The Trapezium Is That A Space Ghost?

Watch: Leonardo DiCaprio calls to end climate change in Oscar acceptance speech.

Interstellar 2014

Planetary Nebula Mz3: The Ant Nebula by R. Sahai

Highest point in Georgia

Pluto’s heart

This high-resolution image captured by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft shows the bright expanse of the western lobe of Pluto’s “heart,” or Sputnik Planitia, which is rich in nitrogen, carbon monoxide and methane ices.

Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

Visible light emitted from a black hole has been detected for the first time

Got a decent telescope at home? That's all you need to observe a nearby black hole.

For the first time, astronomers have observed bursts of visible light being released by a black hole as it swallows matter from nearby stars.

These flashes of light, which lasted between several minutes to a few hours, were seen coming from a black hole in the Cygnus constellation, located about 7,800 light-years away from Earth. Incredibly, some of the flashes were so bright, the team says amateur astronomers could see them with a modest 20-cm telescope.

“We find that activity in the vicinity of a black hole can be observed in optical light at low luminosity for the first time,” astronomer and lead researcher, Mariko Kimura from Kyoto University in Japan, told Charles Q. Choi at Space.com.

“These findings suggest that we can study physical phenomena that occur in the vicinity of the black hole using moderate optical telescopes without high-spec X-ray or gamma-ray telescopes.”

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some of my favourite absolutely SICK facts about the trappist-1 exoplanets: - theyre all very close to one another and to their star, so the length of a year on them varies from 1 to 20 DAYS - since they’re so close, the star appears a lot bigger than our sun from earth, and from one planet you could easily see the rest, some would even appear bigger than the moon from earth. you could literally see the surface of another planet with a naked eye!!! - they’re tidally locked to their star like our moon is locked to earth, meaning only one side of a planet ever faces the star, and on the other side it’s always night. the sun never sets or rises on any of the planets - the star is red, so the sunlight is red/orange, meaning if, for example, plants were to grow there, they could be black and that’s just what we know now, imagine how much cool stuff we have yet to discover about the trappist-1 system

A Message from Earth (AMFE) is a high-powered digital radio signal that was sent on 9 October 2008 towards Gliese 581 c, a large terrestrial extrasolar planet orbiting the red dwarf star Gliese 581. The signal is a digital time capsule containing messages that were selected through a competition. The message was sent using the RT-70 radar telescope of Ukraine’s National Space Agency. The signal will reach the planet Gliese 581 c in early 2029. Many people including celebrities and politicians participated in the AMFE project, which was the world’s first digital time capsule where the content was selected by the public.

More info HERE

More info on Gliese 581 c HERE

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The Shakespearean Moons of Uranus

This weekend marks the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, and we’re highlighting the moons of Uranus; some of which are named after characters from his works.

While most of the moons orbiting other planets take their names from Greek mythology, Uranus’ moons are unique in bing named for Shakespearean characters, along with a couple of them being named for characters from the works of Alexander Pope.

Using the Hubble Space Telescope and improved ground-based telescopes, astronomers have discovered a total of 27 known moons around Uranus.

Here’s a sampling of some of the unique aspects of the moons:

Miranda

Shakespearean work: The Tempest

Miranda, the innermost and smallest of the five major satellites, has a surface unlike any other moon that’s been seen. It has a giant fault canyon as much as 12 times as deep as the Grand Canyon, terraced layers and surfaces that appear very old, and others that look much younger.

Ariel

Shakespearean work: The Tempest

Ariel has the brightest and possibly the youngest surface among all the moons of Uranus. It has a few large craters and many small ones, indicating that fairly recent low-impact collisions wiped out the large craters that would have been left by much earlier, bigger strikes. Intersecting valleys pitted with craters scars its surface.

Oberon

Shakespearean work: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Oberon, the outermost of the five major moons, is old, heavily cratered and shows little signs of internal activity. Unidentified dark material appears on the floors of many of its craters.

Cordelia and Ophelia

Shakespearean works: Cordelia - King Lear; Ophelia - Hamlet

Cordelia and Ophelia are shepherd moons that keep Uranus’ thin, outermost “epsilon” ring well defined.

Between them and miranda is a swarm of eight small satellites unlike any other system of planetary moons. This region is so crowded that astronomers don’t yet understand how the little moons have managed to avoid crashing into each other. They may be shepherds for the planet’s 10 narrow rings, and scientists think there must be still more moons, interior to any known, to confine the edges of the inner rings.

Want to learn more about all of Uranus’s moons? Visit: http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/uranus/moons

Check out THIS blog from our Chief Scientist Ellen Stofan, where she reflects on the life and legacy of William Shakespeare on the 400th anniversary of his death on April 23, 1616.

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Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.  —Ralph Waldo Emerson