canwestaylikethis:

Insignificance defined.

(Source: macabresunrises)

the-star-stuff:

A clash among members of a famous galaxy quintet reveals an assortment of stars across a wide color range, from young blue stars to aging red stars.

This portrait of Stephan’s Quintet, also known as Hickson Compact Group 92, was taken by the new Wide Field Camera 3. Stephan’s Quintet, as the name implies, is a group of five galaxies. The name, however, is a bit of a misnomer. Studies have shown that group member NGC 7320, at upper left, is actually a foreground galaxy about seven times closer to Earth than the rest of the group.

Image and caption: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team

derekyogidugan:

VY Canis Majoris, the largest known star in the Universe.

Our Milky Way galaxy contains a minimum of 100 billion planets, according to a detailed statistical study based on the detection of three planets located outside our solar system, called exoplanets. 

The discovery, to be reported in the January 12 issue of Nature, was made by an international team of astronomers, including co-author Stephen Kane of NASA’s Exoplanet Science Institute at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif.

The survey results show that our galaxy contains, on average, a minimum of one planet for every star. This means that it’s likely there is a minimum of 1,500 planets within just 50 light-years of Earth.

The study is based on observations taken over six years by the PLANET (Probing Lensing Anomalies NETwork) collaboration, using a technique called microlensing to survey the galaxy for planets. In this technique, one star acts like a magnifying lens to brighten the light from a background star. If planets are orbiting the foreground star, the background star’s light will further brighten, revealing the presence of a planet that is otherwise too faint to be seen.

The study also concludes that there are far more Earth-sized planets than bloated Jupiter-sized worlds. A rough estimate from this survey would point to the existence of more than 10 billion terrestrial planets across our galaxy.

“Results from the three main techniques of planet detection, including microlensing, are rapidly converging to a common result: Not only are planets common in the galaxy, but there are more small planets than large ones,” said Stephen Kane, a co-author from NASA’s Exoplanet Science Institute at Caltech. “This is encouraging news for investigations into habitable planets.”

Eagle Nebula

Combining almost opposite ends of the electromagnetic spectrum, this composite of the Herschel in far-infrared and XMM-Newton’s X-ray images shows how the hot young stars detected by the X-ray observations are sculpting and interacting with the surrounding ultra-cool gas and dust, which, at only a few degrees above absolute zero, is the critical material for star formation itself. Both wavelengths would be blocked by Earth’s atmosphere, so are critical to our understanding of the lifecycle of stars.

Image Credit: ESA/Herschel/PACS/SPIRE/Hill, Motte, HOBYS Key Programme Consortium

the-star-stuff:

astrotastic:

dvdp:

Astronomical is a scale model of our solar system in twelve 500 page volumes printed-on-demand. On page 1 the Sun, on page 6,000 Pluto. The width of each page equals one million kilometres. - by Mishka Henner

//via olena

A powerful demonstration of astronomical distances.

Vastness.

(Source: vimeo.com)

skeletales:

Using an underexposed fisheye lens, photographer John Colbensen captured the outstanding galactic image — an aerial shot of a meteor shooting through the sky — above, right from his airplane seat. The Norway native never misses a chance to put his expert photography skills to use. His portfolio boasts a range of versatility that leaps from landscapes and seascapes to macro and fine art photography. Via My Modern Metropolis

crookedindifference:

Watch our expanding universe

Australian Ph.D. student Florian Beutler has created the most accurate measurement yet of how fast the universe is expanding. Working at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), he used the Hubble constant and data from the 6dF Galaxy Survey, the most ambitious survey to date of over 120,000 galaxies across the southern sky, collected between 2001 and 2005. The result is a remarkable map of the expansion of universe, animated here to unfold before your very eyes.

See the video of the animation here.

the-star-stuff:

Most Amazing High Definition Image of Earth Ever - Blue Marble 2012

A ‘Blue Marble’ image of the Earth taken from the VIIRS instrument aboard NASA’s most recently launched Earth-observing satellite - Suomi NPP. This composite image uses a number of swaths of the Earth’s surface taken on January 4, 2012. The NPP satellite was renamed ‘Suomi NPP’ on January 24, 2012 to honor the late Verner E. Suomi of the University of Wisconsin.

Suomi NPP is NASA’s next Earth-observing research satellite. It is the first of a new generation of satellites that will observe many facets of our changing Earth.

Our planet is so HOT! This full-disc image taken by Suomi NPP in several passes Jan. 4 may well be the most amazing image of our planet to date.

Click through to the highest resolution image.

Credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring

n-a-s-a:

JKCS041: The Farthest Galaxy Cluster Yet Measured