all hail! :megaman: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080501.html The Giants of Omega Centauri Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, Martha Boyer (Univ. Minnesota), et al. Explanation: Globular star cluster Omega Centauri is some 15,000 light-years away and 150 light-years in diameter. Packed with about 10 million stars, Omega Cen is the largest of 200 or so known globular clusters that roam the halo of our Milky Way galaxy. This intriguing color picture combines a visible light image of the cluster in blue hues with infrared image data from the Spitzer Space Telescope. The Spitzer data includes images in two infrared bands, one shown in green and one in red. Both infrared bands are sensitive to light from the cool, giant stars in the cluster. Adding the red and green colors together creates yellow, showing off the cluster's giant stars as yellow spots. Of course, red spots also indicate cool, giant stars in the image, but some of the red spots are even more distant background galaxies. Also known simply as Red Giant Stars, they represent a stage in the life-cycle of stars more evolved than our own Sun, a stage the Sun will reach in about 5 billion years. Dust grains formed in the atmospheres of cool, giant stars are ultimately involved in the formation of other stars and planets.

The myriad of dynamite shots continueth!!! :megaman: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080502.html Shaping NGC 6188 Credit & Copyright: John Ebersole Explanation: Dark shapes with bright edges winging their way through dusty NGC 6188 are tens of light-years long. The emission nebula is found near the edge of an otherwise dark large molecular cloud in the southern constellation Ara, about 4,000 light-years away. Formed in that region only a few million years ago, the massive young stars of the embedded Ara OB1 association sculpt the fantastic shapes and power the nebular glow with stellar winds and intense ultraviolet radiation. The recent star formation itself was likely triggered by winds and supernova explosions, from previous generations of massive stars, that swept up and compressed the molecular gas. A false-color Hubble palette was used to create the this gorgeous wide-field image and shows emission from sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms in red, green, and blue hues. At the estimated distance of NGC 6188, the picture spans about 300 light-years.

Very good one, here, courtesy of the Arm of Orion.. :megaman: Dark towers, hehe, maybe Sauron and Melkor have found a new batcave! lol... anyways... http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080508.html The Dark Tower in Scorpius Credit & Copyright: Robert Gendler Explanation: In silhouette against a crowded star field toward the constellation Scorpius, this dusty cosmic cloud evokes for some the image of an ominous dark tower. In fact, clumps of dust and molecular gas collapsing to form stars may well lurk within the dark nebula, a structure that spans almost 40 light-years across the gorgeous telescopic view. Known as a cometary globule, the swept-back cloud, extending from the upper right to the head (top of the tower) left and below center, is shaped by intense ultraviolet radiation from the OB association of very hot stars in NGC 6231, off the left edge of the scene. That energetic ultraviolet light also powers the globule's bordering reddish glow of hydrogen gas. Hot stars embedded in the dust can be seen as small bluish reflection nebulae. This dark tower, NGC 6231, and associated nebulae are about 5,000 light-years away.

THIS THREAD IS INCREDIBLE SO FAR! :dance2: :dance2: ALL MILKY WAY :salute: :salute: :salute:

Really kewl stuff here, seems like a lotta theorizing on the typoid, tho' http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080522.html Windblown NGC 3199 Credit & Copyright: Ken Crawford (Rancho Del Sol Observatory), Macedon Ranges Observatory Explanation: NGC 3199 lies about 12,000 light-years away, a glowing cosmic cloud in the southern constellation of Carina. The nebula is about 75 light-years across in this haunting, false-color view. Though the deep image reveals a more or less complete ring shape, it does look very lopsided with a much brighter edge at the lower right. Near the center of the ring is a Wolf-Rayet star, a massive, hot, short-lived star that generates an intense stellar wind. In fact, Wolf-Rayet stars are known to create nebulae with interesting shapes as their powerful winds sweep up surrounding interstellar material. In this case, the bright edge was thought to indicate a bow shock produced as the star plowed through a uniform medium, like a boat through water. But measurements have shown the star is not really moving directly toward the bright edge. So a more likely explanation is that the material surrounding the star is not uniform, but clumped and denser near the bright edge of windblown NGC 3199.

