Step into the spotlight for too long and you might forget what the sun feels like.
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Hey I'm Ken, sketch artist, art, civil rights, equality & science enthusiast live blogging his interests. New Yorker from uptown Manhattan, originating from the Dominican Republic.
A cropped full size image, this is a large object as a planetary nebua.
Image is in visual spectrum and dominated by the red light emitted by ionized Hydrogen, H-alpha. Blueish hues are from ionized Oxygen, O-III. Some of the colors are shot simultaneously with H-a emission by using QHY8 color camera, Tokina AT-X 300mm f2.8 camera lens and Baader UHCs-filter. — J-P Metsävainio
NGC 6188
Dark shapes with bright edges winging their way through dusty NGC 6188 are tens of light-years long. The emission nebula is found near the edge of an otherwise dark large molecular cloud in the southern constellation Ara, about 4,000 light-years away.
Copyright: Piotrek Sadowski
Side note: I did the filter editing for this pic (something I don’t really do but felt compelled to with this pic), this is the original filter from the astrophotographer. You’ve probably seen the pic above with the same color editing used throughout tumblr for others means (namely for cute sciency quotes but I assure you this version originated here). I wanted the emission to be so saturated that when people looked at it they noticed how the ionized hydrogen dominated the area and how much light years the area took up so you’d get an idea of just how massive these stars are despite them not reaching their main sequence (when they typically are most stable) phase yet. Normally these are considered stellar nurseries largely due to the fact that there are young and very hot stars kicking up the activity surrounding it. Usually only very hot stars, like the young ones, have enough radiation in the ultraviolet region to ionize the hydrogen and give off a view this gorgeous when seen through specific astrophotographic filters (depending on what kind of composition you’re trying to highlight or look at).
A light bulb-shaped eruption leaps from the Sun and blasts into space in this archival image from the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, SOHO.
A coronal mass ejection – or CME – is a huge cloud of magnetised plasma ejected from the Sun’s atmosphere – the corona – and launched into interplanetary space. They comprise millions of tonnes of gas and race away from the Sun at hundreds of kilometres per second.
North America Nebula Burns Bright in Skywatcher Photo
The gas and dust of the North America Nebula glow pink and red in this skywatcher photo.
The North America Nebula lies in the constellation Cygnus, and it takes its name from a supposed resemblence to the continent. It is an emission nebula — essentially, a cloud of high-temperature gas emitting light of various colors.
The image was taken by Jean-Luc Dauvergne in August 2007 from the observatory at the Pic du Midi mountain in the French Pyrenees. The skyscape in the image glowing most brightly is the most active part of the nebula, a region astronomers call the Cygnus Wall. Here, hydrogen gas burns where new stars are forming.
The North America Nebula, also known as NGC 7000, is roughly 1,800 light-years away and perhaps 100 light-years in diameter. A light-year is the distance light travels in one year, or about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers).
The Butterfly
The Butterfly or IC1318, the diffuse emission nebula surrounding Sadr or Gamma Cygni. Sadr lies in the center of Cygnus’s cross. One of the surrounding nebulous regions; others include the Crescent Nebula. It contains many dark nebulae in addition to the emission diffuse nebulae.
Copyright: Jean-Baptiste Gordien
The Butterfly
The Butterfly or IC1318, the diffuse emission nebula surrounding Sadr or Gamma Cygni. Sadr lies in the center of Cygnus’s cross. One of the surrounding nebulous regions; others include the Crescent Nebula. It contains many dark nebulae in addition to the emission diffuse nebulae.
Copyright: Jean-Baptiste Gordien
VdB 93: Emission Nebula in Canis Major
Copyright: Adam Block/Mount Lemmon SkyCenter/University of Arizona
Your gadgets may one day come with a carbon label like the nutritional information displayed on food packets.
That is if Michael Vandenbergh at the Climate Change Research Network at Vanderbilt University Law School in Nashville, Tennessee and colleagues get their way.
The researchers argue that since efforts to set a global price on carbon dioxide emissions look unlikely to bear fruit anytime soon, our best bet in the meantime may be product labels designed to influence what we consumers buy.
These could at least “bend the global carbon-growth curve” enough to buy us some time, they claim.
“Even modest changes in the household sector could significantly reduce emissions,” they say.
Journal reference: Nature Climate Change, DOI: 10.1038/nclimate1071
IC 2177
Copyright: Emil Ivanov
The Elephant Trunk Nebula
This image of the Elephant Trunk Nebula was taken with the Mosaic camera on the WIYN 0.9-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona. The Elephant Trunk is a dense, elongated cloud of gas inside a bright cluster of stars known as IC 1396. The trunk conceals many young protostars that are in the process of forming.
Credit: NOAO
NGC 281
Emission Nebula and Open Cluster in Cassiopeia
Credit: Robert Gendler
VdB 93: Emission Nebula in Canis Major
Copyright: Adam Block/Mount Lemmon SkyCenter/University of Arizona
NASA satellites find high-energy surprises in ‘constant’ Crab Nebula
New results from NASA space observatories have revealed something surprising about the Crab Nebula: This famous supernova remnant — long considered a veritable “old faithful” of X-ray sources for the constancy of it energy output — appears to be dimming over time.
In this image, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory reveals the complex X-ray-emitting central region of the Crab Nebula. This image is 9.8 light-years across. Chandra observations were not compatible with the study of the nebula’s X-ray variations.
• Image Credit: NASA • Full story at http://geeked.gsfc.nasa.gov • Watch video
The plan puts Massachusetts in the company of California, New Mexico and other states that have taken strong action to address global warming.
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