RushRevisited Posted September 17, 2004 Author Share Posted September 17, 2004 http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0409/ic1805_crisp_h1c1.jpg Explanation: Sprawling across hundreds of light-years, emission nebula IC 1805 is a mix of glowing interstellar gas and dark dust clouds. Only about 7,500 light-years away, stars were born in this region whose nickname - the Heart Nebula - derives from its suggestive shape (seen here sideways). This gorgeous, deep telescopic image of the nebula is very colorful, but if you could travel there and gaze across these cosmic clouds with your own eyes, are those the colors you would really see? The short answer is no, even though the image was made with light visible to the human eye. Light from this and other glowing gas clouds surrounding hot, young stars comes in very narrow bands of emission characteristic of energized atoms within the clouds. In fact, the nebular glow is often dominated by hydrogen atoms emitting light in only a small fraction of that broad region of the spectrum that we see as the color red. Adopting an artificial color scheme commonly used for narrow band images of emission nebulae, this beautifully detailed view shows the light from sulfur atoms in red hues, with hydrogen in green, and oxygen atoms in blue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moonraker Posted September 17, 2004 Share Posted September 17, 2004 Very cool, just give em a few billion years for gravity to take effect and the atoms to pool together to make a sun. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phoenix Posted September 17, 2004 Share Posted September 17, 2004 (edited) It has wonderfull colours. The center reminds me to M16 http://skyo.lamost.org/picture/m16.jpg Edited September 17, 2004 by Phoenix Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moonraker Posted September 17, 2004 Share Posted September 17, 2004 QUOTE (Phoenix @ Sep 17 2004, 08:55 AM) It has wonderfull colours. The center reminds me to M16 http://skyo.lamost.org/picture/m16.jpg That one is just beautiful Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phoenix Posted September 18, 2004 Share Posted September 18, 2004 You may like this one too. A planetary nebula called "Cat Eye" or NGC-6543. This one is only 3600 light years away in the constellation Draco. http://home-3.worldonline.nl/~ppsmeets/Deep%20sky/Planetaire%20nevels/NGC6543%20Katteoog%20Hubble.jpg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RushRevisited Posted September 18, 2004 Author Share Posted September 18, 2004 QUOTE (Phoenix @ Sep 18 2004, 06:29 AM) You may like this one too. A planetary nebula called "Cat Eye" or NGC-6543. This one is only 3600 light years away in the constellation Draco. http://home-3.worldonline.nl/~ppsmeets/Deep%20sky/Planetaire%20nevels/NGC6543%20Katteoog%20Hubble.jpg VERY cool! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phoenix Posted September 18, 2004 Share Posted September 18, 2004 (edited) Edited September 18, 2004 by Phoenix Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Indica Posted September 18, 2004 Share Posted September 18, 2004 That's what I miss about Kentucky, there are a lot more stars there than in NY. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RushRevisited Posted September 20, 2004 Author Share Posted September 20, 2004 http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0409/Cring_cassini.jpg Explanation: Are Saturn's rings transparent? The Cassini spacecraft that recently entered orbit around Saturn has confirmed that some of Saturn's rings are more transparent than others. Pictured above, Saturn's main A, B, and C rings can be seen, top to bottom, superposed against the gas giant planet. Although the B-ring across the top is opaque, Saturn's cloud tops can be clearly seen through the lower C-ring. The translucent nature of the C-ring likely indicates that it is less densely populated with ring particles than the B-ring. The above image was taken on July 30 while Cassini was over 7 million kilometers from Saturn. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Singularity Posted September 21, 2004 Share Posted September 21, 2004 QUOTE (BSG @ Sep 7 2004, 04:19 PM) A little Drano, a little plunger action, and just look what happens...... You're actually on to something, B. That's the notion which led me to wonder if there were a black hole at the center of each spiral galaxy....like going down a drain. Turns out they do! Beyond that, I've wondered where all that energy goes, once (and if) it passes through the singularity. My thought is it all collects somewhere and, when all or most of our universe's matter and energy fall through respective black holes, it builds up and forces itself toward a single, reverse singularity...another Big Bang. