images here

Amazingly beautiful photographs taken by the hubble telescope.

first things i thought of about these pictures were christopher kane.

looks like they could interchange with the explosion picture on his now famous dresses from resort 2010:

This is powerful, eloquent and deeply humbling… watch on. We are living on only a speck of dust in the grander universe. It is all that we have.

The Pale Blue Dot

Fancy a bit of space travelling?
Here’s a short film that takes you into space and back again showing the universe we know so far.

One quick follow-on to my previous post on how the Star Wars hyperdrive really should make the Star Wars universe much different than it is.

In addition to the economic, political, and social effects noted in my last post, there is the issue of the broader universe itself. We all know that Star Wars takes place “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away” … and the action really is confined within that far away galaxy. But should it be? If we assume that the average spacing between galaxies is ~30 times their average diameter, and if we assume the time to travel across the galaxy in hyperdrive is 2 days, then the Star Wars hyperdrive technology should be able to propel us to a neighboring galaxy in just two months.

It took Columbus 3 months to sail from Spain to the New World in the late 15th Century. Even though that was a rather long travel time, the radical differences in technology levels between the New and Old worlds meant that Europeans had a big effect on New World societies from the get go.

We would assume that, since the Star Wars galaxy is teeming with life forms, other galaxies would be similarly-endowed. And given the large number of galaxies in the universe, we’d also assume a broad distribution of technology levels among them, with all the disruption that entails. So where are all the other galaxies in the Star Wars universe? Just another way in which the modesty of Star Trek’s Warp Drive rescues that universe from such complications.

No matter how far along you are in your sophistication as an amateur astronomer, there is always one fundamental moment that we all go back to.  That is that very first moment that we went out where you could really see the cosmos well and you took in the night sky.  For city dwellers, this is a revelation as profound as if we discovered aliens living among us.  Most of us have no idea the vast panorama of lights that dot a clear night sky when there are no city lights to interfere with the view.

Sure we all love the enhanced experience of studying the sky using binoculars and various sizes and powers of telescopes.  But I bet you can remember as a child that very first time you saw the fully displayed clear night sky with all the amazing constellations, meters and comets moving about and an exposure of dots of light far to numerous to ever count.

The best way to recapture the wonder of that moment is to go out in the country with a child of your own or one who has never had this experience and be there at that moment when they gaze up and say that very powerful word that is the only one that can summarize the feelings they are having viewing that magnificent sky.  That word is – “Wow”.

Probably the most phenomenal fact about what that child is looking at that is also the thing that is most difficult for them to grasp is the sheer enormity of what is above them and what it represents.  The very fact that almost certainly, virtually every dot up there in the sky is another star or celestial body that is vastly larger that Earth itself, not by twice or ten times but by factors of hundreds and thousands, can be a mind blowing idea to kids.  Children have enough trouble imagining the size of earth itself, much less something on such a grand scope as outer space.

But when it comes to astronomy, we do better when we fall into deeper and deeper levels of awe at what we see up there in the night sky.  Some amazing facts about what the children are looking at can add to the goose bumps they are already having as they gaze eyes skyward.  Facts like…

• Our sun is part of a huge galaxy called the Milky Way that consists of one hundred billion stars just like it or larger.  Show them that one hundred billion is 100,000,000,000 and you will see some jaws drop for sure.
• The milky was is just one of tens of billions of galaxies each of which has billions of stars in them as well.  In fact, the Milky Way is one of the small galaxies.
• If you wanted to drive across the Milky Way, it would take you 100,000 years.  But you can’t get there driving the speed limit.  You have to drive five trillion, eight hundred million miles per year to get all the way across that fast.
• Scientists calculate that the Milky Way is 14 billion years old.

These little fun facts should get a pretty spirited discussion going about the origins of the universe and about the possibility of space travel or if there are life on other planets.  You can challenge the kids to calculate that if every star in the Milky Way supported nine planets and if only one of them was habitable like earth is, what are the odds that life would exist on one of them?  I think you will see some genuine excitement when they try to run those numbers.

