Jump to Orion
Willow on the trampoline with a new Hubble Space Telescope shot as background.
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Where Socks Go?
It’s a well-known fact that wormholes connect many locations in space and time. What’s not well known is that dryers in particular are very good at starting wormholes. Eventually, minute enthalpic fluctuations will cause one of these to open up and fling your socks, say, six hundred light years into space.
Read MoreThose Nebulous Days of Summer
My two daughters lounge on the grass contemplating the magic of space.
From APOD: Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble — maybe Macbeth should have consulted the Witch Head Nebula. This suggestively shaped reflection nebula is associated with the bright star Rigel in the constellation Orion. More formally known as IC 2118, the Witch Head Nebula glows primarily by light reflected from bright star Rigel, located just off the upper right edge of the full image. Fine dust in the nebula reflects the light. The blue color is caused not only by Rigel’s blue color but because the dust grains reflect blue light more efficiently than red. The same physical process causes Earth’s daytime sky to appear blue, although the scatterers in Earth’s atmosphere are molecules of nitrogen and oxygen. The nebula lies about 1000 light-years away
Read MoreNebula Neighbor
When I step out onto my balcony and look East, I always have magnificent views. I look towards the ridge opposite my house in the Dandenong Ranges. There are frequent colorful sunrises that materialise behind the dead branches of a large tree jutting through the forest canopy. You’ll find a number of photos from my balcony with the tree top as subject (just see yesterday’s post).
I took this image some time ago and was struck by the contrast between the red rising sun and the black early morning sky. I then wondered, what would this view be like if we were much closer to other star systems. What if a nebula was a nearby neighbor? Here’s my minds eye of what that would look like. I’ve combined an image of nebula NGC 1333 with my tree view.
This image of NGC 1333 was taken using the Mosaic-1 imager and the National Science Foundation’s Mayall 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak. This star-forming region, located roughly 1,000 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Perseus, harbors hundreds of newly formed stars less than one million years old. Many of these proto-stars exhibit energetic activity such as jets and strong stellar winds. NGC 1333 credit T.A. Rector/University of Alaska Anchorage, H. Schweiker/WIYN and NOAO/AURA/NSF
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