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A new 3-D map of the interstellar gas within 300 parsecs from the sun

Fig. 1 -- Map of partially ionized interstellar gas within 300 parsecs around the sun, as viewed in the Galactic plane. Triangles represent the sight-line positions of the stars used to produce the map. White to dark shading represents the low to high values of the gas density, and orange shading is for areas with no reliable measurement. The Local Cavity is shown as the white area of low density gas that surrounds the sun at about 80 parsecs.

Where did today's spiral galaxies come from?

The Hubble sequence six billion years ago was very different from the one astronomers see today. The two sections show how many more peculiar shaped galaxies (marked Pec) are seen among distant galaxies, as opposed to among local galaxies. The data organization follows the Hubble tuning-fork classification scheme invented in 1926 by the same Edwin Hubble in whose honor the space telescope is named. The top image represents the current -- or local -- universe. Three percent of galaxies are elliptical (marked E), 15 percent lenticular (marked S0), 72 percent spiral (marked Sa to Sd, or SBb to SBd) and 10% peculiar (marked Pec). The bottom image represents the make up of the distant galaxies (six billion years ago), showing a much larger fraction of peculiar galaxies. The census found 4 percent of distant galaxies were elliptical, 13 percent lenticular (S0), 31 percent spiral and 52 percent peculiar. This implies that many of the peculiar galaxies ultimately become large spirals. These images were created from data that are part of large sky surveys undertaken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the 2.5 m-diameter telescope at Apache Point Observatory, New Mexico, USA (Sloan Digital Sky Survey).Hubble shows that the beautiful spirals galaxies of the modern Universe were the ugly ducklings of six billion years ago.

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GOES-P all fueled up

In the mobile service tower at Launch Complex 37 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Fla., a solid rocket booster for the Delta IV rocket, slated to launch NASA's GOES-P satellite as it is lowered toward the base of the rocket.The GOES spacecraft continues its processing at the Astrotech Facility in Titusville, Fla. and fuel was loaded into the GOES-P spacecraft on Saturday, January 30. The fuel will keep GOES-P...

Merging galaxies create a binary quasar

This optical image of SDSS J1254+0846 obtained May 22, 2009, on the IMACS camera at the Magellan/Baade telescope at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile shows the two bright quasar nuclei as well as the tidal arms of the host galaxy merger. Scale bar is 10 arcseconds.Astronomers have found the first clear evidence of a binary quasar within a pair of actively merging galaxies. Quasars are the extremely bright centers of galaxies surrounding super-massive black holes,...

The stars behind the curtain

NGC 3603 is a starburst region: a cosmic factory where stars form frantically from the nebula's extended clouds of gas and dust. Located 22,000 light-years away from the sun, it is the closest region of this kind known in our galaxy, providing astronomers with a local test bed for studying the intense star formation processes, very common in other galaxies, but hard to observe in detail because of their large distance. The newly released image, obtained with the FORS instrument attached to one of the four 8.2-m VLT Unit Telescopes at Cerro Paranal, Chile, is a three-color combination of exposures acquired through visible and near-infrared (V, R, I) filters. This image portrays a wider field around the stellar cluster and reveals the rich texture of the surrounding clouds of gas and dust. The field of view is 7 arcminutes wide.NGC 3603 is a starburst region: a cosmic factory where stars form frantically from the nebula's extended clouds of gas and dust. Located 22 000 light-years away from the Sun,...

Astronomers find rare beast by new means

For the first time, astronomers have found a supernova explosion with properties similiar to a gamma-ray burst, but without seeing any gamma rays from it. The discovery, using the National...

Black hole hunters set new distance record

This artist's impression depicts the newly discovered stellar-mass black hole in the spiral galaxy NGC 300. The black hole has a mass of about twenty times the mass of the Sun and is associated with a Wolf–Rayet star; a star that will become a black hole itself. Thanks to the observations performed with the FORS2 instrument mounted on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, astronomers have confirmed an earlier hunch that the black hole and the Wolf–Rayet star dance around each other in a diabolic waltz, with a period of about 32 hours. The astronomers also found that the black hole is stripping matter away from the star as they orbit each other. How such a tightly bound system has survived the tumultuous phases that preceded the formation of the black hole is still a mystery.The stellar-mass black holes [1] found in the Milky Way weigh up to ten times the mass of the Sun and are certainly not be taken lightly, but, outside our...

Technology-testing Proba-2 opens new eye on the Sun

Packed with novel devices and science instruments, Proba-2 is demonstrating technologies for future ESA missions while providing new views of our Sun.

Images reveal spectacular X-ray tails

Michigan State University astronomer Megan Donahue uses words such as "cool" and "interesting" to describe the two distinct "tails" found on a long tail of gas that is believed to...

Detecting near-Earth objects

Congress has tasked NASA with detecting more near-Earth objects (NEOs) -- asteroids and comets that orbit the sun and could pose a potential hazard to Earth because they approach or...

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Weak lensing gains strength

Visible matter follows an underlying dark matter scaffolding. At left, blue indicates the mass of stars in galaxies in a given area, yellow the number of galaxies, and red the sources of brightest x-ray emission. Contours at right are the distribution of dark matter, from gravitational lensing.Weak gravitational lensing is a uniquely promising way to learn how much dark matter there is in the Universe and how its distribution has evolved since the distant past. New...

