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Holiday Lights from the Universe

Although there are no seasons in space, some cosmic vistas invoke thoughts of a frosty winter landscape. Here are a few stellar images of holiday wonderlands from across the galaxy…

Located in our galaxy about 5,500 light years from Earth, this region is actually a “cluster of clusters,” containing at least three clusters of young stars, including many hot, massive, luminous stars.

The outstretched “wings” of this nebula looks like a soaring, celestial snow angel. Twin lobes of super-hot gas, glowing blue in this image, stretch outward from the central star. This hot gas creates the “wings” of our angel. A ring of dust and gas orbiting the star acts like a belt, clinching the expanding nebula into an “hourglass” shape.

At this time of year, holiday parties often include festive lights. When galaxies get together, they also may be surrounded by a spectacular light show. This pair of spiral galaxies has been caught in a grazing encounter. This region has hosted three supernova explosions in the past 15 years and has produced one of the most bountiful collections of super-bright X-ray lights known.

What do the following things have in common: a cone, the fur of a fox and a Christmas tree? Answer: they all occur in the constellation of the unicorn (Monoceros). Pictured as a star forming region, the complex jumble of cosmic gas and dust is about 2,700 light-years away.

Resembling festive lights on a holiday wreath, this Hubble Space Telescope image of a nearby spiral galaxy is an iconic reminder of the impending season. Bright knots of glowing gas light up the spiral arms, indicating a rich environment of star formation.

The Hubble Space Telescope captured two festive-looking nebulas, situated so as to appear as one. Intense radiation from the brilliant central stars is heating hydrogen in each of the nebulas, causing them to glow red…like a holiday light.

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My wife has never had a cat/kitten so I got her one. This is… - (Source: http://www.miniurls.co/lJTF)

2017 January 14

Stardust in the Perseus Molecular Cloud Image Credit & Copyright: Lorand Fenyes

Explanation: Clouds of stardust drift through this deep skyscape. The cosmic scene spans nearly 2 degrees across the Perseus molecular cloud some 850 light-years away. A triangle of dusty nebulae reflecting light from embedded stars is captured in the telescopic field of view. With a characteristic bluish color reflection nebula NGC 1333 is at left, vdB13 at bottom right, and rare yellowish reflection nebula vdB12 lies at the top. Stars are forming in the Perseus molecular cloud, though most are obscured at visible wavelengths by the pervasive dust. Still, hints of contrasting red emission from Herbig-Haro objects, the jets and shocked glowing gas emanating from recently formed stars, are evident in NGC 1333. At the estimated distance of the molecular cloud, legs of the triangle formed by the reflection nebulae would be about 20 light-years long.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap170114.html

Hubble Chases a Small Stellar Galaxy in the Hunting Dog

by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center   On a clear evening in April of 1789, the renowned astronomer William Herschel continued his unrelenting survey of the night sky, hunting for new cosmic objects — and found cause to celebrate! He spotted this bright spiral galaxy, named NGC 4707, lurking in the constellation of Canes Venatici or The Hunting Dog. NGC 4707 lies roughly 22 million light-years from Earth. NGC stands for “New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars.” Over two centuries later, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is able to “chase down” and view the same galaxy in far greater detail than Herschel could, allowing us to appreciate the intricacies and characteristics of NGC 4707 as never before. This striking image comprises observations from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), one of a handful of high-resolution instruments currently aboard the space telescope. Herschel himself reportedly described NGC 4707 as a “small, stellar” galaxy; while it is classified as a spiral (type Sm), its overall shape, center, and spiral arms are very loose and undefined, and its central bulge is either very small or non-existent. It instead appears as a rough sprinkling of stars and bright flashes of blue on a dark canvas. The blue smudges seen across the frame highlight regions of recent or ongoing star formation, with newborn stars glowing in bright, intense shades of cyan and turquoise. 

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November 14, 1969 – Thirty-six-and-a-half seconds after the launch of Apollo 12, the space vehicle triggered a lightning discharge through itself and down to the earth through the Saturn’s ionized plume. Protective circuits on the fuel cells in the Service Module falsely detected overloads and took all the fuel cells offline, as well as much of the Command/Service Module instrumentation. At 52 seconds after liftoff, a second strike knocked out the “8-ball” attitude indicator. The telemetry stream at Mission Control was garble, but Apollo 12 continued to fly correctly. The strikes had not affected the Saturn V rocket’s Instrument Unit.

000:09:02 Conrad (onboard): I think we got hit by lightning.

000:09:04 Gordon Bean (onboard): I do, too.

000:09:06 Gordon (onboard): Something took care of those panels, I’ll say that for it.

Pete Conrad from the 1969 technical debrief: “Because I could see outside, I made the comment to them several times. I told the ground that I thought we had been hit by lightning. I was the only one that had any outside indications. Dick didn’t note anything over his little hole in his center window. I was the only one who noticed anything and that was only the first time. I was aware that something external to the spacecraft had happened. I had the decided impression that I not only saw it, but felt it and heard it.”

Alan Bean from the 1969 technical debrief: “I knew we had power, so I didn’t want to make any changes. I figured we could fly into orbit just like that and that’s exactly what we did. The ground came up a little later and said to put the fuel cells back on the line. I was a little hesitant about doing that, because I didn’t understand that we had been hit by lightning. I gave it a go and, sure enough, things started working very well after that.”

(NASA/Wikipedia/NASA)

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GODS AND GODDESSES OF THE ANCIENT WORLD: Enki (Sumerian god of wisdom, water, magic, creation and chaos) 

ENKI (also known as Ea, Enkig, Nudimmud, Ninsiku) was the Sumerian god of wisdom, fresh water, intelligence, trickery and mischief, crafts, magic, exorcism, healing, creation, virility, fertility, and art. 

Iconography depicts him as a bearded man wearing a horned cap and long robes as he ascends the Mountain of the Sunrise; flowing streams of water run from his shoulders, emphasizing his association with life-giving water, while trees representing the male and female principle stand in the background. The streams are interpreted as the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers which, according to one myth, were formed from Enki’s semen. His name means “Lord of the Earth” and his symbols are the fish and the goat, both representations of fertility.

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Article by Joshua J. Mark on AHE