Sombrero galaxy

Sombrero galaxy - source: NASA

Sombrero galaxy - NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope set its infrared eyes on one of the most famous objects in the sky, Messier 104, also called the Sombrero galaxy. In this striking infrared picture, Spitzer sees an exciting new view of a galaxy that in visible light has been likened to a "sombrero," but here looks more like a "bulls-eye." Recent observations using Spitzer's infrared array camera uncovered the bright, smooth ring of dust circling the galaxy, seen in red. In visible light, because this galaxy is seen nearly edge-on, only the near rim of dust can be clearly seen in silhouette. Spitzer's full view shows the disk is warped, which is often the result of a gravitational encounter with another galaxy, and clumpy areas spotted in the far edges of the ring indicate young star-forming regions. Spitzer's infrared view of the starlight from this galaxy, seen in blue, can pierce through obscuring murky dust that dominates in visible light. As a result, the full extent of the bulge of stars and an otherwise hidden disk of stars within the dust ring are easily seen. The Sombrero galaxy is located some 28 million light years away. Viewed from Earth, it is just six degrees south of its equatorial plane. Spitzer detected infrared emission not only from the ring, but from the center of the galaxy too, where there is a huge black hole, believed to be a billion times more massive than our Sun....Viewed from Earth, the Sombrero galaxy is seen nearly edge-on, just six degrees away from its equatorial plane. This spiral galaxy is located 28 million light years away and is 50,000 light-years across. The Sombrero is one of the most massive objects at the southern edge of the Virgo cluster of galaxies, and is equal in size to 800 billion Suns. It hosts a rich system of nearly 2,000 globular clusters, 10 times as many as orbit our Milky Way galaxy. It is also interesting that the Sombrero galaxy may harbor a super-massive black hole, accounting for the electromagnetic glow emitted from its center.

The Hubble images were taken by the Hubble Heritage Team in May-June 2003 with the space telescope's advanced camera for surveys. Spitzer's images were taken in June 2004 and January 2005 as part of the Spitzer Infrared Nearby Galaxies Survey, using the telescope's infrared array camera. The survey is one of the six Spitzer Legacy Science projects, designed to reveal how stars are formed in different types of galaxies, and to provide an atlas of galaxy images and spectra for future archival investigations. The Sombrero is one of 75 galaxies being observed by the survey team....M104 is just beyond the limit of the naked eye, but is easily seen through small telescopes. It lies at the southern edge of the rich Virgo cluster of galaxies. It is one of the most massive objects in that group, equivalent to 800 billion suns. The galaxy is 50,000 light-years across and is located 28 million light-years from Earth....The Hubble Heritage Team took these observations in May-June 2003 with the space telescope's advanced camera for surveys. Images were taken in three filters (red, green, and blue) to yield a natural-color image. The team took six pictures of the galaxy and then stitched them together to create the final composite image. This magnificent galaxy has a diameter that is nearly one-fifth the diameter of the full Moon.

source: NASA

Follow @ballaboocom

North America nebula

North America nebula - source: NASA

This swirling landscape of stars is known as the North America nebula. In visible light, the region resembles North America, but in this new infrared view from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, the continent disappears.

Where did the continent go? The reason you don't see it in Spitzer's view has to do, in part, with the fact that infrared light can penetrate dust whereas visible light cannot. Dusty, dark clouds in the visible image become transparent in Spitzer's view. In addition, Spitzer's infrared detectors pick up the glow of dusty cocoons enveloping baby stars.

Clusters of young stars (about one million years old) can be found throughout the image. Slightly older but still very young stars (about 3 to 5 million years) are also liberally scattered across the complex, with concentrations near the "head" region of the Pelican nebula, which is located to the right of the North America nebula (upper right portion of this picture).

Some areas of this nebula are still very thick with dust and appear dark even in Spitzer's view. For example, the dark "river" in the lower left-center of the image -- in the Gulf of Mexico region -- are likely to be the youngest stars in the complex (less than a million years old).

The Spitzer image contains data from both its infrared array camera and multiband imaging photometer. Light with a wavelength of 3.6 microns has been color-coded blue; 4.5-micron light is blue-green; 5.8-micron and 8.0-micron light are green; and 24-micron light is red.

source: NASA

Follow @ballaboocom

Lagoon Nebula

Lagoon Nebula - source: NASA

Swirling dust clouds and bright newborn stars dominate the view in this image of the Lagoon nebula from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Also known as Messier 8 and NGC 6523, astronomers estimate it to be between 4000 and 6000 light years away, lying in the general direction of the center of our galaxy in the constellation Sagittarius.

