Owl Nebula

The “eyes” of the Owl Nebula

The Owl Nebula (M97), an interstellar cloud of dust, hydrogen gas, helium and other ionized gases formed roughly 6,000 years ago in the constellation Ursa Major, is regarded as one of the more complex of the planetaries. The object gets it name due to the appearance of owl-like “eyes” when view through a large telescope under dark sky conditions with the aid of a so-called “nebula filter.” The “eyes” are also easily visible through photographs taken of the nebula.

SPACE

These violent delights have violent ends And in their triumph die, like fire and powder, Which, as they kiss, consume.

Saturn’s Moon Mimas

Saturn’s Moon Mimas is seen in this Cassini image against the cloudless, blue skies over Saturn’s northern hemisphere. The stripes seen on the planet are the shadows of the planets rings.

Solar Dynamics Observatory

NASA’s New Eye on the Sun Delivers Stunning First Images
here is the link.. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sdo/news/first-light.html

NASA's recently launched Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, is returning early images that confirm an unprecedented new capability for scientists to better understand our sun’s dynamic processes. These solar activities affect everything on Earth.

Some of the images from the spacecraft show never-before-seen detail of material streaming outward and away from sunspots. Others show extreme close-ups of activity on the sun’s surface. The spacecraft also has made the first high-resolution measurements of solar flares in a broad range of extreme ultraviolet wavelengths.

"These initial images show a dynamic sun that I had never seen in more than 40 years of solar research,” said Richard Fisher, director of the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "SDO will change our understanding of the sun and its processes, which affect our lives and society. This mission will have a huge impact on science, similar to the impact of the Hubble Space Telescope on modern astrophysics.”

Cloud of Space Dust

Gigantic Baby Stars Discovered in Cloud of Space Dust

Huge new baby stars shine bright in this image of the Rosette Molecular Cloud.

The previously undiscovered protostars are the small points of orangey light in the center of the image. They are up to 10 times more massive than the sun.

Read more at WIRED.com

Rosette nebula

Carmen Defstar Nebula

These are for you...
In the Center of the Lagoon Nebula

The Lagoon Nebula

The Boomerang Nebula

The Boomerang Nebula, a fascinating anomaly of the cosmos. At one degree of Celsius above absolute zero (the temperature at which all movement ceases), this nebula is the coldest thing ever observed in space and the only thing ever known to be colder than the background radiation of the Big Bang (which is very cold, -270C (-454ºF)).

The Flame Nebula in Infrared

The Pencil Nebula

Horsehead Nebula

Aurora Boreas

Named after Aurora, the Roman goddess of the dawn, and Boreas, Greek for "northern wind," the aurora borealis is more commonly known as the "northern lights."

"Polar lights," however, is a more accurate name, as they occur in both the northern and southern hemispheres, but intensify with increasing proximity to the magnetic poles.

Image credit: nick_russill/Flickr

Eagle Nebula

Eagle Nebula: A star-making region famous for its space pillars appears in this infrared view from Spitzer. Green denotes cooler dust, including the pillars seen in the center. Red represents hotter dust thought to have been warmed by the explosion of a massive star about 8,000 to 9,000 years ago.

Astronomers estimate that the explosion’s blast wave would have spread outward and toppled the three pillars about 6,000 years ago. Since light from the Eagle nebula takes 7,000 years to reach us, this means we wouldn’t witness the destruction for about 1,000 years.

Loading... Hide notes

fuckyeahspace

Here’s NGC 2264, also known as the Christmas Tree Nebula. (Photo: Greg Parker via Barcroft Media / the Telegraph)

butterfly wings

What resemble dainty butterfly wings are actually roiling cauldrons of gas heated to more than 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The gas is tearing across space at more than 600,000 miles an hour - fast enough to travel from Earth to the Moon in 24 minutes! A dying star that was once about five times the mass of the Sun is at the center of this fury. It has ejected its envelope of gases and is now unleashing a stream of ultraviolet radiation that is making the cast-off material glow. The Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), installed by NASA astronauts in May 2009, snapped this image of the planetary nebula, catalogued as NGC 6302, which lies within our Milky Way galaxy, roughly 3,800 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius. The glowing gas is the star’s outer layers, expelled over about 2,200 years. NGC 6302 was imaged on July 27, 2009, with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 in ultraviolet and visible light. Filters that isolate emissions from oxygen, helium, hydrogen, nitrogen, and sulfur from the planetary nebula were used to create this composite image. (NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team)

Space Photo of the Day:

On Novermber 14, 1984, NASA astronaut Dale Gardner strapped on his Manned Maneuvering Unit, stepped off the Space Shuttle Discovery, and proceeded to float fifty meters away, untethered, through the vast emptiness of space, to retrieve a wayward satellite which needed to be hauled back to earth.

Ever wonder what the Sun sounds...

The Tumblings of Kev - invaderxan: Ever wonder what the Sun sounds...
Asteroseismology records the frequencies which a star pulsates at and uses those frequencies to study the internal structure of the star. Those frequencies can be turned into actual sound. This mp3 is of the Sun’s pulsations. Turn your bass up and have a listen!


chk out the link above and listen

and for more info chk out (via asteroseismology.org)

first picture of Earth

A newly restored version of the first picture of Earth taken from the Moon, taken in 1966 by Lunar Orbiter 1

Galactic Suite Space Resort

Photo via Exclusive Lifestyle. Artist's rendering of the Galactic Suite Space Resort.

You think you'd find the Galactic Suite Space Resort in a cartoon, comic strip or kitschy hotel in Disney World, right? Wrong. Whether you like it or not, it's real, and plans to open its super-future-like doors to paying guests in 2012.

Don't confuse this hotel however, with Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic project, which plans to propel tourists into suborbital space at $200,000 a ride. Galactic Suite Ltd, the company behind the resort, has bigger, more "bling" plans in mind--a veritable space playground for the rich and famous.

A three night stay comes at a pretty 4.4 million dollar price tag and begs to question: at what cost for the environment?

Galactic Suite Space Resort Hotel Amenities

I'm sorry but complimentary pillow chocolates and stocked mini-fridges seem so less novel when compared to the Galactic Suite Space Resort's digs. After an eight-week astronaut training course on a Caribbean island, guests will rocket up to space to the Galactic Suite's hotel pod. There, they can play Spidey suiting up in Velcro to crawl around their zero-gravity pod room walls, see the sun rise 15 times a day from a weightless spa, and orbit the planet every 80 minutes

Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2009

This year’s Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2009 has been announced, with the award for the Earth and Space category going to Australian photographer Ted Dobosz.

The picture captures a dark, starry night where the glow from the galactic bulge of the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds stretched across the night sky. As the Earth spins during the 30-minute exposure of the photograph, the stars make trails around the southern celestial pole.

BBC