Such discussion can be fun, exciting, and full of questions.  Don’t be too hasty to shut down their imaginations as this is the birth of a lifelong love of astronomy that they are experiencing.  And if you were there that first moment when they saw that night sky, you will re-experience your own great moment when you was a child.  And it might set off a whole new excitement about astronomy in you all over again.

It’s Christmas time and what’s the true meaning of Christmas? Video games of course! Yes, the giving and receiving of video games. Alright, fine. It’s also got something to do with the birth of a baby a couple of thousand years ago or something. I don’t know, I’m an atheist. Still, video games play a lot into the Christmas experience, especially for anyone in my age bracket. Who doesn’t remember receiving a NES at Christmas? Well, I don’t because I have a shitty memory but I did own one and I’m sure it can’t have been a birthday present. No way, not for just one of us. It must have been a combined Christmas present between me and my brother Jason. Maybe Jordan as well but he was born in 1989. Might have been a bit young. On the other hand, I’m sure we all thought that the NES would be the only console there would ever be, something that would last for our entire lives, so maybe it was for all of us

So yes, for as long as I can, and apparently can’t, remember, video games have been a part of Christmas for me. And so it is with this tenuous link that I segue into today’s review, ‘King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters’. It’s a tale as old as time, a tale of rivalry, a tale of conspiracy, a tale of competition between two men. A tale of Donkey Kong.

And what a tale it is. This film is so brilliant in it’s simplicity. At it’s core its about nothing more complex than one guy trying to beat another’s score on Donkey Kong but it’s the intricate events and characters that surround it that makes it so much more. There are three major characters who are at the forefront of this story. There is Steve Wiebe (pronounced Wee-bee), the challenger, Billy Mitchell, the mulleted champion and Walter Day, the referee and an old friend of Billy Mitchell.

Steve is a man who’s life has been beset by failure. Every time he’s gotten close to even tasting the smallest bit of victory or success it’s been snatched away from him. Maybe that’s not fair. He does have a wife, two kids and a nice job as a high school science teacher but in terms of things that men care about such as sporting victory or musical accomplishment, despite being talented in these areas, Steve hasn’t gotten where he’d dreamed he’d be. The main problem seems to be that Steve has, as his brother puts it ‘a few social hang-ups’. In other words he seems to be quite shy and is also incredibly nice. The kind of nice that actually becomes a problem because you allow people to walk all over you. So what better achievement for someone with such social hang ups to aim for than a high score in a video game. Steve also has another thing going for him and that’s that he has a very, very analytical mind. He can detect patterns and find solutions to things that I, someone who has an incredibly poor mathematical mind, find truly astounding.

Billy Mitchell is essentially the polar opposite of Steve. He’s achieved success in his life, both with video games and with his hot sauce business ventures. He’s had the high-score on Donkey Kong ever since the 80s and is basically an idol to the small group of hardcore classic arcade gaming nerds who surround him. Scratch that, he’s more than an idol, to them he’s like a living God. He’s the embodiment of Neo from the Matrix movies if the Matrix had the graphical capabilities of an Atari. As such, Billy Mitchell has a very inflated sense of self-worth. He’s uber-patriotic, uber-egotistical and an uber-arse hole. He’s one of the greatest screen villains I’ve seen in recent years and what’s terrifying is he’s a real person… well, that and his hair. The scene where Billy and Steve are finally on screen together is one of the most tense and heart breaking scenes in any film, documentary or otherwise.

You can’t deny, however, that Billy has a talent for success. He clearly strives hard and works towards achieving his goals, sometimes using questionable means. There’s one scene which shows him in a supermarket, moving another brand of hot sauce out of the way and pushing more of his own into the spare space. What a man.