The Lagoon nebula was first noted by the astronomer Guillaume Le Gentil in 1747, and a few decades later became the 8th entry in Charles Messiers famous catalog of nebulae. It is of particular interest to stargazers as it is only one of two star-forming nebulae that can be seen with the naked eye from northern latitudes, appearing as a fuzzy grey patch.

The glowing waters of the Lagoon, as seen in visible light, are really pools of hot gas surrounding the massive, young stars found here. Spitzers infrared vision looks past the gas to show the dusty basin that it fills. Here we see the central regions of the Lagoon with green showing the glow of carbon-based dust grains, and red highlighting the thermal glow of the hottest dust.

The various columns of dust all seem to point inwards towards the central depths of the Lagoon. These structures are being sculpted by the intense glow of giant, young stars found at the nebulas core. Within these clouds of dust and gas, a new generation of stars is forming.

This image was made using data from Spitzers Infrared Array Camera (IRAC). Blue shows infrared light with wavelengths of 3.6 microns, green represents 4.5-micron light and red, 8.0-micron light.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. For more information about Spitzer, visit http://spitzer.caltech.edu/ and http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer.

source: NASA


Follow @ballaboocom

Dying Star

Dying Star - source: NASA

This image, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, shows the colorful "last hurrah" of a star like our Sun. The star is ending its life by casting off its outer layers of gas, which formed a cocoon around the star's remaining core. Ultraviolet light from the dying star makes the material glow. The burned-out star, called a white dwarf, is the white dot in the center. Our Sun will eventually burn out and shroud itself with stellar debris, but not for another 5 billion years.

Our Milky Way Galaxy is littered with these stellar relics, called planetary nebulae. The objects have nothing to do with planets. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century astronomers named them planetary nebulae because through small telescopes they resembled the disks of the distant planets Uranus and Neptune. The planetary nebula in this image is called NGC 2440. The white dwarf at the center of NGC 2440 is one of the hottest known, with a surface temperature of nearly 400,000 degrees Fahrenheit (200,000 degrees Celsius). The nebula's chaotic structure suggests that the star shed its mass episodically. During each outburst, the star expelled material in a different direction. This can be seen in the two bow tie-shaped lobes. The nebula also is rich in clouds of dust, some of which form long, dark streaks pointing away from the star. NGC 2440 lies about 4,000 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Puppis.

The image was taken Feb. 6, 2007 with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. The colors correspond to material expelled by the star. Blue corresponds to helium; blue-green to oxygen; and red to nitrogen and hydrogen. Source: NASA

Follow @ballaboocom

Andromeda Galaxy

 Andromeda Galaxy - source: NASA

The immense Andromeda galaxy, also known as Messier 31 or simply M31, is captured in full in this new image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The mosaic covers an area equivalent to more than 100 full moons, or five degrees across the sky. WISE used all four of its infrared detectors to capture this picture (3.4- and 4.6-micron light is colored blue; 12-micron light is green; and 22-micron light is red). Blue highlights mature stars, while yellow and red show dust heated by newborn, massive stars.

Andromeda is the closest large galaxy to our Milky Way galaxy, and is located 2.5 million light-years from our sun. It is close enough for telescopes to spy the details of its ringed arms of new stars and hazy blue backbone of older stars. Also seen in the mosaic are two satellite galaxies, known as M32, located just a bit above Andromeda to the left of center, and the fuzzy blue M110, located below the center of the great spiral arms. These satellites are the largest of several that are gravitationally bound to Andromeda.

The Andromeda galaxy is larger than our Milky Way and contains more stars, but the Milky Way is thought to perhaps have more mass due to its larger proportion of a mysterious substance called dark matter. Both galaxies belong to our so-called Local Group, a collection of more than 50 galaxies, most of which are tiny dwarf systems. In its quest to map the whole sky, WISE will capture the entire Local Group.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The mission's principal investigator, Edward Wright, is at UCLA. The mission was competitively selected under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory, Logan, Utah, and the spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

More information is online at http://www.nasa.gov/wise and http://wise.astro.ucla.edu.

source: NASA

Follow @ballaboocom

Solar Filament Eruption

Solar Filament Eruption (source: NASA)

