebula is a large expanding bubble illuminated by a central star in its last stage of life — a massive Wolf-Rayet star which is shedding its outer layers of gas at an extremely high rate due to intense radiation pressure. Wolf-Rayet stars are thought to represent a brief stage of evolution near the end of life for giant super massive stars; the last unstable phase before the star explodes as a brilliant supernova. The nebula is some 30 light years in diameter is embedded among a dense star field consisting of thousands of multi-colored stars, adding more beauty to the scene." - Mark H from Bookmarklet

Sixty-three coloured plates illustrating a series of familiar discourses on astronomy. - Mark H from Bookmarklet

"My solar system chauvinism is well-established, but I am as much a sucker for beautiful astrophotos as the rest of you. Once in a while I get a media advisory from the European Southern Observatory about a new pretty picture posted on their website, and then I inevitably lose an hour following links to one stunner after another. Here are a few that particularly struck me on a recent random walk through their website; I heartily encourage all of you to take your own turn through their archives!" - Mark H from Bookmarklet

"Imagine two massive stars orbiting each other. One ends its life as a supernova. The core collapses, but doesn’t have the oomph needed to make a black hole. Instead, it forms a neutron star, an incredibly dense ball of neutron a few kilometers across but with the mass of the Sun. Then, sometime later, the second star explodes and also forms a neutron star. The two compact and ridiculously dense objects orbit each other, and over time (due to complicated relativistic effects) the orbit decays. The two neutron stars get closer, until, eventually, they get so close they merge. The gravity of either star is a billion times that of Earth, so when they merge, it’s a fiercely violent event. There’s a huge explosion, and again you get those twin beams of energy blasting out." - Mark H from Bookmarklet

"If one of those went off now at that distance, it would be bad. Our atmosphere would absorb all the radiation and we’d be safe enough from all that here on Earth’s surface, but we’d lose satellites, the interaction of the high-energy gamma rays would blow out power grids all over the planet, and our civilization would be in big trouble. But remember, these events are very, very... more... - Mark H

"Reull Vallis, the river-like structure in these images, is believed to have formed when running water flowed in the distant martian past, cutting a steep-sided channel through the Promethei Terra Highlands before running on towards the floor of the vast Hellas basin. This sinuous structure, which stretches for almost 1500 km across the martian landscape, is flanked by numerous tributaries, one of which can be clearly seen cutting in to the main valley towards the upper (north) side. These structures are believed to be caused by the passage of loose debris and ice during the 'Amazonian' period (which continues to this day) due to glacial flow along the channel. The structures were formed long after it was originally carved by liquid water during the Hesperian period, which is believed to have ended between 3.5 billion and 1.8 billion years ago." - Mark H from Bookmarklet

"Excitement continues to rise among both professional and amateur astronomers about Comet ISON, which on Nov. 28 of this year might become one of the brightest comets ever seen, outshining such recent dazzlers as Comet Hale-Bopp (1997) and Comet McNaught (2007). Fortunately, Comet ISON was discovered 14 months before this perihelion passage — its closest point to the sun — while still distant and faint, thus giving observers time to plan. Another major advantage is that this fine object will be favorably placed for viewing, first in the morning sky before perihelion passage on Nov. 28, and then both in the morning and evening sky afterward." "Just how bright the comet will become at that moment cannot yet be forecast reliably. In his 2013 Astronomical Calendar, Guy Ottewell writes: "Using what formulas we can for magnitude, we have it reaching -12.6, the brightness of the full moon!"" [I only wish that they hadn't used an image of a Bolide instead of an actual comet here. ] - Bluesun 2600 from Bookmarklet

"To usher in 2013, I’d like to take a look at Messier 13, the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules, which is visible to northern skywatchers both immediately after sunset and, perhaps most spectacularly, again from after about 2 AM until sunrise. To find it at this later time, look above the horizon to the northeast and find the constellation of Hercules near Vega, one of the brightest stars in the sky." - Mark H from Bookmarklet

"Like many of our galaxy’s globular clusters, Messier 13 is old (with an age of around 11.7 billion years), has hundreds of thousands of stars (about 300,000, with a total mass of about half-a-million Suns), and has an intermediate concentration of stars towards the center (it’s class V on a scale of I, the most dense, to XII, the least)." - Mark H

"Every December I pick my favorite images from the previous year to display, a task that is extraordinarily difficult. I always wind up with a list of about 60 or 70, and I have to cull it down mercilessly. Such is the case this year again, and I could pare it only to 21, a score and more of gorgeousness for you to soak in. I choose the pictures not just for their beauty but also because they are interesting, and different—ones that stand out from the crowd somehow." - Mark H from Bookmarklet

thanks for the share! - jose manuel