Alive again.
space porn
In the Martian winter, carbon dioxide freezes out of the air (and you thought it was cold where you are). In the summer, that CO2 sublimates; that is, turns directly from a solid to a gas. When that happens the sand gets disturbed, and falls down the slopes in little channels, which spreads out when it hits the bottom. But this disturbs the red dust, too, which flows with the sand. When it’s all done, you get those feathery tendrils. Note that at the tendril tips, you see blotches of red; that’s probably from the lighter dust billowing a bit before settling down.
Now, you might think I’m making this all up. How do we know this stuff is flowing downhill like that? Ah, because in this picture we’ve caught it in the act! In this image, a closeup of a region just to the left of center of the big image, you can actually see the cloud of dust from an avalanche as it occurs.
Oh, baby. The cloud is only a few dozen meters across, and can’t be more than a few seconds old.
When did galaxies form? To help find out, the deepest near-infrared image of the sky ever has been taken of the same field as the optical-light Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) in 2004. The new image was taken this summer by the newly installed Wide Field Camera 3 on the refurbished Hubble Space Telescope. Faint red smudges identified on the above image likely surpass redshift 8 in distance. These galaxies therefore likely existed when the universe was only a few percent of its present age, and may well be members of the first class of galaxies. Some large modern galaxies make a colorful foreground to the distant galaxies. Analyses by the HUDF09 team indicate that at least some of these early galaxies had very little interstellar dust. This early class of low luminosity galaxies likely contained energetic stars emitting light that transformed much of the remaining normal matter in the universe from a cold gas to a hot ionized plasma.
This colorful cosmic portrait features glowing gas and obscuring dust clouds in IC 1795, a star forming region in the northern constellation Cassiopeia. The nebula’s colors were created by adopting the Hubble false-color palette for mapping narrow emission from oxygen, hydrogen, and sulfur atoms to blue, green and red colors, and further blending the data with images of the region recorded through broadband filters. Not far on the sky from the famous Double Star Cluster in Perseus, IC 1795 is itself located next to IC 1805, the Heart Nebula, as part of a complex of star forming regions that lie at the edge of a large molecular cloud. Located just over 6,000 light-years away, the larger star forming complex sprawls along the Perseus spiral arm of our Milky Way Galaxy. At that distance, this picture would span about 70 light-years across IC 1795.
Via CNN: Scientists spot nearby “super-Earth”
Uh, holy shit?! There’s a watery planer 40 light years away from Earth that appears to be able to support life (although life very different from us because this planet is a lot hotter with a thicker atmosphere). So basically what you’re saying is aliens are real and the climate crises = solved. Get my spaceship and refrigerator suit ready, scientists! I’m moving!
Awesome! But we need to work on a new name for this super-Earth. It’s current name, “GJ 1214b”, lacks pizzazz.
I nominate “Van Damne” for consideration. Jean-Claude has given us dozens cinematic masterpieces over the years. It’s only fitting we name a planet after him.
A mysterious phenomenen of light on the nightsky shocked citizens of northern and mid-Norway on wednesday morning….
…It spun around and exploded in the sky…
…It looked like it came over a mountain. First it followed a path, until it disintegrated. Then it suddenly became a huge sphere, so large that it covered the entire sky.
Meteorologists in Tromsø have no idea what caused the light:
“We don’t know what it is. I don’t want to assume anything about it, but it appears to have been very spectacular”
“People describe the moving light as overwhelming, extremely beautiful, and partially frightening. They describe it as a new years rocket that looks like a spinning spiral.”
The phenomenon lasted for a few minutes, just before eight on Wednesday morning. The meteorologist says the light apparently has come from the east.
A mysterious phenomenen of light on the nightsky shocked citizens of northern and mid-Norway on wednesday morning….
…It spun around and exploded in the sky…
…It looked like it came over a mountain. First it followed a path, until it disintegrated. Then it suddenly became a huge sphere, so large that it covered the entire sky.
Meteorologists in Tromsø have no idea what caused the light:
“We don’t know what it is. I don’t want to assume anything about it, but it appears to have been very spectacular”
“People describe the moving light as overwhelming, extremely beautiful, and partially frightening. They describe it as a new years rocket that looks like a spinning spiral.”
The phenomenon lasted for a few minutes, just before eight on Wednesday morning. The meteorologist says the light apparently has come from the east.
The constellation of Orion holds much more than three stars in a row. A deep exposure shows everything from dark nebula to star clusters, all imbedded in an extended patch of gaseous wisps in the greater Orion Molecular Cloud Complex. The brightest three stars on the far left are indeed the famous three stars that make up the belt of Orion. Just below Alnitak, the lowest of the three belt stars, is the Flame Nebula, glowing with excited hydrogen gas and immersed in filaments of dark brown dust. Below the frame center and just to the right of Alnitak lies the Horsehead Nebula, a dark indentation of dense dust that has perhaps the most recognized nebular shapes on the sky. On the upper right lies M42, the Orion Nebula, an energetic caldron of tumultuous gas, visible to the unaided eye, that is giving birth to a new open cluster of stars. Immediately to the left of M42 is a prominent bluish reflection nebula sometimes called the Running Man that houses many bright blue stars. The above image, a digitally stitched composite taken over several nights, covers an area with objects that are roughly 1,500 light years away and spans about 75 light years.
