Affascinante ....

[fabio-22raptor]

Avevo letto tempo fà una cosa molto interessante sullo spazio (che personalmente mi affascina) ... ho letto che la nostra galassia e la nebulosa di andromeda si stanno lentamente avvicinando alla velocità di 120 km/s , attratte dalle rispettive forze gravitazionali ... fra un numero di anni che non sò scrivere ( ) le due dovrebbero scontrarsi e creare qualcosa di completamente nuovo .... spero abbiano entrambi una buona assicurazione

 

 

anche su wiki ne parla ...

[-{-Legolas-}-]

Avevo letto tempo fà una cosa molto interessante sullo spazio (che personalmente mi affascina) ... ho letto che la nostra galassia e la nebulosa di andromeda si stanno lentamente avvicinando alla velocità di 120 km/s , attratte dalle rispettive forze gravitazionali ... fra un numero di anni che non sò scrivere ( ) le due dovrebbero scontrarsi e creare qualcosa di completamente nuovo .... spero abbiano entrambi una buona assicurazione

 

 

anche su wiki ne parla ...

Già, peccato non essere qui a godersi lo spettacolo.

[TT-1 Pinto]

Un estraneo in mezzo alla folla ....

 

 

 

NASA's Hubble Sees a Stranger in the Crowd ....

 

The constellation of Virgo (The Virgin) is the largest of the Zodiac constellations, and the second largest overall after Hydra (The Water Snake).

Its most appealing feature, however, is the sheer number of galaxies that lie within it.

In this picture, among a crowd of face- and edge-on spiral, elliptical, and irregular galaxies, lies NGC 4866, a lenticular galaxy situated about 80 million light-years from Earth.

Lenticular galaxies are somewhere between spirals and ellipticals in terms of shape and properties.

From the picture, we can appreciate the bright central bulge of NGC 4866, which contains primarily old stars, but no spiral arms are visible.

The galaxy is seen from Earth as almost edge-on, meaning that the disc structure — a feature not present in elliptical galaxies — is clearly visible.

Faint dust lanes trace across NGC 4866 in this image, obscuring part of the galaxy’s light.

To the right of the galaxy is a very bright star that appears to lie within NGC 4866’s halo.

However, this star actually lies much closer to us; in front of the galaxy, along our line of sight.

These kinds of perspective tricks are common when observing, and can initially deceive astronomers as to the true nature and position of objects such as galaxies, stars, and clusters.

This sharp image of NGC 4866 was captured by the Advanced Camera for Surveys, an instrument on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

 

Image Credit: European Space Agency

 

[TT-1 Pinto]

Il giorno in cui la Terra sorrise ....

 

 

 

The Day the Earth Smiled ....

 

In this rare image taken on July 19, 2013, the wide-angle camera on NASA's Cassini spacecraft has captured Saturn's rings and our planet Earth and its moon in the same frame.

It is only one footprint in a mosaic of 33 footprints covering the entire Saturn ring system (including Saturn itself).

At each footprint, images were taken in different spectral filters for a total of 323 images: some were taken for scientific purposes and some to produce a natural color mosaic.

This is the only wide-angle footprint that has the Earth-moon system in it.

The dark side of Saturn, its bright limb, the main rings, the F ring, and the G and E rings are clearly seen; the limb of Saturn and the F ring are overexposed.

The "breaks" in the brightness of Saturn's limb are due to the shadows of the rings on the globe of Saturn, preventing sunlight from shining through the atmosphere in those regions.

The E and G rings have been brightened for better visibility.

Earth, which is 898 million miles (1.44 billion kilometers) away in this image, appears as a blue dot at center right; the moon can be seen as a fainter protrusion off its right side.

An arrow indicates their location in the annotated version.

 

 

(The two are clearly seen as separate objects in the accompanying narrow angle frame: PIA14949.)

The other bright dots nearby are stars.

This is only the third time ever that Earth has been imaged from the outer solar system.

The acquisition of this image, along with the accompanying composite narrow- and wide-angle image of Earth and the moon and the full mosaic from which both are taken, marked the first time that inhabitants of Earth knew in advance that their planet was being imaged.

That opportunity allowed people around the world to join together in social events to celebrate the occasion.

This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 20 degrees below the ring plane.

Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view.

The images were obtained with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on July 19, 2013 at a distance of approximately 753,000 miles (1.212 million kilometers) from Saturn, and approximately 898.414 million miles (1.445858 billion kilometers) from Earth.

Image scale on Saturn is 43 miles (69 kilometers) per pixel; image scale on the Earth is 53,820 miles (86,620 kilometers) per pixel.

The illuminated areas of neither Earth nor the Moon are resolved here. Consequently, the size of each "dot" is the same size that a point of light of comparable brightness would have in the wide-angle camera.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C.

The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL.

The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

 

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

 

Inoltre .... http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/whycassini/cassini20130722.html

[TT-1 Pinto]

Collisione ....

 

 

Dwarf Galaxy Caught Ramming Into a Large Spiral Galaxy ....

 

Observations with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have revealed a massive cloud of multimillion-degree gas in a galaxy about 60 million light years from Earth.

The hot gas cloud is likely caused by a collision between a dwarf galaxy and a much larger galaxy called NGC 1232.

If confirmed, this discovery would mark the first time such a collision has been detected only in X-rays, and could have implications for understanding how galaxies grow through similar collisions.

An image combining X-rays and optical light shows the scene of this collision.

