the calcium bomb
apariencias
mar,12,2004
Here's a close up of one of the holes found on mars
you can actually see some of the side of the hole
nearly straight down! How cool.
AMAZING!
Very young galaxies, called building block galaxies,
from the very early universe. Some may be only
a million years old.
Rainbows over Norway.
M65. A beautiful nearly undisturbed spiral galaxy.
35 million light years away
This hole pictured is one of several that have been
found on Mars. This photo was taken a few weeks ago.
The hole pictured is about the size of a football field, and
is so deep that the sun doesn't illuminate the bottom at all.
These holes could connect to subsurface cave systems where
life could be protected, were there any there. They could also be used for
future space travellers.
Mars' surface.
A cool looking ring galaxy about 300 million light years away.
A galaxy cluster from when the universe was less than 5 billion
years old. Seen in optical an near infrared are individual galaxy
clusters, pictured in red, yellow, and green. The purple aura
is ultraviolet data.
Cassini took this picture. Saturn's north pole atmosphere
is yeilding a strange hexogonal cloud formation that has been
stable for 20+ years as we've seen it.
Movie of Jupiter and three of its satellites. The largest
is Ganymede, the largest satellite in the solar system. Also
immediately visible is Europa, probably the most interesting
moon with the real possibility of liquid water and life. Lastly,
Io comes into frame; it is the most volcanically active moon
in the solar system. With Jupiter you get the most bang for
your buck as far as awesome satellites go.
Alpha Centauri Star System. It is our closest intragalactic
(interstellar) neighbor at 4.6 light years away. CLOSE! It is,
interestingly, a trinary star system composed of Proxima Centauri:
the smallest and closest of the three which is also a red dwarf;
and Alpha Centauri A and B. They form a binary pair. A is similar in
size and luminosity to our Sun, B is smaller and cooler and orange.
A and B pass the tests as candidates for stars with planets that
could harbour life. They are stable enough, warm enough, and
old enough to have had life evolve. They are actually older
than our Sun (4.6 billion years vs. 6 billion years). It is nice
that a candidate for life is so nearby as most of the stars in our
galaxy do not pass the tests that would indicate a possibility
of otherworldly life.
Truly amazing. Here is a true Galaxy-Field! This image was taken
pointed towards the south pole of our Galaxy, The Milky Way. It covers
a space of about 100 degrees in our sky. Pictured here are more than
2 million galaxies.
Closest picture of Mars surface yet! The entire square covers about
1.5 cm of ground with features visible as small as 1/10 of a milimeter.
The Perseus Cluster of Galaxies. Thousands of Galaxies make up this cluster.
A view of Mars from our Moon.
The Andromeda Deep Field. An exposure of three days was used to
get better age measurements of stars in Andromeda's disc. Her stars are the
bright spikey guys. The rest of what is seen are literally thousands of distant
galaxies in our universe. It looks like a regular starfield
but is, in fact, a Galaxy-Field!
SWEET! Light echos from the initial flash of the star
in the dust that surrounds the star.
A ring galaxy. Their genesis is still not well understood.
Coincidentally, visible in the dark ring in the distance is yet another ring galaxy.
Here's a Polar Ring Galaxy. It is a rare type of galaxy that has a
ring of dust and stars that orbits perpendicular to the main plane.
A layer of trapped smog over New York. We suck, what more
can I say?
The tail of this galaxy was formed when a denser intruder galaxy
floated close by the Tadpole Galaxy. The tail was drawn out by extreme tidal
forces. In time the galaxy will lose its tail, and the stars in
the tail will form clusters that orbit their parent galaxy.
The Eskimo Nebula. A planetary Nebula 5000 light years distant, found
in the constellation Gemini.
The Antennae Galaxies. These guys collided a while ago and this is the aftermath.
In the top image, the bright blue areas are newly formed star forming
areas that were triggered by the collison. In the lower image are the
galaxies in infrared, which has revealed giant newly formed star clusters.
While this picture may not be super interesting to look at, the ideas that
it implies are extremely fascinating. The star circled was previously
thought to be a neutron star, but further observations have shown that it is
far too small, dense, and cold to be a neutron star. This has led to
the suggestion that it may be a Quark Star, also known as a Strange Star.
This type of theoretical star and matter-form is thought to be an intermediate state
between nuetron stars and black holes. Instead of the star being composed of neutrons,
it would be made of up and down quarks. These stars would be so dense
that it would be possible for light itself to orbit them.
