Dusk in Dublin, last evening.
Colum Cronin tweets:
Dusk in Dublin. Alongside the array of colours I particularly like the silhouettes of the statues on St. Paul’s church on the right side.
Author Archives: Chompsky
Behold: the warped magnetic fields of Centaurus A – not one galaxy, but two. To wit:
When galaxies collide — what happens to their magnetic fields? To help find out, NASA pointed SOFIA, its flying 747, at galactic neighbour Centaurus A to observe the emission of polarized dust — which traces magnetic fields. Cen A’s unusual shape results from the clash of two galaxies with jets powered by gas accreting onto a central supermassive black hole. In the resulting featured image, SOFIA-derived magnetic streamlines are superposed on ESO (visible: white), APEX (submillimeter: orange), Chandra (X-rays: blue), and Spitzer (infrared: red) images. The magnetic fields were found to be parallel to the dust lanes on the outskirts of the galaxy but distorted near the centre. Gravitational forces near the black hole accelerate ions and enhance the magnetic field. In sum, the collision not only combined the galaxies’ masses — but amplified their magnetic fields. These results provide new insights into how magnetic fields evolved in the early universe when mergers were more common.
(Image: Optical: European Southern Observatory (ESO) Wide Field Imager; Submillimeter: Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy/ESO/Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX)/A.Weiss et al; X-ray and Infrared: NASA/Chandra/R. Kraft; JPL-Caltech/J. Keene; Text: Joan Schmelz (USRA))
Sea You
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Hot Keels
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Behold: Captn Vaiaro – a conceptual electric ferry for Kiel Fjord in the southern Baltic sea designed by partners from Kiel University and the University of Applied Sciences.
The name stands for Clean Autonomous Public Transport Network and the project envisions silent, zero emission journeys between the east and west of the Fjord (in Schleswig-Holstein, northern Germany) on board one of two prototype designs — a glazed floating platform and a rectangular ferry with a lattice-style covering.
Something you don’t normally see. To wit:
In visible light, the Milky Way’s centre is hidden by clouds of obscuring dust and gas. But in this stunning vista, the Spitzer Space Telescope‘s infrared cameras, penetrate much of the dust revealing the stars of the crowded galactic centre region. A mosaic of many smaller snapshots, the detailed, false-colour image shows older, cool stars in bluish hues. Red and brown glowing dust clouds are associated with young, hot stars in stellar nurseries. The very centre of the Milky Way has recently been found capable of forming newborn stars. The galactic centre lies some 26,700 light-years away, toward the constellation Sagittarius. At that distance, this picture spans about 900 light-years.
(Image: NASA, JPL-Caltech, Spitzer Space Telescope, Susan Stolovy (SSC/Caltech) et al.; Reprocessing: Judy Schmidt)
A Whim Away
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Hot Wheels
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Behold: the 2022 Maxlider Brothers Ford Bronco 6×6.
Maxliders Brothers custom house (an officially licensed Ford partner) has been tweaking Ford’s iconic SUV since 2013. This variant features a 460bhp Coyote crate engine (upgradable to bespoke-tuned turbo and supercharged performance) powering all six wheels.
Currently accepting orders for delivery early next year with the entry level model priced at $399,000 in the US.