Thursday, August 16, 2012

Across The Universe - Huge Solar Filament Stretches Across the Sun

Across The Universe - Huge Solar Filament Stretches Across the Sun:
Across The Universe - Huge Solar Filament Stretches Across the Sun
Caption: High resolution full disc hydrogen alpha composite of the Sun on August 5, 2012, comprising of 6 images for the disc and 5 images for the prominences.Credit: Paul Andrew on Flickr.
The Sun wanted to let us know there was action going on in other places in the Solar System besides Mars. A huge, dark-colored filament stretched across nearly half the solar face on August 5th. Estimates are this filament was about 800,000 km in length! Wow! Paul Andrew took six images to create a composite, full image of the Sun, and below is an 11-panel mosaic by Leonard Mercer from Malta to show the surrounding region with the main sunspots 1535, 1538, 1540 present.


Across The Universe - Winds of Change at the Edge of the Solar System

Across The Universe - Winds of Change at the Edge of the Solar System:
Across The Universe - Winds of Change at the Edge of the Solar System
As the venerable Voyager 1 spacecraft hurtles ever outward, breaking through the very borders of our solar system at staggering speeds upwards of 35,000 mph, it’s sending back information about the curious region of space where the Sun’s outward flow of energetic particles meets the more intense cosmic radiation beyond — a boundary called the heliosheath.
Voyager 1 has been traveling through this region for the past seven years, all the while its instruments registering gradually increasing levels of cosmic ray particles. But recently the levels have been jumping up and down, indicating something new is going on… perhaps Voyager 1 is finally busting through the breakers of our Sun’s cosmic bay into the open ocean of interstellar space?

Across The Universe - A Brand New “Blue Marble” View of Earth

Across The Universe - A Brand New “Blue Marble” View of Earth:
Across The Universe - A Brand New “Blue Marble” View of Earth
Europe’s latest geostationary weather satellite has captured its first image of Earth, and it’s a beauty! The Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) instrument on the Meteosat Second Generation-3 (MSG-3) satellite was launched on July 5, 2012, and has since been in the commission stage. ESA says it will still be a couple of months before it is ready for operations.

UFO - Ironic Science Reality: Flying Saucers on Mars from Earth

UFO - Ironic Science Reality: Flying Saucers on Mars from Earth:
UFO - Ironic Science Reality: Flying Saucers on Mars from Earth
“Irony: The first real flying saucer is from Earth. And it landed on Mars.”
That’s a quote we saw via UT writer Ray Sanders, from a great graphic making its way around the internet. But amazingly, it’s true. Above is a high resolution image from the Mars Science Laboratory’s MARDI instrument showing the heat shield falling away from the spacecraft and heading towards Mars, looking like a classic flying saucer UFO. This image shows the 4.5-meter (15-foot) diameter heat shield when it was about 16 meters (50 feet) from the spacecraft.
The image shows so much detail that “You can actually see the stitching in the thermal blanket and some wiring” said Mike Malin during a press conference at JPL today.
(...)


Galactic Images - See the “Martian Triangle” in the Sky Tonight!

Galactic Images - See the “Martian Triangle” in the Sky Tonight!:
Galactic Images - See the “Martian Triangle” in the Sky Tonight!
If — like me — you’ve been focusing on all the great images and news coming from the Mars Science Laboratory, perhaps you’ve missed the great view of the “Martian Triangle,” now visible in the night sky at twilight! Astrophotographer John Chumack hasn’t missed the view. This image is from August 6, 2012 from his observatory 8-06-12 in Yellow Springs, Ohio.
The Martian Triangle show starts at twilight, and you can find it by looking low in the southwestern sky. The star at the top is actually the planet Saturn, the star on the bottom left is Spica, and the bright spot on bottom right is the planet Mars. And remember, somewhere in your field of view, there’s a few spacecraft on and around Mars and another orbiting Saturn.
John took this image with a modified Canon Rebel Xsi DSLR and a 47mm Lens, at F5.6, ISO 800, 10 second exposure. See more of John’s wonderful astrophotos at his Flickr page or at his website, Galactic Images.
Want to get your astrophoto featured on Universe Today? Join our Flickr group or send us your images by email (this means you’re giving us permission to post them). Please explain what’s in the picture, when you took it, the equipment you used, etc.

VIDEO - Take a Flight Through Our Universe, Thanks to New 3-D Map of the Sky

VIDEO - Take a Flight Through Our Universe, Thanks to New 3-D Map of the Sky:

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III) has released the largest three-dimensional map of massive galaxies and distant black holes ever created, and it pinpoints the locations and distances of over a million galaxies. It covers a total volume equivalent to that of a cube four billion light-years on a side.
A video released with the map takes viewers on an animated flight through the Universe as seen by SDSS. There are close to 400,000 galaxies in the animation, which places zoomed-in images of nearby galaxies at the positions of more distant galaxies mapped by SDSS.


