STARS & Space
 

The admittedly tiny & telescopic theme of which will come to pertain to those intriguing bits of spacedust up there.
Here is my fondest hope that you (dear audience) will come to enjoy what is presented (& come to participate, too!).

#1:
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-- (to note: sync'd up just right with the alignment of the New Moon.)

Hey Jet, what is that flashy astronomically inclined graphic above?

Since you started with an interesting "different" sort of pic, I'll also start with one I think is a different, interesting view of something familiar, our Moon.

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This "illumination map" was constructed using over 1700 photographs of the same area of the moon's south pole taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) over a six month period.

Because the moon's rotational axis is tilted by only 1.54 degrees (compared to Earth's 23.5 degrees), some areas near its poles are left in permanent shadow, while nearby regions remain sunlit for most of the year.

Each image taken by the LROC was projected onto a map of the area and converted to a binary image: if the ground was illuminated that pixel of the map was set to one, and if shadowed zero. Researchers then stacked all the binary images and calculated the percentage of the time each pixel was illuminated over the six month period.

The resulting "illumination map" is shown above. Areas that were never illuminated appear black, areas that were always illuminated are white, and areas that were sometimes illuminated and sometimes in shadow appear as varying shades of grey.

The Shackleton crater, 19 kilometres in diameter and 4 kilometres deep, can be seen at the centre of the image. The south pole is at approximately 9 o'clock on its rim.

The LROC is making daily (which is about 28 Earth days) and yearly illumination maps for both poles in preparation for future lunar missions.

********************************************************

And since the above involved the Shackleton crater on the moon and Ernest Shackleton explored the South Pole on Earth, it reminded me of this unusual photo taken at the South Pole near the time of the summer solstice (a photo I've posted here a couple times in the past...but it's an oldie but goodie imo) of our home star, the Sun. It shows the time in Antarctica when the Sun never sets below the horizon:

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quick Re:
it's a fast-paced (and just as quickly grabbed) animated b-w outline image of the known galaxies able to seen through the Hubble Telescope, (c 2008) BadNick.

I'll also add a quick link to an EXPANSIVE trove of atrological wonderment: NASA's APOD - Astronomy Picture of the Day

In case somebody looking in here hasn't seen this, check out Google Mars Google Mars

Also, if you care to download Google Earth, look at the toolbar at the top and the icon that looks like Saturn allows you to view Earth, Sky, Mars or Moon ...very interesting views and explorations possible.

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The Final Frontier by William Bullimore

quick synopsis:
Astronomers use the Parkes CSIRO Radio telescope to measure the radio energy produced naturally by objects in the universe such as stars, galaxies and clouds of dust and gas. In the spirit of international cooperation, this dish is occasionally used to help JPL/ NASA with collection of data from its spacecraft exploring the planets. Famous for its role in relaying Apollo 11 telemetry and television pictures from the Moon on 21st July, 1969 - the movie "The Dish" was loosely based on that involvement - it has more recently assisted with Voyager 2 at Uranus (January, 1986) and Neptune (August, 1989), Giotto at Comet Halley (March, 1986) and Galileo at Jupiter (most of 1997).

{Photo taken in Parkes, New South Wales, Australia.}

Atlantis on Pad 39A ready for blast off!

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APOD: 2011 March 5 - Cooling Neutron Star

Explanation:
(click to view gallery in FULL.)

Voyager images below from NSSDC PLANETARY IMAGE CATALOG

Image taken by Voyager 2
Io is seen in this image near the center of the frame in front of the southern hemisphere of Jupiter.
The image was taken on 25 June 1979 from a distance of 12 million km. Io's yellowish color is due to sulfur compounds.
Features as small as 200 km can be resolved in this image. Io is 3640 km in diameter, roughly the size of Earth's Moon,
and north is at 11:30. (Voyager 2, P-21719)
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Voyager 1 image of the Great Red Spot on Jupiter in enhanced color to bring out details.
The Great Red Spot is about 12,000 km across its shortest dimension.
It has been known since 1610, when Galileo first observed it with his telescope.
It appears to be some sort of stable vortex in Jupiter's atmosphere.
North is at 1:00. (Voyager 1, P-21229)

From Eminem2Pac's Blog: Benvenuti
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Celestron Celestar 8" + Imaging Source DBK21AU04.AS + Baader Ircut + Celestron barlow Ultima 2x + Extender, 75 avis processed to get this GIF,
the first avi was recorded at 0.24 of 15/9/2010 while the last avi was recorded at 3.05 of 15/9/2010, the total time is 2 hour and 40 minutes, here Jupiter + Great Red Spot + Europa Moon

From Views of the Solar System Photo Gallery
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Jupiter's Great Red Spot | Hayden Planetarium
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This brief animation shows the motion of the clouds in the Jovian atmosphere.
Most notable is the dark, oval-shaped Great Red Spot. The animation was compiled from
blue filter images taken using the narrow-angle camera on NASA's Cassini spacecraft
during seven rotations of Jupiter between October 1 and October 5, 2000.
The images reveal an area on Jupiter centered on the equator that extends about
50° north and south and covers 100° east-west (about a quarter of Jupiter's circumference).