Terrifying stuff here. This light absorbing phenomena are pretty scary stuff...to me, anyways.... lol. http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080528.html Dark Clouds of the Carina Nebula Credit: NASA, ESA, N. Smith (U. California, Berkeley) et al., and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) Explanation: What dark forms lurk in the mists of the Carina Nebula? These ominous figures are actually molecular clouds, knots of molecular gas and dust so thick they have become opaque. In comparison, however, these clouds are typically much less dense than Earth's atmosphere. Pictured above is part of the most detailed image of the Carina Nebula ever taken, a part where dark molecular clouds are particularly prominent. The entire Carina Nebula spans over 300 light years and lies about 7,500 light-years away in the constellation of Carina. NGC 3372, known as the Great Nebula in Carina, is home to massive stars and changing nebula. Eta Carinae, the most energetic star in the nebula, was one of the brigh-*test*-('") stars in the sky in the 1830s, but then faded dramatically. Wide-field annotated and zoomable versions of the larger image composite are also available.

FAMOUS SUPERNOVAE STILL ECHO ACROSS THE MILKY WAY, May 30 While walking home on November 11, 1572, astronomer Tycho Brahe idly glanced at the sky. He was surprised to see a bright star in the constellation Cassiopeia that hadn’t been there before. The new star, which we now know to be the result of a stellar explosion or supernova, grew brighter than Venus and was visible in daylight for about two weeks. It then slowly faded until vanishing in March 1574, 16 months after its discovery. Full story at http://www.physorg.com/news131373159.html You gotta wonder how these go over, crashing through solar and planetary systems....a wall of fire?

Wow. Just amazing. :grin: <img src="http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0806/darkriver_ruiz.jpg" width="800"> http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080603.html The Dark River to Antares Credit & Copyright: Máximo Ruiz Explanation: Connecting the Pipe Nebula to the bright star Antares is a flowing dark cloud nicknamed the Dark River. The murkiness of the Dark River is caused by absorption of background starlight by dust, although the nebula contains mostly hydrogen and molecular gas. Antares, the bright star that appears yellow just below the center of the frame, is embedded in the colorful Rho Ophiuchi nebula clouds. The Dark River, pictured above across the upper left, spans over 20 times the angular diameter of the Moon and lies about 500 light years distant. Other types of nebulas visible here include red emission nebula and the blue reflection nebula.

