Saturday, April 24, 2010

Hubble's 20th anniversary

This was up on google today.
Its a link to Google Earth, and shows their top 20 favorite images taken by the Hubble Telescope. Some of these images were shown in class.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Why I don't like the theory that if you travel through a black hole you'll reach another place...

This is an image from the movie star trek, where the space ship travels through a black hole into a parallel universe. While this would be really cool if that were true, this particular theory makes me rather skeptical.
If you were to go anywhere near a black hole, the gravity would pull you in to such a dense amount of space, there'd be no way to not be crushed under all that pressure....
even light can't survive it. How would a ship? Even one as big as this one!

Droid Commercial Reminds me of Black Hole!




This video reminds me of the image of the black hole starting at :23.

Maybe my favorite picture ever.

Age of the Milky Way


This model shows what we think the Milky Way Galaxy looks like.
As shown in the model, the middle of the galaxy has the oldest stars (M stars),
the outer galaxy has the youngest stars (O stars).

Globular clusters are red. Space dust makes up the heavier elements.

Space Time Continuum

So at first I couldn't wrap my mind around this.
Okay so i still can't really wrap my mind around it. But its some better than before.
i was looking at this model of space time with a large mass object. In my head I kept trying to make time literally move faster or whatever.
But I realized that it just takes less time to cover the same amount of space because the pull of gravity is stronger. How did Einstein figure this out!?!?

Actually...i'm not sure i really want to know the answer to that one...

How Stars Are Born *(Review for Me)

If a clump of interstellar matter is cold and dense enough, it will begin to collapse due to gravitational attraction.
If the clump is massive enough, it will evolve into a main sequence star.

1.In a cold, dark nebula, gas atoms and dust particles move so slowly that gravity can pull them together.

2. Gas and dust begin to condense into clumps, forming the cores of protostars.

3. As the cores condense, their density and temperature increase.

4. Protostars continue to heat up and accrete matter from nebula. They begin to glow to their increasing temperature.

5. Temperature at the center of a protostar becomes sufficiently high. Thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium begins. The star is officially in the main sequence at this point. The mass that is continuing to fall on to the star forms an accretion disk.

6. In the T Tauri stage, the young star ejects mass into space in a bipolar outflow. A stellar wind blows away the remaining parts of the nebula that surround the star, exposing the star to space.

7. The ejected mass can induce a shockwave in the surrounding interstellar material, triggering formation of other stars.
Processes that cause the star to lose or gain mass come to an end, and the star stabilizes as a main sequence star in hydrostatic equilibrium. The remnants of the accretion disk may remain as proto-planetary disk, from which a system of planets may form around the star. (But i thought all the stuff just got blown away by the stellar wind?!)
Red Stars are relatively cold, with low surface temperatures;
Blue stars are relatively hot, with high surface temperatures.

O stars are the hottest. M stars are the coolest.
But O stars are also the biggest stars with shorter lives. So would they still be blue? I'm so confused with this whole color thing!

What Bothers Me About Spectral Lines

this kind of bothers me. We can tell all of these things about a star by looking at spectral lines. But this can be effected by the dopplar shift. So you have to fix that. And the according to the Zeeman Effect, the presence of a magnetic field affects the spectra also. Its just kind of annoying. We have ways of finding out things, but all this other stuff keeps getting in the way!!!!

25 Majestic Photos From Outer Space

So I'm going to talk about each of these pictures

1. Crab Nebula - This is my favorite nebula that we've looked at so far. It is SO beautiful!!! I could just stare at it ALL day long. I can't even take it all in its so big and so much!


2. Interacting Spiral Galaxies NGC 2207 and IC 2163
I believe this is the picture in the observatory of one galaxy eating another. The title of it, however, is a lot more peaceful by saying the two galaxies are simply "Interacting" .... haha


3.Star-Birth Clouds in M16: Stellar Eggs Emerge from Molecular Cloud

I believe this picture is also in the observatory.
I used to see this picture a lot when I was growing up for some reason. Dr. DuPree explained to the GEMS students over the summer about the vast size of this thing. And it blew my mind.


4.Dust Band Around the Nucleus of Black Eye Galaxy M64
I don't remember ever seeing this image before. But its SO beautiful. It kind of reminds me of a cyclone, where all of the stuff is spiraling in towards the center.

