Eyes to the Heavens

sisterplanet: I was panicky on the plane so I drew a cute...

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 17:38:04 -0500

sisterplanet:

I was panicky on the plane so I drew a cute picture

Isn’t she nice?

galaxyshmalaxy: Stock 16 and RCW 75 Area (by marcolorenzi70)

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 12:58:33 -0500

galaxyshmalaxy:

Stock 16 and RCW 75 Area (by marcolorenzi70)

ancient-magics: The plane of our Milky Way Galaxy runs through...

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 12:05:02 -0500

ancient-magics:

The plane of our Milky Way Galaxy runs through this complex and beautiful skyscape. At the northwestern edge of the constellation Vela (the Sails) the 16 degree wide, 30 frame mosaic is centered on the glowing filaments of the Vela Supernova Remnant, the expanding debris cloud from the death explosion of a massive star.

Light from the supernova explosion that created the Vela remnant reached Earth about 11,000 years ago. In addition to the shocked filaments of glowing gas, the cosmic catastrophe also left behind an incredibly dense, rotating stellar core, the Vela Pulsar. Some 800 light-years distant, the Vela remnant is likely embedded in a larger and older supernova remnant, the Gum Nebula. The broad mosaic includes other identified emission and reflection nebulae, star clusters, and the remarkable Pencil Nebula.

Explanation: Few cosmic vistas excite the imagination like the...

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 00:28:07 -0500

Explanation: Few cosmic vistas excite the imagination like the Orion Nebula. Also known as M42, the nebula’s glowing gas surrounds hot young stars at the edge of an immense interstellar molecular cloud only 1,500 light-years away. The Orion Nebula offers one of the best opportunities to study how stars are born partly because it is the nearest large star-forming region, but also because the nebula’s energetic stars have blown away obscuring gas and dust clouds that would otherwise block our view - providing an intimate look at a range of ongoing stages of starbirth and evolution. This detailed image of the Orion Nebula is the sharpest ever, constructed using data from the Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys and the European Southern Observatory’s La Silla 2.2 meter telescope. The mosaic contains a billion pixels at full resolution and reveals about 3,000 stars.

Everyone loves the Orion Nebula.

Photo

Sat, 14 Jul 2012 23:08:26 -0500

The Bee's Knees: The so called "rules" of dating/engagement/marriage

Sat, 14 Jul 2012 23:08:06 -0500

The Bee's Knees: The so called "rules" of dating/engagement/marriage:

sisterplanet:

I’ve basically broken them all.

My parents got engaged at the ages of 16 and 17 after a whopping six months of dating, and as a kid I always thought they were insane. They didn’t end up getting married until they were 18 and 19, and they just recently celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary on…

weareallstarstuff: Flame Nebula

Sat, 14 Jul 2012 23:08:04 -0500

weareallstarstuff:

Flame Nebula

Photo

Sat, 14 Jul 2012 23:07:57 -0500

ikenbot: Ghost Galaxies’ of Early Universe Seen by Hubble...

Sat, 14 Jul 2012 02:32:55 -0500

ikenbot:

Ghost Galaxies’ of Early Universe Seen by Hubble Telescope

The Hubble Space Telescope has captured images of three odd galaxies that may help scientists solve a 13 billion-year cosmic mystery.

The galaxies are so old and faint that astronomers nicknamed them “ghost galaxies” in a description. The objects are among the smallest and faintest galaxies near our own Milky Way galaxy, researchers said.

“These galaxies are fossils of the early universe: they have barely changed for 13 billion years,” scientists explained in a July 10 announcement. “The discovery could help explain the so-called ‘missing satellite’ problem, where only a handful of satellite galaxies have been found around the Milky Way, against the thousands that are predicted by theories.”

The three galaxies observed by the Hubble telescope are known as Hercules, Leo IV and Ursa Major. All three objects are small dwarf galaxies that appear to have begun forming about 13 billion years ago and then — for an unknown reason — their growth hit a cosmic wall.