Solar Filament Eruption Creates 'Canyon of Fire' - A magnetic filament of solar material erupted on the sun in late September, breaking the quiet conditions in a spectacular fashion. The 200,000 mile long filament ripped through the sun's atmosphere, the corona, leaving behind what looks like a canyon of fire. The glowing canyon traces the channel where magnetic fields held the filament aloft before the explosion. In reality, the sun is not made of fire, but of something called plasma: particles so hot that their electrons have boiled off, creating a charged gas that is interwoven with magnetic fields. These images were captured on Sept. 29-30, 2013, by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, which constantly observes the sun in a variety of wavelengths. . . . (source: NASA)


Follow @ballaboocom

Dying Star Helix Nebula photo

Helix Nebula (source: NASA)

The Helix Nebula: Unraveling at the Seams
"A dying star is throwing a cosmic tantrum in this combined image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX), which NASA has lent to the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. In death, the star's dusty outer layers are unraveling into space, glowing from the intense ultraviolet radiation being pumped out by the hot stellar core. This object, called the Helix nebula, lies 650 light-years away, in the constellation of Aquarius. Also known by the catalog number NGC 7293, it is a typical example of a class of objects called planetary nebulae. Discovered in the 18th century, these cosmic works of art were erroneously named for their resemblance to gas-giant planets. Planetary nebulae are actually the remains of stars that once looked a lot like our sun. These stars spend most of their lives turning hydrogen into helium in massive runaway nuclear fusion reactions in their cores. In fact, this process of fusion provides all the light and heat that we get from our sun. Our sun will blossom into a planetary nebula when it dies in about five billion years. . . ." source

Follow @ballaboocom

Tarantula Nebula photo

Tarantula Nebula (source: NASA)

New View of the Tarantula Nebula - This composite of 30 Doradus, aka the Tarantula Nebula, contains data from Chandra (blue), Hubble (green), and Spitzer (red). Located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, the Tarantula Nebula is one of the largest star-forming regions close to the Milky Way. Chandra's X-rays detect gas that has been heated to millions of degrees by stellar winds and supernovas. This high-energy stellar activity creates shock fronts, which are similar to sonic booms. Hubble reveals the light from massive stars at various stages of star birth, while Spitzer shows where the relatively cooler gas and dust lie. NASA

Follow @ballaboocom

Total Solar Eclipse LIVE

Total Solar Eclipse LIVE - Scheduled for Nov 3, 2013 - Join the Slooh Broadcast Team on November 3rd for complete coverage of the incredibly rare Hybrid Eclipse live from Kenya, Gabon, and the Canary Islands. Slooh Astronomer Paul Cox will be broadcasting live from the wilderness of Kenya to bring the clearest images of the Solar Totality, while live feeds from Gabon and the Canary Islands with show the Annular portion of the Eclipse as the Moon's shadow starts its path across the Earth's face.

Follow @ballaboocom

Looking Down On Saturn

This portrait looking down on Saturn and its rings was created from images obtained by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on Oct. 10, 2013. It was made by amateur image processor and Cassini fan Gordan Ugarkovic. This image has not been geometrically corrected for shifts in the spacecraft perspective and still has some camera artifacts.The mosaic was created from 12 image footprints with red, blue and green filters from Cassini's imaging science subsystem. Ugarkovic used full color sets for 11 of the footprints and red and blue images for one footprint. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.

Source and Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/G. Ugarkovic

Follow @ballaboocom

Supernovae

Supernovae
source: NASA via medill.northwestern.edu


Follow @ballaboocom

Cosmic Mystery, Black Holes, May Be Solved (video)

Video - Cosmic Mystery Surrounding Black Holes May Be Solved - WSJ.com: "Cosmic Mystery Surrounding Black Holes May Be Solved Astronomers say they may have solved a cosmic mystery: why gravitational monsters known as black holes are inept at swallowing their prey. Gautam Naik explains on Lunch Break. Photo: NASA."

