Into The Storm

'Enterprise' Nebulae Seen by Spitzer

NASA - Spitzer Space Telescope patch. Sept. 8, 2016

Image above: These nebulae seen by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, at left, may resemble two versions of the starship Enterprise from “Star Trek,” overlaid at right. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech. Just in time for the 50th anniversary of the TV series “Star Trek,” which first aired September 8th,1966, a new infrared image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope may remind fans of the historic show. Since ancient times, people have imagined familiar objects when gazing at the heavens. There are many examples of this phenomenon, known as pareidolia, including the constellations and the well-known nebulae named Ant, Stingray and Hourglass. On the right of the image, with a little scrutiny, you may see hints of the saucer and hull of the original USS Enterprise, captained by James T. Kirk, as if it were emerging from a dark nebula. To the left, its “Next Generation” successor, Jean-Luc Picard’s Enterprise-D, flies off in the opposite direction. Astronomically speaking, the region pictured in the image falls within the disk of our Milky Way galaxy and displays two regions of star formation hidden behind a haze of dust when viewed in visible light. Spitzer’s ability to peer deeper into dust clouds has revealed a myriad of stellar birthplaces like these, which are officially known only by their catalog numbers, IRAS 19340+2016 and IRAS19343+2026. Trekkies, however, may prefer using the more familiar designations NCC-1701 and NCC-1701-D. Fifty years after its inception, Star Trek still inspires fans and astronomers alike to boldly explore where no one has gone before.

Spitzer Space Telescope. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

This image was assembled using data from Spitzer’s biggest surveys of the Milky Way, called GLIMPSE and MIPSGAL. Light with a wavelength of 3.5 microns is shown in blue, 8.0 microns in green, and 24 microns in red. The green colors highlight organic molecules in the dust clouds, illuminated by starlight. Red colors are related to thermal radiation emitted from the very hottest areas of dust. JPL manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech in Pasadena, California. Spacecraft operations are based at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, Littleton, Colorado. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at Caltech. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. For more information about Spitzer, visit: http://spitzer.caltech.edu http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Tony Greicius/JPL/Elizabeth Landau/Written by Robert Hurt, NASA’s Spitzer Science Center. Greetings, Orbiter.ch Full article

 Solar filaments a.k.a. prominences – when observed at the solar limb (above), are long clouds of partially ionized plasma suspended above the Sun’s surface by strongly sheared magnetic structures, called filament channels, that can support the dense plasma against solar gravity. Filaments may form at various locations on the Sun, however, they are always found within preexisting filament channels above polarity inversion lines which separate areas of opposite magnetic polarity regions.

Credit: NASA/SDO/LMSAL

A shot of just a tiny bit of the Andromeda Galaxy, from the sharpest ever view taken by the Hubble Space Telescope

Full size image

Southern NGC7000

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VdB 141 Region Nebulosity by Jeffrey Weiss on Flickr.

Saturns north pole hexagon.

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Do telescopes actually take colorful photographs or are the pretty colorful photographs of galaxies that we know colored afterwards? If a human was floating through space, would space look colorful to them?

So some pictures are taken in different wavelengths to see different characteristics. (infrared wavelengths to see through thick gas and dust, xray wavelengths to see highly energized regions)

But, in the visible wavelengths you are seeing the colors. They’re just enhanced brighter than they might be.

For example, I took this picture of “the California Nebula” using a camera (Canon 60Da) attached to a telescope. This shows one exposure, and the background is red due to effects of the camera (which you subtract):

You take multiple exposures, combine them, subtract the background effects & adjust the color a little and get this…

Milky Way js

The violent past of our galaxy’s black hole could help us solve a cosmic mystery

The supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy is pretty quiet now, but new research suggests that 6 million years ago it was raging and gobbling up matter. Scientists think it could explain a mysterious disappearance.

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New view of the Pillars of Creation - infrared

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