$32 million CU-Boulder instrument package to study space weather set for NASA launch Feb. 9

A $32 million University of Colorado at Boulder instrument package set for launch Feb. 9 by NASA should help scientists better Contact: Tom Woods, 303-492-4224 understand the violent effects of the sun on near-Earth space weather that can affect satellites,...

Cyclone Oli reaches category 4 strength on its way to open waters

An infrared AIRS image (from NASA's Aqua satellite) on Feb. 4 at 11:23 UTC (6:23 a.m. ET) showed that French Polynesia and Tahiti were on the outer edges of powerful Cyclone Oli. Purple indicates strong thunderstorms with heavy rainfall, and very high storms with cloud temperatures to -63F.Oli has exploded in strength and as of February 4 it was a Category 4 cyclone with peak sustained winds of 132 mph (115 knots/213 km/hr). NASA's Aqua and TRMM...

Madly mapping the universe

From the top are pictured Julian Borrill, Chris Cantalupo, and Ted Kisner.To map our home planet, Google Earth depends mostly on satellite imagery for land surfaces and sonar imagery for the sea floor. Maps of the Universe likewise depend on different...

Craters young and old in Sirenum Fossae

Part of the Sirenum Fossae region in the Southern Highlands of Mars. The image shows the region centred at about 28°S / 185°E. It extends some 230 km by 127 km and covers 29 450 sq km, roughly the size of Belgium. The image was taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera on ESA's Mars Express spacecraft during orbit 6547. The image resolution is about 29 m per pixel.The Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera has imaged craters both young and old in this view of the Southern Highlands of Mars.

NASA's Aqua Satellite sees Tropical Depression Fami fading fast

NASA's Aqua satellite AIRS instrument captured Fami (blue) on Feb. 3 at 09:35 UTC (4:35 a.m. ET), and showed the system more resembling a cold front than a tropical cyclone, as it appears stretched out from northwest to southeast.Now that Fami has crossed Madagascar, its fading fast. NASA's Aqua satellite captured an infrared satellite image earlier today that showed the storm was elongating and losing its circulation.

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GOES-P proceeds toward launch

Two solid rocket boosters were installed on Jan. 15, 2010, on the Delta IV Launch Vehicle that will carry GOES-P into space.The latest Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-P is proceeding through more checks in preparation for its launch, which is no earlier than March 1.

University of Colorado student-built satellite selected for flight by NASA

A Rubik's Cube-sized communications satellite designed and built by University of Colorado at Boulder undergraduates at the Colorado Space Grant Consortium has been selected for launch by NASA in November 2009.A tiny communications satellite designed and built by University of Colorado at Boulder undergraduates has been selected as one of three university research satellites to be launched into orbit in...

SwRI researchers offer explanation for the differences between Ganymede and Callisto

The movies show the effect of an outer solar system late heavy bombardment on the interior structure of Callisto (top) and Ganymede (bottom). The left hand side shows the surface of each moon as it suffers repeated impacts that melt its outer layers and clean out rock suspended in its ice. Colors indicate density, with black showing rock, blue showing mixed ice and rock, and lighter shades of blue indicating a decreasing rock fraction. The surfaces are initially blue, indicating a uniform ice/rock mixture. Over time, repeated overlapping impacts remove all of the rock from the moons’ outer layers. The right hand side shows a vertical slice through the spinning globe, allowing us to see the growth of the core (black). Each frame of the movie records 50 new impacts onto each moon. Callisto receives 2,600 impacts, but Ganymede receives 5,200. When the late heavy bombardment on Callisto is complete, the movie of Callisto stops, but Ganymede continues to experience an additional 2,600 impacts (so the movie of its evolution has more frames). The final frame of the movie shows the structure of the moons at the end of the late heavy bombardment. Note that Ganymede's rock core is significantly larger than the core created in Callisto.Differences in the number and speed of cometary impacts onto Jupiter's large moons Ganymede and Callisto some 3.8 billion years ago can explain their vastly different surfaces and interior states,...

Report examines options for detecting and countering near-Earth objects

A new report from the National Research Council lays out options NASA could follow to detect more near-Earth objects (NEOs) – asteroids and comets that could pose a hazard if...

On the trail of a cosmic cat

The Cat's Paw Nebula (NGC 6334) is a vast region of star formation. This new portrait of NGC 6334 was created from images taken with the Wide Field Imager instrument at the 2.2-m MPG/ESO telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile, combining images taken through blue, green and red filters, as well as a special filter designed to let through the light of glowing hydrogen. NGC 6334 lies about 5,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Scorpius. The whole gas cloud is about 50 light-years across. NGC 6334 is one of the most active nurseries of massive stars in our galaxy and has been extensively studied by astronomers. The nebula conceals freshly minted brilliant blue stars — each nearly ten times the mass of our Sun and born in the last few million years. The region is also home to many baby stars that are buried deep in the dust, making them difficult to study. In total, the Cat’s Paw Nebula could contain several tens of thousands of stars. The nebula appears red because its blue and green light are scattered and absorbed more efficiently by material between the nebula and Earth. The red light comes predominantly from hydrogen gas glowing under the intense glare of hot young stars.Few objects in the sky have been as well named as the Cat's Paw Nebula, a glowing gas cloud resembling the gigantic pawprint of a celestial cat out on an...

GOES-P spacecraft being processed in Florida

The NASA Team at the Shuttle Landing Facility in Florida poses after GOES-P arrives.During the first three weeks in January, the latest in the series of Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites also known as GOES-P is being processed and prepped for launch. Meanwhile, the...

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