NGC 7822 in Cepheus
Hot, young stars and cosmic pillars of gas and dust seem to crowd into NGC 7822. At the edge of a giant molecular cloud toward the northernconstellation Cepheus, the glowing star forming region lies about 3,000 light-years away. Within the nebula, bright edges and dark shapes are highlighted in thiscolorful skyscape. The image includes data from narrowband filters, mapping emission from atomic oxygen, hydrogen, and sulfur into blue, green, and red hues. The atomic emission is powered by energetic radiation from the hot stars, whose powerful winds and radiation also sculpt and erode the denser pillar shapes. Stars could still be forming inside the pillars by gravitational collapse, but as the pillars are eroded away, any forming stars will ultimately be cutoff from their reservoir of star stuff. This field spans around 40 light-years at the estimated distance of NGC 7822.
(Source: news.discovery.com)
Majestic Milky Way
Credit: Phil McGrew
The Milky Way shines over McWay Falls south of Big Sur, Calif. Photographer Phil McGrew pulled an “all-nighter” to get this shot.
Animals Inside Womb
These amazing embryonic animal photographs of dolphins, sharks, dogs, penguins, cats and elephants are from a new National Geographic Documentary called “Extraordinary Animals in the Womb”.
Sunscreen in the Sky? Reflective Particles May Combat Warming
In the image: Titanium dioxide, as seen through a scanning electron microscope.
Titanium dioxide could scatter sunlight and cool Earth, scientist says.
Spritzing a sunscreen ingredient into the stratosphere could help counteract the effects of global warming, according to scientists behind an ambitious new geoengineering project.
The plan involves using high-altitude balloons to disperse millions of tons of titanium dioxide—a nontoxic chemical found in sunscreen as well as in paints, inks, and even food.
Once in the atmosphere, the particles would spread around the planet and reflect some of the sun’s rays back into space.
About three million tons of titanium dioxide—spread into a layer around a millionth of a millimeter thick—would be enough to offset the warming effects caused by a doubling of today’s atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, according to project leader and chemical engineer Peter Davidson.
Saturn’s Most Habitable Moon Offers Ice, Water, Killer Views
1. Enceladus’ southern tiger stripes are actively spewing jets of ice into space. The region is also anomalously warm relative to the rest of the planet, and releasing three times more heat than a similar sized area on Earth. Until recently, scientists didn’t know why.
A study in Nature Geoscience in January explains that the heat is caused by blobs of warmer ice moving toward the surface and pushing colder ice down. Scientists think these eras of churning ice last around 10 million years, while the intervening quiet times last 100 million to 2 billion years, so Cassini is lucky to have visited during one of the active times that make up between 1 and 10 percent of the moon’s history.
“Cassini appears to have caught Enceladus in the middle of a burp,” UC Santa Cruz planetary scientist Francis Nimmo, co-author of the new study, said in a press release. “These tumultuous periods are rare, and Cassini happens to have been watching the moon during one of these special epochs.”
2. Enceladus is the sixth largest of Saturn’s 62 moons. The plumes emanating from its southern pole are just visible in this image.
3. This spectacular image of Enceladus nestled next to Saturn below the planet’s rings was taken by Cassini on Christmas Day, 2009. It was captured by the spacecraft’s wide-angle camera from 384,000 miles away.
4. Here, Enceladus is speeding by Dione, a moon more than twice its size. Enceladus orbits faster and closer to Saturn than Dione. The ring is Saturn’s outermost F-ring.
(Source: Wired)
(Source: news.discovery.com)
Amature Astronomers Boost Asteroid Hunt
Amateur astronomers have an invaluable role in the detection and tracking of potentially hazardous asteroids.