I'm pretty sure this is in the Milky Way... News Release Number: STScI-2008-21 White Dwarf Lost in Planetary Nebula The full news release story: White Dwarf Lost in Planetary NebulaView this image Call it the case of the missing dwarf. A team of stellar astronomers is engaged in an interstellar CSI (crime scene investigation). They have two suspects, traces of assault and battery, but no corpse. The southern planetary nebula SuWt 2 is the scene of the crime, some 6,500 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Centaurus. SuWt 2 consists of a bright, nearly edge-on glowing ring of gas. Faint lobes extend perpendicularly to the ring, giving the fain-*test*-('") parts of the nebula an hourglass shape. These glowing ejecta are suspected to have been energized by a star that has now burned out and collapsed to a white dwarf. But the white dwarf is nowhere to be found. The mystery deepened when researchers obtained ultraviolet observations in the early 1990's with NASA's International Ultraviolet Explorer satellite, expecting to see signs of a faint but very hot star. But no ultraviolet radiation was detected. Instead, at the center of the nebular ring are two suspicious characters: a pair of tightly bound stars that whirl around each other every five days, neither one of which is a white dwarf. These stars are hotter than our Sun (their spectral class is A) but they are still not hot enough to make the nebula glow. Only a flood of ultraviolet radiation, such as that from the missing white dwarf, could do that. The study is being conducted by Katrina Exter and Howard Bond of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md. and a team of British and American colleagues. Their extensive photometry and spectroscopy of the binary show that both stars are larger than main-sequence stars of their masses. This may imply that they have started to evolve toward becoming red giants. Both stars also appear to be rotating more slowly than expected; they would be expected to always be facing the same sides toward each other, but they do not. The astronomers suggest a simple explanation for the facts at the scene: the stars at the center of SuWt 2 were born as a family of three, with the A stars circling each other tightly and a more massive star orbiting further out. This allowed room for the massive star to evolve to become a red giant, which only then engulfed the pair of A stars. Trapped inside the red giant in what astronomers call a "common envelope," the pair spiraled down toward the core, causing the envelope to spin faster. Eventually, the outer layers of the red giant were ejected in the plane of the orbit, producing the ring-shaped nebula seen today. The unusually slow spins of the two A stars may have been another consequence of their victimization by their massive sibling. The ground-based observations were obtained with telescopes at the Cerro Tololo Inter- American Observatory, Chile; the New Technology Telescope at the European Southern Observatory, Chile; the Anglo-Australian Telescope, Australia; and the South African Astronomical Observatory. Ultraviolet radiation from the exposed hot core of the red giant would have caused the nebula to glow. If the giant's core were of high enough mass, it would then shrink and cool off rapidly to a faint white dwarf, which might explain its current invisibility. Their results are being presented today at the 212th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in St. Louis, Mo. Other members of the team are Keivan Stassun (Vanderbilt University, Tenn.), Pierre Maxted and Barry Smalley (Keele University, UK), and Don Pollacco (Queen's University, UK). CONTACT Ray Villard Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md. 410-338-4514 villard@stsci.edu Howard Bond/Katrina Exter Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md. 410-338-4718/4993 bond@stsci.edu/kexter@stsci.edu :megaman:

http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2008-11/release.shtml Spitzer Captures Stellar Coming of Age in Our Galaxy For Release: June 03, 2008 Milky Way More than 800,000 snapshots from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have been stitched together to create a new "coming of age" portrait of stars in our inner Milky Way galaxy. The image depicts an area of sky 120 degrees wide by two degrees tall. It was unveiled today at the 212th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in St. Louis, Mo. "This is the highest-resolution, largest, most sensitive infrared picture ever taken of our Milky Way," said Sean Carey of NASA's Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif. Carey is lead investigator for one of two teams responsible for the new picture. "Where previous surveys saw a single source of light, we now see a cluster of stars. With this data, we can learn how massive stars form, map galactic spiral arms and make a better estimate of our galaxy's star-formation rate," Carey explained. "I suspect that Spitzer's view of the galaxy is the best that we'll have for the foreseeable future. There is currently no mission planned that has both a wide field of view and the sensitivity needed to probe the Milky Way at these infrared wavelengths," said Barbara Whitney of the Space Science Institute, Madison, Wis. Whitney is a member of the second astronomy team. Because Earth sits inside our dusty, flat, disk-shaped Milky Way, we have an edge-on view of our galactic home. We see the Milky Way as a blurry, narrow band of light that stretches almost completely across the sky. With Spitzer's dust-piercing infrared eyes, astronomers peered 60,000 light-years away into this fuzzy band, called the galactic plane, and saw all the way to the other side of the galaxy. The result is a cosmic tapestry depicting an epic coming-of-age tale for stars. Areas hosting stellar embryos are identified by swaths of green, which are organic molecules, called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, illuminated by light from nearby newborn stars. On Earth, these molecules are found in automobile exhaust and charred barbeque grills, essentially anywhere carbon molecules are burned incompletely. The regions where young stars reside are revealed as "bubbles," or curved ridges in the green clouds. These bubbles are carved by the winds from young starlets blowing away their natal dust. The starlets appear as yellow and red dots, and the wisps of red that fill most bubbles are composed of graphite dust particles, similar to very small pieces of pencil lead. Blue specks sprinkled throughout the photograph are individual older Milky Way stars. The bluish-white haze that hovers heavily in the middle two panels is starlight from the galaxy's older stellar population. A deep, careful examination of the image also shows the dusty remnants of dying and dead stars as translucent orange spheres. "With these Spitzer data, we've been able to catalogue more than 100 million stars," said Edward Churchwell of the University of Wisconsin, at Madison. Churchwell is principal investigator of one of the teams. "This picture shows us that our Milky Way galaxy is a crowded and dynamic place. We have a lot to learn. I've definitely found a lot of things in this map that I didn't expect to see," said Carey. This infrared composite incorporates observations from two Spitzer instruments. Data from the infrared array camera were collected and processed by The Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire team, led by Churchwell. The Multiband Imaging Photometer for Spitzer Galactic Plane Survey Legacy team, led by Carey, processed observations from Spitzer's multiband imaging photometer. Blue represents 3.6-micron light, green shows light of 8 microns and red is 24-micron light. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, also in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673/818-648-9734 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. jpl2008-095 ssc2008-11 Printable version (PDF) of this release :megaman:

