The Universe

[Confidemus]

kirk wouldnt get a look in for at least 2 minutes! i would be all up inside her!

I'd certainly give her the most astonishing 23 seconds of her life.

[Ric]

Recent Hubble imagery of two galaxies in the process of colliding.

http://www.space.com/21658-penguin-galaxy-crash-hubble-photo.html

The video is a decent watch, if a little light on detail, as it shows other colliding galaxies near the end.

[Confidemus]

Credit where credit's due, Ricardo.

Here's a rather nifty picture of the milky way over crater lake.

Explanation: How many different astronomical phenomena have come together to create the above vista? Several. First, in the foreground, is Crater Lake -- a caldera created by volcanism on planet Earth about 7,700 years ago. Next, inside the lake, is water. Although the origin of the water in the crater is melted snowfall, the origin of water on Earth more generally is unclear, but possibly related to ancient Earthly-impacts of icy bodies. Next, the green glow in the sky is airglow, light emitted by atoms high in the Earth's atmosphere as they recombine at night after being separated during the day by energetic sunlight. The many points of light in the sky are stars, glowing by nuclear fusion. They are far above the atmosphere but nearby to our Sun in the Milky Way Galaxy. Finally, the bright arch across the image is the central band of the Milky Way, much further away, on the average, than the nearby stars, and shaped mostly by gravity. Contrary to appearances, the Milky Way band glows by itself and is not illuminated by the airglow. The above image is a six-frame panorama taken during about two weeks ago in Oregon, USA.

Edited June 21, 2013 by Confidemus

[RandomGuy.]

I fucking love the Hubble telescope. I've never had any feelings towards any inanimate object before, but for some reason I love that bloody telescope

[Confidemus]

I fucking love the Hubble telescope. I've never had any feelings towards any inanimate object before, but for some reason I love that bloody telescope

Then you should probably check out this. The Hubble replacement James Webb Space Telescope:

http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/

[Bully Wee Villa]

I like the fact that when the Europeans built a very large telescope they decided to call it... The Very Large Telescope.

[Boghead ranter]

Recent Hubble imagery of two galaxies in the process of colliding.

http://www.space.com/21658-penguin-galaxy-crash-hubble-photo.html

The video is a decent watch, if a little light on detail, as it shows other colliding galaxies near the end.

That bottom bit's some kind of celestial penguin, surely.

[keptie]

I like the fact that when the Europeans built a very large telescope they decided to call it... The Very Large Telescope.

As Spock would say,perfectly logical

[Confidemus]

_{Scientists have discovered 3 "Super-Earths" orbiting nearby star Gliese 667C's habitable zone:}

_{http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23032467}

_{Scientists have identified three new planets around a star they already suspected hosted a trio of worlds.}

_{It means this relatively nearby star, Gliese 667C, now has three so-called super-Earths orbiting in its "habitable zone".}

_{This is the region where temperatures ought to allow for the possibility of liquid water, although no-one can say for sure what conditions are really like on these planets.}

_{Gliese 667C is 22 light-years away.}

_{Astronomers can see it on the sky in the constellation of Scorpius (The Scorpion).}

_{Previous studies of Gliese 667C had established there were very probably three planets around it, with its habitable zone occupied by one super-Earth - an object slightly bigger than our home world, but very probably with a rocky surface.}

_{Now, a team of astronomers led by Guillem Anglada-Escude of the University of Göttingen, Germany, and Mikko Tuomi, of the University of Hertfordshire, UK, has re-examined the system and raised the star's complement of planets.}

_{The researchers used a suite of telescopes including the 3.6m telescope at the Silla Observatory in Chile. This incorporates the high-precision Harps instrument. Harps employs an indirect method of detection that infers the existence of orbiting planets from the way their gravity makes a parent star appear to twitch in its motion across the sky.}

_{Full to bursting}

_{The planets' presence needs to be disentangled from this complex signal but the Harps instrument is recognised as having tremendous success in identifying smaller worlds.}

_{Gliese 667C is a low-luminosity "M-dwarf" star just over one-third the mass of our Sun.}

