Posts Tagged milky way
More Space Tees
Posted by Danielle in Fashion & Accessories on February 23, 2010
“I Only Surf on Comets” by Peter Kramar
Posting two cool tees I saw recently on Threadless (via @moonrangerlaura.)
“The Milky Way” by Budi Satria Kwan
Milky Way Transit Authority
Posted by Danielle in Maps & Cartography on January 18, 2010
Map created by Samuel Arbesman
I have to say, I am just in AWE of this terrific concept by Samuel Arbesman. Not only does it ingeniously illustrate the relative positions of things in our galaxy, it mimics possibly my favorite map in the process (does one have such a thing as a favorite map? I hadn’t considered it until now, but yes, my statement is accurate: the Tube map is definitely my favorite map.)
This map is an attempt to approach our galaxy with a bit more familiarity than usual and get people thinking about long-term possibilities in outer space. Hopefully it can provide as a useful shorthand for our place in the Milky Way, the ‘important’ sights, and make inconceivable distances a bit less daunting. And while convenient interstellar travel is nothing more than a murky dream, and might always be that way, there is power in creating tools for beginning to wrap our minds around the interconnections of our galactic neighborhood.
Read the whole thing, it’s worthwhile.
Happy 2010!
Sky photo credit & copyright: Tony Hallas, astrophoto.com
Tony Hallas doesn’t know how his photo above thrilled me to bits on Christmas Day — I never dreamed I’d see my home-mountain — is that a term? I live at the foot of it — on APOD! I live near Mount Shasta, California, which is on the right side of his photo; I’ve cropped it above to show just Mt. Shasta, because it’s clearly better than Mt. Lassen and YES I AM EXTREMELY BIASED, I DON’T CARE! (If you don’t believe me, see for yourself. And if you like those sites, click here, eheh. Thank you.)
Anyway, all mountain-bias aside, I’d like to wish all my visitors and regular readers a very happy 2010 — may yours be especially awesome! Thanks for your (site) patronage!!
Milky Way Waterfall
Milky Way Waterfall © Masahiro Miyasaka, taken at Zengoroodaki Waterfall, Norikura, Nagano, Japan
This is the overall winner of the Galilean Nights Astrophotography competition (part of the International Year of Astronomy), taken at a beautiful waterfall in Nagano Prefecture, Japan. This photo won the Earth and Sky division, as well as the overall competition; oddly enough, second runner-up in Earth and Sky was also shot in Nagano Prefecture. Although I’m surprised to see that a third of the winning photos (2/6) come from Nagano, I really shouldn’t be — it is an exceedingly beautiful place.
Milky Way Central
A colorful examination of the center of our Milky Way galaxy:
In celebration of the International Year of Astronomy 2009, NASA’s Great Observatories — the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory — have collaborated to produce an unprecedented image of the central region of our Milky Way galaxy.
In this spectacular image, observations using infrared light and X-ray light see through the obscuring dust and reveal the intense activity near the galactic core. Note that the center of the galaxy is located within the bright white region to the right of and just below the middle of the image. The entire image width covers about one-half a degree, about the same angular width as the full moon.
Each telescope’s contribution is presented in a different color:
- Yellow represents the near-infrared observations of Hubble. These observations outline the energetic regions where stars are being born as well as reveal hundreds of thousands of stars.
- Red represents the infrared observations of Spitzer. The radiation and winds from stars create glowing dust clouds that exhibit complex structures from compact, spherical globules to long, stringy filaments.
- Blue and violet represent the X-ray observations of Chandra. X-rays are emitted by gas heated to millions of degrees by stellar explosions and by outflows from the supermassive black hole in the galaxy’s center. The bright blue blob on the left side is emission from a double star system containing either a neutron star or a black hole.
When these views are brought together, this composite image provides one of the most detailed views ever of our galaxy’s mysterious core.
Diamond Milky Way
Posted by Danielle in Fashion & Accessories, Museums & Exhibits on October 27, 2009
Photo © C. Philip Hersey Photographer, Ltd
I spotted this necklace in a small mention of a new exhibit at The Field Museum in Chicago, The Nature of Diamonds. “Milky Way” and “necklace” were all I needed to read before I scurried off to the Vast and Wonderous Intarwebs to find a larger picture, and luckily, a description!
“Milky Way” Necklace: This voluminous necklace, designed by Dieter Huebner, sponsored by Brinkhaus Jewelers, is adorned with 2,000 luminous diamonds.
The “Milky Way” necklace was designed in 2000 as a celebration and ode to the millennium.
Judging from the descriptive term “voluminous”, and taking into account the 2,000 diamonds, I can safely say this bauble is out of the realm of possible purchases, for, well, ANYBODY. All the same, I’d love to see it around a neck, for scale if nothing else.
Galactic Center
Posted by Danielle in News & Happenings, Picspam on September 25, 2009
Released on Monday: the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, as you’ve never seen it before (via NASA.) At bottom is a crop I made, showing more detail. This image release is part of Chandra’s 10th anniversary celebration.
A dramatic new vista of the center of the Milky Way galaxy from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory exposes new levels of the complexity and intrigue in the Galactic center. The mosaic of 88 Chandra pointings represents a freeze-frame of the spectacle of stellar evolution, from bright young stars to black holes, in a crowded, hostile environment dominated by a central, supermassive black hole.
Permeating the region is a diffuse haze of X-ray light from gas that has been heated to millions of degrees by winds from massive young stars — which appear to form more frequently here than elsewhere in the Galaxy — explosions of dying stars, and outflows powered by the supermassive black hole — known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). Data from Chandra and other X-ray telescopes suggest that giant X-ray flares from this black hole occurred about 50 and about 300 years earlier.
Streaming Dark Nebulas
A dramatic APOD from Monday, this amazing image is full of dust and dark streaks between points of light….
Explanation: Dark dust lit by the bright yellow star Antares highlight this photogenic starscape of the southern sky. A wider angle image shows the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy connected to Antares by streams of dust knows as the Dark River. At the head of the Dark River the dust appears in dense knots. One of the densest knots is B44, pictured near the bottom of the above image. Off to the left of the above image lies Antares, a star so bright that the pictured dust reflects its light, giving it a distinct yellow hue. Light from the blue star on the image left creates a surrounding blue reflection nebula named IC 4605. B44 and IC 4605 lies about 500 light years distant toward the constellation of the Scorpion.
Central Milky Way
I usually avoid reposting APOD pictures on the day they appear, but today’s image by Robert Gendler is just too pretty not to repost.
Explanation: What does the center of our Milky Way Galaxy look like? In visible light, no one knows! It is not possible to see the Galactic center in light our eyes are sensitive to because the thick dust in the plane of our Galaxy obscures it. If one looks in the direction of our Galaxy’s center – which is toward the constellation of Sagittarius – many beautiful wonders become apparent, though. Large dust lanes and star clouds dominate the picture. As many as 30 Messier Objects are visible in the above spectacular image mosaic, including all types of nebulas and star clusters. Two notable nebula include the Lagoon Nebula (M8), a red patch just above and to the right of center, and slightly to its right is the red and blue Trifid Nebula (M20).
Stargazing spot
Yesterday’s APOD showed a lovely view of the stars from a lake in Turkey.
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