APOD

[RushRevisited]

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0605/ngc2440_hst4.jpg

 

Explanation: Like a butterfly, a white dwarf star begins its life by casting off a cocoon that enclosed its former self. In this analogy, however, the Sun would be a caterpillar and the ejected shell of gas would become the prettiest of all! In the above cocoon, the planetary nebula designated NGC 2440, contains one of the hottest white dwarf stars known. The white dwarf can be seen as the bright dot near the photo's center. Our Sun will eventually become a "white dwarf butterfly", but not for another 5 billion years. The above false color image was post-processed by Forrest Hamilton.

[RushRevisited]

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0605/slabsthelens_usgs.jpg

 

Explanation: A new rock slab is growing at more than one meter a day on the Mt. St. Helens volcano in Washington, USA. The rock slab, growing since last November, now extends about 100 meters out from one of the volcano's craters. A recently made time lapse movie shows the rock slab growing. Pictured above, a helicopter examines the steaming hot rock slab late last month. Mt. St. Helens underwent a spectacular eruption in 1980 but has been undergoing a comparatively serene eruption since 2004 September. A new volcanic dome has been building which is now about 100 meters above the 1980s dome. The rock slab is visible from the Johnson Ridge Observatory on the erupting volcano.

[Alsgalpal]

QUOTE (RushRevisited @ May 9 2006, 07:36 AM)

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0605/slabsthelens_usgs.jpg Explanation: A new rock slab is growing at more than one meter a day on the Mt. St. Helens volcano in Washington, USA. The rock slab, growing since last November, now extends about 100 meters out from one of the volcano's craters. A recently made time lapse movie shows the rock slab growing. Pictured above, a helicopter examines the steaming hot rock slab late last month. Mt. St. Helens underwent a spectacular eruption in 1980 but has been undergoing a comparatively serene eruption since 2004 September. A new volcanic dome has been building which is now about 100 meters above the 1980s dome. The rock slab is visible from the Johnson Ridge Observatory on the erupting volcano.

Thats awesome!!!

 

 

Is there a link to the video they took? That would be very interesting to watch.

[Daylin]

QUOTE (RushRevisited @ May 9 2006, 10:20 AM)

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0605/ngc2440_hst4.jpg Explanation: Like a butterfly, a white dwarf star begins its life by casting off a cocoon that enclosed its former self. In this analogy, however, the Sun would be a caterpillar and the ejected shell of gas would become the prettiest of all! In the above cocoon, the planetary nebula designated NGC 2440, contains one of the hottest white dwarf stars known. The white dwarf can be seen as the bright dot near the photo's center. Our Sun will eventually become a "white dwarf butterfly", but not for another 5 billion years. The above false color image was post-processed by Forrest Hamilton.

I love the colors!

 

Thanks for these RR <<< Miller Light of course

[RushRevisited]

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0605/lmc_whw.jpg

 

Explanation: Portuguese navigator Fernando de Magellan and his crew had plenty of time to study the southern sky during the first circumnavigation of planet Earth. As a result, two fuzzy cloud-like objects easily visible for southern hemisphere skygazers are known as the Clouds of Magellan. Of course, these star clouds are now understood to be dwarf irregular galaxies, satellites of our larger spiral Milky Way galaxy. The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) pictured above is only about 180,000 light-years distant in the constellation Dorado. Spanning about 15,000 light-years or so, it is the most massive of the Milky Way's satellite galaxies and is the site of the closest supernova in modern times. The prominent red knot on the left is 30 Doradus, or the Tarantula Nebula, a giant star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

[RushRevisited]

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0605/c73pM57_walker_c46r.jpg

 

Explanation: Moving rapidly through planet Earth's night sky, Fragment C of crumbling comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 passed almost directly in front of M57 - the Ring Nebula, and faint spiral galaxy IC 1296 on May 8. In fact, in this gorgeous view, the bright head of Fragment C is separated by only about 0.1 degrees from M57, with the tail apparently engulfing nebula and galaxy. Recorded from Elizabeth, Illinois, USA, this picture corresponds to the cosmic scene only 30 minutes after yesterday's picture of the approaching alignment. The relative motion of the comet against the background stars and nebulae is easy to see when comparing the two images. This comet's fragments will be near their closest approach in the coming days, about 10 million kilometers away, and none pose any danger to our fair planet.