HOLY SHIT! Here's a cloud formation in the shape of a sonic boom cone!
When an object breaks the sound barrier, a condensation formation like
this may occur. It is still not completely understood. But its unarguably
cool-as-shit!
The caldera Tupon Patera is an active volcano on the surface of Io, a moon
of Jupiter. The black stuff is hot lava, red stuff is warm sulfer depoists, and
yellow is the rich in sulfur surface.
A bunch of galaxies viewed EDGE ON!
Edge on view of a WARPED spiral galaxy!
These galaxies are interacting in a very interesting manner: they have
collided in the past, were flung through each other, and are bouncing
back again! They will continue to do so for billions of years before
finally merging into one. Their previous collision has created
the dark band of matter that runs from the blue spiral wrapping around
the yellow galaxy. The band was pulled out by gravitational forces.
The collision also triggered star formation in blue areas of the
spiral galaxy to the left.
Looking closely at the shadow cast by this tree will reveal
hundreds of images of a partially eclipsed sun. During a partial solar
eclipse in 1994 at Northwestern University, the spaces between the
leaves of this tree acted as pinhole lenses, casting the images of the elcipse
onto the ground.
The three galaxies fully visable in this image are bound for a
collision relatively soon. They are part of a quintet, with the fifth off the image.
the bluish one in the left lower corner is much closer to us and not involved in
the gravitational battle. These three galaxies are currently tearing each
apart due to huge gravitational forces. They will distort each other greatly
before finally ending in a relatively uneventful crash.
The bottom is a close up of an area of the top, which is gas from a supernova
in the Cygnus Loop. It is effectivly a shock wave that is moving toward the top of the
picture at the rate of 170 km/sec.
Here's how the moon looks through a lunation. The word month comes from
moon-th!
A Leonid meteor exploding in 1999 over New Mexico.
A mosaic of all the the things that Messier catalogued in his well-known
catalogue of celestial bodies.
Venus in radar. How the surface looks without the thick atmosphere
blocking our view. Reds are mountians, blues are valleys.
The classic message sent to the star cluster M13 in 1974 as a celebration
of the Arecibo Observatory, still the larges radio telescope in the world
(and featured in the movie Contact!). The message was sent in binary and
represents our number system, some molecules, DNA, the human form, basics
on our solar system, and basics on the telescope sending the message.
Unfortunately, we have to wait 50,000 years for a response, and the message is largely ceremonial
since we are constantly sending signals from radio and TV everywhere.
Our galactic neigbor and sister galaxy in our Local group: Andromeda M31
, she's 2 million light years away.
Billions of years from now these guys are gunnah collide! Interestingly enough
there is so much space between stars in a galaxy, that while galaxies often collide
their stars rarely do!
X-Ray jets from galaxy Centaurus A, caused by a black hole near the galactic
center that was born of a star 10 million times more massive than our own sun.
A MASSIVE solar prominence! Hot plasma is lifted and twisted by powerful
magnetic fields on the sun. The path of the plasma traces the shape of the field.
A computer generated map of the crazy solar magnetic fields. Each field disappears
every 40 hrs or so, with a new one appearing about every 40 hrs.
Fun fact! The sun rotates on its axis every 27 days!
ANOTHER spectacular picture of saturn. This is a TRUE COLOR image
, not digitally enhanced at all! The weird effect is from the sun being
directly behind saturn, so that for the satellite sensing saturn, saturn eclipses the sun.
VERY COOL! Thanks to this spectacular
view, new rings of saturn were discovered.
Io, a moon of Jupiter, is a really strange looking moon. It is due to the sulfuric
rock and silicate at the surface. Jupiter's enormous tidal forces on the moon cause rock in the center of
Io to melt and erupt to the surface. This is effectively turning the moon
inside out!
BEAUTIFUL SATURN IN INFRARED!
This picture was taken from a manned spacecraft
orbiting earth in 1999. They are ocean eddies, and
were at the time thought to be very rare, but are now
understood to be important parts of global ocean currents.
They are dramatically visible due to an extremely low sun angle and an oily film that is of biological origin.
This is what Venera 13, a Soviet Lander, saw of the surface of Venus
, shortly before burning up from the planets heat and enormous atmospheric
pressure.
Here's the Witches Broom Nebula!
