Did you two plan that?
No, it’s just a coincidence. haha (Second time around)
Talk about same wavelength. This is so cool. haha
Southern Moon Lights
Moons Tethys and Rhea are visible beyond Saturn’s southern hemisphere. They orbit in the plane of the planet’s rings, but from this vantage point appear to be below the planet. Tethys is near the center of the image, and Rhea is on the lower right. Image taken June 29,2010
Image: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
The Valles Marineris Canyon System
The largest canyon in the solar system, Valles Marineris, on Mars, is almost 2,500 miles long — nearly as long as the continental United States is wide. A ground fog hugs the canyon floor. Haze in the thin Martian atmosphere is visible on the horizon.
M8 Lagoon Nebula
A portion of the Lagoon nebula imaged by Argentinean astronomers Julia Arias and Rodolfo Barbá using the Gemini South telescope with the Gemini Multiple-Object Spectrograph.
Iridescent Dinosaurs
Photo illustration courtesy Jason Brougham, University of Texas
According to a new study, Microraptors—four-winged, feathered dinosaurs that lived 125 million years ago—sported Earth’s earliest known iridescence, as pictured in this illustration.
Recent research suggests the pigeon-size Microraptor’s feathers glimmered black and blue in sunlight, like feathers of modern crows or grackles.
The findings are the earliest evidence of iridescence in any creature-bird or dinosaur, said study leader Julia Clarke, a paleontologist at the University of Texas at Austin.
Clarke and colleagues also suggest this iridescent coloring may have helped make Microraptor’s tail feathers even more eye-catching to mates.
Using an electron microscope, the researchers compared tiny, pigment-containing structures called melanosomes in a Microraptor fossil to melanosomes of living birds.
The team found that Microraptor’s melanosomes were narrow, elongated, and organized in a sheetlike orientation—features that produce an iridescent sheen on modern feathers.
“This study gives us an unprecedented glimpse at what this animal looked like when it was alive,” study team member Mark Norell, chair of the American Museum of Natural History’s Division of Paleontology, said in a statement.
(See “True-Color Dinosaur Revealed: First Full-Body Rendering.”)
The new findings are detailed in this week’s issue of the journalScience.
—Ker Than
I’ll Never Lego
The Seagull Nebula spreads its wings across 100 light-years
This beautiful image is an up-close look at one of the universe’s best examples of pareidolia: the Seagull Nebula, also known as the Parrot Nebula or Eagle Nebula, depending on your ornithological preference. Point is, this is one gargantuan bird.
Just like the Man in the Moon, the face on Mars, and, for some reason, the entire state of California, this collection of dust and gas just so happens, when viewed from Earth, to look like something familiar. In this case, I’d argue the bird’s head is more crucial to the illusion than its wings, which are honestly pretty faint and ghostly in this image. But that head, which just happens to have a black spot right where I think an eye should be, not to mention a gap right where a mouth could go? Throw in what looks like the outline of a rather sharp beak, and consider me convinced.
Remarkably, the image up top of the Seagull Nebula — or the Parrot Nebula, as my overactive imagination prefers to see it — isn’t even the most convincing image. For my money, I’d say that honor goes to the one down here on the left, which was taken in 2009 and also happens to include the tinier Duck Nebula down on the bottom right corner. Truly, the cosmos is for the birds. For yet another look at this particular cosmic illusion, you can also go here.
Moon Waves
In the rings on the left, the moon Daphnis (5 miles across) affects ring material as it orbits. The material on the inner edge of Daphnis orbits faster than the moon, and the material on the outer edge orbits more slowly, which causes the waves. On the right, Pan (17 miles across) also causes waves. Image taken June 3, 2010.
Image: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
