Ryan Mercer's thoughts, mostly random musings, spanning form 2001 to present. Freemason, geek, nutter, Whovian, 8-bit Atari enthusiast, SciFi fan.
Wow, so that's an approximately 250k light year tail on CGCG254-021. So beautiful! I could get lost looking at images of far away galaxies, stars, you name it. Maybe some day, in my life, we will get a distributed optical telescope in space that allows us to image extrasolar planets! How exciting would that be?!
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/University of Bonn/G. Schellenberger et al; Optical: INT
AVIATR: An Airplane Mission for Titan
It upsets me greatly that we won't be sending a mission there in the next decade with a plane, the plane would likely be able to stay aloft for months and gather all kinds of data. Oh well, as long as we have idiots deciding what we do this will continue to happen
It has been said that the atmosphere on Titan is so dense that a person could strap a pair of wings on their back and soar through its skies.
Read more HERE
Should we terraform Mars?
Yes, we should. It would provide insurance in our own Solar System for the human race. We need a domed colony on the moon, we need a colony on Mars, and we need to escape the solar system if we want to ensure our future. Supernova, alien invasion, all sorts of things can end the existence of humans as long as we remain only on Earth.
As we continue to explore farther out into our solar system and beyond, the question of habitation or colonization inevitably comes up. Manned bases on the Moon or Mars for example, have long been a dream of many. There is a natural desire to explore as far as we can go, and also to extend humanity’s presence on a permanent or at least semi-permanent basis. In order to do this, however, it is necessary to adapt to different extreme environments. On the Moon for example, a colony must be self-sustaining and protect its inhabitants from the airless, harsh environment outside.
Read more HERE
Twin Grail spacecraft reunite in lunar orbit
I'm glad these two made it safely to their destination and are ready to start collecting what will be a fantastic amount of data! A couple more months and we will start getting all sorts of info from them!
The second of NASA's two Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft has successfully completed its planned main engine burn and is now in lunar orbit. Working together, GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B will study the moon as never before.
Read more HERE
Space Image: Fastest rotating star found in neighboring galaxy
Rotating a million times an hour... that just makes me dizzy!
The massive, bright young star, called VFTS 102, rotates at a million miles per hour, or 100 times faster than our sun does.
Read more HERE
Space Image: Ring of fire
I fell in to a burning ring of fire...
This composite image shows the central region of the spiral galaxy NGC 4151. X-rays (blue) from the Chandra X-ray Observatory are combined with optical data (yellow) showing positively charged hydrogen (H II) from observations with the 1-meter Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope on La Palma. The red ring shows neutral hydrogen detected by radio observations with the NSF's Very Large Array. This neutral hydrogen is part of a structure near the center of NGC 4151 that has been distorted by gravitational interactions with the rest of the galaxy, and includes material falling towards the center of the galaxy. The yellow blobs around the red ellipse are regions where star formation has recently occurred.
Read more HERE
Chandra finds nearest pair of supermassive black holes
Astronomers have used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to discover the first pair of supermassive black holes in a spiral galaxy similar to the Milky Way. At a distance of 160 million light years, it is also the nearest known pair of supermassive black holes.
See the article HERE
The star that should not exist
A team of European astronomers has used ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) to track down a star in the Milky Way that many thought was impossible. They discovered that this star is composed almost entirely of hydrogen and helium, with only remarkably small amounts of other chemical elements in it. This intriguing composition places it in the "forbidden zone" of a widely accepted theory of star formation, meaning that it should never have come into existence in the first place. The results will appear in the 1 September 2011 issue of the journal Nature.
See the article HERE
