Posts tagged "Astronomy"
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Notes: 57 / 3 months ago from unknownskywalker
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Notes: 10 / 3 months ago from popmech (originally from sbjournal)
Scattered light from the Boomerang Nebula, a cloud of gas and dust being ejected from a central star. The ejection process is called bipolar outflow. Bipolar outflows occur both from very young stars that are still in the process of forming, and from old stars nearing the ends of their lives. The Boomerang is believed to be the ejected outer layers from an old red giant.
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Notes: 62 / 4 months ago from unknownskywalker
Pulverized Planet Dust May Lie Around Double Stars
Tight double-star systems might not be the best places for life to spring up, according to a new study using data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. The infrared observatory spotted a surprisingly large amount of dust around three mature, close-orbiting star pairs. Where did the dust come from? Astronomers say it might be the aftermath of tremendous planetary collisions.
The particular class of double stars in the study, RS Canum Venaticorums (RS CVns for short), are separated by only about two million miles, or two percent of the distance between Earth and our sun. The stellar pairs orbit around each other every few days, with one face on each star perpetually locked and pointed toward the other.
The close-knit stars are similar to the sun in size and are probably about a billion to a few billion years old — roughly the age of our sun when life first evolved on Earth. But these stars spin much faster, and, as a result, have powerful magnetic fields, and giant, dark spots. The magnetic activity drives strong stellar winds that slow the stars down, pulling the twirling duos closer over time. And this is where the planetary chaos may begin.
As the stars cozy up to each other, their gravitational influences change, and this could cause disturbances to planetary bodies orbiting around both stars. Comets and any planets that may exist in the systems would start jostling about and banging into each other, sometimes in powerful collisions.
Above: (1) This artist’s concept illustrates an imminent planetary collision around a pair of double stars. (2) This artist’s concept illustrates a tight pair of stars and a surrounding disk of dust — most likely the shattered remains of planetary smashups.
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Notes: 93125 / 4 months ago from unknownskywalker (originally from carl00s01)
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Notes: 16 / 4 months ago from serina
![serina:
[Wallpaper]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxeje0OK8T1qaqnguo1_500.jpg)
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Notes: 7125 / 5 months ago from serina (originally from simpleflaw)
Just to lie under that…woah…
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Notes: 151 / 5 months ago from unknownskywalker
December 2011 Total Lunar Eclipse
The Earth passed between the moon and the sun this morning, treating early risers to a cosmic, rusty-red lunar light spectacular. This was the last chance to see the natural wonder of a total lunar eclipse in 2011.
It was a rare chance to see an ‘impossible’ eclipse, with the moon red and the rising sun in the sky simultaneously. Those in western North America had the best views well before dawn at 4.45am PST, and viewers could still catch the eclipse until as late as 6.05am PST. Unfortunately, sunrise and moonset stopped those in the eastern U.S. from watching the eclipse.
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Notes: 41542 / 5 months ago from whatisrxpnow (originally from slaves-shall-serve)
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Notes: 23 / 6 months ago from serina
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Notes: 147 / 6 months ago from unknownskywalker
Galactic bridge
Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, appears in this stunning wide angle view as a bridge which seems to connect Paranal Mountain, the VLT site (on the left) with the nearby peak, home of the VISTA survey telescope. The brightest area, crossed by dark lanes corresponds to the central bulge of our galaxy that we see perfectly edge-on.
On the right, just above the VISTA telescope, the Andromeda galaxy (M31) is clearly visible as an elongated bright spot. M31 is a giant spiral galaxy, larger than the Milky Way, member of our Local Group and located some 2 million light-years away.
Because of the exceptional quality of the sky, stars are still perfectly visible just above the horizon, where clouds typically cover the Pacific Ocean, only 12 km away from the observatory.
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Notes: 101 / 6 months ago from unknownskywalker
Total Eclipse of the Moon
A total lunar eclipse occurs when the moon passes completely beneath Earth’s shadow. On Dec. 10, 2011, the second of this year’s two total lunar eclipses will occur, and will be visible in Asia, Australia, and will rise and set over Europe and North America, respectively. The first total lunar eclipse of the year occured June 15.
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Notes: 23 / 6 months ago from unknownskywalker
Leonid Fireball over Tenerife
The colorful meteor trail and final flare was captured in the early morning of November 18 over the Canary Island Observatorio del Teide on Tenerife. Inset are two exposures of this fireball’s persistent train. The consecutive train images follow the meteor’s flash by several minutes as high altitude winds disperse the faint, smokey trail.
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Notes: 6 / 6 months ago
A Leonid Meteor streaks above the desert sky in California in 1998 (Photo by Jerry Schad, Getty Images).
Leonid Meteor shower peaked on Thursday, November 17th this year (sorry about the late post). You can find more information at HuffingtonPost.com and
http://www.space.com/13637-leonid-meteor-shower-peak-observing-tips.html -
Notes: 415 / 6 months ago from unknownskywalker
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Notes: 273 / 6 months ago from unknownskywalker
The Visible Universe, Then and Now
Before the telescope was invented in 1608, our picture of the universe consisted of six planets, our moon, the sun and any stars we could see in the Milky Way galaxy. But as our light-gathering capabilities have grown, so too have the boundaries of the visible universe. Popular Science’s interactive map shows how the known universe has grown from 1950 to 2011.
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