5.Hubble Snaps a Splendid Planetary Nebula
Okay. I LOVE PLANETARY NEBULA.
They are just about the most beautiful things I've ever seen!
This photo reminds me of a watercolor painting. The ejected material looks pretty solid and even. I wonder if this is a false color image.


6. The Helix Nebula: a Gaseous Envelope Expelled By a Dying Star
I've also seen this one. Its beautiful how so much of a star can just explode into something this beautiful.

7. Spiral Galaxy NGC 3370, Home to Supernova Seen in 1994
This spiral galaxy is mainly blue, so it must be filled with newer stars!!!
I love how you can see all of the other galaxies floating around in the background.

8. Light Echoes From Red Supergiant Star V838 Monocerotis - December 2002
I wonder what this is... it looks like a planetary nebula. The title says Red Supergiant Star so it would make sense that it would be a planetary nebula but it doesn't really look like the other ones we saw...


9. HST/WFPC2 Image of Jupiter and Ganymede Taken April 9, 2007
I love Jupiter. This is more last semester's stuff.


10. Abstract Art Found in the Orion Nebula
All i can say is....WOW. I also wonder if this is a false-color image....I hope not, its so beautiful!

11. NGC 6302
This looks like a butterfly. Its so gorgeous. All of these things are so vast and enormous. What it reminds me of is when you take food dye and drop it in a glass of water. The edges remind me of this type of spreading.

12. Scattered Light from the Boomerang Nebula
This reminds me of the background on Macs. Its really pretty. I wonder what this is. It seems to be emanating from a very small thing from the center.


13. Carina Nebula Details: The Caterpillar
So I assume that the images in this one are different gasses of different consistensies so that they look like clumps in the middle of the clouds.


14. M101 Composite Image: Hubble Data (Green Component)
Cool. So since this is a green component image, would that mean that the stars that clearly show up in green would be like our sun, which is also more of a green?

15. The Dusty Galaxy NGC 1316
I love how the dust can show up like this. It looks kind of red.

16. The Majestic Sombrero Galaxy (M104)
This spiral galaxy is so perfectly flat, its amazing. I wonder what factors make this perfect flat galaxy.

17. Star-Forming Region LH 95 in the Large Magellanic Cloud
This is so beautiful. One day I'd like to go to the southern hemisphere and see the large magellanic clouds that you mentions in class some time.

18. Globular Star Cluster M80
This is so symmetrical its beautiful. this globular star cluster has red stars.

19. Hubble Interacting Galaxy NGC 7674
Here's another example of "interacting" galaxies. aka a giant galaxy eating another one.

20. The Colorful Demise of a Sun-like Star
I wonder how they know that this supernova was from a sun-like star....

21. Cassiopeia A: Colorful, Shredded Remains of Old Supernova
I love this image. Its so colorful and reminds me of MarioKart for some reason....no idea why. Anyway, the material looks like its sort of clumping together/accreting. Maybe they're about to form new stars?

21.Supernova Bonanza in Nearby Galaxy NGC 1569
This looks like algae in the middle of a galaxy full of stars.

22. Hubble Observes the Large Magellanic Cloud's Star-Forming Region, 30 Doradus
This doesn't even look real! The stars are so beautiful! it looks like there are stars forming inside of the Magellanic Cloud and that there are clusters of stars behind the cloud as well.

23. Hubble Interacting Galaxy NGC 3256
This reminds me of the picture of galaxies being pulled at by another galaxy (perhaps one that you can't see in this image?) Or maybe they are intertwined in the middle of eachother!

24. Orion Nebula ( NGC 1976, M42)
I'm not really sure what to say about this one, its just beautiful.

25.This website lied. There are in fact only 24 images.

A Brain Cell is the Same as the Universe

This was really cool :
This confused me.
Because it looks like a dark nebula.
But this article is acting like its a giant void in space??

Maybe its inaccurate

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/7WAm5Y/www.wtnrradio.com/news/story.php%253Fstory%253D254

Very Funny!

Sam the Photon

We were talking about this today in class sort of :)
Cosmic Head Massage

how strange.....?
This is my Astronomy Blog.
I started it kind of late.
But I have been writing journal entries on paper :)