[pixey]

QUOTE (RushRevisited @ May 9 2006, 09:36 AM)

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0605/slabsthelens_usgs.jpg Explanation: A new rock slab is growing at more than one meter a day on the Mt. St. Helens volcano in Washington, USA. The rock slab, growing since last November, now extends about 100 meters out from one of the volcano's craters. A recently made time lapse movie shows the rock slab growing. Pictured above, a helicopter examines the steaming hot rock slab late last month. Mt. St. Helens underwent a spectacular eruption in 1980 but has been undergoing a comparatively serene eruption since 2004 September. A new volcanic dome has been building which is now about 100 meters above the 1980s dome. The rock slab is visible from the Johnson Ridge Observatory on the erupting volcano.

Read story here

 

A large portion of the rock fell apart, an estimated 65K cubic feet of it.

[RushRevisited]

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0605/bumpyboulder_spirit.jpg

 

 

Explanation: What created this unusually textured rock on Mars? Most probably: a volcano. Dubbed Bumpy Boulder, the strange stone measuring just under a half-meter high was found by the robotic Spirit rover currently rolling across Mars. Pits on the raged rock are likely vesicles and arise from hot gas bubbling out of hot rock ejected by an active Martian volcano. Several similar rocks are visible near Bumpy Boulder that likely have a similar past. The above true-color image was taken about one month ago. The Spirit rover, now in its third year of operation on Mars, is weathering the low sunlight winter of Mar's northern hemisphere on a hillside slope in order to maximize the amount of absorbable battery-refreshing sunlight.

 

[blonde77th]

Very nice as usual RR !!

[RushRevisited]

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0605/quasar5p2_hst.jpg

 

Explanation: What's happening near the center of this cluster of galaxies? At first glance, it appears that several strangely elongated galaxies and fully five bright quasars exist there. In reality, an entire cluster of galaxies is acting as a gigantic gravitational lens that distorts and multiply-images bright objects that occur far in the distance. The five bright white points near the cluster center are actually images of a single distant quasar. This Hubble Space Telescope image is so detailed that even the host galaxy surrounding the quasar is visible. Close inspection of the above image will reveal that the arced galaxies at 2 and 4 o'clock are actually gravitationally lensed images of the same galaxy. A third image of that galaxy can be found at about 10 o'clock from the cluster center. Serendipitously, numerous strange and distant galaxies dot the above image like colorful jewels. The cluster of galaxy that acts as the huge gravitational lens is cataloged as SDSS J1004+4112 and lies about 7 billion light years distant toward the constellation of Leo Minor.

[launchpad67a]

Awesome! I believe that's part of the "Deep Sky Survey" image.

[RushRevisited]

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0605/ngc1579_gabany_c55.jpg

 

Explanation: Colorful NGC 1579 resembles the better known Trifid Nebula, but lies much farther north in planet Earth's sky, in the heroic constellation Perseus. About 2,100 light-years away and 3 light-years across, NGC 1579 is a captivating study in color. Like the Trifid, NGC 1579 is a dusty star forming region providing contrasting emission and reflection nebulae in the same field - the characteristic red glow of hydrogen gas and the blue of reflected starlight. Also like the Trifid, dark dust lanes are prominent in the nebula's central regions. In fact, obscuring dust is pervasive in NGC 1579, drastically dimming the visible light from the massive, young, hot stars still embedded in the cosmic cloud.

[RushRevisited]

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0605/ipolar_garlick_big.jpg

 

Explanation: How can two stars create such a strange and intricate structure? Most stars are members of multiple-star systems. Some stars are members of close binary systems where material from one star swirls around the other in an accretion disk. Only a handful of stars, however, are members of an intermediate polar, a system featuring a white dwarf star with a magnetic field that significantly pushes out the inner accretion disk, only allowing material to fall down its magnetic poles. Shown above is an artist's depiction of an intermediate polar system, also known as a DQ Hercules system. The foreground white dwarf is so close to the normal star that it strips away its outer atmosphere. As the white dwarf spins, the columns of infalling gas rotate with it. The name intermediate polar derives from observations of emitted light polarized at a level intermediate to non-disk binary systems known as polars. Intermediate polars are a type of cataclysmic variable star system.

[RushRevisited]

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0606/ngc6188_gendler.jpg

 

Explanation: NGC 6188 is an interstellar carnival of young blue stars, hot red gas, and cool dark dust. Located 4,000 light years away in the disk of our Galaxy, NGC 6188 is home to the Ara OB1 association, a group of bright young stars whose nucleus forms the open cluster NGC 6193. These stars are so bright that some of their blue light reflects off of interstellar dust forming the diffuse blue glow surrounding them stars in the above photograph. Open cluster NGC 6193 formed about three million years ago from the surrounding gas, and appears unusually rich in close binary stars. The red glow visible throughout the photograph arises from hydrogen gas heated by the bright stars in Ara OB1. The dark dust that blocks much of NGC 6188's light was likely formed in the outer atmospheres of cooler stars and in supernovae ejecta.

[Daylin]

I missed a few of these!

