Check Out This Tripping New Look for the Milky Way

Check out how cosmic dust creates a fiery lion-like mane for the Milky Way!/Image: ESA and the HFI Consortium, IRAS

From Denny: The Milky Way is finally getting its "propers." This Planck telescope captured this showy fiery mane by surveying the sky in four massive sweeps. In the video clip you can see how the telescope is scanning the entire sky while in orbit.





So, what are you looking at here?

These diva style dust clouds are within about 500 lights years of the sun. The horizontal white stripe in this far-infrared photo is the Milky Way's spiral disk. What's odd in this photo is that the white stripe is warmer and all the reddish tones are actually colder.

It was the European Space Agency that put the Planck telescope into orbit back in May 2009. To date, this telescope is creating the best ever of the cosmic radiation background that is left over from the original Big Bang scientists think happened 13.7 billion years ago.


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Check Out Cosmic Generator Producing Energy at Rate of 100K Suns

Photo from NASA

From Denny: We all remember that exploding supernova we saw on Earth a while ago and it sure was spectacular. Well, OK, maybe you and I - and about a million other ancestors - were not there to witness it in person.

When something dies in the universe it usually has a spectacular Hollywood styled funeral show production. There was such a showy production in the constellation Taurus back in 1054 A.D. of a supernova.

Why is this almost thousand year old cosmic funeral show so important today? Turns out an actor left behind from the showy production is speaking up and yelling into the universe. Its a super dense object otherwise known as a neutron star.

This neutron star is quite the chip off the old block and is a real show-off. To get our attention this star is spewing out a magnificent blizzard of high energy particles and expanding the debris field. Since Earthlings just have to name everything - a family tradition handed down from our ancient ancestor Adam of the duo commonly known as "Adam and Eve" - we settled on the name of the Crab Nebula.

This honking huge Crab Nebula ranks as a cosmic icon because it is one of the most studied objects in our sky. The above photo is really a composite of X-ray, optical and infrared images from three of NASA's Great Observatories.

Why is the Chandra X-ray image in blue so small? Mainly because the little gremlins, AKA energizer bunny electrons, that send out the X-rays also are the track stars of the energy kingdom. They move far faster than their slower electron cousins sending out optical and infrared light and so the energy dissipates quicker.

The other colors in the photo are from the Hubble Space Telescope whose optical images are shown in yellow and red. The Spitzer Space Telescope infrared image is depicted in purple.

This showy Crab Nebula is pumping out the energy of 100,000 suns, so colossal that it boggles the mind. What we all could do with that energy here on Earth if we could figure out a way to tap into this powerful cosmic generator. Any ideas?

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Astronomy: Meteorite Grains Divulge Earth's Cosmic Roots

From Denny: A short article from the folks over at Science Daily. It seems like every few years there comes along a group of scientists telling us the Universe is either older or younger than previously thought. Who said Nature's laws are written in stone? Our maybe it's just our understanding is in a fluid state...

Pair of the grains Image via Wikipedia

Here's an excerpt:

"The interstellar stuff that became incorporated into the planets and life on Earth has younger cosmic roots than theories predict..."

"Heck and his colleagues examined 22 interstellar grains from the Murchison meteorite for their analysis. Dying sun-like stars flung the Murchison grains into space more than 4.5 billion years ago, before the birth of the solar system. Scientists know the grains formed outside the solar system because of their exotic composition."

For the rest of the article just click on the title link.