Clipmarks | Aribeth's Space collection

A True Image from False Kiva

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 21:10:20 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

Explanation: Is there any place in the world you could see a real sight like this? Yes. Pictured above is single exposure image spectacular near, far, and in between. Diving into the Earth far in the distance is part of the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy, taken with a long duration exposure. Much closer, the planet Jupiter is visible as the bright point just to band's left. Closer still are picturesque buttes and mesas of the Canyonlands National Park in Utah, USA, lit by a crescent moon. In the foreground is a cave housing a stone circle of unknown origin named False Kiva. The cave was briefly lit by flashlight during the long exposure. Astrophotographer Wally Pacholka reports that getting to the cave to take this image was no easy trek. Also, mountain lions were a concern while waiting alone in the dark for just the right exposure.

Tags: photo, astronomy

50 Billion Suns! -The Biggest Single Object in the Universe

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 17:26:41 GMT

clipped by: papananook

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

Scientists have determined the mass of the largest things that could possibly exist in our universe. New results have placed an upper limit on the current size of black holes - and at fifty billion suns it's pretty damn big. That's a hundred thousand tredagrams, and you'll never get the chance to use that word in relation to anything else

Black holes are regions of space where matter is so dense that regular physics just breaks down. You might think physical laws are immutable - you can't get out of gravitational attraction the same way you can get out of a speeding ticket - but beyond a certain level laws which determine how matter is regulated are simply overloaded and material is crushed down into something that's less an object and more a region of altered space.

The Sunspot Enigma: The Sun is “Dead”—What Does it Mean for Earth? 2.92%

What Triggered Sahara's Transition from a Lush Savanna to Planet's Largest Hot Desert? A Galaxy Classic 2.03%

Three black holes collide like this

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 12:24:44 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: The black holes that collide when galaxies merge.

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Larry O'Hanlon

Researchers have simulated the outcome of what is perhaps the heaviest of heavyweight match-ups in the universe: the collision of three colossal black holes.

Scientists predict that when a black hole binary interacts with a third black hole, they produce these trajectories before merging

The triple collision and merger simulation comes after the discovery of a triple quasar last year.

Quasars are gigantic black holes, billions of times more massive than the sun, located at the centre of a galaxy.

They are visible only when matter is falling violently into them. A triple quasar, therefore, suggests that three galaxies have collided.

This sort of super-heavyweight battle is of particular interest to physicists hunting for the so-far elusive gravitational waves that Einstein predicted.

The discovery of the triple quasar makes it clear that it's also more than academic,

"The most likely event is to have two black holes merge

Next in line is the triple merger, then quadruple merger.

Planet Of Life

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 12:21:42 GMT

clipped by: skwirlinator

Clip Source: antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov

Clip Source: www.coolscifi.com

Explanation: On April 12th, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Alexseyevich Gagarin became the first human in space. His remotely controlled Vostok 1 spacecraft lofted him to an altitude of 200 miles and carried him once around planet Earth. Commenting on the first view from space he reported, "The sky is very dark; the Earth is bluish. Everything is seen very clearly". Alan Shepard, the first US astronaut, would not be launched until almost a month later and then on a comparatively short suborbital flight. Born on March 9, 1934, Gagarin was a military pilot before being chosen for the first group of cosmonauts in 1960. As a result of his historic flight he became an international hero and legend. Killed when his MIG jet crashed during a training flight on March 27, 1968, Gagarin was given a hero's funeral, his ashes interred in the Kremlin Wall. On yet another April 12th, in 1981, NASA launched the first space shuttle.

Tags: space, yuri's planet, earth, planet of life

Coolest Star Ever Detected

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 11:35:51 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: The photo alone is "cool" enough for a look.

Clip Source: dsc.discovery.com

Ambiguous Star

April 11, 2008 -- A dim, lonely, weakling star with the lowest stellar temperature yet recorded has been found just 40 light-years from Earth.

The brown dwarf star is between 15 and 30 times the mass of Jupiter and has a surface temperature of a mild 660 degrees Fahrenheit (350 Celsius) -- about the surface temperature of the planet Mercury at the equator and much cooler than the surface of Venus.

The spectacularly unspectacular object is of special interest because it falls right smack in the middle of the final frontier that divides mega-planets from the puniest stars. Stars in that realm theoretically qualify as an entirely new stellar type -- what's called a Y class dwarf.

"This would be the last spectral type between stars and planets," said stellar researcher Loic Albert of the Canada France Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii.

Tags: space

Space debris: evolution in pictures

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 14:45:41 GMT

clipped by: dakotayii
clipper's remarks: Between the launch of Sputnik on 4 October 1957 and 1 January 2008, approximately 4600 launches have placed some 6000 satellites into orbit, of which about 400 are travelling beyond geostationary orbit or on interplanetary trajectories.

Today, it is estimated that only 800 satellites are operational - roughly 45 percent of these are both in LEO and GEO. Space debris comprise the ever-increasing amount of inactive space hardware in orbit around the Earth as well as fragments of spacecraft that have broken up, exploded or otherwise become abandoned. About 50 percent of all trackable objects are due to in-orbit explosion events (about 200) or collision events (less than 10).