From From NASA - Map of Jupiter's South
This map of Jupiter is the most detailed global color map of the planet ever produced. The round map is a polar stereographic projection that shows the south pole in the center of the map and the equator at the edge. It was constructed from images taken by Cassini on Dec. 11 and 12, 2000, as the spacecraft neared Jupiter during a flyby on its way to Saturn. The map shows a variety of colorful cloud features, including parallel reddish-brown and white bands, the Great Red Spot, multi-lobed chaotic regions, white ovals and many small vortices. Many clouds appear in streaks and waves due to continual stretching and folding by Jupiter's winds and turbulence. The bluish-gray features along the north edge of the central bright band are equatorial "hot spots," meteorological systems such as the one entered by NASA's Galileo probe. Small bright spots within the orange band north of the equator are lightning-bearing thunderstorms. The polar region shown here is less clearly visible because Cassini viewed it at an angle and through thicker atmospheric haze.
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light-hearted revival
 

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“Astronomatryoshkas”, crafted by Nate Bellegrade.

author's comments:
My girlfriend is majoring in Astronomy, so for her birthday I made some astronomer matryoshkas. She is really awesome so I tried to make a gift as awesome as she is. I had planned them out for months and it was great to finally be able to give them to her and see the look on her face as she opened each one. These were done with acrylic on wood (I am really rusty at painting and acrylics are maybe my least favorite medium :/), and I kind of cheated and used a brush pen for the black lines, since I couldn't really pull off the detail in paint. The downside is that the ink from the pens comes off the paint when you handle them so I have to put a varnish on them. Hopefully, if you know anything about famous astronomers, you can guess who they are (without cheating!).


[superpunch.]

It's almost here! 400 Years of the Telescope | A Journey of Science, Technology and Thought

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The above image was taken by the Cassini spacecraft in mid January in infrared and polarized light. Titan looms just over the thin rings, while dark ring shadows on Saturn show the Sun to be above the ring plane. Close inspection of the image will show the smaller moon Enceladus on the far right. Cassini, humanity’s first mission to orbit Saturn, currently has operations planned until 2017.

NASA - Multimedia: STS-133 Booster Camera Views [video ; out-of-this-world]

quick synopsis:
Video recorded by cameras mounted on Discovery's twin solid rocket boosters provide unique views of the February 24 launch.

+ bonus

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Last Discovery launch --Photo by: Michael Erard

{Taken in Cape Canaveral, FL, on Feb. 24, 2011.}

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Photographer Anton Jankovoy spent months camping at the foot of Mount Everest
in a bid to capture the perfect picture of star trails over the Himalayas. Anton,
from Zhytomyr in Ukraine, used a Canon EOS 5D Mark II with a 24mm lens to capture
this picture, leaving the shutter open for several hours.


author's comments: (A. Jankovoy)
I adore photography, especially landscapes because I can just sit there and observe the nature around me. It's so peaceful.

But because star trail images need very long shutter speeds they take a lot of patience. I've learnt how to endure the freezing cold by meditating.

It's surprising but it really helps. Although I started taking photographs when I was nine years old I really learnt to cultivate my skills when taking photographs in the mountains. All my childhood I dreamt about mountains and hoped to visit Nepal one day.

Then four years ago, after saving for a year-and-a-half, I made my first trip to the Himalayas.

I visited Mount Everest and it was like a revelation to me, a different world, a different way of life, almost a different universe to what I had known in the Ukraine.

It had a profound effect on me and seriously changed my life. I fell in love with Nepal, the people and the amazing scenery.

When I came home I realised I couldn't go back to my old way of life and so for the last three years I've lived in Nepal for six months of the year.

It has taken a lot of dedication and patience but the result has been worth it.

+ BONUS

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Peaks including the Annapurna South and the Hiunchuli can be seen in this spectacular image, which took hours to capture and expose

[Telegraph. / DailyMail.]

Storm on Saturn
 

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Late last year, a new, remarkably bright storm erupted in Saturn's northern hemisphere. Amateur astronomers first spotted it in early December, with the ringed gas giant rising in planet Earth's predawn sky. Orbiting Saturn, the Cassini spacecraft was able to record this close-up of the complex disturbance from a distance of 1.8 million kilometers on December 24th. Over time, the storm has evolved, spreading substantially in longitude, and now stretches far around the planet. Saturn's thin rings are also seen slicing across this space-based view, casting broad shadows on the planet's southern hemisphere

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In Nostalgic Mood. (The retired astronaut.) design by Yau Hoong Tang.

Space shuttle Discovery and the six-person STS-133 crew lifted off from
NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Feb. 24, 2011, starting a
mission to the International Space Station.

At 11:57 a.m. EST on Mar. 9, 2011, space shuttle Discovery landed for
the final time at NASA's Kennedy Space Center after 202 orbits around
Earth and a journey of 5,304,140 miles on STS-133.

