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M_45_and_the_Moon.jpgThe Pleiades "obscured" by the Moon60 visite"...There is no point to Life; though there is a point to Art..."
frase attribuita a Kingsley Amis (1922 - 1995)MareKromium
(9 voti)
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Venusian_Atmosphere-Airglow_VIRTIS_Anticlockwise-01.jpgThe "Airglow" of Venus59 visiteOne year has passed since 11 April 2006, when Venus Express, Europe’s first mission to Venus and the only spacecraft now in orbit around the planet, reached its destination. Since then, this advanced probe, born to explore one of the most mysterious planetary bodies in the Solar System, has been revealing planetary details never caught before.
Intensively visited by several Russian and American probes from the 60s to the early 90s, Venus has always represented a puzzling target for scientists worldwide to observe. Venus Express, designed and built in record time by ESA, was conceived with the purpose of studying Venus - unvisited since 1994 - in the most comprehensive and systematic way ever, to provide a long-due tribute to a planet so interesting, yet cryptic.
Using state-of-the-art instrumentation, Venus Express is approaching the study of Venus on a global scale. The space probe is collecting information about Venus’ noxious and restless atmosphere (including its clouds and high-speed winds, as seen from this video obtained with the VMC camera on board) and its interaction with the solar wind and the interplanetary environment. Last but not least, it is looking for signs of surface activity, such as active volcanism. MareKromium
(9 voti)
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NGC-2237-PIA09268.jpgNGC 2237 - The "Rosette Nebula", and Globular Star Cluster NGC 224476 visite"...Ad paenitendem properat, cito qui iudicat..:"
(P. Siro)
"...Presto si pente colui che giudica frettolosamente..."MareKromium
(9 voti)
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AuroraBorealis-Alaska.jpgAurora over Alaska63 visiteCaption NASA:"Higher than the highest mountain, higher than the highest airplane, lies the realm of the aurora. Aurora rarely reach below 60 Km, and can range up to 1000. Aurora light results from solar shockwave causing energetic electrons and protons to striking molecules in the Earth's atmosphere. Frequently, when viewed from space, a complete aurora will appear as a circle around one of the Earth's magnetic poles. The above digitally enhanced photograph was taken in 2005 January shows a spectacular aurora borealis above the frozen landscape of Bear Lake, Alaska, USA.
The above image was voted Wikipedia Commons Picture of the Year for 2006".
(9 voti)
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NGC-1672.jpgBarred Spiral Galaxy NGC 167273 visite"...The babe in the cradle is closing his eyes
The blossom embraces the bee.
But soon, says a whisper:
Arise, arise,
Tomorrow belongs to me..."
Dal Musical "Cabaret"
(9 voti)
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AlienWorld-PIA09228.jpgTwin Suns' Sunset60 visiteOur solitary sunsets here on Earth might not be all that common in the grand scheme of things. New observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have revealed that mature planetary systems -- dusty disks of asteroids, comets and possibly planets -- are more frequent around close-knit twin, or binary, stars than single stars like our sun. That means sunsets like the one portrayed in this artist's photo concept, and more famously in the movie "Star Wars," might be quite commonplace in the universe.
Binary and multiple-star systems are about twice as abundant as single-star systems in our galaxy, and, in theory, other galaxies. In a typical binary system, two stars of roughly similar masses twirl around each other like pair-figure skaters. In some systems, the two stars are very far apart and barely interact with each other. In other cases, the stellar twins are intricately linked, whipping around each other quickly due to the force of gravity.
Astronomers have discovered dozens of planets that orbit around a single member of a very wide stellar duo. Sunsets from these worlds would look like our own, and the second sun would just look like a bright star in the night sky.
But do planets exist in the tighter systems, where two suns would dip below a planet's horizon one by one? Unveiling planets in these systems is tricky, so astronomers used Spitzer to look for disks of swirling planetary debris instead. These disks are made of asteroids, comets and possibly planets. The rocky material in them bangs together and kicks up dust that Spitzer's infrared eyes can see. Our own solar system is swaddled in a similar type of disk.
