The Milky Way over Hawaii

The White Mountain from charles on Vimeo.

Lucy Answers An Age-Old Question About The Difference Between Astrology And Astronomy

Mr. Deity and the Really Unique Gift

Perhaps the promise of space booze will get Congress to make space exploration a priority....

From the Guardian.co.uk
Galaxy's centre tastes of raspberries and smells of rum, say astronomers

Finding amino acids in interstellar space is a Holy Grail for astrobiologists, as this would raise the possibility of life emerging on other planets after being seeded with the molecules.

In the latest survey, astronomers sifted through thousands of signals from Sagittarius B2, a vast dust cloud at the centre of our galaxy. While they failed to find evidence for amino acids, they did find a substance called ethyl formate, the chemical responsible for the flavour of raspberries.

"It does happen to give raspberries their flavour, but there are many other molecules that are needed to make space raspberries," Arnaud Belloche, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, told the Guardian.

Curiously, ethyl formate has another distinguishing characteristic: it also smells of rum.

"You gotta keep 'em separated...."

Milky Way — the galaxy — not snack-sized anymore

WASHINGTON – Take that, Andromeda! For decades, astronomers thought when it came to the major galaxies in Earth's cosmic neighborhood, our Milky Way was a weak sister to the larger Andromeda. Not anymore.

The Milky Way is considerably larger, bulkier and spinning faster than astronomers once thought, Andromeda's equal.

A fitting advent calendar for the Winter Solstice

Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar 2008

5 This image, taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), represents a small section of a larger mosaic - the sharpest view ever taken of the Orion Nebula - a picture book of star formation with massive young stars that are shaping the nebula and pillars of dense gas that may be the homes of budding stars. The bright glow at left is from M43, a small region being shaped by ultraviolet light from a massive young star. Astronomers call the region a miniature Orion Nebula because only one star is sculpting the landscape. The Orion Nebula has four such stars. The Orion Nebula is 1,500 light-years away, the nearest star-forming region to Earth. (NASA, ESA, M. Robberto - STScI) More (see this on Google Sky) #

Your Gods Seem So Small...

Hubble got a picture of an extra-Solar planet. An alleged Jewish messiah's walking on water, a mythical dictating fiery shrubbery, and ambiguous prophesied horrors are comparatively unimpressive.

Seeing is not believing.

I [Heart] Neil deGrasse Tyson

While I may disagree with him about some aspects of atheism/science and how to promote both, Neil deGrasse Tyson is simply the greatest spokesperson for space science and our greatest NASA advocate. This podcast is touching, cogent, controversial, and inspiring. Hear it out.

He is often compared to the late Carl Sagan, his mentor. He should be.

I [Heart] Hubble

From Bad Astronomy, before and after the Hubble telescope's fixes. What will we do when it's gone?

Total Lunar Eclipse Tuesday morning

NASA's Lunar Eclipse Page

Shadow & Substance Home Page

MrEclipse.com

Wow. Just... Wow.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/K. Rines (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA)

NASA's Spitzer Spies Monster Galaxy Pileup

"Four galaxies are slamming into each other and kicking up billions of stars in one of the largest cosmic smash-ups ever observed.

The clashing galaxies, spotted by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, will eventually merge into a single, behemoth galaxy up to 10 times as massive as our own Milky Way. This rare sighting provides an unprecedented look at how the most massive galaxies in the universe form.

'Most of the galaxy mergers we already knew about are like compact cars crashing together,' said Kenneth Rines of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass. 'What we have here is like four sand trucks smashing together, flinging sand everywhere.' Rines is lead author of a new paper accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal Letters."

Read it all.

'Fantastic Four' Galaxies

"This artist's concept shows what the night sky might look like from a hypothetical planet around a star tossed out of an ongoing four-way collision between big galaxies (yellow blobs). NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope spotted this 'quadruple merger' of galaxies within a larger cluster of galaxies located nearly 5 billion light-years away.

Though the galaxies appear intact, gravitational disturbances have caused them to stretch and twist, flinging billions of stars into space -- nearly three times as many stars as are in our Milky Way galaxy. The tossed stars are visible in the large plume emanating from the central, largest galaxy. If any of these stars have planets, their night skies would be filled with the monstrous merger, along with other galaxies in the cluster (smaller, bluish blobs)."

Read it all.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle (SSC)