Here’s a couple of spiral galaxies. As usual, click on the picture for the .tif download…
Spiral Galaxy Pair NGC 4302 and NGC 4298
No major story, here. Just Europa. Click on image for .tif file…
Hubble Image of Europa
Since I missed it on Wednesday, here it is now. I thought this was neat…
As usual, click on the image for the tiff…
A Multiwavelength View of Supernova 1987A
Yet another really cool Astronomy discovery, this one announced back on March 23rd…
Composite ALMA and optical image of a young Milky Way-like galaxy 12 billion light-years away and a background quasar 12.5 billion light-years away. Light from the quasar passed through the galaxy’s gas on its way to Earth, revealing the presence of the galaxy to astronomers. New ALMA observations of the galaxy’s ionized carbon (green) and dust continuum (blue) emission show that the dusty, star-forming disk of the galaxy is vastly offset from the gas detected by quasar absorption at optical wavelengths (red). This indicates that a massive halo of gas surrounds the galaxy. The optical data are from the Keck I Telescope at the W.M. Keck Observatory. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), M. Neeleman & J. Xavier Prochaska; Keck Observatory
Spacewalks are honestly rather fascinating. I’ve been enjoying pics and videos of them for a long time, now.
I think everyone here already knows what a spacewalk is, but here’s the Wikipedia breakdown (of Extravehicular Activity, of which a spacewalk is the most common type), just in case…
Extravehicular activity (EVA) is any activity done by an astronaut or cosmonaut outside a spacecraft beyond the Earth’s appreciable atmosphere. The term most commonly applies to a spacewalk made outside a craft orbiting Earth (such as the International Space Station), but also has applied to lunar surface exploration (commonly known as moonwalks) performed by six pairs of American astronauts in the Apollo program from 1969 to 1972. On each of the last three of these missions, astronauts also performed deep-space EVAs on the return to Earth, to retrieve film canisters from the outside of the spacecraft. Astronauts also used EVA in 1973 to repair launch damage to Skylab, the United States’ first space station.
A “Stand-up” EVA (SEVA) is where the astronaut does not fully leave a spacecraft, but is completely reliant on the spacesuit for environmental support.[1] Its name derives from the astronaut “standing up” in the open hatch, usually to record or assist a spacewalking astronaut.
EVAs may be either tethered (the astronaut is connected to the spacecraft; oxygen and electrical power can be supplied through an umbilical cable; no propulsion is needed to return to the spacecraft), or untethered. Untethered spacewalks were only performed on three missions in 1984 using the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU), and on a flight test in 1994 of the Simplified Aid For EVA Rescue (SAFER), a safety device worn on tethered U.S. EVAs.
The Soviet Union/Russia, the United States, and China have conducted EVAs.
So… that supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy? It’s inactive, and has been for a long time. Scientists wondered just how long it’s been inactive, and now they have an idea…
It ate it’s last meal about 6 million years ago.
And here’s the image (as usual, click on the image for the hi-res tif file):
Quasar’s Light Yields Clues to Outflow
Here’s a cool gallery from Space.com, showcasing artist renderings of the strangest exoplanets discovered so far…
I’ll post a few of my favorites, but head on over to see the rest…
Mega-Earth Kepler-10c Planet
Okay okay… potentially habitable planets… the title was already long enough…
(Thanks to Rob Grigjanis for alerting me to this…)
Allowing for the fact that NASA is known for its sensationalism (routinely mocked, actually, by some astronomy podcasts I listen to, like Awesome Astronomy), this is actually really intriguing. From Vox…
TRAPPIST-1 System… planets e, f, and g are the potentially habitable planets
Saturn’s Moon Mimas and It’s Mountain
