Monicks: Unleashed

Tag: Science

  • Astronomy Picture of the Day – Hubble Peers Inside a Celestial Geode

    In this unusual image, the Hubble Space Telescope captures a rare view of the celestial equivalent of a geode – a gas cavity carved by the stellar wind and intense ultraviolet radiation from a young hot star.

    Hubble Peers Inside a Celestial Geode. Credit: ESA/NASA, Yäel Nazé (University of Liège, Belgium) and You-Hua Chu (University of Illinois, Urbana, USA)

    via spacefellowship.com

    Real geodes are handball-sized, hollow rocks that start out as bubbles in volcanic or sedimentary rock. Only when these inconspicuous round rocks are split in half by a geologist, do we get a chance to appreciate the inside of the rock cavity that is lined with crystals. In the case of Hubble’s 35 light-year diameter “celestial geode” the transparency of its bubble-like cavity of interstellar gas and dust reveals the treasures of its interior.

     

  • Astronomy Picture of the Day | The Lure of the Rings

    Resembling a diamond-encrusted bracelet, a ring of brilliant blue star clusters wraps around the yellowish nucleus of what was once a normal spiral galaxy in this image from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST).

    The Lure of the Rings. Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI)

    via spacefellowship.com

    The sparkling blue ring is 150,000 light-years in diameter, making it larger than our entire home galaxy, the Milky Way. The galaxy, cataloged as AM 0644-741, is a member of the class of so- called “ring galaxies.” It lies 300 million light-years away in the direction of the southern constellation Dorado. This image was released to commemorate the 14th anniversary of Hubble’s launch on April 24, 1990 and its deployment from the space shuttle Discovery on April 25, 1990.

    Posted via web from Monicks: Unleashed

  • The Earth and Moon from Mars | This is so beautiful!

    via i.dailymail.co.uk

    Stunning image of what our planet looks like from the Red Planet.

    This stunning picture is the first image of Earth ever taken from another planet that shows our home as a planetary disc, with the Moon in the distance

    Captured by Nasa’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as the spacecraft orbited the Red Planet, both the Earth and the Moon appear as crescents, engulfed in the vast darkness of space.

    Our planet is captured in a ‘half-Earth’ phase, while the image also shows the Earth-facing hemisphere of the Moon.
    Because the Earth and the Moon are closer to the Sun than Mars, they exhibit phases, just as the Moon, Venus, and Mercury do when viewed from Earth.
    When the image was captured in 2007, Earth was 88million miles from Mars, giving the HiRISE image a scale of 88 miles per pixel.
    Nasa could only picture the Earth and moon at full disk illumination when they are on the opposite side of the Sun from Mars. However, then the range would be much greater and the image would show less detail.
    On the Earth image you can make out the west coast outline of South America at lower right, although the clouds are the dominant features.
    This image required a processing, with the Moon image brightened so it would show up next to Earth.

    Posted via web from Monicks: Unleashed