STS-133 was the 39th and final flight for Discovery, which spent 365
days in space, orbited Earth 5,830 times and traveled 148,221,675 miles.

Please keep me in the dark about such matters.

Jasper becomes world's largest 'astronomy park' - CTV News

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Illustration of a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy. Using new data from ESA’s XMM-Newton spaceborne observatory, astronomers have probed closer than ever to a supermassive black hole lying deep at the core of a distant active galaxy known as 1H0707-495.

XMM-Newton detected two bright features of iron emission in the reflected X rays that astronomers had never seen together in an active galaxy. These bright features are known as the iron L and K lines, and they can be so bright only if there is a high abundance of iron. Seeing both in this galaxy suggests that the core is much richer in iron than the rest of the galaxy. The direct X-ray emission varies in brightness with time. During the observation, the iron L line was bright enough for XXM-Newton to follow its variations.

A painstaking statistical analysis of the data revealed a time lag of 30 seconds between changes in the X-ray light observed directly and those seen in its reflection from the disk. This delay in the echo enabled scientists to measure the size of the reflecting region, which lead to an estimate of black hole's mass to be about 3 to 5 million solar masses.

The observations of the iron lines also reveal that the black hole is spinning very rapidly and eating matter so quickly that it verges on the theoretical limit of its eating ability, swallowing the equivalent of two Earths per hour.

The team is continuing to track the galaxy using its new technique. Far from being a steady process, a feeding black hole is a messy eater. "Accretion is a very messy process because of the magnetic fields that are involved," Fabian said.

The team's new technique will enable the astronomers to map out the process in all its complexity, taking them to previously unseen regions at the very edges of this and other supermassive black holes.

Only 589 days left! Don't miss it.

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First Image Ever Obtained from Mercury Orbit | NASA


{Captured on Tuesday morning (March 29, 2011) at 5:20am EDT ; Photo by: NASA's MESSENGER Spacecraft}


Why you may be interested:

Beautiful signs from space:



"It is a timelapse video of the Northern Lights. All sequences are shot in or close to Tromsø in Northern Norway."

http://thecorner.files.wordpress.com...est-moon-2.jpg

...like when the moon looks @you quizzically?

Over 5,000 space-flight shots of Saturn coalesce ideally, by the Cassini Imaging Team
 

This video is made entirely by images captured from the Cassini spacecraft and the best part is, this awesome clip is actually a
teaser for a larger IMAX called "Outside In" that is currently in production. -- Music: Adagio for Strings (NY Philharmonic)

FOR MORE INFO, CLICK BELOW


[APOD. / vimeo.]

Speaking of which:

The Aurora(s) Over Norway by Terje Sørgjerd. Music featured: Gladiator Soundtrack: 'Now we are Free'


[APOD.]


-- courtesy of Biorequiem.

Gallery: Discovery's Last Voyage

Space shuttle Discovery's next mission will be to awe and inspire those who visit it at the Smithsonian Institution. NASA's workhorse shuttle was retired after completing its trip last month to the International Space Station -- that’s 39 missions covering 5,750 orbits, 150 million miles, and almost a year in space since it first lifted off in 1984. It's name was inspired by the exploring ships of the past, including one that plied the Hudson Bay in the early 1600s seeking a northwest passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans. Discovery carried some of NASA's most-distinguished astronauts, including Eileen Collins, the first female commander, Sergei Krikalev, the first Russian to fly on a shuttle, and Senator John Glenn, who returned to space at 76. In its last mission, Discovery dropped Robonaut 2, the first dexterous humanoid robot in space, at the space station. -- Lloyd Young

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-- heads up, courtesy of Claes Källarsson.

Chile today, hot tamales. I would love to do this:

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"The Milky Way Over Tenerife" by Juan Carlos Casado (Spain)

Explanation (abridged):

[APOD.]

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“Hyakutake over Rabbit Island” by Richard Wainscoat (as seen in Oahu, Hawaii, USA)

author's comments:
Comet Hyakutake over Rabbit Island (Manana Island), Oahu, Hawaii. On the night
this photo was taken the comet passed very close to Polaris, so a sharp image of
the comet could be obtained without use of an equatorial mount to compensate for
the Earth's rotation. As you move further away from the north celestial pole the
Earth's rotation leaves clear star trails in this long exposure. This photograph was
taken using film in 1996. With a modern digital camera (which are more sensitive
than film), a short enough exposure could be used to freeze both the land and the
sky, without any trailing from the Earth's rotation.

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Rain on Titan - artwork by David A. Hardy.

Explanation (in full):
+ bonus... author's comments:
I originally painted this, in acrylics, early in 2010, having seen reports of methane rain on the Cassini website. I knew that radio bursts had been detected too,
so wondered whether there actually could be lightning and asked Carolyn Porco, who said it hadn't been seen but that didn't mean there couldn't be any. Then
last week I saw the report of rainstorms on Titan [March 17, 2011 news release], so sent this image! I had to use artist's license to show Saturn through a brief gap in the clouds.