Walter Day is a bit more like Steve Wiebe. He’s also incredibly nice to the point of it perhaps being to his disadvantage. He seems to be a refugee from the love generation, an aging hippy who somehow found himself in the arcades during the 80s and never managed to find his way out. He’s the founder of Twin Galaxies, an organisation that collects and ranks high scores and acts as it’s official referee during live events. There seems to be the suggestion, however, that because of his nature, Twin Galaxies has been almost high-jacked by the gamers themselves, Billy Mitchell in particular. Most of the other people who make up TG also seem to have high scores and there are times when it seems as though they are doing everything they can to stop Steve Wiebe from removing their king from his throne. Of course it could just be that the only people qualified to check if people are cheating or not or if a score is valid are the people who have truly mastered those games. It’s the nature of the beast.

It’s these other people who surround the situation that add yet another layer to this film and it’s interesting to see the juxtaposition between the two worlds, the very ordinary world of Steve and his family and the very odd and sheltered world of Twin Galaxies and the people it’s made up of. Some of these people, such as Robert Mruczek who watches every taped high score attempt that comes in, have given their lives over to the past time. It’s really quite sad to see though I suppose they can be admired for their passion. Maybe.

So what’s left to say about the film without giving too much of the story away? Well, it has an awesome soundtrack. In particular their use of the ‘You’re The Best’ from the Karate Kid, ‘Eye of the Tiger’, ‘In The Hall Of The Mountain King’, Leonard Cohen’s ‘Everybody Knows’ and one particular track that Steve Wiebe composed himself are all brilliant and just add to the feeling that this is just like watching a film about boxers, karate masters or any other physical contest between two men… I dunno, wrestling or something. It has the feel of a true sports underdog story.

So to wrap up, I love this film and I haven‘t really covered too much of the plot because I don‘t want to spoil it for anyone. I honestly think that it might be perfect and I can’t see anyone not enjoying it. Go and buy it right now and by several more copies for your friends and loved ones for Christmas. It’s only £3.98 at amazon.co.uk and $15.99 at amazon.com. You can afford that! Actually, Americans might wanna buy it from amazon.co.uk… It’s probably cheaper even with the postage and packaging. And don’t just download it. You need the DVD and the two brilliant commentaries that come included on it, especially the one with Chris Carle and John M. Gibson. It’s hilarious. Seriously, buy this film. You won’t regret it. Even if you don’t like video games, you’ll enjoy this film. I showed it to my mum and before she said “What? A movie about Donkey Kong? That sounds stupid! You’re stupid! I wish I’d never given birth to you!” Ok, she didn’t exactly say that but she thought it sounded stupid but afterwards she loved it. And so will you. That’s a promise. Look, here’s the link:

King Of Kong DVD

No more arguing, go buy it. I give this film five pints out of five. Laterz. Buy it.

The BBC released some crazy new space imagery from the Herschel Telescope today.  One image is of stars being born in the Aquila constellation.  Massive amounts of gas and dust compound together to created new stars far far away.  Another measures the properties and portions of stardust, calculating the chance of such new stars forming.  There’s also one of the Crux — or “southern cross” — constellation: long strands of matter spaced out with tiny beads known as star embryos.  An infrared image of the spiral galaxy known as M81 appears as well.  Apparently images such as that are used to determine if another galaxy nearby is sucking stars away with its own gravitational pull.  Again, THE LINK.

-Sonny

NASA Launches Comet-Hunting Space Camera

NASA on Monday successfully launched a space telescope designed to create a highly detailed map of the heavens and spot comets and asteroids that could pose a threat to life on Earth.

NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, lifted off from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base atop a Delta II rocket at 6:09 a.m. PST.

“”WISE thundered overhead, lighting up the pre-dawn skies,” said William Irace, mission project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, Calif.

“All systems are looking good, and we are on our way to seeing the entire infrared sky better than ever before,” said Irace.

