Lucy in the sky IS diamonds
Fifty light years — that’s about 300,000,000,000,000 (300 quadrillion) miles — away from Earth is Lucy, a former star whose proverbial bulb has burned out. And Lucy’s core has turned into a diamond. In this case, the diamond is huge — the largest in the galaxy. At 10 billion trillion trillion carats — 1 followed by 34 zeroes! — it’s, well, huge beyond imagination. The largest terrestrial diamond, the Golden Jubilee Diamond, is about 500 carats — a 5, followed by two lonely zeroes.
How’d this happen?
When a star consumes all of its fuel, it burns out, leaving behind a white dwarf — a hot, crystallizing core. For years, scientists have believed that the core, made mostly of carbon, turns into a diamond, but we have had no evidence supporting that thesis. That all changed in 2004, when astronomers were able to use gong-like pulsations emanating from Lucy to determine that its core was a really big diamond and developed the model pictured above. [ The rest of the story]
Five planets and a nebula wallpaper
The last Genius supper
Left to right: Galileo-Heliocentric theory, Marie Curie - Radiation, Oppenheimer-Atomic Bomb, Isaac Newton - Gravitation, Pasteur-Germ Theory/Vaccines, Hawking - Black Holes, Einstein-Relativity, Sagan-Astronomy, Edison - Inventor, Aristotle - Philosophy, Tyson-Astrophysics, Dawkins- Evolution, Darwin - Evolution
I’m suprised that Leonardo DaVinci is not in this, nor Tesla.. though Edison is …*eyeroll* … Marconi would of been a better choice IMHO than edison
One of the 66 moons of Jupiter
The star SOL showing sunspots and micro flares (Oh and SOL is the technical name for our sun)
I can see Uranus, and she’s not even bending over (ok.. I will go hide in a cave now)
keconway:
itsfullofstars:
unknownskywalker:
APEX Snaps First Close-up of Star Factories in Distant Universe
Astronomers were observing a massive galaxy cluster with APEX telescope, using submillimetre wavelengths of light, when they found a new and uniquely bright galaxy, more distant than the cluster and the brightest very distant galaxy ever seen at submillimetre wavelengths. It is so bright because the cosmic dust grains in the galaxy are glowing after being heated by starlight. The new galaxy has been given the name SMM J2135-0102.
The new galaxy is so bright because of the massive galaxy cluster that lies in the foreground. The vast mass of this cluster bends the light of the more distant galaxy, acting as a gravitational lens. As with a telescope, it magnifies and brightens our view of the distant galaxy. Thanks to a fortuitous alignment between the cluster and the distant galaxy, the latter is strongly magnified by a factor of 32.
This magnification means that the star-forming clouds can be picked out in the galaxy, down to a scale of only a few hundred light-years. To see this level of detail without the help of the gravitational lens would need future telescopes such as ALMA, which is currently under construction. This lucky discovery has therefore given astronomers a unique preview of the science that will be possible in a few years time.
These “star factories” are similar in size to those in the Milky Way, but one hundred times more luminous, suggesting that star formation in the early life of these galaxies is a much more vigorous process than typically found in nearer galaxies. SMM J2135-0102 is stimated to be producing stars at a rate of 250 Suns per year. The star formation in its large dust clouds is unlike that in the nearby Universe, but observations also suggest that astronomers should be able to use similar underlying physics from the densest stellar nurseries in nearby galaxies to understand star birth in these more distant galaxies.
Image: Artist’s impression by M. Kornmesser (ESO). Click for high resolution. [via]
Credit: ESO
The universe, so massive, so complex, so amazing, and all made of quantum foam ;)
![Lucy in the sky IS diamonds
Fifty light years — that’s about 300,000,000,000,000 (300 quadrillion) miles — away from Earth is Lucy, a former star whose proverbial bulb has burned out. And Lucy’s core has turned into a diamond. In this case, the diamond is huge — the largest in the galaxy. At 10 billion trillion trillion carats — 1 followed by 34 zeroes! — it’s, well, huge beyond imagination. The largest terrestrial diamond, the Golden Jubilee Diamond, is about 500 carats — a 5, followed by two lonely zeroes.
How’d this happen?
When a star consumes all of its fuel, it burns out, leaving behind a white dwarf — a hot, crystallizing core. For years, scientists have believed that the core, made mostly of carbon, turns into a diamond, but we have had no evidence supporting that thesis. That all changed in 2004, when astronomers were able to use gong-like pulsations emanating from Lucy to determine that its core was a really big diamond and developed the model pictured above. [ The rest of the story]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lhbd8fObtJ1qzufnjo1_1280.jpg)
![Sunrise Solstice at Stonehenge Credit & Copyright: Max Alexander, STFC, SPL [via NASA APOD ]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l4gf86m8Z41qzufnjo1_500.jpg)
![keconway:
itsfullofstars:
unknownskywalker:
APEX Snaps First Close-up of Star Factories in Distant Universe
Astronomers were observing a massive galaxy cluster with APEX telescope, using submillimetre wavelengths of light, when they found a new and uniquely bright galaxy, more distant than the cluster and the brightest very distant galaxy ever seen at submillimetre wavelengths. It is so bright because the cosmic dust grains in the galaxy are glowing after being heated by starlight. The new galaxy has been given the name SMM J2135-0102.
The new galaxy is so bright because of the massive galaxy cluster that lies in the foreground. The vast mass of this cluster bends the light of the more distant galaxy, acting as a gravitational lens. As with a telescope, it magnifies and brightens our view of the distant galaxy. Thanks to a fortuitous alignment between the cluster and the distant galaxy, the latter is strongly magnified by a factor of 32.
This magnification means that the star-forming clouds can be picked out in the galaxy, down to a scale of only a few hundred light-years. To see this level of detail without the help of the gravitational lens would need future telescopes such as ALMA, which is currently under construction. This lucky discovery has therefore given astronomers a unique preview of the science that will be possible in a few years time.
These “star factories” are similar in size to those in the Milky Way, but one hundred times more luminous, suggesting that star formation in the early life of these galaxies is a much more vigorous process than typically found in nearer galaxies. SMM J2135-0102 is stimated to be producing stars at a rate of 250 Suns per year. The star formation in its large dust clouds is unlike that in the nearby Universe, but observations also suggest that astronomers should be able to use similar underlying physics from the densest stellar nurseries in nearby galaxies to understand star birth in these more distant galaxies.
Image: Artist’s impression by M. Kornmesser (ESO). Click for high resolution. [via]
Credit: ESO
The universe, so massive, so complex, so amazing, and all made of quantum foam ;)](http://www.eso.org/public/archives/images/screen/eso1012a.jpg)