This could spell something drastic..... Two of the Milky Way's Spiral Arms Go Missing For Release: June 3, 2008 Milky Way Spiral Structure http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2008-10/release.shtml For decades, astronomers have been blind to what our galaxy, the Milky Way, really looks like. After all, we sit in the midst of it and can't step outside for a bird's eye view. Now, new images from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope are shedding light on the true structure of the Milky Way, revealing that it has just two major arms of stars instead of the four it was previously thought to possess. "Spitzer has provided us with a starting point for rethinking the structure of the Milky Way," said Robert Benjamin of the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater, who presented the new results at a press conference today at the 212th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in St. Louis, Mo. "We will keep revising our picture in the same way that early explorers sailing around the globe had to keep revising their maps." Since the 1950s, astronomers have produced maps of the Milky Way. The early models were based on radio observations of gas in the galaxy, and suggested a spiral structure with four major star-forming arms, called Norma, Scutum-Centaurus, Sagittarius and Perseus. In addition to arms, there are bands of gas and dust in the central part of the galaxy. Our sun lies near a small, partial arm called the Orion Arm, or Orion Spur, located between the Sagittarius and Perseus arms. "For years, people created maps of the whole galaxy based on studying just one section of it, or using only one method," said Benjamin. "Unfortunately, when the models from various groups were compared, they didn't always agree. It's a bit like studying an elephant blind-folded." Large infrared sky surveys in the 1990s led to some major revisions of these models, including the discovery of a large bar of stars in the middle of the Milky Way. Infrared light can penetrate through dust, so telescopes designed to pick up infrared light get better views of our dusty and crowded galactic center. In 2005, Benjamin and his colleagues used Spitzer's infrared detectors to obtain detailed information about our galaxy's bar, and found that it extends farther out from the center of the galaxy than previously thought. The team of scientists now has new infrared imagery from Spitzer of an expansive swath of the Milky Way, stretching 130 degrees across the sky and one degree above and below the galaxy's mid-plane. This extensive mosaic combines 800,000 snapshots and includes over 110 million stars. Benjamin developed software that counts the stars, measuring stellar densities. When he and his teammates counted stars in the direction of the Scutum-Centaurus Arm, they noticed an increase in their numbers, as would be expected for a spiral arm. But, when they looked in the direction where they expected to see the Sagittarius and Norma arms, there was no jump in the number of stars. The fourth arm, Perseus, wraps around the outer portion of our galaxy and cannot be seen in the new Spitzer images. The findings make the case that the Milky Way has two major spiral arms, a common structure for galaxies with bars. These major arms, the Scutum-Centaurus and Perseus arms, have the grea-*test*-('") densities of both young, bright stars, and older, so-called red-giant stars. The two minor arms, Sagittarius and Norma, are filled with gas and pockets of young stars. Benjamin said the two major arms seem to connect up nicely with the near and far ends of the galaxy's central bar. "Now, we can fit the arms together with the bar, like pieces of a puzzle," said Benjamin, "and, we can map the structure, position and width of these arms for the first time." Previous infrared observations found hints of a two-armed Milky Way, but those results were unclear because the position and width of the arms were unknown. Though galaxy arms appear to be intact features, stars are actually constantly moving in and out of them as they orbit the center of the Milky Way, like London commuters in a busy traffic circle. Our own sun might have once resided in a different arm. Since it was formed more than 4 billion years ago, it has traveled around the galaxy 16 times. Co-investigators of this research include Ed Churchwell, Marilyn Meade and Brian Babler of the University of Wisconsin, Madison; Barbara Whitney of the Space Science Institute, Madison, Wis.; Rémy Indebetouw of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville; and Christer Watson of Manchester College, Ind. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations occur at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, also in Pasadena. Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673/818-648-9734 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. jpl2008-094 ssc2008-10 Printable version (PDF) of this release