WISE will use an infrared camera to map the cosmos. The mission calls for the unmanned spacecraft to cover the entire sky one-and-a-half times, until its frozen coolant runs out. NASA hopes it will capture everything from near-Earth asteroids to distant galaxies teeming with stars.

“The last time we mapped the whole sky at these particular infrared wavelengths was 26 years ago,” noted UCLA’s Edward Wright, who is principal mission manager.

“Infrared technology has come a long way since then. The old all-sky infrared pictures were like impressionist paintings—now we’ll have images that look like actual photographs,” said Wright.

WISE is designed to provide information about the size, composition, and texture of near-Earth objects such as comets and asteroids.

“We can help protect our Earth by learning more about the diversity of potentially hazardous asteroids and comets,” said Amy Mainzer, deputy project scientist for the mission at JPL.

WISE will also attempt to document the cycle of life in the Universe, as it will capture faraway images of star-hatching galaxies and ravenous, planet-eating black holes.

See also:
WISE Spacecraft Seeks Near Earth Objects, New Stars Using Infrared Wavelengths
NASA launches new mapping spacecraft
Utah-made telescope blasts into space
Infrared Space Telescope Launched From California
NASA launches spacecraft that will map stars, galaxies, asteroids
NASA Craft To Photograph Entire Universe
Nasa sky survey probe blasts off
NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer launched
NASA’s WISE (Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer) telescope launched
NASA – Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer
Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer
Delta II Overview
Delta II

/WISE is not only good science, but a good idea for protecting the Earth, well done NASA and JPL

Hubblecast 32: Born in Beauty – Proplyds in the Orion Nebula.

Visible to the naked eye, only 1500 light-years from Earth, the great Orion Nebula has been known and revered since ancient times.

A popular target of Hubble, researchers have now identified 42 new discs within it that could be the beginnings of new planetary systems like our own.

A new UK-designed telescope that can map the sky much faster and deeper than any other infrared telescope has made its first release of stunning images.

VISTA (the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy) is the world’s largest telescope dedicated to mapping the sky in infrared light and will reveal a completely new view of the southern sky.  The spectacular images of the Flame Nebula, the centre of our Milky Way Galaxy and the Fornax Galaxy Cluster show that VISTA, based at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile, is working extremely well.

Amongst other things, VISTA’s surveys will help our understanding of the nature and distribution and origin of known types of stars and galaxies, map the 3-D structure of our galaxy, and help determine the relation between the 3-D structure of the Universe and the mysterious ‘dark energy’ and ‘dark matter’. Samples of objects will also be followed up in detail with further observations by other telescopes and instruments such as the nearby Very Large Telescope (VLT). Keele University in Staffordshire is one of 18 UK universities in the VISTA consortium.

The Minister of State for Science and Innovation Lord Drayson, said, “This outstanding example of UK kit is revealing our universe’s deepest secrets. I eagerly await more images from VISTA, which builds on our reputation as a world-leading centre for astronomy.”

The first released image shows the Flame Nebula (NGC 2024), a spectacular star-forming cloud of gas and dust in the familiar constellation of Orion (the Hunter) and its surroundings. In visible light the core of the object is hidden behind thick clouds of dust, but the VISTA image, taken at infrared wavelengths, can penetrate the murk and reveal the cluster of hot young stars hidden within. The wide field of view of the VISTA camera also captures the glow of NGC 2023 and the ghostly form of the famous Horsehead Nebula.

The second image is a mosaic of two VISTA views towards the centre of our Milky Way galaxy in the constellation of Sagittarius (the Archer). Vast numbers of stars are revealed – this single picture shows about one million stars – and the majority are normally hidden behind thick dust clouds and only become visible at infrared wavelengths.

For the final image, VISTA has stared far beyond our galaxy to take a family photograph of a cluster of galaxies in the constellation of Fornax (the Chemical Furnace). The wide field allows many galaxies to be captured in a single image including the striking barred-spiral NGC 1365 and the big elliptical galaxy NGC 1399.

