25 YEARS AGO TODAY: On May 13, 1992, Astronauts Richard J. Hieb, Thomas D. Akers And Pierre J. Thuot

space and ocean aesthetic

Latest SDO PFSS image for: AIA 0171

When Will The First Star Go Dark?

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, but there aren’t any black dwarfs around today. The Universe is simply far too young for it. In fact, the coolest white dwarfs have, to the best of our estimates, lost less than 0.2% of their total heat since the very first ones were created in this Universe. For a white dwarf created at 20,000 K, that means its temperature is still at least 19,960 K, telling us we’ve got a terribly long way to go, if we’re waiting for a true dark star.”

Stars live for a variety of ages, from just a million or two years for some to tens of trillions of years for others. But even after a star has run out of its fuel and died, its stellar corpse continues to shine on. Neutron stars and white dwarfs are both extremely massive, but very small in volume compared to a star. As a result, they cool very slowly, so slow that a single one has not yet gone dark in all the Universe. So how long will it take, and who will get there first: neutron stars or white dwarfs? Believe it or not, there’s still enough uncertainty about how neutron stars cool, mostly due to uncertainties in neutrino physics, that we think we know the answer to be white dwarfs – and 10^14 or 10^15 years – but we’re not entirely sure!

Come find out what we know about finding the first truly dark star in the Universe today.

Carina Nebula: “Mystic Mountain”

via reddit

Happy Birthday Yuri Gagarin! On this day in 1934, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was born. 27 years later, Gagarin flew aboard Vostok 1 – and in doing so, became the first ambassador of our planet to enter the vastness of space. While flying weightless above Earth’s surface, Yuri Gagarin witnessed a spectacular view of home — forests, deserts, and great plains were surrounded by expansive oceans. Upon viewing the thin blue line of the atmosphere, Gagarin became the first of our inquisitive species to see our planet as it truly is — a vibrant, geologically active world circling a star. We at Penny4NASA urge you to honor the memory of this brave man, as his Vostok 1 mission was the catalyst for every manned spaceflight adventure to date.

2017 May 6

Galaxy Cluster Abell 370 and Beyond Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Jennifer Lotz and the HFF Team (STScI)

Explanation: Some 4 billion light-years away, massive galaxy cluster Abell 370 only appears to be dominated by two giant elliptical galaxies and infested with faint arcs in this sharp Hubble Space Telescope snapshot. The fainter, scattered bluish arcs along with the dramatic dragon arc below and left of center are images of galaxies that lie far beyond Abell 370. About twice as distant, their otherwise undetected light is magnified and distorted by the cluster’s enormous gravitational mass, dominated by unseen dark matter. Providing a tantalizing glimpse of galaxies in the early universe, the effect is known as gravitational lensing. A consequence of warped spacetime it was first predicted by Einstein a century ago. Far beyond the spiky foreground Milky Way star at lower right, Abell 370 is seen toward the constellation Cetus, the Sea Monster. It is the last of six galaxy clusters imaged in the recently concluded Frontier Fields project.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap170506.html

Milky Way over Spencer Bay, Moosehead Lake, Maine

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Captain Phasma by expandedart

Object Name: NGC 2442

Image Type: Astronomical

Credit: NASA, ESA

Time And Space