StarStuff

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blackaperture:

Three-person chess.
[via]

This can only end in tears and physical fighting

One of my housemates has one of these. The above person was correct.

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The Silence of the Lambs

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europeinspace:

A spiral galaxy with a secret

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope - with a little help from an amateur astronomer - has produced one of the best views yet of nearby spiral galaxy Messier 106. Located a little over 20 million light-years away, practically a neighbour by cosmic standards, Messier 106 is one of the brightest and nearest spiral galaxies to our own.

Despite its appearance, which looks much like countless other galaxies, Messier 106 hides a number of secrets. Thanks to this image, which combines data from Hubble with observations by amateur astronomers Robert Gendler and Jay GaBany, they are revealed as never before.

At its heart, as in most spiral galaxies, is a supermassive black hole, but this one is particularly active. Unlike the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way, which pulls in wisps of gas only occasionally, Messier 106’s black hole is actively gobbling up material. As the gas spirals towards the black hole, it heats up and emits powerful radiation. Part of the emission from the centre of Messier 106 is produced by a process that is somewhat similar to that in a laser - although here the process produces bright microwave radiation [1].

As well as this microwave emission from Messier 106’s heart, the galaxy has another startling feature - instead of two spiral arms, it appears to have four. Although the second pair of arms can be seen in visible light images as ghostly wisps of gas, as in this image, they are even more prominent in observations made outside of the visible spectrum, such as those using X-ray or radio waves.

Unlike the normal arms, these two extra arms are made up of hot gas rather than stars, and their origin remained unexplained until recently. Astronomers think that these, like the microwave emission from the galactic centre, are caused by the black hole at Messier 106’s heart, and so are a totally different phenomenon from the galaxy’s normal, star-filled arms.

The extra arms appear to be an indirect result of jets of material produced by the violent churning of matter around the black hole. As these jets travel through the galactic matter they disrupt and heat up the surrounding gas, which in turn excites the denser gas in the galactic plane and causes it to glow brightly. This denser gas closer to the centre of the galaxy is tightly-bound, and so the arms appear to be straight. However, the looser disc gas further out is blown above or below the disc in the opposite direction from the jet, so that the gas curves out of the disc — producing the arching red arms seen here.

Despite carrying his name, Messier 106 was neither discovered nor catalogued by the renowned 18th century astronomer Charles Messier. Discovered by his assistant, Pierre Méchain, the galaxy was never added to the catalogue in his lifetime. Along with six other objects discovered but not logged by the pair, Messier 106 was posthumously added to the Messier catalogue in the 20th century.

Amateur astronomer Robert Gendler retrieved archival Hubble images of M 106 to assemble a mosaic of the centre of the galaxy. He then used his own and fellow astrophotographer Jay GaBany’s observations of M 106 to combine with the Hubble data in areas where there was less coverage, and finally, to fill in the holes and gaps where no Hubble data existed.

The centre of the galaxy is composed almost entirely of Hubble data taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys, Wide Field Camera 3, and Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 detectors. The outer spiral arms are predominantly HST data colourised with ground-based data taken by Gendler’s and GaBany’s 12.5-inch and 20-inch telescopes, located at very dark remote sites in New Mexico, USA.

Gendler was a prizewinner in the recent Hubble’s Hidden Treasures image processing competition. Another prizewinner, André van der Hoeven, entered a different version of Messier 106, combining Hubble and NOAO data.

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neuronsandneutrons

(Source: jonnovstheinternet)

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sea-shepherd:

Who went out to get a free tour on the Bob Barker in Williamstown, Victoria, Australia? Here’s the ship in port. :)

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for-all-mankind:

sagansense:

Sky Rockets in Flight

Here’s a look at what I did for SPACE! A Gallery Show at Gallery 1988, opening 21st June, organised and curated by my bud Mike Mitchell.

Look closely! It’s an isometric pixel drawing of iconic space rockets and their occupants. I was careful to do it to scale to give you an impression of how big each one would have been. I love space!

via aledknowsbest

Good job! It’s nice to see boosters like this!

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laboratoryequipment:

Analysis Shows Dino Feathers Were Patterned, Not Black

The first complete chemical analysis of feathers from Archaeopteryx, a famous fossil linking dinosaurs and birds, reveals that the feathers were patterned — light in color, with a dark edge and tip — rather than all black, as previously thought.