VISTA was conceived and developed by a consortium of 18 Universities in the UK led by Queen Mary University of London and is an in-kind contribution to ESO as part of the UK’s accession agreement.  The telescope design and construction were project managed by STFC’s UK Astronomy Technology Centre (UKATC).  VISTA was formally handed over to ESO at a ceremony at ESO’s Headquarters in Garching, Germany, attended by representatives of Queen Mary, University of London and STFC on 10 December 2009 and will now be operated by ESO..

“VISTA is a unique addition to ESO’s observatory on Cerro Paranal.  It will play a pioneering role in surveying the southern sky at infrared wavelengths and will find many interesting targets for study by the future European Extremely Large Telescope,” says Professor Tim de Zeeuw, ESO Director General.

Professor Keith Mason, Chief Executive of the Science and Technology Facilities Council, said, “This innovative telescope, designed by the UK, will give us unparalleled observing of the southern skies and will help to reveal some of the deepest secrets of the Universe like the nature of Dark Matter and Dark Energy.”

Professor John Womersley, Director of Science Programmes at STFC, added, “The handover of VISTA marks a major milestone for UK astronomy, strengthens our relationship with ESO and enhances our capabilities in an area of science where the UK has a particular strength.”

Observing at wavelengths longer than those visible with the human eye allows VISTA to study a wide range of objects, including stars hidden by interstellar dust, very cool stars that are hard to detect in visible light and the most distant galaxies where the light is stretched beyond the visible into the infrared by the expansion of the Universe. To avoid swamping the faint infrared radiation coming from space, the VISTA camera has to be cooled to -200 degrees Celsius and is sealed with the largest infrared-transparent window ever made. The camera was designed and built by a consortium including the STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, the UK ATC and the University of Durham.

Kim Ward, the camera manager from STFC’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, said, “At the heart of VISTA is a 3-tonne camera containing 16 special detectors sensitive to infrared light with a combined total of 67 million pixels.”

Professor Ian Robson, Head of the STFC UK ATC, added, “We’re immensely proud of what we’ve achieved in providing the astronomical community with the VISTA telescope. The exceptional quality of the scientific data is a tribute to all the scientists and engineers who were involved in this exciting and challenging project.”

Because VISTA is a large telescope that also has a large field of view it can both detect faint sources and also cover wide areas of sky quickly. Each VISTA image captures an area of sky about ten times as large as the full Moon and it will be able to detect and catalogue objects over the whole southern sky with a sensitivity that is forty times greater than achieved with earlier infrared sky surveys such as the highly successful Two Micron All-Sky Survey. This jump in observational power, comparable to the step in sensitivity from the unaided eye to Galileo’s first telescope, will reveal vast numbers of new objects and allow the creation of far more complete inventories of rare and exotic objects in the southern sky.

Professor Jim Emerson, leader of the VISTA consortium from Queen Mary University London (QMUL), is looking forward to a rich harvest of science from the new telescope, “History has shown us that the most exciting things that come out of projects like VISTA are what you least expect – and I’m very excited to see what these will be!”

View some of the images

ESOcast 12: VISTA – A Pioneering New Survey Telescope Starts Work.

VISTA (the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy) is a new telescope that has just started work at ESOs Paranal Observatory in Chile and has made its first release of pictures.

VISTA is a survey telescope working at infrared wavelengths and is the worlds largest survey telescope. Its large mirror, wide field of view and very sensitive detectors will reveal a completely new view of the southern sky.

Spectacular pictures of the Flame Nebula, the Centre of the Milky Way and the Fornax Galaxy Cluster show that it is working very well.

Li spacial telescop «Hubble» pos su general reparation descovrit li max vel’i galaxies, queles es conosset till nu. Scientificos del NASA informat, que un nov installat cámera inviat inregistrationes de plur milles de stellari systemas al terre, queles antey nequí hat videt.