<img src="http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0806/iracmb_gc_c800.jpg" width="800"> http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080605.html Spitzer's Milky Way Credit: GLIMPSE, MIPSGAL, NASA, JPL-Caltech, Univ. Wisconsin Explanation: The Spitzer Space Telescope's encompasing infrared view of the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy is hard to appreciate in just one picture. In fact, more than 800,000 frames of data from Spitzer's cameras have now been pieced together in an enormous mosaic of the galactic plane - the most detailed infrared picture of our galaxy ever made. The small portion seen here spans nearly 8 degrees, roughly the apparent width of your fist held at arms length, across the galaxy's center. The full mosaic is 120 degrees wide. Highlighted in the false-color presentation are curving green filaments of light from complex molecules - polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) - that on Earth are the common, sooty products of incomplete combustion. The PAHs are found in star forming regions, along with reddish emission from graphite dust particles. Blue specks throughout the picture are individual Milky Way stars. :megaman: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080606.html Two-Armed Spiral Milky Way Illustration Credit: R. Hurt (SSC), JPL-Caltech, NASA Survey Credit: GLIMPSE Explanation: Gazing out from within the Milky Way, our own galaxy's true structure is difficult to discern. But an ambitious survey effort with the Spitzer Space Telescope now offers convincing evidence that we live in a large galaxy distinguished by two main spiral arms (the Scutum-Centaurus and Perseus arms) emerging from the ends of a large central bar. In fact, from a vantage point that viewed our galaxy face-on, astronomers in distant galaxies would likely see the Milky Way as a two-armed barred spiral similar to this artist's illustration. Previous investigations have identified a smaller central barred structure and four spiral arms. Astronomers still place the Sun about a third of the way in from the Milky Way's outer edge, in a minor arm called the Orion Spur. To locate the Sun and identify the Milky Way's newly mapped features, just place your cursor over the image. :salute:

K A P O W ! ! ! :megaman: <img src="http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0806/etacar2_hst.jpg" width="800"> http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080617.html Eta Carinae and the Homunculus Nebula Credit: N. Smith, J. A. Morse (U. Colorado) et al., NASA Explanation: How did the star Eta Carinae create this unusual nebula? No one knows for sure. About 165 years ago, the southern star Eta Carinae mysteriously became the second brigh-*test*-('") star in the night sky. In 20 years, after ejecting more mass than our Sun, Eta Car unexpected faded. This outburst appears to have created the Homunculus Nebula, pictured above in a composite image from the Hubble Space Telescope taken last decade. Visible in the above image center is purple-tinted light reflected from the violent star Eta Carinae itself. Surrounding this star are expanding lobes of gas laced with filaments of dark dust. Jets bisect the lobes emanating from the central star. Surrounding these lobes are red-tinted debris captured only by its glow in a narrow band of red light. This debris is expanding most quickly of all, and includes streaming whiskers and bow shocks caused by collisions with previously existing material. Eta Car still undergoes unexpected outbursts, and its high mass and volatility make it a candidate to explode in a spectacular supernova sometime in the next few million years.