Since the universe is estimated to be about 13.7 billion years old, the galaxies were born sometime within the first billion years of the cosmos.

octoafterhours: nephilimswansong: forlackofabettercomic: This...

Sat, 14 Jul 2012 02:32:23 -0500

octoafterhours:

nephilimswansong:

forlackofabettercomic:

This comic is dedicated to EVERYONE who’s ever had to teach a parent how to use technology over the phone and lived to tell the tale.

WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT FOR PEOPLE TO DOUBLE CLICK SOMETHING? WHYYYYYYYY.

oh look it’s my job

thescienceofreality: 21st Century M101 - APODImage...

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 19:32:05 -0500

thescienceofreality:

21st Century M101 - APOD
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CXC, JPL, Caltech STScI

“One of the last entries in Charles Messier’s famous catalog, big, beautiful spiral galaxy M101 is definitely not one of the least. About 170,000 light-years across, this galaxy is enormous, almost twice the size of our own Milky Way Galaxy. M101 was also one of the original spiral nebulae observed with Lord Rosse’s large 19th century telescope, the Leviathan of Parsontown. In contrast, this multiwavelength view of the large island universe is a composite of images recorded by space-based telescopes in the 21st century. Color coded from X-rays to infrared wavelengths (high to low energies), the image data was taken from the Chandra X-ray Observatory (purple), the Galaxy Evolution Explorer ( blue), Hubble Space Telescope(yellow), and the Spitzer Space Telescope(red). While the X-ray data trace the location of multimillion degree gas around M101’s exploded stars and neutron star and black hole binary star systems, the lower energy data follow the stars and dust that define M101’s grand spiral arms. Also known as the Pinwheel Galaxy, M101 lies within the boundaries of the northern constellation Ursa Major, about 25 million light-years away.”

Photo

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 19:32:00 -0500

leviathan8: IRDC G11.11-0.11: Dark murky clouds in the Bright...

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 19:31:42 -0500

leviathan8:

IRDC G11.11-0.11: Dark murky clouds in the Bright Milky Way

Typically if an astronomer wants to look into or through a thick dark cloud in space, they will choose to look in infrared light. However, in this infrared image from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, we can see that some clouds are so cool and thick that even infrared can’t penetrate them. The black areas in this image called infrared dark clouds (IRDCs) are exceptionally cold, dense cloud cores seen in silhouette against the bright diffuse infrared glow of the plane of the Milky Way.

If you were to look at this same region of the sky through a backyard telescope you would see a sea of stars packed together, similar to the thousands of blue stars seen here. You might also notice small patches of darkness that appear to block out the stars behind them. But what you wouldn’t see are these beautiful clouds colored green, yellow and red, as in this image from WISE—those are only seen in infrared. In fact, the places where you see dark patches with your eyes are often the places where WISE sees bright clouds with its infrared ”eyes.” What’s dark to our eyes is often bright to WISE because those clouds are dense enough to block visible light, but not dense enough to block the longer wavelengths of infrared light—and too cool to shine in visible light but still warm enough to glow brightly in infrared light.

However, that same basic darkening effect is happening even in this infrared image. The dark areas here are places where the gas is extremely compact and chilly, so much so that it is opaque even in the infrared wavelengths that WISE sees. To see them glow we must look in even longer wavelengths.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

galaxyshmalaxy: M78

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 19:29:23 -0500

galaxyshmalaxy:

M78

alecshao: Adam Cvijanovic - Stardust, 2010 - flash acrylic on...

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 23:51:56 -0500

alecshao:

Adam Cvijanovic - Stardust, 2010 - flash acrylic on tyvek

galaxyshmalaxy: Thor’s Helmet

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 18:02:27 -0500

galaxyshmalaxy:

Thor’s Helmet

Photo

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 16:17:56 -0500

This image has been floating around for some time, but Christy...

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 13:32:19 -0500

This image has been floating around for some time, but Christy indicated to me that the image that was floating around on Tumblr had been altered and wasn’t the artist’s original work, so here it is!

Photo

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 13:15:47 -0500

premiium: fuckin love space

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 20:08:33 -0500

premiium:

fuckin love space