The findings came from X-ray experiments at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, where scientists were able to find chemical traces of the original dinobird and its pigments in the rock that entombed it 150 million years ago.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/videos/2013/06/analysis-shows-dino-feathers-were-patterned-not-black

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science-junkie:

New Kind of Dark Matter Could Form ‘Dark Atoms’

The mysterious dark matter that makes up most of the matter in the universe could be composed, in part, of invisible and nearly intangible counterparts of atoms, protons and electrons, researchers say.

Dark matter is an invisible substance thought to make up five-sixths of all matter in the universe. Scientists inferred the existence of dark matter via its gravitational effects on the movements of stars and galaxies.

Most researchers think dark matter is composed of a new type of particle, one that interacts very weakly at best with all the known forces of the universe save gravity. As such, dark matter can almost never be seen or touched, and rarely even collides with itself.

This might not hold true for all forms of dark matter, though. Now, some researchers suggest a new kind of dark matter could exist, representing about one-fifth of all dark matter in the universe, making it potentially as plentiful as conventional matter.

Dark atoms

“There is no good reason to assume that all the dark matter in the universe is built out of one type of particle,” study author Andrey Katz of Harvard University told SPACE.com.

These new dark matter particles would essentially consist of heavy “dark protons” and light “dark electrons.” They would interact with each other far more than other dark matter particles to form “dark atoms” that use “dark photons” to interact through a sort of “dark electromagnetism,” much as regular protons and electrons interact through photons in conventional electromagnetism to build the atoms making up the stuff of everyday life. If dark atoms are possible, they could react with each other for dark chemistry, much as regular atoms interact chemically.

Read more

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stellar-indulgence:

Early Earth Turned Methane Haze On and Off?

Saturn‘s moon Titan is unique in our solar system, being the only natural satellite to boast a significant atmosphere, somewhat like Earth’s.

Also like Earth, Titan has bodies of liquid on its surface that support processes akin to our water cycle—the huge moon has clouds, spring rains, and fog—and even shows signs of a lake effect similar to the one seen over North America’s Great Lakes.

The key difference, of course, is that the liquid on chilly Titan is methane, a carbon-based chemical that, on our world, is the prime component in natural gas.

Still, Titan’s hydrocarbon haze is exciting to scientists who are hoping to get a glimpse of how life might have been sparked on Earth: Lab experiments, for example, suggest that the moon’s atmosphere may be flush with the building blocks of life, such as amino acids and DNA bases.

And now, for the first time, scientists say they have proof that early Earth had a very Titan-like atmosphere … at least periodically.

On today’s Earth, dry air contains roughly 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen, with trace amounts of other gases. But ancient rocks show that, before about 2.5 billion years ago, atmospheric oxygen was a scarce commodity on our planet.

The widely held theory has been that before the so-called Great Oxygenation Event, Earth’s atmosphere was dominated by Titan-esque organics—but no one had yet found evidence for such a chemical makeup in the planet’s rocky history.

Core samples from these rocks contain microbial mats, which show that some of the tiny creatures in shallow seas were producing oxygen long before the Great Oxygenation of our atmosphere.

The rocks also contain carbon and sulfur isotopes—chemicals that would have reacted with oxygen. The levels of the different kinds of isotopes present indicate that sometimes oxygen production was happening when the atmosphere was thick with methane—but other times the atmosphere must have been haze-free.

The clarity of the early atmosphere seems to flip flop roughly every few million years, Zerkle and co. report, hinting at a push and pull between microbes that generated oxygen and those that belched methane.

At last, though, *something* happened about 2.5 billion years ago to trigger the planet’s permanent oxygen high. (What that “something” was is still a mystery, although theories abound.)

Of course, this pattern has so far been seen only in the South African rocks, so more research on samples from around the world will be needed to truly tell whether Earth was once a Titan—atmospherically speaking.

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framesandflames:

Looking along a Filament

SDO peered down the length of a long solar filament as it rotated over the Sun’s edge June 3 (at 3:00 UT) to June 4, 2013 (at 17:00 UT). The filament’s darker, cooler plasma of appeared to have a number of support struts below it as it snaked its way above the surface. In the background bright coils of magnetic field lines rose up above an active region. Images were taken in extreme ultraviolet light.

Credit: Solar Dynamics Observatory.

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Early Earth Turned Methane Haze On and Off?