-- David A. Hardy is European Vice President of the International Association of Astronomical Artists (IAAA).


[APOD.]

yikes! I guess you don't need air conditioning on Titan.

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I've been meaning to add a bit of musical inclination inside the observatory from...
 

... the very beginning. (* -)

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In Love With Oblivion, (2011) by Crystal Stilts. #currently live-streaming the new album.


-- (to note: I especially like the tune, Flying Into the Sun, which I am re-listening to now.)

I'm still in that vibe of relating music to the heavens
 

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Cat Power - Rockets

(cont.) ... and then, relating imagery to the lyrics ...

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The Red Pyramid by Maurice Graham

- - -

Angel wings tonight
Appear normal in daylight
They shine and dazzle
With glittering shimmer
Reflections of the sun
Keep babies protecte
From the bad
Guiding them to good
Hovering above them as they sleep
Watching as they peacefully dream

-- Unique-Mystique

- - -

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Bryan Collins
Good Thing Zach Doesn't Dream, 2007
acrylic on canvas
5″×7″

The fitting end to this eerie endeavor... I have more, but I'll leave you in suspense
 

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NASA’s Hubble Sees A Majestic Disk of Stars | captured by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

NASA image release Feb. 17, 2011

Explanation:
To see a hd video of this sprial galaxy go to: Spiral Galaxy Zoom [hd video] | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

50th anniversary of the first manned spaceflight orbit
 

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Today's (April, 12, 2011) Google Doodle... celebrating Yuri Gagarin's successfully completed
orbit of the Earth, 50 years ago on this date, thus marking him as the first man in space.

- - -

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Yuri Gagarin: First Human in Space

- - -

Yuri's Night is an international celebration held on April 12 every year to commemorate space exploration milestones.
To commerate the 50th Anniversary this year, the Expedition 27 crew aboard the International Space Station sent
a special video message to the world below to wish them a Happy Yuri's Night.

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A patron dines under a painting of Yuri Gagarin in Kazakhstan on August 9, 2006. Gagarin's fame outlived the Soviet Union
itself, which ceased to be in 1991. READ MORE.
-- Photo: Uriel Sinai/Getty Images

- - -

- - - - -
additional:

[NationalGeographic. / russianarchives. / NYTimes. / TIME. / wiki.]

“The Frontier is Everywhere” by damewse

author's comments:
In all of their brilliance, NASA seems to have forgotten to share their
hopes and dreams in a way the public can relate to, leaving one of
humanities grandest projects with terrible PR and massive funding cuts.
I have a lot of ideas for a NASA marketing campaign, but I doubt they’d
pay me even minimum wage to work for them.

+ bonus: Part 2

Milky Way over Chile's Very Large Telescope array:

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---------- Post added at 11:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:21 PM ----------

Interesting vid showing E-ELT in Chile and more night sky:



---------- Post added at 11:33 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:32 PM ----------

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follow-up, about 3 weeks later...
excerpt:
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A full moon sets over Hungary, Photograph by Tamas Ladanyi (TWAN)

source: "Supermoon" Tonight: Biggest Full Moon in 18 Years

- - - - -

excerpt:
source: Super "Perigee Moon" - NASA Science

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Fly Me to the Moon (* -) ; created by Adam de la Mare (Melbourne, Australia)

How about a little cosmological thought about where and why all this comes from?

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Manyfold Universe
Superstring theory predicts the universe has ten or eleven dimensions. Why don't we see these extra dimensions? Perhaps we are living on a brane (short for membrane) - floating in a space of five, six or more dimensions, like a soap bubble in the bathroom. The "manyfold universe" theory asserts that the brane we live on could be folded over on itself many times, accordion-fashion (Figure 05). Light could travel only on the brane, but gravity could take a shortcut by jumping from one fold to the next. Nearby matter on other folds can be detected gravitationally as unseen dark matter, since its emitting light takes a long time to reach us traveling around the fold.


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Pre-Big Bang Universes
The concept of branes floating in higher dimensional space has offered some new ideas about condition at the moment of Big Bang and further back to the time before the event (see Figure 08). According to general relativity, density and temperature become infinity at the moment of Big Bang. The nonzero size and novel symmetries of strings set upper bounds to physical quantities that increase without limit in conventional theories, and they set lower bounds to quantities that decrease. The string theory expects that the curvature of space-time increase as the history of the universe is re-winded backward in time. But instead of going all the way to infinity, it eventually hits a maximum and shrinks once more. The string theory also proposes some hazarded guesses about the pre-big bang universe. There are two popular models floating around - the Pre-Big Bang and the Ekpyrotic scenarios.

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"The View Near a Black Hole" - drawing: April Hobart, courtesy of the CXC.

Explanation (in full)
[APOD.]

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"The Pacific: Earth" - image courtesy of NASA, aboard the ISS Expedition 7, (c) 2003.


[APOD.]

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Battlestar Galactica, illustrated by Frank Frazetta, 1978. {originally run in TV Guide Promo}

A Trip to the Moon, a French film made in 1902 is often considered the first sci-fi film ever made.


