Comets are extraordinary, so extraordinary in fact that some comets can survive the sun! Most sun grazing comets that we have observed don’t survive grazing the sun. However, observations by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) we can actually SEE comet Lovejoy survive! This comet was discovered last year by Terry Lovejoy an amateur Australian astronomer who was observing during an ongoing comet survey in November 2011. Now check this video out:
Credit: Golden Spike Company Well you may or may have not heard the news today. The Golden Spike announced that it would be offering a trip to the moon aimed for 2020. Why do we care even though last time we were on the moon was in 1972? Well it’s that very fact that we haven’t been back to the moon in 40 years! Obviously this isn’t for any regular joe like you or I. This is aimed at the rich and powerful leaders who can afford this. Nonetheless it’s a step in the right direction to me. It’s always risky offering commercial space flight because it’s so high in cost as well as how many people can you really get on board with this? Well here is a promotional video they released to go along with this. I am really excited about this because to me it means we are thinking more about space and that hopefully it is inspiring someone who...
Have you seen Jupiter or Beteleguese in the night sky? Well I went out to take pictures of Jupiter and Betelgeuse in the night sky. I live in Maple, ON or where Canada’s wonderland is. The light pollution is still pretty bad I even had to darken the photo and then make the temperature cooler so that you could see the stars better. I just wanted to point out one star in particular Betelgeuse. Click the image to get a better look! So hopefully you can see the comparison of the two. One I took of course and the other is from a free program I use on my Mac called Stellarium. You can see the cross in picture near the roof of the house that I took and you can compare it with this second one. Betelgeuse is on the left end of the cross. What’s so crazy about Betelgeuse is REALLY BIG. If it were in our solar system it would go PAST Jupiter! Now we know that from the...
Source: Hubblesite.org This is a picture of a supermassive black hole located in Hercules A. You can see the two extremely large jets shooting out from the core of the black hole. This galaxy is located 2.1 billion light years away and also 1000 times the mass of our own milky way. The jets themselves are about 1 and half million light years long! It’s quite a beauty to look at even though we’ll never ever get there, it’s great to at least appreciate these images in the wild. Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/98729/gigantic-plasma-jets-pour-from-the-heart-of-hercules-a/
Titan’s South Pole Titan is one of the only moon’s in our solar system that has an atmosphere. It’s amazing what they saw on the recent flyby of Titan. What they recently discovered is a swirling vortex of gas forming over the moon’s south pole. They say it’s a result of the upcoming winter for Titan. Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/96209/cassini-spots-surprising-swirls-above-titans-south-pole/#ixzz2DzhVlnkA Here is an animation of that south pole: Titan itself