Earth illuminated Video - New Stunning ISS Time-lapse: Earth Illuminated

Earth illuminated Video - New Stunning ISS Time-lapse: Earth Illuminated:

“If you could see the Earth illuminated when you were in a place as dark as night, it would look to you more spendid than the Moon.”
– Galileo Galilei.
400 years ago, Galileo could only imagine what the view of Earth would be like from space. Today, we have people on board the International Space Station who see that view every day. This new beautiful time-lapse shows aurora, lightning, our Milky Way Galaxy, city lights and other sights as seen from orbit.
Below is a great still image from this video, an amazing look through the ISS’s Cupola as Earth whizzes by:
Earth illuminated Video

Fireball meteor - Easiest Guide Ever to Watching the Perseid Meteor Shower

Fireball meteor - Easiest Guide Ever to Watching the Perseid Meteor Shower:

A bright fireball meteor on August 1, 2012. Credit: John Chumack.
This will probably be the most simple and easiest guide to viewing the Perseids and other meteor showers you may possibly ever read. The reason why it is so simple is when you are outside you want to concentrate on looking for meteors and not worrying about technical details, which are unnecessary for the casual observer.
First, a LITTLE about the Perseids: (...)
Read the rest of Easiest Guide Ever to Watching the Perseid Meteor Shower (556 words)

Diamonds in the sky - Astrophoto: Ptolemy’s Cluster by Rolf Wahl Olsen

Diamonds in the sky- Astrophoto: Ptolemy’s Cluster by Rolf Wahl Olsen:
Diamonds in the sky - Astrophoto: Ptolemy’s Cluster by Rolf Wahl Olsen
Looking like diamonds in the sky, this lovely astrophoto shows Ptolemy’s Cluster, or Messier 7, a very bright open star cluster easily visible with the naked eye near the tail of Scorpius. Taken by photographer Rolf Wahl Olsen — Sky Viking on Flickr — this beautiful, glittering cluster is about 980 light years away from Earth and has some 80 member stars within its diameter of about 25 light years. Astronomers have determined these young, bright stars are approximately 200 million years old.
The cluster is visible as a hazy patch in the sky, and was first described by the ancient astronomer Ptolemy in 130 AD.
Rolf said this image was taken with a bright 78% illuminated Moon nearby.
Image details:
Date: 31st May 2012
Exposure: LRGB: 48:24:24:24m, total 2hrs @ -28C
Telescope: 10″ Serrurier Truss Newtonian f/5
Camera: QSI 683wsg with Lodestar guider
Filters: Astrodon LRGB E-Series Gen 2
Taken from Sky Viking’s observatory in Auckland, New Zealand


Astrophotos: The 2012 Perseid Meteor Shower from Around the World

Astrophotos: The 2012 Perseid Meteor Shower from Around the World:

Caption: Perseid Meteors with Lunar & Planetary Conjunction on August 12, 2012. Credit: John Chumack.
Here’s some great views of the Perseid Meteor Shower from Universe Today readers around the world. Over the weekend was the peak of the annual meteor shower that never seems to disappoint! We start with one of our “regulars,” John Chumack from his observatory in Yellow Springs, Ohio, USA. But there were also many other objects in John’s field of view, including the waning crescent Moon, Venus, and Orion rising over the observatory dome, the Pleaides, Hyades, and Jupiter, too. John used a odified Canon Rebel Xsi & 17mm lens at F4, ISO 400, and a 20 second exposure. See more of John’s wonderful astrophotos at his Flickr page or at his website, Galactic Images.



BLACK HOLE - A Star’s Dying Scream May Be a Beacon for Physics

BLACK HOLE - A Star’s Dying Scream May Be a Beacon for Physics:
BLACK HOLE - A Star’s Dying Scream May Be a Beacon for Physics
When a star suffered an untimely demise at the hands of a hidden black hole, astronomers detected its doleful, ululating wail — in the key of D-sharp, no less — from 3.9 billion light-years away. The resulting ultraluminous X-ray blast revealed the supermassive black hole’s presence at the center of a distant galaxy in March of 2011, and now that information could be used to study the real-life workings of black holes, general relativity, and a concept first proposed by Einstein in 1915.
(...)
Read the rest of A Star’s Dying Scream May Be a Beacon for Physics (510 words)

Across The Universe - How Old Is The Earth?

Across The Universe - How Old Is The Earth?:
Solar nebula
Across The Universe - How Old Is The Earth?


How old is the Earth? Scientists think that the Earth is 4.54 billion years old. Coincidentally, this is the same age as the rest of the planets in the Solar System, as well as the Sun. Of course, it’s not a coincidence; the Sun and the planets all formed together from a diffuse cloud of hydrogen billions of years ago.
In the early Solar System, all of the planets formed in the solar nebula; the remnants left over from the formation of the Sun. Small particles of dust collected together into larger and larger objects – pebbles, rocks, boulders, etc – until there were many planetoids in the Solar System. These planetoids collided together and eventually enough came together to become Earth-sized.
(...)
Read the rest of How Old Is The Earth? (1,408 words)

WOW X-51 Waverider ‘Scramjet’ Test Flight Fails

X-51 Waverider ‘Scramjet’ Test Flight Fails:

Artists concept of the X-51A Waverider. Credit: US Air Force
A highly anticipated test flight of the X-51A Waverider scramjet ended abruptly after the experimental aircraft suffered a control failure and broke apart during an attempt to fly at six times the speed of sound. The test flight took place off the coast of California and the X-51A was dropped from a B-52 bomber, but an US Air Force spokesman said that a faulty control fin prevented it from starting its unique “airbreathing” scramjet engine.
(...)
Read the rest of X-51 Waverider ‘Scramjet’ Test Flight Fails (281 words)