Clip Source: esamultimedia.esa.int

Clip Source: www.esa.int

Trackable objects in orbit around Earth

Clip Source: esamultimedia.esa.int

Clip Source: www.esa.int

Debris objects in low-Earth orbit (LEO)

Clip Source: esamultimedia.esa.int

Clip Source: www.esa.int

Debris objects in low-Earth orbit (LEO)

Clip Source: esamultimedia.esa.int

Clip Source: www.esa.int

Objects in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) - view over the North Pole

Clip Source: esamultimedia.esa.int

Clip Source: www.esa.int

The geostationary ring

Clip Source: esamultimedia.esa.int

Clip Source: www.esa.int

Objects in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) - view over the equator

Tags: science

3D Moon of Mars - New pictures of Phobos

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 14:03:59 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: spaceweather.com

3D MOON OF MARS: Grab your 3D glasses. Two weeks ago, NASA's Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter (MRO) targeted martian moon Phobos and took a pair of high-resolution pictures. Mission scientists have combined them to make a startling red-blue anaglyph. Glasses on? Behold.

The 2D view is nearly as good:

Long ago, something struck Phobos and almost shattered the tiny moon. The scar of that impact, 9km-wide Stickney crater, is located at the top of the image. Color filters in MRO's camera reveal a blue splash of material around Stickney's rim. What is it? No one knows. Equally striking are Phobos' many long grooves and crater chains. Although these seem to radiate from Stickney, recent studies show that most are not related to the crater. Instead they come from the planet below; when asteroids hit Mars, debris flies up and scores Phobos. The grooves seem to emerge from Stickney only because the crater faces Mars.

Tags: mars, phobos, moon, 3d image, nasa, space

The Secret Story of the Atomic Spaceship

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 14:50:43 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: Science that could have gone very, very wrong

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

World renowned physicist Freeman Dyson's son, George Dyson, tells the spellbinding story of Project Orion, a massive, nuclear-powered spacecraft the size of the Empire State building fueled by atomic bombs with the power to destroy half of Planet Earth. The mission was to take us to Saturn in five years. With an insider's perspective and a cache of documents -many still classified-photos and film, Dyson brings this dusty Atomic Age dream of the early 1960's to life.

The project lives today in limbo at NASA possibly to be activated should an asteroid arrive with our name on it.

Tags: science

images from space

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 18:59:03 GMT

clipped by: deviltiger

Clip Source: www.galleryofpix.com

From Mars, With Love

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 19:40:52 GMT

clipped by: sahara

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

The message from Mars

Star-struck lovers need only look to the skies for inspiration this Valentine's day.

A satellite orbiting Mars has sent back a valentine's message just in time for 14 February.

Pictures show a heart-shaped Martian plateau in the south polar region of the red planet.

Nasa has released the pictures onto its web site so lovers can e-mail them as an alternative to the usual padded red card or roses.

Dark side

Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Pasadena in California announced that the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft had captured a lovely view of a bright, heart-shaped area of the planet measuring 255 metres across.

But be warned the heart has a dark side. It is surrounded by a layer of dark rough terrain.

The asteroid of love

In another Valentine's day special a Near spacecraft is due to explore an asteroid named after the Greek god of love "Eros" on Monday.

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Eros is some 20 km across

Clip Source: sse.jpl.nasa.gov

To send these images as an e-Valentine visit the link at www.nasa.gov/jpl or www.jpl.nasa.gov .

Clip Source: mars.jpl.nasa.gov

Tags: space, holiday

Relative Sizes Of Known Celestial Bodies

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 06:44:17 GMT

clipped by: BartendingBear
clipper's remarks: Humbling and empowering at the same time.

Clip Source: i51.photobucket.com

Black Holes Are Everywhere!

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 19:25:45 GMT

clipped by: Marcariel
clipper's remarks: So when do we all get swallowed up by a giant black hole? There is a black hole reportedly at the center of our own galaxy.

Clip Source: time-blog.com

The circled galaxies all contain giant black holes. / NASA/JPL-Caltech/ Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique

Theory says that most of the galaxies formed shortly after the Big Bang should have giant black holes lurking in their cores--but until now, astronomers haven't seen much evidence. You can't see a black hole directly, but when gas falls into its voraciously powerful gravitational field, the gas heats up and glows brilliantly. Except that so far, it hasn't, as far as observers could tell.

But it turns out that at least some black holes have been blazing all along; they were just shrouded by dust. It took the infrared-sensitive Spitzer Space Telescope to peer through the dust, and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory (also in space) to find the telltale X-rays that betray the presence of super-hot gas that surrounds the black holes.

That's one mystery down. Luckily for science reporters, there are always more.

Tags: astronomy, black holes, galaxies, space dust, big bang

Nasa Image

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 19:28:08 GMT

clipped by: grammydjb1

Clip Source: www.nasa.gov

Recent Cassini images of Saturn's moon Enceladus backlit by the sun show the fountain-like sources of the fine spray of material that towers over the south polar region. The image was taken looking more or less broadside at the "tiger stripe" fractures observed in earlier Enceladus images. It shows discrete plumes of a variety of apparent sizes above the limb of the moon.

The greatly enhanced and colorized image shows the enormous extent of the fainter, larger-scale component of the plume.

Imaging scientistsbelieve that the jets are geysers erupting from pressurized subsurface reservoirs of liquid water above 273 degrees Kelvin (0 degrees Celsius).

Tags: interesting photo, space;science

Top 10 Most amazing facts about the Earth

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 05:35:57 GMT

clipped by: skwirlinator

Clip Source: fogonazos.blogspot.com

Top 10 Most amazing facts about the Earth

1. Gravity is not the same over the surface of the Earth

2. Atmosphere 'escapes'

3. The Earth is slowing down

4. Van Allen radiation belt

5. Moon is moving away from Earth

6. Moon has a tidal effect on the atmosphere

7. The Chandler wobble

8. Earth electric charge

9. Tons of interplanetary dust reaches Earth every year

10. Earth's magnetic poles change places

Tags: top 10 most amazing facts about the earth, space, top10