Category Archives: Space

Today’s pretty picture

Posted on April 19, 2007 | Comments Off on Today’s pretty picture

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Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1672, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope at 60 million light years away./NASA

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Today’s pretty picture

Posted on April 15, 2007 | Comments Off on Today’s pretty picture

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 Supernovae remnant in the Constellation Vela, in visible light/NASA and Skyfactory.

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Black hole eclipse

Posted on April 12, 2007 | Comments Off on Black hole eclipse

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 "NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has observed a remarkable eclipse of a supermassive black hole [just 60 million light years away], allowing a disk of hot matter swirling around the hole to be measured for the first time."

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Posted in Science/Engineering, Space

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The hexagon of Saturn

Posted on March 28, 2007 | Comments Off on The hexagon of Saturn

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And you thought geometry was only for terrestrial engineers and architects? Apparently it’s involved in the maintenance of planets, as well. This six-sided hexagon–twice as wide as Earth–encircles Saturn’s north pole. It was first seen by the Voyager robot spacecraft in the 1980s and recently photographed (here, in infrared) by the Cassini spacecraft. There is some (disputed) thought that it is a vortex-like flow in the atmosphere of the gas giant. But its cause remains a msytery.

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Today’s pretty picture

Posted on March 26, 2007 | Comments Off on Today’s pretty picture

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The Witch Head Nebula, about 1,000 light years away, in honor of Mr. B’s and my reading of Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince, which we are taking slow, since it’s the last one before the concluding book due in July. It’s also got more "kiss-kiss, boy-girl stuff," as Mr. B. calls it with wrinkled nose to show his disgust. So much that I find I have to read around those descriptions, partly because they’re too old for him and partly because he dislikes them anyway. 

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Posted in Library, Mr. Boy, Space

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Today’s pretty picture

Posted on March 5, 2007 | Comments Off on Today’s pretty picture

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The beauty of dusty nebula NGC 2170: hydrogen, dust and stars/Russell Croman Astrophotography

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Saturn from above

Posted on March 2, 2007 | Comments Off on Saturn from above

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Saturn’s shadow stretches out across its rings on Jan. 19, 2007. This natural-color view, taken from about 764,000 miles (1.2 million kilometer) away by the Cassini spacecraft was released Thursday. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.

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