In more recent years, it was named one of the 100 greatest films of the 20th century by The Village Voice.

[Space Vixens]

how 'bout them sun spots? Get out your SPF 100!

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How about one photographed in extreme UV light?:
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And a nice pic of a solar magnetic storm plasma discharge in UV light:
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The Prague Orloj
 

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Astrological Clock by ~margolia (Margot from USA)

author's comments:
Astrological clock on the Old Town Hall in Prague. Shows time, astrological sign, position of planets, and was constructed in 1410.

Legend says that after the clock was completed, those who commissioned the clock gouged the clockmaker's eyes out -- to ensure that there would never be another like it. I don't know about that... but I've never seen the like!


READ MORE...

Golden Anniversary today of the May 5, 1961 U.S. space flight by Alan Shepard.

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U.S. astronaut Alan B. Shepard, Jr., on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Champlain
on May 5, 1961, after the return of his Mercury spacecraft Freedom 7 (in background) from the first manned suborbital flight.

[Notable Quotable ; Read of Interest]
 

If we evolve a bit..we have a chance of being something that can gradually integrate with the rest of the planetary system and … truly, be a part of it, just as our brain is a part of us… This would give, for the first time in the galaxy, what amounted to an intelligent planet with a much better capacity for looking after itself and defending itself from impacts and other accidents that happen in…cosmic history

... -- James Lovelock

[culturelab.]

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If you get up any morning for the next few weeks, you’ll be treated to the sight of all the planets except Saturn arrayed along the ecliptic, the path of the sun through the sky.

For the last two months, almost all the planets have been hiding behind the sun, but this week they all emerge and are arrayed in a grand line above the rising sun. Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter are visible, and you can add Uranus and Neptune to your count if you have binoculars or a small telescope.

The sky map above of the six planets shows how they should appear at dawn to observers with clear weather and an unobstructed view.

The Mountain by Terje Sørgjerd. -- as seen in Spain, sclaed atop the Pico del Teide.

... known as “one of the best places in the world to photograph the stars”.

author's comments:

*previously

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after the explosion of a super-hot white dwarf star, this is what remains: the
'Tycho supernova remnant'.

“Low-energy X-rays (red) in the image show expanding debris from the supernova
explosion and high energy X-rays (blue) show the blast wave, a shell of extremely
energetic electrons . These high-energy X-rays show a pattern of X-ray “stripes”
never previously seen in a supernova remnant. Some of the brightest stripes can
also directly be seen in the full color image, on the right side of the remnant pointing
from the outer rim to the interior. The stellar background is from the Digitized Sky
Survey and only shows stars outside the remnant.”

-- to note: (bonus)
[dvice.]

This is something cool you might enjoy playing with: Photopic Sky Survey

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Using the "zoom" feature in the link above, the pic below is my screen shot of a zoom in on the faint "red circle" on the right side with the bright dots inside:

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I came across this article via email today: The night sky in 37,440 exposures | R&D Mag

The night sky in 37,440 exposures
Posted In: Strange But True | R&D Daily | Astrophysics | Computer Technology | Software | Space | Imaging Technology

By Phuong Le, Associated Press
Thursday, May 12, 2011

SEATTLE (AP) — Nick Risinger has always gazed up at the sky. But last year the amateur astronomer and photographer quit his day job as a Seattle marketing director and lugged six synchronized cameras about 60,000 miles to capture an image of the entire night sky.

Risinger, 28, set up his rack of cameras in high-elevation locales in the Western U.S. and South Africa, timing photo shoots around new moons when nights were long and dark. He programmed his six cameras to track the stars as they moved across the sky and simultaneously snapped thousands of photos.

He then stitched 37,440 exposures together into a spectacular, panoramic survey sky that he posted online two weeks ago. The photo reveals a 360-degree view of the Milky Way, planets and stars in their true natural colors. Viewers can zoom in on portions of the 5,000-megapixel image to find Orion or the Large Magellanic Cloud.

"I wanted to share what I thought was possible," said Risinger, a first-time astrophotographer. "We don't see it like this. This is much brighter. On a good night in Seattle, you'll see 20 or 30 stars. This, in its full size, you'll see 20 to 30 million. Everything is amplified."

Other sky surveys have preceded this one, including the Digitized Sky Survey and Google Sky. Many serve scientific purposes and were shot in red and blue to measure the temperature of stars, Risinger said. He shot in a third color, green, to give the photo added depth and richness, he said.

"What a labor of love it is!" said Andrew Fraknoi, senior educator at the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. "Professional astronomers are now doing much deeper surveys of small regions of the sky, using big telescopes. But every once in a while it's nice to step back and have such a beautiful photographic record of the whole sky."

"This is not a scientifically useful image. This is for educational and artistic appreciation," Risinger said, adding that he didn't want to make money off it. "It is for educational purposes. I want to develop some tools for the classroom."