_{The Harps instrument has had great success at identifying super-Earths}

_{This means its habitable zone can be much closer in before temperatures make liquid water impossible. The team is now confident that three rocky worlds occupy this region at Gilese 667C.}

_{"Their estimated masses range from 2.7 to 3.8 that of the Earth's," Mikko Tuomi told BBC News.}

_{"However, we can only estimate the physical sizes by assuming certain compositions that is, well, only educated guessing.}

_{"Their orbital periods are 28, 39, and 62 days, which means that they all orbit the star closer to its surface than Mercury in our own system. Yet, the estimated surface temperatures enable the existence of liquid water on them because of the low luminosity and low mass of the star."}

_{These planets are said to completely fill the habitable zone. There are no more stable orbits in which to fit another planet.}

_{That said, the team has found tantalising evidence for what may be another rocky world on the inner-edge of the zone.}

_{Fruitful targets}

_{The planets would need an atmosphere to sustain liquid water on their surfaces, but at a distance of more than 200 trillion km, there are no means currently to determine what the precise conditions are like or whether life would have any chance of establishing itself.}

_{Nonetheless, Dr Tuomi believes M-dwarf stars are good candidates to go hunting for potentially habitable worlds.}

_{They are small enough that close-in rocky planets will show up well in the Harps Doppler spectroscopy data, but they are also dim enough that those close-orbiting worlds will not be roasted.}

_{"This discovery single-handedly demonstrates that low-mass stars can be hosts of several potentially habitable planets," explained Dr Tuomi.}

_{"In practice, it means that we might have to double or treble our estimates for the occurrence rate of habitable-zone planets around M-dwarf stars.}

_{"There might, in fact, be more habitable-zone planets in the Universe than there are stars, which makes it much easier for the future space missions to obtain images of these planets.}

_{"So, although only a rather simple discovery, its implications might force us to re-think how common habitable-zone planets are in the Universe."}

[Confidemus]

From the top - The Milky Way, Aurora Borealis and Iceland's Godafoss (Waterfall of the Gods).

You can alse see Jupiter and the Andromeda Galaxy if you look close enough. An incredible, incredible picture.

[Raidernation]

^{Been there, wonderful place Iceland. Never saw anything like that though.}

[Ric]

Saw this, thought I might add it onto this thread.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130710-moon-birth-impact-science-space-cover

It's all about how thinking is changing about the moon and how it was formed.

[Confidemus]

Morning space fans.

I thought I'd give you a little comparison on the age of the Universe.

If the whole 13.75 billion year life of the Universe could be condensed down to a 90 minute football game, humans would have been playing for the last 1/4 of a second of the match and the dinosaurs would have been sent off 25 seconds ago.

[NorthAyrshireKillie]

Morning space fans.

I thought I'd give you a little comparison on the age of the Universe.

If the whole 13.75 billion year life of the Universe could be condensed down to a 90 minute football game, humans would have been playing for the last 1/4 of a second of the match and the dinosaurs would have been sent off 25 seconds ago.

So essentially, if the human species was wiped out overnight, it would just be the plantet returning to "normal" ?

[FlyerTon]

UK Space Conference starts today in Glasgow:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-23319103

19,000 mph 'spaceplane' gets UK government funding:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/industry/10181438/19000mph-spaceplane-gets-Government-funding-to-spark-UK-space-race.html

[Confidemus]

So essentially, if the human species was wiped out overnight, it would just be the plantet returning to "normal" ?

Yep, pretty much. Modern humans have been around for about 200,000 years. A blip compared to the 4.5 billion year old Earth, and an even smaller blip compared to the 13.75 billion year old Universe.

[NorthAyrshireKillie]

Yep, pretty much. Modern humans have been around for about 200,000 years. A blip compared to the 4.5 billion year old Earth, and an even smaller blip compared to the 13.75 billion year old Universe.

But, but , but my teacher told me it was 2000 years old

[Mr. Brightside]

But, but , but my teacher told me it was 2000 years old

Did you go to a Creationist school?

[NorthAyrshireKillie]

Did you go to a Creationist school?

No, but my maths teacher was bat-shit crazy.

[Confidemus]

But, but , but my teacher told me it was 2000 years old

Did this teacher have a beard and leather elbow patches on his jacket?