Category Archives: Science

Star formation is a colourful business – as evidenced by this chromatic cosmic portrait of glowing gas and dark dust near some recently formed stars of NGC 3572 – a cluster near the Carina Nebula. To wit:

Stars from NGC 3572 are visible near the bottom of the image, while the expansive gas cloud above is likely what remains of their formation nebula. The image‘s striking hues were created by featuring specific colors emitted by hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur, and blending themwith images recorded through broadband filters in red, green, and blue. This nebula near NGC 3572 spans about 100 light years and lies about 9,000 light years away toward the southern constellation of the Ship’s Keel (Carina). Within a few million years the pictured gas will likely disperse, while gravitational encounters will likely disperse the cluster stars over about a billion years.

(Image: Andrew Campbell)

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A colourful composite of three bright nebulae in the constellation of Sagittarius –  recorded last last year from Teide National Park in Tenerife. To wit:

18th century cosmic tourist Charles Messier cataloged two of them; M8, the large nebula just left of centre, and colourful M20 on the top left. The third emission region includes NGC 6559 and can be found to the right of M8. All three are stellar nurseries about five thousand light-years or so distant. Over a hundred light-years across, the expansive M8 is also known as the Lagoon Nebula. M20’s popular moniker is the Trifid. Glowing hydrogen gas creates the dominant red colour of the emission nebulae. In striking contrast, blue hues in the Trifid are due to dust reflected starlight. Recently formed bright blue stars are visible nearby. 

(Image: Emilio Rivero Padilla)

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Of course astronauts landed on the moon, silly, but that’s not to say there’s no fun to be had imagining the whole thing was faked on a sound stage by Stanley Kubrick back in 1969.

Which is what French director Fabrice Mathieu does here with an elegant mashup of Apollo 11 prelaunch footage, Kubrick interviews and film clips.

Seriously though…

Belief in Moon Landing Hoax Conspiracy Could Spread as Memory of Apollo Recedes (Space.com)

awesomer

(…all the way)

Not quite.

Actually, an ice halo photographed over Dublin, Ohio, in 2009. To wit:

The reason here is that ice crystals in distant cirrus clouds are acting like little floating prisms. Sometimes known as a fire rainbow for its flame-like appearance, a circumhorizon arc lies parallel to the horizon. For a circumhorizontal arc to be visible, the Sun must be at least 58 degrees high in a sky where cirrus clouds are present. Furthermore, the numerous, flat, hexagonal ice-crystals that compose the cirrus cloud must be aligned horizontally to properly refract sunlight in a collectively similar manner. Therefore, circumhorizontal arcs are quite unusual to see.

(Image:Todd Sladoje)

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Behold: RS Puppis (or RS Pup) a Cepheid variable star ten times the size and 15,000 times the brightness of our old Sol. It’s around 6500 light years away, and the brightness of RS Pup is one of the reasons we know that. To wit:

As RS Pup pulsates over a period of about 40 days, its regular changes in brightness are also seen along its surrounding nebula delayed in time, effectively a light echo. Using measurements of the time delay and angular size of the nebula, the known speed of light allows astronomers to geometrically determine the distance to RS Pup to be 6,500 light-years, with a remarkably small error of plus or minus 90 light-years. An impressive achievement for stellar astronomy, the echo-measured distance also more accurately establishes the true brightness of RS Pup, and by extension other Cepheid stars, improving the knowledge of distances to galaxies beyond the Milky Way.

(Image: NASA, ESA, Hubble Legacy Archive;  Processing & Copyright: Rogelio Bernal Andreo (DeepSkyColors.com))

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Behold: spiral galaxy NGC 4921 in the constellation Coma Berenices – estimated to be about 320 million light years away from us. Pale and interesting 320 million years ago, probably much the same today. To wit:

The magnificent spiral NGC 4921 has been informally dubbed anaemic because of its low rate of star formation and low surface brightness. Visible in the featured image are, from the center, a bright nucleus, a bright central bar, a prominent ring of dark dust, blue clusters of recently formed stars, several smaller companion galaxies, unrelated galaxies in the far distant universe, and unrelated stars in our Milky Way Galaxy.

(Image: NASA, ESA, Hubble; Processing & Copyright: Kem Cook (LLNL) & Leo Shatz)

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Behold: the bright young stars of the Trumpler 14 cluster – some as young as a mere 5 million years and still so hot, they emit detectable x-rays. Listen up, grandad:

In older star clusters, most stars this young have already died — typically exploding in a supernova — leaving behind stars that are fainter and redder. Trumpler 14 spans about 40 light years and lies about 9,000 light years away on the edge of the famous Carina Nebula. A discerning eye can spot two unusual objects in this detailed 2006 image of Trumpler 14 by the Hubble Space Telescope. First, a dark cloud just left of center may be a planetary system trying to form before being destroyed by the energetic winds ofTrumpler 14‘s massive stars. Second is the arc at the bottom left, which one hypothesis holds is the supersonic shock wave of a fast star ejected 100,000 years ago from a completely different star cluster.

(Image: NASA, ESA, and J. Maíz Apellániz (IoAoA Spain); N. Smith (U. Arizona)

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German educational design channel Kurzgesagt applies infuriatingly balanced and logical reasoning to the conspiracy-theory-roach-motel that is vaccination. To wit:

Vaccines are one of our best tools to prevent dangerous diseases, but they come with side effects. So would it be safer not to vaccinate?

Previously: Strange Matter

Earlier: Clare Daly: Nuance And Adverse Effects