Surprisingly, Spitzer found more debris disks around the tightest binaries it studied (about 20 stars) than in a comparable sample of single stars. About 60 percent of the tight binaries had disks, while the single stars only had about 20 percent. These snug binary systems are as close or closer than just three times the distance between Earth and the sun. And the disks in these systems were found to circumnavigate both members of the star pair, rather than just one.
Though follow-up studies are needed, the results could mean that planet formation is more common around extra-tight binary stars than single stars. Since these types of systems would experience double sunsets, the artistic view portrayed here might not be fiction.
The original sunset photo used in this artist's concept was taken by Robert Hurt of the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif.
(9 voti)
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Rising_Moon.jpgRising Moon74 visiteCaption NASA:"What's happening to the Moon? Drifting around the Earth in 2006 July, astronauts from the International Space Station (ISS) captured a crescent Moon floating far beyond the horizon. The captured above image is interesting because part of the Moon appears blue, and because part of the moon appears missing.
Both effects are created by the Earth's atmosphere. Air molecules more efficiently scatter increasingly blue light, making the clear day sky blue for ground observers, and the horizon blue for astronauts.
Besides reflecting sunlight, these atmospheric molecules also deflect moonlight, making the lower part of the Moon appear to fade away. As one looks higher in the photograph, the increasingly thin atmosphere appears to fade to black".
(9 voti)
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SOL1135-2N227121982EDNASY4P1558L0M1.jpgBright Sun, Dark Sky (1) - Sol 113559 visitenessun commento
(9 voti)
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Earth_Eclipse.jpgThe "Diamond Ring"...from the Moon!62 visiteUno splendido montaggio che ci mostra una ipotetica veduta dalla Luna di un Eclisse Totale di Sole. Bellissima ricostruzione, davvero, ma...c'è un errore davvero grande in questa "Scena di fantasia": durante una eclissi totale di Sole (ed anche nel momento in cui si forma l'Anello di Diamante - come in questa immagine) la superficie della Luna si troverebbe immersa nella più totale oscurità e quindi risulterebbe ai nostri occhi solo appena distinguibile, in forma di vaghe e quasi indefinibili ombre scure, con le stelle ben visibili nel cielo.
Ma va bene lo stesso...
Caption NASA:"Parts of Saturday's (March 3) lunar eclipse will be widely visible. For example, skywatchers in Europe, Africa, and western Asia will be able to see the entire spectacle of the Moon gliding through Earth's shadow, but in eastern North America the Moon will rise already in its total eclipse phase. Of course if you traveled to the Moon's near side, you could see the same event as a solar eclipse, with the disk of our fair planet Earth completely blocking out the Sun. For a moon-based observer's view, graphic artist Hana Gartstein (Haifa, Israel) offers this composite illustration. In the cropped version of her picture, an Apollo 17 image of Earth is surrounded with a red-tinted haze as sunlight streams through the planet's dusty atmosphere. Earth's night side remains faintly visible, still illuminated by the dark, reddened Moon, but the disk of the Earth would appear almost four times the size of the Sun's disk, so the faint corona surrounding the Sun would be largely obscured. At the upper left, the Sun itself is just emerging from behind the Earth's limb".MareKromium
(9 voti)
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Dunes-Migrating_Dunefields-PCF-LXTT.jpgThree moments of the "Dunes' Migration Process" (an Image-Mosaic by Dr Paolo C. Fienga - Lunexit Team)65 visiteForse noi ci affanniamo per nulla. Forse dovremmo smetterla di cercare congruenze, incongruenze, similitudini, singolarità, anomalìe e quant'altro.