Ti galaxies trova se in un distantie de circa 13 milliardes de luminari annus e format se supposibilmen 600 milliones de annus pos li Originatori Crac, quel es li massiv explosion, quel secun generalmen acceptat theorie guidat al nascentie del universe. Li images monstra un region del spacie, quel esset explorat de «Hubble» ja in li annu 2004.

American and European scientists say the upgraded Hubble space telescope has spotted the oldest galaxies ever seen. The images were taken with the telescope’s new Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) in August this year.
The galaxies are about 13 billion light years from Earth, meaning they formed less than one billion years after the Big Bang – the cosmological model of the initial conditions and subsequent development of the universe.
WFC3 was installed in May this year, during a mission by the space shuttle Atlantis to repair and upgrade Hubble. Experts say the new instrument will let them peer even further back in time, to when the universe was in its infancy. The more distant a galaxy is, the more its light is “redshifted” due to expansion of the universe. Light from the furthest galaxies is shifted to infrared wavelengths invisible to the human eye, but WFC3 can detect these.
The new image was taken in August, in the same region as a 2004 visible light image known as the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. The 2004 photo previously showed the most distant galaxies, but the new infrared pictures from the WFC3 allow even more remote galaxies to be seen.
Capturing the image took four days, and the total exposure lasted 173,000 seconds. In the three months since, twelve scientific papers have been submitted on it. On Tuesday one of these confirmed the galaxies as the furthest ever seen.
They are also the oldest, with the light from them having taken around 13 billion years to reach Earth.
“At these distances, you’re really looking back in time, like you have a time machine,” said Ray Villard, of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. “Those things don’t exist anymore.”
The photo could be one of the ultimate achievements of the Hubble telescope, now almost twenty years old.
“These new observations are likely to be the most sensitive images Hubble will ever take,” said Professor Jim Dunlop of the University of Edinburgh.
The servicing mission in May extended the telescope’s life by around five years, but it is scheduled to be replaced by the James Webb Space Telescope in 2014. This will use infrared imaging and have a greater collecting area than Hubble, and it is thought that it may be able make out objects from just 100 million years after the Big Bang.
“We’ve really pushed Hubble to its limits,” said Villard, “and we need a bigger space telescope to go back even farther. It shows us there are really exciting things to look for with the Webb telescope.”

Mapping the deep galactic field.  A short video on Hubble’s images of the farthest reaches of the universe.

Gives perspective, the lights are galaxies — NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has managed to capture the “deepest image” of the universe ever taken in near-infrared light.

The image was reportedly acquired in the same region as the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF), which was snapped in 2004 and is the deepest visible-light image of the universe.

“Hubble’s newly installed Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) collects light from near-infrared wavelengths and therefore looks even deeper into the universe, because the light from very distant galaxies is stretched out of the ultraviolet and visible regions of the spectrum into near-infrared wavelengths by the expansion of the universe,” NASA explained in a statement.

“The faintest and reddest objects seen in the image are galaxies that formed 600 million years after the Big Bang.”

Indeed, infrared light is invisible and therefore does not have colors that can be perceived by the human eye. As such, the colors in the image are assigned comparatively short, medium, and long, near-IR wavelengths (blue, 1.05 microns; green, 1.25 microns; red, 1.6 microns).

Mission Objectives: Constellation, Galaxy

Equipment: Sky map, Naked eye, Binoculars, Telescope

Required Time: 5 minutes

Related Missions: Cassiopeia and the Double Cluster

Instructions: Go outside after dark, look up high in the east, and find a big square of stars surrounding a whole lot of nuthin’. That’s the Great Square of Pegasus. If it doesn’t jump out at you, punch it up in Stellarium, print out  a free sky map, or follow the other middle leg of the Cassiopeia W, the one that doesn’t point to the Double Cluster.

The Great Square of Pegasus isn’t all in Pegasus; the star at the northeast corner actually belongs to the neighboring constellation of Andromeda. But the square is such a handy signpost that most people ignore the official constellation boundaries as set out by the International Astronomical Union.

