Horsehead Nebula 

“Scanning the skies for galaxies, Canadian astronomer Paul Hickson and colleagues identified some 100 compact groups of galaxies, now appropriately called Hickson Compact Groups (HCGs). This sharp telescopic image captures one such galaxy group, HCG 91, in beautiful detail. The group’s three colorful spiral galaxies at the center of the field of view are locked in a gravitational tug of war, their interactions producing faint but visible tidal tails over 100,000 light-years long. Their close encounters trigger furious star formation. On a cosmic timescale the result will be a merger into a large single galaxy, a process now understood to be a normal part of the evolution of galaxies, including our own Milky Way. HCG 91 lies about 320 million light-years away in the constellation Piscis Austrinus. But the impressively deep image also catches evidence of fainter tidal tails and galaxy interactions close to 2 billion light-years distant.”

Here’s one I haven’t seen before. Perseid meteors viewed from above, from the International Space Station, 2 in about 2 seconds from the high resolution downlooking camera.

I went to college in another state from where I grew up. I’d been with my girlfriend for three years at the time so we tried to do the long distance thing. Within a week she was acting weird and then she just suddenly quit talking to me without any goodbye. I was understandably confused, so I called her house to try to talk to her. She wasn’t home, but her dad (who is fucking awesome) told me that she’d been hanging out with my best friend (from here on out referred to as db, for douchebag).

I called DBs roommate that I got along with and asked him to tell me the truth. He said she’d been over every night that week and stayed. I lost my shit. Called them both pissed off, told them to fuck themselves, etc.

Initially I wanted to kick his ass, but by the time I came home for break I’d decided it wasn’t worth it. So I just let it go and moved on. A few years go by, I finish college and move back home.

One day I get a call from db. He’s three hours away from home and his car is broken down. He doesn’t want to pay a towing company to get it home and I’m the only one he knows with a trailer big enough to haul it. He says he knows it’s awkward but he’ll give me $200 if I come get him.

I was fucking ecstatic. Told him I was an hour and a half away from home but I could leave after that if he wanted. He says that’s fine. I get off the phone and go back to watching tv on my couch.

Two hours go by: DB: hey, have you left yet? Me: I’m getting ready now, traffic was bad DB: ok. See you in a few hours

Three more hours: DB: you getting close? Me: my gps screwed up, still about a half hour

Another hour DB: dude where are you at?

Ten minutes DB: hello?

Five minutes DB: answer your phone dude

Five minutes: DB: are you even coming? 

Me: nah, but have fun.

He didn’t respond after that

Beneath the Milky Way

Deep in the Chilean Desert, astronomers staying at ESO’s La Residencia, the VLT Observatory’s hotel, witness a skyscape like few others on Earth.

In this photograph, the plane of the Milky Way can be seen above La Residencia, as passing staff members take a moment to admire the spectacular sight.

Credit: ESO/Luis Calçada/Herbert Zodet

Just so you know, you can always watch the Earth live from the ISS. Its really relaxing to me (the music they play is soothing too)

Three Bands of Light

The faint light extending up from the horizon just below centre of this photo is known as zodiacal light, caused by sunlight scattering from cosmic dust in the plane of our Earth’s orbit. A second band of light can be seen at the horizon on the lower left. This red light is airglow, produced by the Earth’s atmosphere. Airglow is caused by processes taking place in the upper atmosphere, including cosmic rays, recombining photoionized atoms, and various chemical reactions between oxygen, nitrogen, hydroxyl, sodium, and lithium atoms. The third and final band is the Milky Way, our home galaxy, high in the sky. This band consists of billions of stars of all kinds. Many of them are hidden to the human eye behind large layers of interstellar dust, giving the Milky Way its characteristically mottled look.

Credit: ESO/Y. Beletsky

Island Point Milky Way

Nikon d5100 - 6 x 25s - ISO 4000 - f2.8 - 16mm

You aren't getting away Scott free after pissing on my car

This story takes place at 1am today.

I’d just gotten home from working my 5th 12 hour work day and started to unwind with a bottle of wine and a show (the Eric Andre show) in the living room with my girlfriend. (I should note the door to the patio is about 10 feet directly in front of the sofa. And I live on the 4th floor in an apartment building.)

I begin to hear loud voices but it’s 1am on a Saturday night on a busy street, not out of place. However I decided to go on to the porch to people watch. I see five drunk 16/17 year old kids getting out of a truck parked directly in front of my car. There appears to be maybe 4-5 inches of space between my car and theirs.

Everyone seems to crowd around my front bumper laughing and are staring at my car, at first I thought they’d hit it, but then I notice the driver of the truck is pissing on my car. I hear him say to his friends “sucks for whoever owns this car” and pisses on the handle. So I shout back “that’d be me” they didnt look my way so I assumed they didn’t hear me. Then he quickly finishes and they start running toward the lobby so I yell “cheers mate” and he yells back a “cheers bud.”

I decided I needed to have revenge. So I grabbed a condom and filled it with conditioner. I then wrote a note that said “piss on my car? Enjoy my cum :)”

I delicately placed the note under their blade and took the condom and threw it full force at the windshield causing a glorious splatter. I then moved my car underground to make sure they couldn’t retaliate.

I woke up bright and early this morning and drank tea on my porch for an hour and a half just to be there to witness them see my work. The driver audibly yelled “what the fuck” and looked up to my porch. I raised my mug and yelled back a “cheers bud”. And then returned inside to watch The Eric Andre Show (the show is fucking awesome)

VLT Snaps An Exotic Exoplanet “First”

Astronomers hunt for planets orbiting other stars (exoplanets) using a variety of methods. One successful method is direct imaging; this is particularly effective for planets on wide orbits around young stars, because the light from the planet is not overwhelmed by light from the host star and is thus easier to spot. This image demonstrates this technique. It shows a T-Tauri star named CVSO 30, located approximately 1200 light-years away from Earth in the 25 Orionis group (slightly northwest of Orion’s famous Belt). In 2012, astronomers found that CVSO 30 hosted one exoplanet (CVSO 30b) using a detection method known as transit photometry, where the light from a star observably dips as a planet travels in front of it. Using the data astronomers have imaged what is likely to be a second planet! To produce the image, astronomers exploited the astrometry provided by VLT’s NACO and SINFONI instruments. This new exoplanet, named CVSO 30c, is the small dot to the upper left of the frame (the large blob is the star itself). While the previously-detected planet, CVSO 30b, orbits very close to the star, whirling around CVSO 30 in just under 11 hours at an orbital distance of 0.008 astronomical units, CVSO 30c orbits significantly further out, at a distance of 660 au, taking a staggering 27 000 years to complete a single orbit. (For reference, the planet Mercury orbits the Sun at an average distance of 0.39 au, while Neptune sits at just over 30 au.) If it is confirmed that CVSO 30c orbits CVSO 30, this would be the first star system to host both a close-in exoplanet detected by the transit method and a far-out exoplanet detected by direct imaging. Astronomers are still exploring how such an exotic system came to form in such a short timeframe, as the star is only 2.5 million years old; it is possible that the two planets interacted at some point in the past, scattering off one another and settling in their current extreme orbits.

Credit: ESO/Schmidt et al.

Elephants Trunk Nebula IC1396

Thursday was the first clear night in ages so I took Friday off and stayed up most of the night imaging this beauty. Taken using a Canon 700D and a Canon 200mm lens