Alitheastronomer - Science Rules

me: *thinks about space for 0.2 seconds*

me: *gets really motivated to do well and study hard in school so I can help explore it*

NGC 660, an example of the unusually shaped polar ring galaxies. These galaxies are likely to form their structures following violent interactions with other passing galaxies.

Constellations Vector Set Poster (it is only 12 dollars!)

I love how stars are billions of miles apart and we’re like “that’s a soup ladle”.

It's amazing how these galaxies, that are so unfathomably huge to us, are actually really fragile and delicate in the scheme of things

Top 10 Bizarre Galaxy Pairs From Hubble

“The Arp catalog illustrates galaxies in many different stages of a collision:

* prior to their first close pass, * in the collision process, * subsequent to an interaction but before merging, * and in the final merger stages.

Unlike ellipticals, spirals are easily disturbed, often becoming destroyed entirely by such an interaction.”

When you take a glimpse into the deep Universe, beyond the gas, dust, stars and planets of our own galaxy, you enter the realm of the galaxies. In general, they come in two types: the spirals, with neat, orderly arms, and the ellipticals, with a symmetric, bulging shape. But for everything that exists in the Universe a particular way in general, there are exceptions. In the 1960s, astronomer Halton Arp became fascinated with these exceptions, creating a catalog of 338 examples: the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies. We now know that most of these are galaxy pairs or triplets in the process of major mergers, displaying features such as tidal disruption, stellar bridges, starbursts and occasionally a rare, ring shape.

The Space Shuttle Columbia

Pause today to remember the Crew of STS-107, who all died on this day 13 years ago, February 1, 2003, when the Space Shuttle Columbia became unstable and disintegrated on re-entry over Texas.  The Crew:

The Flight Commander was Rick D. Husband, a U.S. Air Force colonel and mechanical engineer, who piloted a previous shuttle during the first docking with the International Space Station on STS-96.

The Pilot was William C. McCool, a 1983 graduate of the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland and U.S. Navy commander.

The Payload Commander was Michael P. Anderson, a U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel.  He was also a physicist and mission specialist who was in charge of the science mission.

The Payload Specialist Ilan Ramon was a colonel in the Israeli Air Force and the first Israeli astronaut.

The Mission Specialist was Kalpana Chawla, an Indian-born aerospace engineer who was on her second space mission.  She was the first Indian woman in space.

The Mission Specialist was David M. Brown, a U.S. Navy captain trained as an aviator and flight surgeon. 

The Mission Specialist was Laurel Blair Salton Clark, a U.S. Navy captain and flight surgeon. Clark worked on biological experiments.

The Space Shuttle Columbia was named after the poetic designation for the United States of America.  This poetic name (based on Christopher Columbus, thought then as the sole discoverer of America) was meant to be both inclusive and a little bit nostalgic, in the sense that America could be embodied in a name.  Clearly these seven astronauts and mission specialists embodied the best spirit of America, the inclusion of an Indian and Israeli the strongest symbol yet of what America can accomplish when unified to a common purpose. Special thought to William McCool, graduate of the USNA-I pass almost daily the ‘McCool Marker’, a memorial on the grounds of the USNA golf course to celebrate his achievements both as a Naval Aviator but also his accomplishments as a Midshipman, where he served as Captian of the Cross Country team his senior year.  The marker is placed on the cross country course 16 minutes from the finish line of his fastest run on the Navy course.

The stunning Sombrero galaxy (seriously, there should be a blog that’s just photos of the Sombrero galaxy)

The Gaussian Integral is a beautiful integral for which the area between the e^(-x^2) and the x-axis from negative infinity to positive infinity perfectly equals the square root of pi. Image sources: 1, 2.