Biggest Supermassive Black Hole and Most Unusual Discovered

By on Dec 1, 2012 in Astonishing Discoveries | 0 comments

Credit: NASA/ESA/Andrew C. Fabian The biggest supermassive black hole was recently discovered by astronomers thus far. Using the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at The University of Texas at Austin’s McDonald Observatory astronomers have discovered this beast, located in the constellation Perseus,  to have a mass of 17 billion solar masses! A solar mass is the mass of our own Sun. So you can almost imagine how dense and heavy this supermassive black hole is. Now what makes this even more unusual is how much of the galaxies mass it has inside. Now to give you a little context astronomers have only measured the weight of about 100 or less black holes. So that data isn’t exactly all there but what the norm has been is that a typical black hole usually consists of 0.1% of a galaxy’s mass. However this behemoth has 14% of it’s galaxy’s mass! You can imagine how extreme...

Have You Seen a Picture of a Supernova?

By on Nov 29, 2012 in Supernova | 0 comments

Supernovas are probably one of the coolest events that happen in our universe. It’s just amazing of the sheer amount of energy these death machines put out. I came across a famous supernova called Supernova 1987A. As I researched the story behind it I gained a lot of appreciation for supernovas and how incredibly hard it is to catch one in the act. Before I move on to the story let me just give you an overview of what a supernova is exactly. Well a supernova depends on a few factors first actually. One of them being the size of the star. Our own Sun for example will not go supernova at the end of it’s life (you have around 5 billion years or so until that happens) because the size of it is too small. A star would have to be several times the size of that to actually go supernova. There are also two types of ways a star can go supernova: Type I – a star accumulates...

Check Out this Awesome Star Simulation from Google

By on Nov 15, 2012 in Pictures | 0 comments

I love these awesome Milky Way simulators. A new one just released by Chrome experiments came out and is spreading like crazy. It’s a star simulation and it’s possibly one of the coolest things I have seen from Google. You may or may not have seen this already but please check this out NOW. Click here to take journey.   There is an even better one made by NASA called Exoplanet. It’s basically Keplers planet tracking app but it has a really awesome feature where you can see where each planet is located and gives you the same “traveling out”  experience. You can download the iPhone app for free.    

2012 Total Solar Eclipse: Here’s Where to Watch it

By on Nov 13, 2012 in Pictures | 0 comments

Well today is an amazing day for anyone who is in Australia at the moment. However if you’re not in the area then here is where you’ll see the 2012 total solar eclipse. Where: http://events.slooh.com/ When: 20:39 UTC or 15:39 in Toronto Canada (where I am) Source Interesting Facts: Last time there was a total solar eclipse was in July 2010 and the next time you’ll be able to see one is in August 2017. Baily’s Beads: is a special effect that can only be seen during a total solar eclipse. It’s when the moon is directly right in front of the Sun and you can see the beads of light on each side. Here’s a picture.   Here’s one from APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day)    

All Things Awesome NASA Edition

By on Nov 11, 2012 in Pictures | 0 comments

NASA is awesome. Not many people know specifically why. However, here is all things awesome NASA edition. Here are two images I came across that were interesting.     This next picture is a recent news article by NASA. Here is the link for more information on this. http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2012/44/   What’s interesting about this is that according to astronomer by the name of Mario Livio he suggests that the size and location of an asteroid belt, shaped by the evolution of the Sun’s protoplanetary disk and by the gravitational influence of a nearby giant (Jupiter in our case), may actually determine whether complex life will evolve on a rocky planet (such as our Earth). “Our study shows that only a tiny fraction of planetary systems observed to date seem to have giant planets in the right location to produce an asteroid belt of...