Astronomers are puzzled by new burst of very short radio pulse emissions from a distant galaxy. Could the source of these emissions be from a rapidly spinning neutron star or black hole or a sign of an alien civilization?

 

The new fast radio burst, designated FRB121102, is a series of 15 pulses just milliseconds long and is the only one known to be repeating. Earlier last month astronomers in WV not only detected the 15 pulses also found them to be at a higher radio frequency than was ever observed before . Astronomers have detected many pulses from this source for years but never at a frequency this high.

What is interesting about FSB 121102 is that it doesn't behave like other objects, such as pulsars, that emit similar signals. Usually, pulsars emit signals in a smooth fashion over many different frequencies. FBS 121102 doesn't fit that same pattern. Is it aliens or a fast-spinning star? Stay tuned.

Where were you on August 20, 1977??? I had just begun my sophomore year at Corbin High School. The Big Red Machine had acquired Tom Seaver just 66 days earlier from the Mets. "Best of My Love" by the Emotions was the #1 song in the country.

 

More importantly for humanity, that was the day that Voyager 2 was launched. 16 days later, on September 5, Voyager I was launched into space, destined for the outer limits of the Solar System and beyond.

 

Voyager 1 and 2 have become the longest operating and most distant spacecraft from Earth. Nearly 16 light-hours(about 10.7 billion miles) from the Sun, Voyager 2 has reached the edge of the heliosphere, the realm defined by the influence of the solar wind and the Sun's magnetic field. Now humanity's first ambassador to the Milky Way, Voyager 1 is over 19 light-hours(about 12.7 billion miles) away, beyond the heliosphere in interstellar space.

 

NASA and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum will celebrate 40 years of the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft -- humanity's farthest and longest-lived mission -- with a public event at 12:30 p.m. EDT), Tuesday, Sept. 5. For BGP'ers who are interested in tuning in to the event, it will be broadcast live on NASA Television and streamed on the agency’s website.

 

Activities will include panel discussions about the Voyagers’ creation and mission history, their unprecedented science findings and imagery, impact on Earth’s culture and how the spacecraft inspired countless scientists, engineers and the next generation of explorers. The event also will include a galactic message transmitted toward the Voyager 1 spacecraft by a celebrity guest.

 

The Voyagers’ original mission was to explore Jupiter and Saturn. Although the twin spacecraft are now far beyond the planets in the solar system, NASA continues to communicate with them daily as they explore the frontier where interstellar space begins.

What powers the Heart Nebula? The large emission nebula dubbed IC 1805 looks, in whole, like a heart. The nebula's glow -- as well as the shape of the gas and dust clouds -- is powered by by stellar winds and radiation from massive hot stars in the nebula's newborn star cluster Melotte 15. The deep telescopic image that I have for your viewing pleasure below maps the pervasive light of narrow emission lines from atoms of hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur in the nebula. The field of view spans just over two degrees on the sky, so that it appears larger than four times the diameter of a full moon. The cosmic heart is found in the constellation of Cassiopeia, the boastful mythical Queen of Aethiopia .

 

Keep this going SF. Intriguing material.

Our universe is so amazing!

Keep this going SF. Intriguing material.

Our universe is so amazing!

 

I can't tell you how much I appreciate you reading the thread. I hope the readers find my cosmic musings interesting. Please feel free to chime in anytime you want. I love hearing from you folks. You are so right, Professor, our universe is so incredible!!!

For those who were in a totality zone on Aug. 21, what did you enjoy most about the eclipse? The corona is typically the star(no pun intended) of the show. However, there are many more wonders of a total eclipse to enjoy. How did you like the diamond ring??? Wasn't it awesome? Here's a pic of clouds in South Carolina drifting towards the Sun's diamond ring. The clouds look kinda like smoke. Almost looks like something's on fire. Oh yeah, it is on fire... It's the Sun!!!

 

As the Moon's shadow swept across the US on August 21, eclipse chasers in the narrow path of totality were treated to a diamond ring in the sky. At the beginning and end of totality, the fleeting and beautiful effect often produces audible gasps from an amazed audience. It occurs just before or after the appearance of the faint solar corona with a brief ring of light and glimpse of Sun. The image below was captured near the end of totality in the central part of the Palmetto State.

 

Our Sun's Crown in all it's glory. All those years waiting to see this was well worth it.

During a total solar eclipse, the Sun's extensive outer atmosphere, or corona, is an inspirational(and may I say, even a spiritual) sight. Streamers and shimmering features visible to the eye span a brightness range of over 10,000 to 1, making them notoriously difficult to capture in a single photograph. But this composite of telescopic images covers a wide range of exposure times to reveal the crown of the Sun in all its glory. The aligned and stacked digital frames were taken in clear skies above Stanley, Idaho in the Sawtooth Mountains during the Sun's total eclipse on August 21. Look closely for the pinkish solar prominences extending just beyond the right edge of the solar disk. Even small details on the dark night side of the New Moon can be made out, illuminated by sunlight reflected from a Full Earth. Enjoy!!!

 

Earth-Moon Shadow Dance...

 

Many of us traveled several hours a couple weeks ago to see the Sun's light disappear for more than two minutes. Two weeks prior to that the Earth did a partial shadow dance across the Moon. We missed out on the lunar eclipse, which was observed in the eastern hemisphere. I don't think we can complain too much, though. We had the opportunity to host the big show on the 21st.