That northeast corner star is the anchor for two almost identical chains of stars, one of which looks like a fainter copy of the other. Go from the second star in the brighter chain to the second star in the dimmer one, and then on in the same direction for an equal distance, and you’ll come to M31,  the Great Nebula in Andromeda.

M31 was named Back In The Day when the term “nebula” was used for any hazy patch in the sky. These days “nebula” means an interstellar cloud of gas and dust, any one of the many that litter the arms of spiral galaxies. They come in lots of flavors, which I won’t cover here; the important thing is that nebulae are comparatively tiny parts of galaxies.

M31, or the Andromeda Galaxy, is not just a galaxy; for stargazers in the northern hemisphere, it’s THE galaxy. From a dark site you can see it with the naked eye, and in fact at two million light years away, it is the most distant object that can be easily observed without optical aid (I qualified that with “easily” because there are a handful of more distant galaxies that can also be seen with the Mark 1 eyeball; pick up the current issue of Astronomy magazine and check out Stephen O’Meara’s column to learn more).

In binoculars, the Andromeda Galaxy looks like a pretty oval haze with a bright core. As you go from binoculars to small telescope to big telescopes, the amount of visible detail increases but the field of view usually decreases, and it can be hard or impossible to fit the whole thing into the field of view of a long focal-length telescope. Think of that, a galaxy so big and so close you can’t see it all with most scopes! It’s so close that people with monster Dobs regularly amuse themselves by picking out its globular clusters, whereas small-scope folks like me find the globs in our own galaxy to be plenty challenging.

The very, very small version of Rob Gendlers' very, very large M31 mosaic.

If you want to see M31 in all its glory, you must get over to Rob Gendler’s site and check out the stupendously huge mosaics on his galaxies page. One of his images has a resolution of 21,904 x 14,454 pixels and at least as of 2009 was the highest resolution image ever made of a spiral galaxy, period.

You may also know that the Andromeda Galaxy is destined to collide with our own Milky Way in a few billion years, setting off massive bouts of star formation as the two repeatedly pass through each other and eventually merge into something bigger and stranger, probably an elliptical but possibly a super-spiral or even a ring galaxy. Should be a pretty good show for whoever is around to see it.

Don’t wait up though. M31 is high overhead in the early evening and pretty good viewing until the wee hours. Go check it out.

Life Beyond Earth: Origin And Evolution Of Life In The Universe – Best Of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos

So this seems like a random post that doesn’t follow the pattern of my other posts here on Nimble Ogre.  Yet, remember this is The Ramblings of Sha’ul not exactly the “new” Engadget or Worldstarhiphop.com.

Anyways, I heard about this today on Bloomberg Radio, the WISE program from NASA.  It will map the sky in infrared to see the origin of star systems, find new stars, galaxies and more.  I’ve been obsessed with space since childhood, and of course Mass Effect (on a side space dork note).  This truly is amazing.  The WISE program begins in roughly 4 days.

This is straight from the site:

“WISE is a NASA-funded Explorer mission that will provide a vast storehouse of knowledge about the solar system, the Milky Way, and the Universe. Among the objects WISE will study are asteroids, the coolest and dimmest stars, and the most luminous galaxies.

WISE is an unmanned satellite carrying an infrared-sensitive telescope that will image the entire sky. Since objects around room temperature emit infrared radiation, the WISE telescope and detectors are kept very cold (below -430° F /15 Kelvins, which is only 15° Centigrade above absolute zero) by a cryostat — like an ice chest but filled with solid hydrogen instead of ice.

Solar panels will provide WISE with the electricity it needs to operate, and will always point toward the Sun. Orbiting several hundred miles above the dividing line between night and day on Earth, the telescope will look out at right angles to the Sun and will always point away from Earth. As WISE orbits from the North pole to the equator to the South pole and then back up to the North pole, the telescope will sweep out a circle in the sky. As the Earth moves around the Sun, this circle will move around the sky, and after six months WISE will have observed the whole sky.