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RushRevisited Posted September 21, 2004 Author Share Posted September 21, 2004 QUOTE (Singularity @ Sep 20 2004, 09:44 PM) QUOTE (BSG @ Sep 7 2004, 04:19 PM) A little Drano, a little plunger action, and just look what happens...... You're actually on to something, B. That's the notion which led me to wonder if there were a black hole at the center of each spiral galaxy....like going down a drain. Turns out they do! Beyond that, I've wondered where all that energy goes, once (and if) it passes through the singularity. My thought is it all collects somewhere and, when all or most of our universe's matter and energy fall through respective black holes, it builds up and forces itself toward a single, reverse singularity...another Big Bang. Very interesting thought. Have you considered the possibility that there is nother universe that it all "spews" into? Weird concept! is it really true that all spiral galazies havea black hole and that is why they are spiraling? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RushRevisited Posted September 21, 2004 Author Share Posted September 21, 2004 http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0409/m24_noao.jpg Explanation: Many vast star fields in the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy are rich in clouds of dust, and gas. First and foremost, visible in the above picture are millions of stars, many of which are similar to our Sun. Next huge filaments of dark interstellar dust run across the image and block the light from millions of more stars yet further across our Galaxy. The bright red region on the left is part of the Omega Nebula, an emission nebula of mostly hot hydrogen gas also known as M17. A small bright grouping of stars near the image center is the open cluster M18, while the long bright streak of stars just right of center is M24. On the far right of the image is the picturesque red emission nebula IC 1283 flanked by two blue reflection nebulas NGC 6589 and NGC 6590. These objects are visible with a small telescope toward the constellation of Sagittarius. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GhostGirl Posted September 21, 2004 Share Posted September 21, 2004 So gorgeous....thanks for posting these, RR. <sigh.....> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RushRevisited Posted September 21, 2004 Author Share Posted September 21, 2004 QUOTE (GhostGirl @ Sep 21 2004, 10:49 AM) So gorgeous....thanks for posting these, RR. <sigh.....> Thank APOD! A great site! I just copy and paste them here so we can discuss and share... I WILL, however be posting pics from my own telescope soon (within the next month or so), as Saturn will start to be visible in the night sky around 3am soon... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RushRevisited Posted September 27, 2004 Author Share Posted September 27, 2004 http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0409/orion_seip.jpg Explanation: The Great Nebula in Orion is a colorful place. Visible to the unaided eye, it appears as a small fuzzy patch in the constellation of Orion. Long exposure, digitally sharpened images like this, however, show the Orion Nebula to be a busy neighborhood of young stars, hot gas, and dark dust. The power behind much of the Orion Nebula (M42) is the Trapezium - four of the brightest stars in the nebula. Many of the filamentary structures visible are actually shock waves - fronts where fast moving material encounters slow moving gas. The Orion Nebula spans about 40 light years and is located about 1500 light years away in the same spiral arm of our Galaxy as the Sun. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moonraker Posted September 27, 2004 Share Posted September 27, 2004 Cool beans RR, keep em coming. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RushRevisited Posted September 27, 2004 Author Share Posted September 27, 2004 http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0409/eclipse99_mir.jpg Explanation: Here is what the Earth looks like during a solar eclipse. The shadow of the Moon can be seen darkening part of Earth. This shadow moved across the Earth at nearly 2000 kilometers per hour. Only observers near the center of the dark circle see a total solar eclipse - others see a partial eclipse where only part of the Sun appears blocked by the Moon. This spectacular picture of the 1999 August 11 solar eclipse was one of the last ever taken from the Mir space station, which was deorbited in a controlled re-entry in 2001. