Hubble views NGC 4522
Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) allows astronomers to study an interesting and important phenomenon called ram pressure stripping that is so powerful, it is capable of mangling galaxies and even halting their star formation.Credit: NASA & ESA
NGC 3372: The Great Carina Nebula
One of our galaxy’s largest star-forming regions.
(via abcstarstuff)
05.29.12 ♥ 13NASA EDGE is proud to join forces with the Sun Earth Day Team to celebrate the Transit of Venus! On June 5, 2012, we will air a live ‘remote’ webcast from Mauna Kea, Hawaii, through our partnership with the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy. The event will not be visible from the continental U.S. in its entirety. A mountainside Visitors Station site near the observatories in Hilo, Hawaii will give a wonderful view of the entire transit with little chance of cloud cover to a worldwide audience.
The live Webcast is set to begin at 11:45am HAWAIIAN time (9:45pm UTC).
Is Pluto a planet? (by CGPGrey)
The Swan and the Butterfly
This image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows NGC 7026, a planetary nebula. Located just beyond the tip of the tail of the constellation of Cygnus, this butterfly-shaped cloud of glowing gas and dust is the wreckage of a star similar to the Sun.
Fluorescent lights on Earth get their bright colours from the gases they are filled with. Neon signs, famously, produce a bright red colour, while ultraviolet lights (black lights) typically contain mercury. The same goes for nebulae: their vivid colours are produced by the mix of gases present in them.
This image of NGC 7026 shows starlight in green, light from glowing nitrogen gas in red, and light from oxygen in blue (in reality, this appears green, but the colour in this image has been shifted to increase the contrast). As well as visible light, NGC 7026 emits X-ray radiation, which is a result of the extremely high temperatures of the gas in NGC 7026.
(via abcstarstuff)
A lava lake glows in Halemaumau vent, with Pu’u O’o vent on the left and the Milky Way shimmering in the sky overhead, on Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. (Photo: G. Brad Lewis / Barcroft Media via The Telegraph)
Stephen Colbert Interviews Neil deGrasse Tyson (youtube)
(Source: erosum, via lights-in-the-sky)
I seem to be saying two things that contradict each other. On the one hand, we trust scientific knowledge, on the other hand, we are always ready to modify in-depth part of our conceptual structure about the world. But there is no contradiction, because the idea of a contradiction comes from what I see as the deepest misunderstanding about science: the idea that science is about certainty.
—Carlo Rovelli
Theoretical Physicist; University of the Mediterraneum, Marseille; Author, Quantum Gravity
(Source: casyopeia)
NASA Wanted Astronauts to View Venus Up Close
In a little over a week, we’re all going to be looking skyward and focusing our sights (safely) on Venus as it crosses the disk of the sun. It’s going to be a fantastic view, especially since most of us only ever see Venus as a tiny dot of light in the sky. But in 1967, NASA considered giving three astronauts a really rare view of Venus by sending them on a flyby around the second planet from the sun.
GRB 090423: The Farthest Explosion Yet Measured
Credit: Gemini Observatory / NSF / AURA, D. Fox & A. Cucchiara (Penn State U.), and E. Berger (Harvard Univ.)
Explanation: An explosion so powerful it was seen clear across the visible universe was recorded in gamma-radiation by NASA’s orbiting Swift Observatory. Farther than any known galaxy, quasar, or optical supernova, the gamma-ray burst recorded was clocked at redshift 8.2, making it the farthest explosion of any type yet detected.
(via abcstarstuff)