As WISE sweeps along the circle a small mirror scans in the opposite direction, capturing an image of the sky onto an infrared sensitive digital camera which will take a picture every 11 seconds. Each picture will cover an area of the sky 3 times larger than the full Moon. After 6 months WISE will have taken nearly 1,500,000 pictures covering the entire sky. Each picture will have one megapixel at each of four different wavelengths that range from 5 to 35 times longer than the longest waves the human eye can see. Data taken by WISE will be downloaded by radio transmission 4 times per day to computers on the ground which will combine the many images taken by WISE into an atlas covering the entire celestial sphere and a list of all the detected objects.”

via NASA

By Margriet van der Heijden

ddp

The Large Hadron Collider accelerator in Geneva was constructed to search for the Higgs boson, among other things.

Physicist Peter Higgs is now world famous because of the subatomic particle bearing his name. But his ideas were initially snubbed by the academic world, with his landmark publication predicting the existence of the Higgs boson being rejected at first. The editor apparently didn’t understand a word of it.

Read more at Source

->>>>>><<<<-

First up, check out this awesome polar ring galaxy from APOD:

Ring galaxies are weird beasts to begin with, with a giant ring of stars, gas, and dust around a central core instead of the usual spiral arms. Polar ring galaxies are even weirder, in that the ring is offset from the axis of the central disk. Think about what it would be like to live on a planet in such a galaxy: depending on where the planet was located and the season, there might be two “milky ways” of light arching over the night sky.

And speaking of the Milky Way, check out these awesome posters celebrating the view of the night sky from the US National Parks. The posters were created by Dr. Tyler Nordgren, who toured the national parks a couple of years ago to document the night sky and educate people about light pollution. I got to see him speak at an SBVAA meeting last year, and I’m looking forward to his forthcoming astrophotography book, which will chronicle his experiences on his national park tour.

Sorry for the lack of blogging lately, I spent most of my free time over the last month working on a feature on Dublin’s internet cafes for The Dubliner magazine. I’ve a few things lined up for the blog now, including a post on where the balance of evidence lies regarding the effects of one-parent families, same-sex parents and other family issues, and – if I can figure out the techy stuff – a series of podcast interviews with leading scientists based in Ireland. For now, I’ll resume with the first of a series of great online science videos – few will inspire an interest in science and an awe at the universe more than the classic ‘powers of ten’ clip.

As an amateur astronomer, I find the clear night sky fascinating. It’s like TV but better, sure the same things on every night, but just one glance upward can make the universe seem so wondrous.

I find it surprising that most people I know don’t even realise there’s even stars in the sky, they look up once a year and say “oh isn’t that pretty”. Pretty? It’s beyond pretty, it’s awesome! And I don’t mean the kind of awesome like when you get a free burger you didn’t order from McDonalds drive through. I mean the real term Awesome.

You are one person, on a planet of Billions, in a solar system of 8 planets, in a galaxy of millions of stars in a universe filled with Trillions of galaxies. Or in another way, the Milky Way (our galaxy not the chocolate bar) is like one grain of sand on one beach in the entire world. That might help give you an idea of how vast the universe really is.

And there’s so much to see from our own back garden, just looking up into the night’s sky you can see planets in the solar system, Stars in our own galaxy and even other galaxies, all with the naked eye.

With the meteor shower due on the 13^th December I’m pleading with every person to get out there and watch it, it may not be as exciting as 24, or as funny as mock the week. But at least the signal doesn’t cut out or charge you an extortionate rate to watch it in HD. It’s a free light show available for everyone. And if we truly want answers about why we’re here or where we came from, the answers more likely to come from out there than on this small boulder we live on. So please next time your bored or your on a long car journey at night, or even if you just want some time alone to think. Just look up and wonder!