Follow @ballaboocom

Asteroid Zips By Orion Nebula

Asteroid Zips By Orion Nebula - This image shows the potentially hazardous near-Earth object 1998 KN3 as it zips past a cloud of dense gas and dust near the Orion nebula. NEOWISE, the asteroid-hunting portion of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, mission, snapped infrared pictures of the asteroid, seen as the yellow-green dot at upper left. Because asteroids are warmed by the sun to roughly room temperature, they glow brightly at the infrared wavelengths used by WISE. Astronomers use infrared light from asteroids to measure their sizes, and when combined with visible-light observations, they can also measure the reflectivity of their surfaces. The WISE infrared data reveal that this asteroid is about .7 mile (1.1 kilometers) in diameter and reflects only about 7 percent of the visible light that falls on its surface, which means it is relatively dark. In this image, blue denotes shorter infrared wavelengths, and red, longer. Hotter objects emit shorter-wavelength light, so they appear blue. The blue stars, for example, have temperatures of thousands of degrees. The coolest gas and dust appears red. The asteroid appears yellow in the image because it is about room temperature: cooler than the distant stars, but warmer than the dust. JPL manages the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The principal investigator, Edward Wright, is at UCLA. The mission was competitively selected under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory, Logan, Utah, and the spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech pia17255.jpg (430×323)

Follow @ballaboocom

Cosmography, 3-D Map of the Local Universe

New Science of Cosmography Reveals 3-D Map of the Local Universe | MIT Technology Review: "Today, Helene Courtois at the University of Lyon in France and a few buddies show off this newfound knowledge in a movie (and accompanying paper) that they’ve created to explore the rich structure of our galactic neighbourhood."

You can view the movie here.

One of the key questions that this data can help to answer is whether the distribution of visible mass in the universe is an accurate reflection of the distribution of dark matter. Courtois and co say the data shows that this is indeed the case.

Follow @ballaboocom

Newest planets, Earth-like, NASA astronomers

Newest planets most Earth-like yet, NASA astronomers say - SiliconValley.com: "To learn more about planets closer to home, NASA will use its newly completed "Automated Planet Finder" telescope at Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton. It will seek out Earth-like planets around the nearest stars, within 20 light years of us. Scientists hope to begin using it this summer. "These habitable zone planets indicate that worlds with lakes and oceans number in the billions within our home Milky Way Galaxy," said Marcy. "Such planets can certainly spawn biology as we know it."" "The next great scientific question is even more daunting: How often does simple, single-cell life spring up on these habitable worlds?" he asked. "How common are intelligent critters who look up at their night sky asking the same questions about their uniqueness in the universe?" NASA's "Exoplanet Archive" lists extrasolar planets and their host stars. The latest tally: -- 30 solar systems with multiple planets -- 2,712 planets (candidates and confirmed) For more information about the Archive: http://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/index.html For more information about the Kepler mission: www.nasa.gov/kepler.

Follow @ballaboocom

1967 Contact Incident, SETI, pulsars

The story of the SETI discussions during the discovery of pulsars --

The True Story of a 1967 “Contact” Incident | MIT Technology Review: " . . . . Soon afterwards, she found a second source of signals and by mid-January, a third and fourth source. By this time, the team discounted the possibility that an artificial source could be responsible and eventually settled on neutron stars as the explanation. In February, the paper announcing the discovery was accepted and published in Nature following a public announcement on 24 February 1968. Penny says that what’s interesting about this process is that during the discovery process, the team discussed the implications should the signal turn out to be an artificial source, how to verify such a conclusion and how to announce it. They also discussed whether such a discovery might be dangerous. This process closely follows the Detection Protocol agreed by the international community in 1990. There’s an interesting corollary to this. The team also discussed the possibility that if it were an artificial source, somebody would want to reply. Penny points out that the international community has yet to agree on a Reply Protocol because there are widely differing views on whether such a course of action would be beneficial or dangerous for humanity. This is a situation that needs to be rectified. “The 1967 episode indicates how difficult it would be to construct a policy in the fervid atmosphere of a ‘Contact’,” says Penny. With SETI searches now focusing on habitable exoplants around other stars, it seems prudent to come to some agreement sooner rather than later. Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1302.0641: The SETI Episode in the 1967 Discovery of Pulsars (read more at links above)

Follow @ballaboocom

NASA searches for habitable planets near Earth

NASA ramps up search for habitable planets near Earth - SlashGear: " . . . . Called the Transisting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, TESS for short, this space-based telescope will be launched by NASA in 2017. Once in space, TESS will pick through the relatively nearby areas around the sun in search of other exo-planets that are potentially habitable, with the bonus being their distance, allowing researchers to study in more details any exo-planets found. According to Universe Today, NASA TESS’s Principle Investigator George Ricker said: “TESS will carry out the first space-borne all-sky transit survey, covering 400 times as much sky as any previous mission. It will identify thousands of new planets in the solar neighborhood, with a special focus on planets comparable in size to the Earth.” Following the launch of TESS will be another telescope, the JWST (James Webb Space Telescope), slated for orbit in 2018. Unlike TESS, JWST will search for planets via infrared light, providing an extra layer of search for bodies that lie beyond the reach of visible light. Once both satellites are launched, their combined information could help determine whether any planets discovered are capable of sustaining life. The catch is that the exo-planets – assuming any are found – will have to be located within a relatively small distance: 50 or so light years away from Earth. Anything found behind a certain threshold will be difficult for researchers to analyze sufficiently enough to determine whether aspects of it, such as the atmosphere, are sufficient for sustaining life."

