The Polaris Flare
Hearing that a nebula I knew little about was mapped by Herschel made me go and find out more. The Polaris Flare is a cirrus nebula that appears to surround the North Star. Here’s a bit more about it – pretty pictures included.
Tag Archives: Nebula
Spitzer’s Galaxy
A fantastic image from the Spitzer Space Telescope (which you’ll see all over the web today) of our own Milky Way galaxy. The team have release a Google Maps API type site that lets you browse the galaxy in the infrared with some guidance.
Nebulae in 3D
This is more art than science, but it is very pretty. Stereoscopic 3D images give full colour and allow each nebula to show another dimension of beauty.
Eagle Nebula in Two Wavelengths
We just had a great star formation talk from Professor Ralf Klessen from the Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics at the Center for Astronomy at Heidelberg University. During that talk he put up a great slide showing the famous Pillars of Creation from the Eagle Nebula (M16) in both infrared and the optical.
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=k31QZcQK6SA[/youtube]
Inspired, and looking for [...]
The 10 Strangest (Real) Things in Space
I recently saw a Digg article which linked to a space.com page about the 10 Strangest Things in Space. All but 2 of the items were not pictures at all but computer simulations, or artists impressions. So here to correct this injustice to phenomena everywhere I present the REAL 10 Strangest Things in Space – [...]
Spitzer
Wednesday’s seminar speaker was Robert Kennicutt, the principal investigator of the SINGS project (Spitzer Infrared Nearby Galaxies Survey). They have been using the Spitzer Space Telescope, launched 2003, to observe the dust content of the nearest galaxies.
Spitzer detects at a wide range of wavelengths in the infrared and submillimeter regimes. This is the part of [...]
The Stars of Tomorrow
What follows is my submitted entry for the Wellcome Trust’s New Scientist Essay Competition 2007. There are prizes involved and the top one is publication of the essay in New Scientist. I am very inexperienced with such things, but thought I’d enter anyway, so just in case I don’t win, I’ll publish this myself on [...]
Do Not Cross This Line
NASA researchers using the Spitzer space telescope have laid out what they have called ‘planetary danger zones’ around stars. In these zones, extending from bright O-stars, protoplanetary disks will be swept away by the strong stellar winds given out by the star. Smaller,cooler stars will continue forming planets from accretion disks so long as they [...]
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