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RushRevisited Posted September 27, 2004 Author Share Posted September 27, 2004 http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0409/feii_eit010922_1812.jpg Explanation: The ultraviolet light emitted by eleven times ionized iron at temperatures over 2 million degrees Farenheit was used to record the above picture of the Sun on September 22, 2001, the date of that year's autumnal equinox. The image was made by the EIT camera onboard the SOHO spacecraft, a space observatory which can continuously observe the Sun. Eleven times ionized iron is atomic iron with eleven of its electrons stripped away. Here the electrons are stripped by the frantic collisions with other atoms and electrons which occur at the extreme temperatures in the Solar Corona. Since electrons are negatively charged, the resulting ionized iron atom is highly positively charged. Astronomer's "shorthand" for eleven times ionized iron is written "Fe XII", the chemical symbol for iron followed by a Roman numeral 12 (Fe I is neutral iron). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RushRevisited Posted September 29, 2004 Author Share Posted September 29, 2004 http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0407/Bubble_crawford_c1.jpg Explanation: Blown by the wind from a star, this tantalizing, ghostly apparition is cataloged as NGC 7635, but known simply as The Bubble Nebula. Astronomer Ken Crawford's striking view combines a long exposure through a hydrogen alpha filter with color images to reveal the intricate details of this cosmic bubble and its environment. Although it looks delicate, the 10 light-year diameter bubble offers evidence of violent processes at work. Seen here above and left of the Bubble's center is a bright hot star embedded in telltale blue hues characteristic of dust reflected starlight. A fierce stellar wind and intense radiation from the star, which likely has a mass 10 to 20 times that of the Sun, has blasted out the structure of glowing gas against denser material in a surrounding molecular cloud. The intriguing Bubble Nebula lies a mere 11,000 light-years away toward the boastful constellation Cassiopeia. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RushRevisited Posted October 1, 2004 Author Share Posted October 1, 2004 I figured this one would be appropriate with Mt. St. Helens about to erupt again http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0403/venuslava_magellan.jpg Explanation: The hot surface of Venus shows clear signs of ancient lava flows. Evidence of this was bolstered by the robot spacecraft Magellan, which orbited Venus in the early 1990s. Using imaging radar, Magellan was able to peer beneath the thick perpetual clouds that cover Earth's closest planetary neighbor. Picture above, lava apparently flowed down from the top of the image and pooled in the light colored areas visible across the image middle and bottom. The lava cut a channel across the darker ridge that runs horizontally across the image center. The picture covers about 500 kilometers across. The lava originates from a caldera named Ammavaru that lies about 300 kilometers off the image top. The hot dense climate makes Venus a more difficult planet on which to land spacecraft and rovers. Venus currently sparkles as the brightest object in the western sky after sunset. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moonraker Posted October 1, 2004 Share Posted October 1, 2004 Very interesting find RR. This could be indicitive of what our planet will look like once our sun begins to burn its energy supply and expand outward. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Singularity Posted October 1, 2004 Share Posted October 1, 2004 Nope. No intelligent life. Not a one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RushRevisited Posted October 4, 2004 Author Share Posted October 4, 2004 http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0410/ngc6823_cfht.jpg Explanation: Star cluster NGC 6823 is ready for its close-up. The center of the open cluster, visible on the upper right, formed only about two million years ago and is dominated in brightness by a host of bright young blue stars. Outer parts of the cluster, visible above in the image center as the stars and pillars of emission nebula NGC 6820, contain even younger stars. The huge pillars of gas and dust likely get their elongated shape by erosion from hot radiation emitted from the brightest cluster stars. Striking dark globules of gas and dust are also visible across the bottom of this image by the 25 year old Canada France Hawaii Telescope. Open star cluster NGC 6823 spans about 50 light years and lies about 6000 light years away toward the constellation of Vulpecula (The Fox). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Indica Posted October 4, 2004 Share Posted October 4, 2004 QUOTE (Singularity @ Oct 1 2004, 06:15 PM) Nope. No intelligent life. Not a one. How can we be sure? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drumnut Posted October 5, 2004 Share Posted October 5, 2004 (edited) Edited October 5, 2004 by Drumnut Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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