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In this Monday, May 9, 2011 photo, Nick Risinger poses for
a photo in Seattle with the rack of six synchronized
astrophotography cameras he used to create the photograph
on the wall behind him, which shows the entire night sky in a
single composite image, made up of more than 37,000 exposures
taken in different locations all over the world. Risinger traveled
more than 60,000 miles by air and land and spent more than a
year to produce the photo. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

To capture the entire night sky in a year, Risinger plotted out an exact schedule of images he needed from both the northern and southern hemisphere. He divided the sky into 624 uniform sections and entered those coordinates into the computer.

"The sheer amount of work was mind-boggling," he said at his apartment in Seattle. "It's not a wing-it kind of project. You have to plan how you're going to get the entire sky. And you do that by dividing it up into pieces and knowing what time you need to collect those pieces because as the Earth goes around the Sun, things come in and out of view."

In March of last year, Risinger and his older brother, Erik, traveled to the desert near Tonapah, Nev., and took the first photos of what eventually would become his Photopic Sky Survey.

When he realized the work was too monumental, Risinger quit his day job as a marketing director of a countertop company to devote himself full-time to the project. He also persuaded his retired father, Tom, who lives in Gig Harbor, Wash., to join him.

In the U.S., he and his dad would often drive all day and set up and take photographs all night. They chased ideal windows of opportunity to catch the night sky at its clearest.

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In this 2010 photograph provided by Nick Risinger of Skysurvey.org,
Risinger is shown in Colorado, setting up a rack of six synchronized
cameras for a night of photographing the night sky.
(AP Photo/Courtesy Nick Risinger, Skysurvey.org)

Their travels took them to dark places where light pollution was low and higher altitudes where there was less water vapor — near the Chiricahua Mountains in Arizona, near Fort Davis, Tex., and Lassen National Forest in California. He found himself staking out stars in freezing temperatures in Telluride, Colo., and amid stars in South Africa where none of the constellations were recognizable to his northern hemisphere-trained eyes.

Each night, Risinger set the six cameras — high-end monochrome astrophotography imagers equipped with different filters — to point in the exact same spot and continuously feed his laptop with images. He monitored the photographs in real-time and passed the dark hours eating sunflower seeds. Meanwhile, his dad slept.

Back in Seattle, Risinger began piecing the panoramic image together in January. He used a computer software program to scan each frame, recognize the pattern with a database of stars and then match them with the other colors and frames. That got projected onto a sphere.

"Making an atlas of the night sky is something that mostly professional astronomers would have done in the past," said Fraknoi, who is also chairman of the astronomy department at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, Calif. "With new computer tools at our disposal, it's remarkable what amateur astronomers can discover."

Risinger finished the project a couple weeks ago, and has been getting thousands of hits on his website.

"It was always hard to describe what I was doing that would make sense to people that aren't familiar with astronomy. But once they see it, they get it."

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In the first launch since the space shuttle Challenger disaster on Jan. 28, 1986,
NASA employees cheered on the roof of the Vehicle Assembly Building of the Kennedy
Space Center (on Merritt Island, Florida) as Discovery lifted off successfully, Sept. 29, 1988.


[The Big Picture.]

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Photo by: Nick Risinger

Explanation: (in full)
[APOD.]

+2 ...I agree this is important and interesting enough to post twice :thumbsup:

Remarkable Explosion on the Sun

After three years of weak activity, the Sun is back in action and well on its way to the next solar maximum, predicted for early 2013. And this time, we have better views than ever before.

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), launched in February 2010, is providing more detailed and rapid-fire movies of solar events than we've yet seen. These, along with views from STEREO and the venerable Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), are bound to keep us riveted in the coming years.

Fortunately, these spacecraft were ready and waiting earlier today, when they captured a spectacular prominence erupting into space and falling back onto the solar surface. The spacecraft observed the flare's peak at 2:41 a.m. Eastern time (06:41 UTC). SDO's AIA instrument recorded images at the extreme-ultraviolet wavelengths of 171, 211, and 304 angstroms. These were followed by wider frames from the LASCO C2 white-light coronagraph on SOHO.


The SDO's extreme-ultraviolet images show that this huge eruption involves relatively cool gas. It is somewhat unique because at many places in the eruption there seems to be even cooler material — at temperatures less than 140,000°F (80,000 K).

NASA's announcement this afternoon noted that the eruption involved an M2 (medium-sized) solar flare, an S1-class (minor) radiation storm, and a spectacular coronal mass ejection (CME) from sunspot complex 1226-1227. After ballooning high above the Sun, the large cloud of matter rained back down onto an area covering almost half the solar disk.

The CME should deliver a glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field
during the late hours of June 8th or 9th. High-latitude skywatchers should be alert for auroras when the CME arrives.

This video was put together by The Sun Today and Helioviewer.org.

******************************************************************


by Randy Halverson:
During the month of May, I shot Milky Way timelapse in central South Dakota, when I had the time, and the weather cooperated. The biggest challenge was cloudy nights and the wind. There were very few nights, when I could shoot, that were perfectly clear, and often the wind was blowing 25mph +. That made it hard to get the shots I wanted. I kept most of the shots low to the ground, so the wind wouldn't catch the setup and cause camera shake, or blow it over. I used a Stage Zero Dolly on the dolly shots and a "Milapse" mount on the panning ones.

