Archive for December, 2009
Martian Polar Horse
Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
Flying across the ice fields of Mars, we find all sorts of strange and familiar shapes. I imagine this horse leaping in the thin ice layers in the southern polar region shown in this image from NASA’s HiRISE camera aboard Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Holiday Ribbon
Credit: NASA & ESA
Tying up this starry present is the Boomerang Nebula. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope took this image of twin reflecting clouds of gas and dust being ejected from this star. Astronomers call these bi-polar nebulae, butterfly nebulae or bow-tie nebulae. Scientists aren’t sure why the material from the star is being ejected in this way. Perhaps denser material at the equator is forcing the star to eject gas and dust at the star’s poles. Or, maybe magnetic fields are funneling material toward the poles.
Glittering Sky
Credit: NASA & ESA
A glittering sky of lights greets us in this NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of the globular cluster Omega Centauri. This image shows just a small part of the massive star cluster with 10 million suns. Globular star clusters are groups of millions of stars bound together by gravity. Omega Centauri is very old too. Stars in this cluster were among the first stars to form in the Milky Way Galaxy more than 10 billion years ago. By contrast, our Sun arrived on the scene only 4.6 billion years ago.
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The ancient peoples saw pictures in the sky. From those patterns in the heavens, ancient storytellers created legends about heroes, maidens, dragons, bears, centaurs, dogs and mythical creatures…Read More
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