Forse dovremmo, davvero, "piantarla lì", e metterci a cercare le "rovine" delle Antiche Civiltà Marziane. Probabilmente finiremmo con il farci ridere dietro anche dai più beceri fra i Ricercatori ma, nel processo, probabilmente riusciremmo anche ad acquisire un poco di "Visibilità" (e, magari, qualche soldo).
Già, "Visibilità".
E perché “Visibilità”?
Perchè senza "Visibilità", le Fondazioni e le Associazioni che fanno della Ricerca il loro scopo, nel tempo (in fondo nemmeno tanto), finiscono con il morire.
E non solo per una "cronica mancanza di fondi" (una malattia, anch'essa, assai temibile e spesso mortifera), bensì per "consunzione".
Consunzione, ovvero un misto di stupore, rabbia, noia e, alla fine, sconcerto. Un mix di sentimenti davvero letale.
Quel mix che, ogni volta che ci capita di leggere qualche nuova "strabiliante scoperta" sulle summenzionate "Antiche Civiltà Marziane", riesce a farci passare la voglia anche di metterci a dibattere.
E si: perchè, nel momento in cui lo facessimo (seriamente), non otterremmo altro se non lo scopo perseguito dai Fautori di questa nuova (e sempre più ridicola) pseudo-Scienza.
Quale scopo? Ma è ovvio: acquisire "Visibilità"!...
Nel montaggio: movimenti compatti di Campi di Dune le quali, viste e considerate anche le loro forme ed orientazioni, sembrano provenire dai rilievi infossati che giacciono nei loro pressi.
Forse una coincidenza, forse un indizio.
Che cosa sono, realmente, le “Dune Migranti”?...
(9 voti)
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SOL1103-2N224289287EFFASJ0P0775L0M1.jpgA lonely Dust Devil is passing-by... - Sol 1103 (false colors)66 visitenessun commento
(9 voti)
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HD-209458b-00.jpgExtra-Solar Planet HD-209458b (1)59 visiteThe powerful vision of NASA's HST has allowed astronomers to study for the first time the layer-cake structure of the atmosphere of a planet orbiting another star. HST discovered a dense upper layer of hot Hydrogen gas where the super-hot planet's atmosphere is bleeding off into space.
The planet, designated HD 209458b, is unlike any world in our Solar System. It orbits so close to its star and gets so hot that its gas is streaming into space, making the planet appear to have a comet-like tail. This new research reveals the layer in the planet's upper atmosphere where the gas becomes so heated it escapes, like steam rising from a boiler.
"The layer we studied is actually a transition zone where the temperature skyrockets from about 1340 deg. Fahrenheit (1000 Kelvin) to about 25.540 degrees (15.000 Kelvin), which is hotter than the Sun " said Gilda Ballester of the University of Arizona in Tucson, leader of the research team.
"With this detection we see the details of how a planet loses its atmosphere."
The findings by Ballester, David K. Sing of the University of Arizona and the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, and Floyd Herbert of the University of Arizona will appear Feb. 1 in a letter to the journal Nature.
The Hubble data show how intense ultraviolet radiation from the host star heats the gas in the upper atmosphere, inflating the atmosphere like a balloon. The gas is so hot that it moves very fast and escapes the planet's gravitational pull at a rate of 10,000 tons a second, more than three times the rate of water flowing over Niagara Falls. The planet, however, will not wither away any time soon. Astronomers estimate its lifetime is more than 5 billion years.
The scorched planet is a big puffy version of Jupiter. In fact, it is called a "hot Jupiter," a large gaseous planet orbiting very close to its parent star. Jupiter might even look like HD 209458b if it were close to the Sun, Ballester said.
The planet completes an orbit around its star every 3.5 days. It orbits 4.7 million miles from its host, 20 times closer than the Earth is to the Sun. By comparison, Mercury, the closest planet to our Sun, is 10 times farther away from the Sun than HD 209458b is from its star. Unlike HD 209458b, Mercury is a small ball of iron with a rocky crust.
(9 voti)
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