Canon 60D and T2i
Tokina 11-16
Sigma 20mm F1.8
Tamron 17-50

Dynamic Perception Stage Zero Dolly dynamicperception.com

Shot in RAW format, the Milky Way shots were 30 seconds exposure F2.8 or F1.8 with 2 second interval between shots, for 3-4 hours run time. ISO 1600

Ten seconds of the video is about 2 hours 20 minutes in real time.

Simon Wilkinson from thebluemask.com created the soundtrack "Exodus" for the video

More about Exodus on his site. thebluemask.com/​blog/​2011/​06/​new-time-lapse-video-featuring-my-music-exodus/​

Wired.com article wired.com/​wiredscience/​2011/​06/​milky-way-video/​

Bad Astronomer article blogs.discovermagazine.com/​badastronomy/​2011/​06/​03/​gorgeous-milky-way-time-lapse/​

From HubbleSite - NewsCenter - Hubble Views the Star that Changed the Universe (05/23/2011) - The Full Story

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Though the universe is filled with billions upon billions of stars, the discovery of a single variable star in 1923 altered the course of modern astronomy. And, at least one famous astronomer of the time lamented that the discovery had shattered his world view.

The star goes by the inauspicious name of Hubble variable number one, or V1, and resides in the outer regions of the neighboring Andromeda galaxy, or M31. But in the early 1900s, most astronomers considered the Milky Way a single "island universe" of stars, with nothing observable beyond its boundaries. Andromeda was cataloged as just one of many faint, fuzzy patches of light astronomers called "spiral nebulae."

Were these spiral nebulae part of the Milky Way or were they independent island universes lying outside our galaxy? Astronomers didn't know for sure, until Edwin Hubble found a star in Andromeda that brightened and faded in a predictable pattern, like a lighthouse beacon, and identified it as V1, a Cepheid variable. This special type of star had already been proven to be a reliable distance marker within our galaxy.

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The star helped Hubble show that Andromeda was beyond our galaxy and settled the debate over the status of the spiral nebulae. The universe became a much bigger place after Hubble's discovery, much to the dismay of astronomer Harlow Shapley, who believed the fuzzy nebulae were part of our Milky Way.

Nearly 90 years later, V1 is in the spotlight again. Astronomers pointed Edwin Hubble's namesake, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, at the star once again, in a symbolic tribute to the legendary astronomer's milestone observation.

Astronomers with the Space Telescope Science Institute's Hubble Heritage Project partnered with the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) to study the star. AAVSO observers followed V1 for six months, producing a plot, or light curve, of the rhythmic rise and fall of the star's light. Based on this light curve, the Hubble Heritage team scheduled telescope time to capture images of the star.

"V1 is the most important star in the history of cosmology," says astronomer Dave Soderblom of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Md., who proposed the V1 observations.

"It's a landmark discovery that proved the universe is bigger and chock full of galaxies. I thought it would be nice for the Hubble telescope to look at this special star discovered by Hubble, the man."

But Hubble Heritage team member Max Mutchler of the STScI says that this observation is more than just a ceremonial nod to a famous astronomer.

"This observation is a reminder that Cepheids are still relevant today," he explains. "Astronomers are using them to measure distances to galaxies much farther away than Andromeda. They are the first rung on the cosmic distance ladder."

The Hubble and AAVSO observations of V1 will be presented at a press conference May 23 at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Boston, Mass.

Ten amateur astronomers from around the world, along with AAVSO Director Arne Henden, made 214 observations of V1 between July 2010 and December 2010. They obtained four pulsation cycles, each of which lasts more than 31 days. The AAVSO study allowed the Hubble Heritage team to target Hubble observations that would capture the star at its brightest and dimmest phases.

The observations were still tricky, though. "The star's brightness has a gradual decline followed by a sharp spike upward, so if you're off by a day or two, you could miss it," Mutchler explains.

Using the Wide Field Camera 3, the team made four observations in December 2010 and January 2011.

"The Hubble telescope sees many more and much fainter stars in the field than Edwin Hubble saw, and many of them are some type of variable star," Mutchler says. "Their blinking makes the galaxy seem alive. The stars look like grains of sand, and many of them have never been seen before."

For Soderblom, the Hubble observations culminated more than 25 years of promoting the star. Shortly after Soderblom arrived at the Institute in 1984, he thought it would be fitting to place a memento of Edwin Hubble's aboard the space shuttle Discovery, which would carry the Hubble Space Telescope into space.

"At first, I thought the obvious artifact would be his pipe, but [cosmologist] Allan Sandage [Edwin Hubble's protégé] suggested another idea: the photographic glass plate of V1 that Hubble made in 1923," Soderblom recalls.

