NASA scientists are having a lot of fun with Messenger, the spacecraft now orbiting Mercury. Not only they are documenting the planet at a resolution of 200 meters per pixel, but they are spotting all kinds of fun stuff. A few weeks ago it was the Sesame Street’s cookie monster. Today it’s a smiley crater. More »
This beautiful, unreal portrait of the Sun was taken by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory as it was moving into its eclipse season: More »
It’s still going to take some practice to be able to read the time at a glance, but Mr. Jones’ new Satellite watch doesn’t look as complicated as Tokyo Flash’s latest efforts. And astronomy enthusiasts will appreciate its use of hour and minute markers that look like orbiting celestial bodies. More »
If you’re a lazy astronomer, the kinda person who likes gazing into the night sky but never plans ahead, good news: NASA has launched a new service which will pop you a text message or email whenever the international space station is about to pass over your place, so you can dash outside and take a look. More »
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but this just leaves us speechless. Pictured above is a compressed 108,500 x 81,500 pixel image of 84 million stars across central parts of the Milky Way. Taken by the VISTA survey telescope at the ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile, this 9-gigapixel photo is the result of thousands of individual images being meshed together. If it were printed out at the average resolution of a standard book it would measure a mind-boggling 9 x 7 meters. Using three separate infrared filters, VISTA is able to see through dust fields that normally obscure the view of an optical telescope. By studying this monumental image, astronomers hope to gain a better understanding of how galaxies form and evolve. If you’d like to take a look at this galactic work of art in its entirety, you can do so by visiting the source link below.
(Image credit: ESO/VVV Consortium)
Continue reading 9-gigapixel image of the Milky Way reminds us just how small we truly are
9-gigapixel image of the Milky Way reminds us just how small we truly are originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 27 Oct 2012 06:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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It’s like something out a strange science fiction movie: a giant asteroid careening towards earth is diverted using a massive blast of paintballs fired into space, saving mankind and forever giving paintball-lovers bragging rights over airsoft fans. As odd as it sounds, this very proposal earned Sung Wook Paek, Department of Aeronautics and Astronauts at MIT, the 2012 Move an Asteroid Technical Paper Competition. And yes, there’s a video.
The competition was sponsored by the United Nations’ Space Generation Advisory Council. Paek presented his strategy at the International Astronautical Congress in Italy, where he detailed how firing a mass quantity of paintballs into an asteroid could prevent what would otherwise be an unfortunate collision with our fragile planet. It’s as simple sounding as it is seemingly ingenious; the light-colored paintballs, upon impact, would cause a slight diversion in the asteroid’s course. At this point, the chunk of space rock would then be coated in a reflective substance. The sunlight bouncing off the reflective surface would increase solar radiation pressure and further alter the asteroid’s course, redirecting it out of the danger zone.
This method was detailed in a video using the 900-foot-wide asteroid Apophis as the virtual test subject due to its potential impact with earth in the future. Just how many paintballs would it take to potentially knock the massive asteroid off course? Five tons’ worth. And sadly, while it’s fun to imagine the asteroid careening off-course immediately after a blast of pellets, it would take about two decades for the solar radiation pressure to shove the rock out of its dangerous trajectory. You can check out a video of this in action here.
According to Paek, additional things could be launched into space in addition to the paint pellets, such as pellets with aerosols that would “impart air drag on the incoming asteroid to slow it down. Or, you could just paint the asteroid so you can track it more easily with telescopes on Earth. So there are other uses for this method.” Last year’s winning strategy revolved around the idea of diverting an asteroid via a blast of solid pellets.
[via Space]
Fighting asteroids with paintballs: an MIT graduate student’s winning strategy is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
ESO has released a ginormous 9-gigapixel image of 84 million stars taken via the VISTA infrared survey telescope at its Paranal Observatory. Featuring the center of the Milky Way, this huge picture is the by-product of an international team of astronomers, and will be used to help study our galaxy. Just how big is 9-gigapixels? Printed “with the resolution of a typical book,” it would be almost 30 feet long and 23 feet high.
Roberto Saito, the lead author of the study, had this to say: “By observing in detail the myriads of stars surrounding the centre of the Milky Way we can learn a lot more about the formation and evolution of not only our galaxy, but also spiral galaxies in general.” Spiral galaxies feature their oldest stars in the center, something astronomers call the galaxy’s bulge. Seeing the Milky Way’s bulge is difficult because of copious amounts of dust.
According to the study’s co-author Dante Minniti, astronomers have to observe infrared light when dust is an issue. To get this image of our galaxy’s middle, the team used VISTA, which stands for Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy. The team used data from VISTA Variable in the Via Lactea program to assemble the mega image.
This is the first time the Milky Way’s bulge has been cataloged like this, containing ten times the number of stars of previous efforts. Said Minniti: Each star occupies a particular spot in this diagram at any moment during its lifetime. Where it falls depends on how bright it is and how hot it is. Since the new data gives us a snapshot of all the stars in one go, we can now make a census of all the stars in this part of the Milky Way.”
[via ESO]
ESO assembles 9-gigapixel image of 84 million stars is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
You are looking at more than 84 million stars, the largest ever catalogue of the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way. Astronomers at the Paranal Observatory in Cerro Paranal, Chile, stitched the 9 gigapixels of the original image from thousands of individual infrared pictures.You can see the full, zoomable version here. More »
Alt-week peels back the covers on some of the more curious sci-tech stories from the last seven days.
Most mornings, we wake up with little to no idea what happened the day before, let alone last week. Fortunately, they don’t let us run important scientific research projects. Or maybe they do, and we just forgot? This week (and most others as it goes) we definitely leave it to the pros, as we get some insightful glimpses at some important origins. Ball Lightning, the moon and even us humans are the benefactors of those tireless scientists, who work hard to explain where it all comes from. There’s also a planet with four stars that sees the first few paragraphs of its origin story excitedly written out. One thing we never forget, however, is that this is alt-week.
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Alt-week 20.10.12: our oldest primate ancestor, the birth of the moon and a planet with four stars originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 20 Oct 2012 17:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Alt-week peels back the covers on some of the more curious sci-tech stories from the last seven days.
Most mornings, we wake up with little to no idea what happened the day before, let alone last week. Fortunately, they don’t let us run important scientific research projects. Or maybe they do, and we just forgot? This week (and most others as it goes) we definitely leave it to the pros, as we get some insightful glimpses at some important origins. Ball Lightning, the moon and even us humans are the benefactors of those tireless scientists, who work hard to explain where it all comes from. There’s also a planet with four stars that sees the first few paragraphs of its origin story excitedly written out. One thing we never forget, however, is that this is alt-week.
Filed under: Alt
Alt-week 20.10.12: our oldest ancestor, the birth of the moon and a planet with four stars originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 20 Oct 2012 17:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | Comments
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