Follow @ballaboocom

Fireballs in the Sky

Fireballs reported in skies above Cuba and California - Telegraph: " . . . The 55 foot wide rock, said by Nasa to have a mass of 10,000 tonnes, lit up the sky above the Urals region on Friday morning, causing shockwaves that injured 1,200 people and damaged thousands of homes in an event unprecedented in modern times. Nasa estimated that the energy released as the meteor's disintigrated in the atmosphere was 500 kilotons, around 30 times the size of the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. It entered the atmosphere at 44,000 miles per hour, taking 32.5 seconds to break up at an altitude of around 15 miles above the earth's surface. The resulting explosion created a shockwave that blew out windows and set of car alarms in Chelyabinsk two and a half minutes later. The drama in Russia developed just hours before an asteroid - a space object similar to a tiny planet orbiting the sun - whizzed safely past Earth at the unprecedented distance of 17,200 miles...." 

Follow @ballaboocom

Finding Another Earth

Finding Another Earth: How Will Scientists Confirm It Exists? | Space.com: "The Kepler mission is a starting point in the search for a true Earth-like planet, Nicolas Cowen a postdoctoral fellow in astronomy at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. told SPACE.com. "Kepler just told us how big the telescope we have to build is." There could be more than 17 billion Earth-sized planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone, but that doesn’t mean they’re easy to research once detected. Once planets of interest are confirmed by Kepler, then other instruments can be used to investigate the specifics of the planet."





Follow @ballaboocom

A Year on Mars (video)

A Year on Mars: "One year ago, the rover's arrival on Mars ushered in a new era of exploration. Since then, it has been inching toward a mountain that could yield fascinating insights."

Follow @ballaboocom

Magellanic Stream

Magellanic Stream

Explanation: Spanning the sky toward the majestic Clouds of Magellan is an unusual stream of gas: the Magellanic Stream. The origin of this gas remains unknown but likely holds a clue to the origin and fate of our Milky Way's most famous satellite galaxies: the LMC and the SMC. Until recently, two leading genesis hypotheses have been considered: that the stream was created by gas stripped off these galaxies as they passed through thehalo of our Milky Way, or that the stream was created by the differential gravitational tug of the Milky Way. Recently, however, wide angle radio images -- including those from the Byrd Green Bank Telescope -- have shown that the Magellanic Stream is longer and older than previously thought, perhaps as old as 2.5 billion years. These observations bolster a third possible origin for the stream -- that the Large and Small Magellanic Cloud galaxies once passed so close to each other that gravitational tides triggered a burst of star formation that left the stream. Pictured above digitally superposed on a recently-completed all-sky image in visible light, theradio emission of Magellanic stream is shown in false color pink extending across the sky and ending at the two Magellanic galaxies on the lower right.(source: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100125.html)

Follow @ballaboocom

Riding the Space Shuttle Booster with enhanced sound

Riding the Booster with enhanced sound - YouTube: "From the upcoming Special Edition Ascent: Commemorating Space Shuttle DVD/BluRay by NASA/Glenn a movie from the point of view of the Solid Rocket Booster with sound mixing and enhancement done by the folks at Skywalker Sound. The sound is all from the camera microphones and not fake or replaced with foley artist sound."