 

Very interesting and beautiful RR

 

Thanks for sharing

[RushRevisited]

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0606/ic443_comp_f85.jpg

 

Explanation: IC 443 is typical of the aftermath of a stellar explosion, the ultimate fate of massive stars. Seen in this false-color composite image, the supernova remnant is still glowing across the spectrum, from radio (blue) to optical (red) to x-ray (green) energies -- even though light from the stellar explosion that created the expanding cosmic cloud first reached planet Earth thousands of years ago. The odd thing about IC 443 is the apparent motion of its dense neutron star, the collapsed remnant of the stellar core. The close-up inset shows the swept-back wake created as the neutron star hurtles through the hot gas, but that direction is not aligned with the direction toward the apparent center of the remnant. The misalignment suggests that the explosion site was offset from the center or that fast-moving gas in the nebula has influenced the wake. The wide view of IC 443, also known as the Jellyfish nebula, spans about 65 light-years at the supernova remnant's estimated distance of 5,000 light-years.

[Daylin]

QUOTE (RushRevisited @ Jun 2 2006, 02:14 PM)

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0606/ic443_comp_f85.jpg Explanation: IC 443 is typical of the aftermath of a stellar explosion, the ultimate fate of massive stars. Seen in this false-color composite image, the supernova remnant is still glowing across the spectrum, from radio (blue) to optical (red) to x-ray (green) energies -- even though light from the stellar explosion that created the expanding cosmic cloud first reached planet Earth thousands of years ago. The odd thing about IC 443 is the apparent motion of its dense neutron star, the collapsed remnant of the stellar core. The close-up inset shows the swept-back wake created as the neutron star hurtles through the hot gas, but that direction is not aligned with the direction toward the apparent center of the remnant. The misalignment suggests that the explosion site was offset from the center or that fast-moving gas in the nebula has influenced the wake. The wide view of IC 443, also known as the Jellyfish nebula, spans about 65 light-years at the supernova remnant's estimated distance of 5,000 light-years.

I'm learning so much

 

I love these images...In this one that blue looks magnificent!

[blonde77th]

Wow i like that so interesting !!

[RushRevisited]

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0606/ngc6164_gemini.jpg

 

Explanation: How did a star form this beautiful nebula? In the middle of emission nebula NGC 6164-5 is an unusually massive star nearing the end of its life. The star, visible in the center of the above image and catalogued as HD 148937, is so hot that the ultraviolet light it emits heats up gas that surrounds it. That gas was likely thrown off from the star, possibly by its fast rotation, like a rotating lawn sprinkler. Expelled material might have been further channeled by the magnetic field of the star, creating the symmetric shape of the bipolar nebula. Several cometary knots of gas are also visible on the lower left. NGC 6164-5 spans about four light years and is located about 4,000 light years away toward the southern constellation Norma.

[Taril]

Love this site. Its been my homepage on my browser for at least 6 or 7 years now.

[LakesideMaiden]

QUOTE (RushRevisited @ Jun 6 2006, 02:28 PM)

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0606/ngc6164_gemini.jpg Explanation: How did a star form this beautiful nebula? In the middle of emission nebula NGC 6164-5 is an unusually massive star nearing the end of its life. The star, visible in the center of the above image and catalogued as HD 148937, is so hot that the ultraviolet light it emits heats up gas that surrounds it. That gas was likely thrown off from the star, possibly by its fast rotation, like a rotating lawn sprinkler. Expelled material might have been further channeled by the magnetic field of the star, creating the symmetric shape of the bipolar nebula. Several cometary knots of gas are also visible on the lower left. NGC 6164-5 spans about four light years and is located about 4,000 light years away toward the southern constellation Norma.

Gorgeous, RR! I had totally forgotten about this thread until you ed it up with the new pick!

Edited June 17, 2006 by RushRevisited

[blonde77th]

Really cool i love it

[different strings]

This thread is one of the more interesting and informative threads on the board

[RushRevisited]

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0606/volcanoplume_iss.jpg

 

Explanation: What is happening to that volcano? It's erupting! The first person to note that the Aleutian Cleveland Volcano was spewing ash was astronaut Jeffrey N. Williams aboard the International Space Station. Looking down on the Alaskan Aleutian Islands two weeks ago, Williams noted, photographed, and reported a spectacular ash plume emanating from the Cleveland Volcano. Starting just before this image was taken, the Cleveland Volcano underwent a short eruption lasting only about two hours. The Cleveland stratovolcano is one of the most active in the Aleutian Island chain. The volcano is fueled by magma displaced by the subduction of the northwest-moving tectonic Pacific Plate under the tectonic North America Plate.

[blonde77th]

thats neat