Crab Nebula

This is a remnant of a supernova. An interesting little guy, this is part of the constellation Taurus, which we have not studied yet. This image was composed with X-Rays from 3 different space telescopes- Hubble, Chandra, and Spitzer. The bright spot in the center is known as the Crap Pulsar, a neutron star spinning at 30 TIMES A SECOND! WHOA.

Dark Side of the Saturn

What I find most interesting about this image is that it shows how the dark side of Saturn is brightened by the reflection of the sun's light off of it's rings- like how the dark side of earth is lighted from the reflection of the sun's light off of our moon. The reflection also showed some new rings of Saturns. It was taken by the Cassini Satelltie, which is in orbit around Saturn.

Many Stars

I rad an article about this a week or so ago. What they did was track a certain number of stars and recorded images, and saw if any of the stars became dimmer, which would signify the star being eclipsed by a large planet. They found about 16 of these. 5 of them were of particular interest because they were extremely large, but were still close enough to the sun to have either shorter than earth years or days, I don't remember. Still, it's incredible because the planets are the size of Jupiter. It was the first time they had found anything like this.

Victoria Crater on Mars

The Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity have been on the planet for almost 1000 days, much longer than the expected...week or two. I forget. The victoria Crater is the biggest crater on Mars. I read an article on it a week or so ago and now I have forgotten most of the info. It's 200 (I think) feet deep. What's cool about the rovers is that they're able to sense if a move sent from NASA is too dangerous, and can disobey. They are adapting! Skynet is getting a mind of its own! AAAAAAAAH!

Another interesting thing I found...

While surfing the internet I found another interesting article. I'll insert the link but here's what it says in short:
There is a type of star called "blue stragglers," which usually inhabit areas of older stars. Two theories explaining this was that:
1) They are created by "direct steller collisions"
2) In a binary star group one star rejuvenates itself by "sucking" the star material out of the other star.

What they have recently found six of these blue stragglers that have less carbon and oxygen at their surface than others (I'm not sure whether it is other stars or other Blue stragglers, if someone could fill me in on that).
These situations- lower carbon and oxygen levels at the surface- have lead scientists to believe that the 2nd theory is most likely, since these conditions are usually present on the inside of stars.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-10/eso-svu100206.php

Check it out.

Supernova

This image is that of what is pretty convincingly percieved to be the earliest recorded Supernova. While obviously not the earliest, 185 AD is a while ago. Chinese astroners were the first to notice it not as a Supernova but as a new star that appeared for a couple of months. X rays taken from two space telescopes, XMM-Newton and Chandra, have shown supernova debris in the same general area. Their composite, false-color view of RCW 86 shows the expanding shell of material glowing in x-rays with high, medium, and low energies shown in blue, green, and red hues.

Size of Our World

As a rememberance of our first lesson in Astro class. I never realized how small the Death Star was. I really thought it was bigger than that. At LEAST the size of OUR moon.
http://newsizeofourworld.ytmnd.com/