The impact between the dwarf galaxy and the spiral galaxy caused a shock wave − akin to a sonic boom on Earth – that generated hot gas with a temperature of about six million degrees.

Chandra X-ray data, in purple, show the hot gas has a comet-like appearance, caused by the motion of the dwarf galaxy.

Optical data from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope reveal the spiral galaxy in blue and white. X-ray point sources have been removed from this image to emphasize the diffuse emission.

Near the head of the comet-shaped X-ray emission (mouse over the image for the location) is a region containing several very optically bright stars and enhanced X-ray emission.

Star formation may have been triggered by the shock wave, producing bright, massive stars.

In that case X-ray emission would be generated by massive star winds and by the remains of supernova explosions as massive stars evolve.

The mass of the entire gas cloud is uncertain because it cannot be determined from the two-dimensional image whether the hot gas is concentrated in a thin pancake or distributed over a large, spherical region.

If the gas is a pancake, the mass is equivalent to forty thousand Suns.

If it is spread out uniformly, the mass could be much larger, about three million times as massive as the Sun.

This range agrees with values for dwarf galaxies in the Local Group containing the Milky Way.

The hot gas should continue to glow in X-rays for tens to hundreds of millions of years, depending on the geometry of the collision.

The collision itself should last for about 50 million years.

Therefore, searching for large regions of hot gas in galaxies might be a way to estimate the frequency of collisions with dwarf galaxies and to understand how important such events are to galaxy growth.

An alternative explanation of the X-ray emission is that the hot gas cloud could have been produced by supernovas and hot winds from large numbers of massive stars, all located on one side of the galaxy.

The lack of evidence of expected radio, infrared, or optical features argues against this possibility.

A paper by Gordon Garmire of the Huntingdon Institute for X-ray Astronomy in Huntingdon, PA describing these results is available online and was published in the June 10th, 2013 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.

 

Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Huntingdon Institute for X-ray Astronomy/G. Garmire; Optical: ESO/VLT

 

Link .... http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/multimedia/dwarf-spiral-collision.html

[TT-1 Pinto]

Il canyon di fuoco ....

 

 

Solar Filament Eruption Creates 'Canyon of Fire' .... http://www.nasa.gov/content/solar-filament-eruption-canyon-of-fire/

[-{-Legolas-}-]

Una fornace di plasma capace d'inghiottire la Terra intera senza sforzo.

[TT-1 Pinto]

A 22 milioni di anni luce dalla Terra ....

 

 

NGC 6946: The 'Fireworks Galaxy' ....

 

NGC 6946 is a medium-sized, face-on spiral galaxy about 22 million light years away from Earth.

In the past century, eight supernovas have been observed to explode in the arms of this galaxy.

Chandra observations (purple) have, in fact, revealed three of the oldest supernovas ever detected in X-rays, giving more credence to its nickname of the "Fireworks Galaxy."

This composite image also includes optical data from the Gemini Observatory in red, yellow, and cyan.

 

Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/MSSL/R.Soria et al, Optical: AURA/Gemini OBs

 

[TT-1 Pinto]

I colori del pianeta più vicino al Sole ....

 

 

Colors of the Innermost Planet ....

 

This colorful view of Mercury was produced by using images from the color base map imaging campaign during MESSENGER's primary mission.

These colors are not what Mercury would look like to the human eye, but rather the colors enhance the chemical, mineralogical, and physical differences between the rocks that make up Mercury's surface.

Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

 

[TT-1 Pinto]

Eclissi solare .... vista dallo spazio ....

 

 

 

On Jan. 30, 2014, beginning at 8:31 a.m EST, the moon moved between NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, and the sun, giving the observatory a view of a partial solar eclipse from space. Such a lunar transit happens two to three times each year.

This one lasted two and one half hours, which is the longest ever recorded.

When the next one will occur is as of yet unknown due to planned adjustments in SDO's orbit.

Image Credit: NASA/SDO

 

"NASA's SDO Sees Lunar Transit" .... http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasas-sdo-sees-lunar-transit/index.html

 

[-{-Legolas-}-]

Bellissimo!

[TT-1 Pinto]

Messier 5 .... un ammasso globulare di più di 100.000 stelle ....

 

 

Hubble's Messier 5 ....

 

"Beautiful Nebula discovered between the Balance [Libra] & the Serpent [serpens] ..." ....

 

 

.... begins the description of the 5th entry in 18th century astronomer Charles Messier's famous catalog of nebulae and star clusters.

Though it appeared to Messier to be fuzzy and round and without stars, Messier 5 (M5) is now known to be a globular star cluster, 100,000 stars or more, bound by gravity and packed into a region around 165 light-years in diameter.

It lies some 25,000 light-years away.

Roaming the halo of our galaxy, globular star clusters are ancient members of the Milky Way.

M5 is one of the oldest globulars, its stars estimated to be nearly 13 billion years old.

The beautiful star cluster is a popular target for Earthbound telescopes.

Of course, deployed in low Earth orbit on April 25, 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope has also captured its own stunning close-up view that spans about 20 light-years near the central region of M5.

Even close to its dense core at the left, the cluster's aging red and blue giant stars and rejuvenated blue stragglers stand out in yellow and blue hues in the sharp color image.

 

Image Credit: NASA, Hubble Space Telescope, ESA

 

[-{-Legolas-}-]

E l'Hubble non smetterà mai di stupirmi.