 

Here's what the partial lunar eclipse looked like. August's Full Moon is framed in this sharp, high dynamic range composition. Captured before sunrise on August 8 from Sydney, Australia, south is up and the curve of the Earth's dark, umbral shadow is at the left, near the maximum phase of a partial lunar eclipse.

 

Wonder how Kyrie Irving and the other flat-Earthers explain this???

 

I know this is an Astronomy 101 question, but who knows why we always see the same face of the Moon(the lunar nearside)? Btw, the same is true for Neptune and its largest moon, Triton. If you were on Neptune , you would always see the same side of Triton. Why???

A Galaxy that has a huge case of the red shift...

 

Early last year the Hubble Space Telescope calculated the distance to the farthest galaxy ever measured--- a staggering 13.39 billion LY, or about 78,714,793,746,900,000,000,000 miles. (That's a lot!!!) The discovery provided scientists with a deep look into the history of the universe.

 

The far-away galaxy, named GN-z11, existed a mere 400 million years after the Big Bang, or about 13.3 billion years ago. Because the light from such a distant galaxy must travel huge distances to reach Earth, scientists are seeing the galaxy as it looked over 13 billion years ago. BGP'ers, we have managed to look back in time to measure the distance to a galaxy when the universe was only 3 percent of its present age. Incredible!!!

 

Measuring the distance to an extremely far-off cosmic object poses many challenges to scientists, including the fact that the universe is expanding, and has been expanding for nearly all of time. Any distance measurement must take into account exactly how much the space between objects has stretched since an object's light left and traveled to Earth.

 

To determine this for GN-z11, scientists measured the degree to which the light from the galaxy has been shifted by the expanding universe, known as redshift. A higher redshift indicates a more distant object. Previously, the highest redshift ever measured was from the galaxy EGSY8p7, whose redshift was 8.68. The GN-z11 galaxy's newly measured redshift is a whopping 11.1.!

 

If GN-z11 existed 400 million years after the Big Bang, then it belongs to the very first population of stars and galaxies to form in the cosmos. At that time, the universe was just emerging from a period known as the Dark Ages.

 

Observations from Hubble revealed that GNz-11 is 25 times smaller than the Milky Way galaxy and has only about 1 percent the total stellar mass of the Milky Way. Still, that's a pretty massive galaxy for one that formed just 200 or 300 million years after the very first stars started to form.

 

GNz11 is forming stars at 20 times the current rate of the Milky Way, which explains , in part why such a distant galaxy was bright enough to be observed by Hubble. Previous work by scientists had seemed to indicate that galaxies as bright as this one should not have been able to form at such an early point in the history of the universe. I think it shows that knowledge about the very early history of the universe , including how GNz-11 formed, still remains shrouded in quite a bit of mystery. We are probably now seeing the first generation of stars forming around black holes.

 

I can't wait to see what the James Webb Space telescope reveals to us about these very distant galaxies. With the launch of Webb next year, we are truly on the precipice of seeing back in time to the very beginning of the universe. SO DARN EXCITING !!!

The galaxy that I spoke of last night, GN-z11, the most distant ever found, is actually considerably farther than 13.4 billion LY away. It took 13.4 billion years for light from the galaxy to zoom through the universe and collide with the Hubble Space Telescope.

The universe has been expanding in the meantime, meaning GN-z11 is actually much, much farther from Earth than that, likely about 32 billion LY. That's really far!!! Of course, the galaxy in its present form would look very different than what Hubble sees now.

 

GN-z11's Red Shift of 11 is mind-blowing. However, for some perspective, light from the cosmic microwave background—a remnant of the Big Bang—has a redshift of 1,089. :scared:

Kind of a neat graphic showing the timeline of the universe and the red shift of the distant galaxy I wrote about above .

 

Cassini has only a few more orbits around Saturn before it dives into the giant ringed-world on September 15. Stay tuned to this space for updates .

The galaxy that I spoke of last night, GN-z11, the most distant ever found, is actually considerably farther than 13.4 billion LY away. It took 13.4 billion years for light from the galaxy to zoom through the universe and collide with the Hubble Space Telescope.

The universe has been expanding in the meantime, meaning GN-z11 is actually much, much farther from Earth than that, likely about 32 billion LY. That's really far!!! Of course, the galaxy in its present form would look very different than what Hubble sees now.

 

GN-z11's Red Shift of 11 is mind-blowing. However, for some perspective, light from the cosmic microwave background—a remnant of the Big Bang—has a redshift of 1,089. :scared:

 

Btw, 32 billion LY is in the neighborhood of 192,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles !!! That's a way yonder out there as Andy Griffith might have said.

40 years ago today..... Do you know what happened?

 

Yep, Voyager 1 launched from Earth and thus began one of the greatest explorations of the Solar System ever conducted.

 

What are those spots on Jupiter? Largest and furthest, just right of center, is the Great Red Spot -- a huge storm system that has been raging on Jupiter possibly since Giovanni Cassini's likely notation of it 352 years ago. It is not yet known why this Great Spot is red. The spot toward the lower left is one of Jupiter's largest moons: Europa. Images from Voyager in 1979 bolster the modern hypothesis that Europa has an underground ocean and is therefore a good place to look for extraterrestrial life. But what about the dark spot on the upper right? Anyone know what that is?

 

Sixteen frames from Voyager 1's flyby of Jupiter in 1979 were recently reprocessed and merged to create the image below.