Author Archives: Chompsky

Behold: the great tidal streams surrounding NGC 5907 – the Splinter or Knife Edge galaxy. But what manner of rogue-missile-trail-looking space nonsense is this? To wit:

The arcing structures form tenuous loops extending more than 150,000 light-years from the narrow, edge-on spiral […]. Recorded only in very deep exposures, the streams likely represent the ghostly trail of a dwarf galaxy – debris left along the orbit of a smaller satellite galaxy that was gradually torn apart and merged with NGC 5907 over four billion years ago. Ultimately this remarkable discovery image, from a small robotic observatory in New Mexico, supports the cosmological scenario in which large spiral galaxies, including our own Milky Way, were formed by the accretion of smaller ones. NGC 5907 lies about 40 million light-years distant in the northern constellation Draco.

apod

Behold: the Aspark Owl – a supercar whose four electric motors develop a massive 2,012bhp, accelerating the rigid carbon fibre monocoque to 100km/h in a  pants-jeopardising1.69 seconds and on to a life-flashing-before-your-eyes top speed of 402km/h.

At 1,900kg, the Owl is not light but at just 96.5cm high, it is somewhat track-hugging.

Only fifty will be made and yours will cost €2,890,000.

uncrate

Behold: stellar nippers in the Rho Ophiuchi Cloud, but not as you’d normally see them. To wit:

…astronomers created this tantalizing false-color composition of dust clouds and embedded newborn stars in infrared wavelengths with WISE, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. The cosmic canvas features one of the closest star forming regions, part of the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex some 400 light-years distant near the southern edge of the pronounceable constellation Ophiuchus. After forming along a large cloud of cold molecular hydrogen gas, young stars heat the surrounding dust to produce the infrared glow. Stars in the process of formation, called young stellar objects or YSOs, are embedded in the compact pinkish nebulae seen here, but are otherwise hidden from the prying eyes of optical telescopes. An exploration of the region in penetrating infrared light has detected emerging and newly formed stars whose average age is estimated to be a mere 300,000 years. That’s extremely young compared to the Sun’s age of 5 billion years. The prominent reddish nebula at the lower right surrounding the star Sigma Scorpii is a reflection nebula produced by dust scattering starlight. This view from WISE, released in 2012, spans almost 2 degrees and covers about 14 light-years at the estimated distance of the Rho Ophiuchi cloud.

(Image: NASA, JPL-Caltech, WISE)

apod