Follow @ballaboocom

Solar Magnetic energy, Magnetic reconnection (video)

NASA | X Marks the Spot: SDO Sees Reconnection: Two NASA spacecraft have provided the most comprehensive movie ever of a mysterious process at the heart of all explosions on the sun: magnetic reconnection. Magnetic reconnection happens when magnetic field lines come together, break apart, and then exchange partners, snapping into new positions and releasing a jolt of magnetic energy. This process lies at the heart of giant explosions on the sun such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections, which can fling radiation and particles across the solar system. Magnetic field lines, themselves, are invisible, but the sun's charged plasma particles course along their length. Space telescopes can see that material appearing as bright lines looping and arcing through the sun's atmosphere, and so map out the presence of magnetic field lines. Looking at a series of images from the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), scientists saw two bundles of field lines move toward each other, meet briefly to form what appeared to be an "X" and then shoot apart with one set of lines and its attendant particles leaping into space and one set falling back down onto the sun. To confirm what they were seeing, the scientists turned to a second NASA spacecraft, the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI). RHESSI collects spectrograms, a kind of data that can show where exceptionally hot material is present in any given event on the sun. RHESSI showed hot pockets of solar material forming above and below the reconnection point, an established signature of such an event. By combining the SDO and RHESSI data, the scientists were able to describe the process of what they were seeing, largely confirming previous models and theories, while revealing new, three-dimensional aspects of the process. (Published on July 15, 2013)

This video is public domain

Follow @ballaboocom

Russian Meteor security footage

Russian security footage reveals curiosity, then chaos, as meteor strikes | Herald Sun: "FIRST came confusion as a "second sun" streaked over Russia. Then, 2 minutes 24 seconds later, a city erupted in chaos as the meteor's shockwave struck"


Follow @ballaboocom

Messier 61 Looks Straight Into Hubble's Camera

NASA - Messier 61 Looks Straight Into Hubble's Camera: "The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured this image of nearby spiral galaxy Messier 61, also known as NGC 4303. The galaxy, located only 55 million light-years away from Earth, is roughly the size of the Milky Way, with a diameter of around 100 000 light-years. The galaxy is notable for one particular reason — six supernovae have been observed within Messier 61, a total that places it in the top handful of galaxies alongside Messier 83, also with six, and NGC 6946, with a grand total of nine observed supernovae. In this Hubble image the galaxy is seen face-on as if posing for a photograph, allowing us to study its structure closely. The spiral arms can be seen in stunning detail, swirling inwards to the very center of the galaxy, where they form a smaller, intensely bright spiral. In the outer regions, these vast arms are sprinkled with bright blue regions where new stars are being formed from hot, dense clouds of gas. Messier 61 is part of the Virgo Galaxy Cluster, a massive group of galaxies in the constellation of Virgo (the Virgin). Galaxy clusters, or groups of galaxies, are among the biggest structures in the Universe to be held together by gravity alone. The Virgo Cluster contains more than 1300 galaxies and forms the central region of the Local Supercluster, an even bigger gathering of galaxies. The image was taken using data from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 2."

photo: NASA

Follow @ballaboocom

Tour of the Nearest Galaxies in UV Light (video)

NASA | A Swift Tour of the Nearest Galaxies in UV Light: Astronomers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and the Pennsylvania State University in University Park, Pa., have used NASA's Swift satellite to create the most detailed surveys of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, the two closest major galaxies, in ultraviolet light. Thousands of images were assembled into seamless portraits of the main body of each galaxy to produce the highest-resolution surveys of the Magellanic Clouds at ultraviolet wavelengths. The project was proposed by Stefan Immler, an astronomer at Goddard. The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, or LMC and SMC for short, lie about 163,000 and 200,000 light-years away, respectively, and orbit each other as well as our own Milky Way galaxy. Compared to the Milky Way, the LMC has about one-tenth its physical size and only 1 percent of its mass. The SMC is only half the size of the LMC and contains about two-thirds of its mass. The new images reveal about a million ultraviolet sources within the LMC and about 250,000 in the SMC. Viewing in the ultraviolet allows astronomers to suppress the light of normal stars like the sun, which are not very bright at these higher energies, and provide a clearer picture of the hottest stars and star-formation regions. Only Swift's Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope, or UVOT, is capable of producing such high-resolution wide-field multi-color surveys in the ultraviolet. The LMC and SMC images range from 1,600 to 3,300 angstroms, UV wavelengths largely blocked by Earth's atmosphere. The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are readily visible from the Southern Hemisphere as faint, glowing patches in the night sky. The galaxies are named after Ferdinand Magellan, the Portuguese explorer who in 1519 led an expedition to sail around the world. He and his crew were among the first Europeans to sight the objects. All visible light imagery provided by Axel Mellinger, Central Michigan University. This video is public domain.

Follow @ballaboocom

First X-Class Solar Flares of 2013 (video)

First X-Class Solar Flares of 2013 (source: NASA)

Follow @ballaboocom

Mystery: Where did all the water come from?