He made 15 film copies of the original 4-inch-by-5-inch glass plate. Ten of them flew onboard space shuttle Discovery in 1990 on the Hubble deployment mission. Fittingly, two of the remaining five film copies were part of space shuttle Atlantis's cargo in 2009 for NASA's fifth servicing mission to Hubble. One of those copies was carried aboard by astronaut and astronomer John Grunsfeld, now the STScI's deputy director.

Telltale Star Expands the Known Universe

Prior to the discovery of V1 many astronomers thought spiral nebulae, such as Andromeda, were part of our Milky Way galaxy. Others weren't so sure. In fact, astronomers Shapley and Heber Curtis held a public debate in 1920 over the nature of these nebulae. During the debate, Shapley championed his measurement of 300,000 light-years for the size of the Milky Way. Though Shapley overestimated its size, he was correct in asserting that the Milky Way was much larger than the commonly accepted dimensions. He also argued that spiral nebulae were much smaller than the giant Milky Way and therefore must be part of our galaxy. But Curtis disagreed. He thought the Milky Way was smaller than Shapley claimed, leaving room for other island universes beyond our galaxy.

To settle the debate, astronomers had to establish reliable distances to the spiral nebulae. So they searched for stars in the nebulae whose intrinsic brightness they thought they understood. Knowing a star's true brightness allowed astronomers to calculate how far away it was from Earth. But some of the stars they selected were not dependable milepost markers.

For example, Andromeda, the largest of the spiral nebulae, presented ambiguous clues to its distance. Astronomers had observed different types of exploding stars in the nebula. But they didn't fully understand the underlying stellar processes, so they had difficulty using those stars to calculate how far they were from Earth. Distance estimates to Andromeda, therefore, varied from nearby to far away. Which distance was correct? Edwin Hubble was determined to find out.

The astronomer spent several months in 1923 scanning Andromeda with the 100-inch Hooker telescope, the most powerful telescope of that era, at Mount Wilson Observatory in California. Even with the sharp-eyed telescope, Andromeda was a monstrous target, about 5 feet long at the telescope's focal plane. He therefore took many exposures covering dozens of photographic glass plates to capture the whole nebula.

He concentrated on three regions. One of them was deep inside a spiral arm. On the night of Oct. 5, 1923, Hubble began an observing run that lasted until the early hours of Oct. 6. Under poor viewing conditions, the astronomer made a 45-minute exposure that yielded three suspected novae, a class of exploding star. He wrote the letter "N," for nova, next to each of the three objects.

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Later, however, Hubble made a startling discovery when he compared the Oct. 5-6 plate with previous exposures of the novae. One of the so-called novae dimmed and brightened over a much shorter time period than seen in a typical nova.

Hubble obtained enough observations of V1 to plot its light curve, determining a period of 31.4 days, indicating the object was a Cepheid variable. The period yielded the star's intrinsic brightness, which Hubble then used to calculate its distance. The star turned out to be 1 million light-years from Earth, more than three times Shapley's calculated diameter of the Milky Way.

Taking out his marking pen, Hubble crossed out the "N" next to the newfound Cepheid variable and wrote "VAR," for variable, followed by an exclamation point.

For several months the astronomer continued gazing at Andromeda, finding another Cepheid variable and several more novae. Then Hubble sent a letter along with a light curve of V1 to Shapley telling him of his discovery. After reading the letter, Shapley was convinced the evidence was genuine. He reportedly told a colleague, "Here is the letter that destroyed my universe."

By the end of 1924 Hubble had found 36 variable stars in Andromeda, 12 of which were Cepheids. Using all the Cepheids, he obtained a distance of 900,000 light-years. Improved measurements now place Andromeda at 2 million light-years away.

"Hubble eliminated any doubt that Andromeda was extragalactic," says Owen Gingerich, professor emeritus of Astronomy and of the History of Science at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. "Basically, astronomers didn't know the distance to novae, so they had to make a rough estimate as to where they were and therefore what their absolute luminosity was. But that is on very treacherous ground. When you get a Cepheid that's been reasonably calculated, the period will tell you where it sits on the luminosity curve, and from that you can calculate a distance."

Shapley and astronomer Henry Norris Russell urged Hubble to write a paper for a joint meeting of the American Astronomical Society and American Association for the Advancement of Science at the end of December 1924. Hubble's paper, entitled "Extragalactic Nature of Spiral Nebulae," was delivered in absentia and shared the prize for the best paper. A short article about the award appeared in the Feb. 10, 1925, issue of The New York Times. Gingerich says Hubble's discovery was not big news at the meeting because the astronomer had informed the leading astronomers of his result months earlier.

Edwin Hubble's observations of V1 became the critical first step in uncovering a larger, grander universe. He went on to find many galaxies beyond the Milky Way. Those galaxies, in turn, allowed him to determine that the universe is expanding.

Could Hubble ever have imagined that nearly 100 years later, technological advances would allow amateur astronomers to perform similar observations of V1 with small telescopes in their backyards? Or, could Hubble ever have dreamed that a space-based telescope that bears his name would continue his quest to precisely measure the universe's expansion rate?

What's next?

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[Y!: @tariqjmalik]