Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has captured a vast region of space containing the Heart nebula and Soul nebula.The infrared picture above is composed of 1,147 frames totaling exposure time of three and a half hours.
On the left, it is the Heart nebula designated IC 1805, named after its resemblance to human heart. The Soul nebula on the right also known as Embryo nebula designated IC 1848 is named after its resemblance to symbolic heart with two lobes. In my opinion, I think the Soul nebula resemble our hearts better. Anyway, these two nebulae are massive star making factories lying about 6,000 light years away in the constellation Cassiopeia. They stretch out nearly 580 light-years across. For comparison, Milky Way is 100,000 light-years across.
Continue reading ‘WISE Has Heart and Soul?’
We always hear that people are sorted into types and groups automatically at a gathering or any similar activity. Hubble Space Telescope (HST) found a direct proof of this behavior having by globular cluster. Heavier stars are sinking into the cluster’s core and the ligher stars accelerate to the boundary of the cluster.
Quick facts: A typical globular cluster contains several hundred thousand stars. Although the density of stars is very small in the outskirts of such stellar systems, the stellar density near the center can be more than 10,000 times higher than in the local vicinity of our Sun. If we lived in such a region of space, the night sky would be ablaze with 10,000 stars that would be closer to us than the nearest star to the Sun, Alpha Centauri, which is 4.3 light-years away (or approximately 272,000 times the distance between Earth and the Sun).
This newly found most earthlike planet has the key ingredient of life, the liquid water. This exoplanet (extrasolar planet) is located at the “Goldilocks” position (not too far and not too close to its star) that the water on this planet can be in the form of liquid state. This exoplanet is named Gliese 581 C after its star, Gliese 581.
Continue reading ‘Most Earthlike Planet – Gliese 581c’
Look at the mysterious antique above. It’s the orrery made by ancient Greek. This device is made of bronze and encased in wood. It was found by divers off the Mediterranean island Antikythera in 1900. Thus, it is also called Antikythera Mechanism.
It enabled astronomers in the second century BC to predict the movements of the Moon and Sun, along with lunar and solar eclipses. It could recreate irregularities in the Moon’s motion due to its elliptical orbit. It also helped Greek astronomers to predict the location of the known planet. I guess this was the tool that made ancient Greek astronomers GODlike.
The Jupiter Red Spot Junior is officially named Oval BA (Bad Astronomy?). It is getting reddish as its elder brother, the Great Red Spot. The wind is currently boasting at 640km/h. It just takes 1.5625 seconds to travel from the southest of Malaysia (Johor Bahru) to the northest (Perlis), roughly 1000km, imagine!
Left: The spot in the middle is the Oval BA
As suggested, as the storm has grown stronger it probably picked up red material from lower in the Jupiter atmosphere, most likely some form of sulfur which turns red as part of a chemical reaction.
Earthlike planets covered with deep oceans that could harbor life may be found in as many as a third of solar systems discovered outside of our own. These solar systems feature gas giants known as “Hot Jupiters,” which orbit extremely close to their parent stars which is even closer than Mercury to our sun.
The close-orbiting gassy planets may help encourage the formations of smaller, rocky Earthlike planets. They also help rocky planets form close to the suns and may help pull in icy bodies that deliver water to the young planets.
There may be a new class of ocean-covered, and possibly habitable, planets in solar systems unlike our own. However, lives on this planet are most likely different from ours.
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