Meteorites, Comets, or ???--

Water on Earth and Moon May Have Same Source: Ancient Meteorites | Space.com: " . . . . "I wonder whether Saal and his colleagues can exclude that the samples they investigated contain cometary water," Hartogh told SPACE.com. The European Space Agency's Rosetta mission might be able to resolve the question of whether comets or meteorites are the origins of water in Earth and the moon when it reaches the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014, Hartogh said. Rosetta, which launched in March 2004, will analyze the comet's isotope ratios to see how closely they match those of the Earth and the moon." (read more at link above)

photo source: NASA

Follow @ballaboocom

Sun eruption video

Earlier this morning an active region still over the eastern limb of the Sun erupted and exploded, hurling plasma into space. Getting this side view shows the power and force behind these solar flares and coronal mass ejections. This event was not Earth directed. This video covers approx. 2 hours and 40 minutes from 02:30 through 05:10 UT on May 1, 2013. Credit: NASA SDO

Follow @ballaboocom

Time-lapse footage of the Earth as seen from the ISS

All Alone in the Night - Time-lapse footage of the Earth as seen from the ISS

Images: http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/
Music: 'Freedom Fighters' by Two Steps from Hell
Inspiration: http://youtu.be/74mhQyuyELQ
Editor: David Peterson
Inspired by a version of the opening sequence of this clip called 'What does it feel like to fly over planet Earth?', the original time-lapse sequence taken on the International Space Station (ISS) via NASA, found some additional ones there, including the spectacular Aurora Australis sequences, and set it to a soundtrack

  Follow @ballaboocom

NASA Sees Distant Planets That Seem Ideal for Life

NASA Sees Distant Planets That Seem Ideal for Life
ABC News
NASA's planet-hunting telescope has discovered two planets that seem like ideal places for some sort of life to flourish. And they are just the right size and in just the right place. One is toasty, the other nippy. The distant duo are the best candidates for ...The planets are slightly wider than Earth, but not too big. Kepler-62-e is a bit balmy, like a Hawaiian world and Kepler-62-f is a bit frosty, more Alaskan, Borucki said. The pair is 1,200 light-years away; a light-year is almost 6 trillion miles. . . .

ABC News

Follow @ballaboocom

Time-Lapse Earth

Time-Lapse | Earth from Bruce W. Berry Jr on Vimeo.

All Time-lapse sequences were taken by the astronaunts onboard the International Space Station (ISS) (Thanks guys for making this available to the public for use!) All footage has been color graded, denoised, deflickered, slowed down and stabilized by myself. Clips were then complied and converted to 1080 HD at 24 frames/sec.

Some interesting tidbits about the ISS. It orbits the planet about once every 90 mins and is about 350 Km/217 miles. The yellow/greenish line that you see over the earth is Airgolw.

Music: "Manhatta" composed & performed by “The Cinematic Orchestra”
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/cinematic-orchestra-presents/id527221766
All rights reserved to their respective owners.

Edited by: Bruce W. Berry @ Website: http://www.bruce-wayne-photography.com/

Image Courtesy of the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory,
NASA Johnson Space Center, The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth
eol.jsc.nasa.gov
http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/Videos/CrewEarthObservationsVideos/
nasa.gov/multimedia/hd/
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/

Footage Note: The slower video represents a closer resemblance to the true speed of the International Space Station; this footage was shot at one frame per second. Clips are all marked with an *.

Locations of Footage in the order they appear:

1. A Jump over the Terminator
2. Sarychev Volcano
3. From Turkey to Iran*
4. Hurricane Irene Hits the US
5. Indian Ocean to Pacific Ocean Through the Cupola*
6. Central Great Plains at Night*
7. Aurora Borealis over the North Atlantic Ocean*
8. Aurora Borealis from Central U.S.*
9. Up the East Coast of North America*
10. Myanmar to Malaysia*
11. Western Europe to Central India
12. Middle East to the South Pacific Ocean
13. Aurora Borealis over Europe*
14. City Lights over Middle East*
15. European City Lights*
16. Northwest coast of United States to Central South America at Night
17. Moonglow over Canada and Northern U.S.*
18. Stars from the Pacific Ocean (1)
19. Stars from the Pacific Ocean (2)
20. Stars from the Pacific Ocean (3)
21. Stars and the Milky Way over the Atlantic*
22. The Milky Way and Storms over Africa (1)
23. The Milky Way and Storms over Africa (2)


Follow @ballaboocom

Light Echoes from V838 Mon

Light Echoes from V838 Mon

What caused this outburst of V838 Mon? For reasons unknown, star V838 Mon's outer surface suddenly greatly expanded with the result that it became the brightest star in the entire Milky Way Galaxy in January 2002. Then, just as suddenly, it faded. A stellar flash like this had never been seen before -- supernovas and novas expel matter out into space. Although the V838 Mon flash appears to expel material into space, what is seen in the above image from the Hubble Space Telescope is actually an outwardly moving light echo of the bright flash.

In a light echo, light from the flash is reflected by successively more distant rings in the complex array of ambient interstellar dust that already surrounded the star. V838 Mon lies about 20,000 light years away toward the constellation of the unicorn (Monoceros), while the light echo above spans about six light years in diameter.

(source: NASA)

Follow @ballaboocom

NASA's SDO Observes Fast-Growing Sunspot

NASA - NASA's SDO Observes Fast-Growing Sunspot: "The bottom two black spots on the sun, known as sunspots, appeared quickly over the course of Feb. 19-20, 2013. These two sunspots are part of the same system and are over six Earths across. This image combines images from two instruments on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO): the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI), which takes pictures in visible light that show sunspots and the Advanced Imaging Assembly (AIA), which took an image in the 304 Angstrom wavelength showing the lower atmosphere of the sun, which is colorized in red. Credit: NASA/SDO/AIA/HMI/Goddard Space Flight Center"

Follow @ballaboocom

Star-forming Region 30 Doradus

Star-forming Region 30 Doradus: Hubble's 22nd Anniversary Image - Visit the scene of Hubble's 22nd anniversary image and explore a rich tapestry of star birth and stellar destruction. (first published Apr 17, 2012)

Follow @ballaboocom

Asteroid 2012 DA14 to Whiz Past Earth

Published on Feb 7, 2013 - The small near-Earth asteroid 2012 DA14 will pass very close to Earth on Feb. 15, 2013. It will be so close that it will pass inside the ring of geosynchronous weather and communications satellites. Asteroid 2012 DA14 will be closest to Earth at about 11:24 a.m. PST (2:24 p.m. EST and 1924 UTC), on Feb. 15, when it will be at a distance of about 27,700 kilometers (17,200 miles) above Earth's surface. NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office can accurately predict the asteroid's path with the observations obtained, and it is therefore known that there is no chance that the asteroid might be on a collision course with Earth. Nevertheless, the flyby will provide a unique opportunity for researchers to study a near-Earth object up close. Includes interview with Donald K. Yeomans, Manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office, Jet Propulsion Laboratory. For more info: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsyste....

Follow @ballaboocom

The Crab Nebula

The Crab Nebula, the result of a supernova noted by Earth-bound chroniclers in 1054 A.D., is filled with mysterious filaments that are are not only tremendously complex, but appear to have less mass than expelled in the original supernova and a higher speed than expected from a free explosion. The Crab Nebula spans about 10 light-years. In the nebula's very center lies a pulsar: a neutron star as massive as the Sun but with only the size of a small town. The Crab Pulsar rotates about 30 times each second. 




Image Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Hester, A. Loll (ASU)

Follow @ballaboocom

spiral galaxy NGC 1097

The Hubble Space Telescope captured a spectacular image of the bright star-forming ring that surrounds the heart of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1097. In this image, the larger-scale structure of the galaxy is barely visible: its comparatively dim spiral arms, which surround its heart in a loose embrace, reach out beyond the edges of this frame.

This face-on galaxy, lying 45 million light-years away from Earth in the southern constellation of Fornax (The Furnace), is particularly attractive for astronomers. NGC 1097 is a Seyfert galaxy. Lurking at the very center of the galaxy, a supermassive black hole 100 million times the mass of our sun is gradually sucking in the matter around it. The area immediately around the black hole shines powerfully with radiation coming from the material falling in.


The distinctive ring around the black hole is bursting with new star formation due to an inflow of material toward the central bar of the galaxy. These star-forming regions are glowing brightly thanks to emission from clouds of ionized hydrogen. The ring is around 5000 light-years across, although the spiral arms of the galaxy extend tens of thousands of light-years beyond it.

Image Credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble



Follow @ballaboocom

Curiosity Rover on Mars

Curiosity Rover on Mars - source: NASA

Follow @ballaboocom