Orion Movie

Crab Nebula

 

Enlightenment

The Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment opened a path for independent thought, and the fields of mathematics, astronomy, physics, politics, economics, philosophy, and medicine were drastically updated and expanded. The amount of new knowledge that emerged was staggering. Just as important was the enthusiasm with which people approached the Enlightenment: intellectual salons popped up in France, philosophical discussions were held, and the increasingly literate population read books and passed them around feverishly. The Enlightenment and all of the new knowledge thus permeated nearly every facet of civilized life.

When will we experience the next enlightenment? We need enlightenment 2.0 don't you think? I think so. Think

Huge Super Nova

Explanation: What could cause a bang this big? This supernova explosion was so inherently bright that it could be seen nearly 5 billion light years away (a redshift of 0.28) even with a small telescope. Specific colors emitted during SN 2005ap indicate that it was a Type II supernova, a breed of stellar explosion that results when a high mass star begins fusing heavy elements in or near its core. Type II supernovas may be more powerful than their Type Ia cousins, but they are not currently more useful cosmologically because astronomers don't understand how to accurately recover their intrinsic brightnesses. It is therefore dimmer Type Ia supernovas that are used by astronomers to calibrate the distance scale of the nearby universe. Were Type II supernova better understood, astronomers might be able to probe distances further into the universe, and so probe the stability of the strange dark energy that dominates the present universe. Pictured above in a digitally compressed image, the bright supernova SN 2005ap is visible on the right where no exploding star had been seen on the left less than three months before.

NGC 1672

NGC 1672, visible from the Southern Hemisphere, is seen almost face on and shows regions of intense star formation. The greatest concentrations of star formation are found in the so-called starburst regions near the ends of the galaxy's strong galactic bar. NGC 1672 is a prototypical barred spiral galaxy and differs from normal spiral galaxies in that the spiral arms do not twist all the way into the centre. Instead, they are attached to the two ends of a straight bar of stars enclosing the nucleus.

Look up

Look up at night and wonder at the wonder of our universe.

Pleiades Cluster (M45)

"For my part, I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of stars makes me dream." -- Vincent van Gogh

Starry Night

"For my part, I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of stars makes me dream." -- Vincent van Gogh

Dream

"For my part, I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of stars makes me dream." -- Vincent van Gogh

Just one of the reasons I like Vincent van Gogh. Scientists are dreamers of the best kind, reasoned.

4 Galaxy Pileup

For Release: August 6, 2007

Four galaxies are slamming into each other and kicking up billions of stars in one of the largest cosmic smash-ups ever observed.

The clashing galaxies, spotted by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, will eventually merge into a single, behemoth galaxy up to 10 times as massive as our own Milky Way. This rare sighting provides an unprecedented look at how the most massive galaxies in the universe form.

"Most of the galaxy mergers we already knew about are like compact cars crashing together," said Kenneth Rines of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass. "What we have here is like four sand trucks smashing together, flinging sand everywhere." Rines is lead author of a new paper accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Collisions, or mergers, between galaxies are common in the universe. Gravity causes some galaxies that are close together to tangle and ultimately unite over a period of millions of years. Though stars in merging galaxies are tossed around like sand, they have a lot of space between them and survive the ride. Our Milky Way galaxy will team up with the Andromeda galaxy in five billion years.

Kind of reminds me of Iraq + Afghanistan + Al Qaeda + USA

Are We Alone?

Astronomers have found more than 200 planets beyond our solar system. The nearest one known lies 10.5 light-years away and orbits the star Epsilon Eridani. I really hope we are not alone. Living in Kuwait I feel alone sometime. I hope their is intelligent life outside our solar system and that we get the chance to interact with them.

Astronomy Photo Album

So click on the title to this post to see my first web based (Picasa) photo album devoted to astronomy. Astronomy is a love of mine, especially viewing the spectactual photos taken from space based telescopes and probes sent from Earth to Jupiter, Saturn and beyond! The Hubble photos of deep space objects really put life into perspective for me. We can't be alone. And my hope is that we are not the best.

It's all about where you place your efforts

In Iraq the Sunni's and Shiites are blowing up each others holy shrines, killing each other by decapatation. While up in space the US, Russia, Japan and the ESA are working together on the International Space Station trying to fix a problem with a computer that helps maintain the orientation of the ISS and regulate the oxygen. So what is a better use of your time? Cooperating to take humanity into the last frontier or killing each other? I'll let you decide. For me I want to be on the International Space Station fixing the computer rather than down here in Kuwait designing computer and communications systems.

More Extrsolar Planets

Water World: Extrasolar planet is loaded with hot ice
Ron Cowen
Astronomers have found a Neptune-size planet outside the solar system that's composed mainly of water—albeit in solid form. With a torrid surface temperature of 600 kelvins, the planet can't support life. But its existence bodes well for finding watery planets that could provide a haven for life, say Frédéric Pont of the Geneva Observatory in Sauverny, Switzerland, and his colleagues, who report the discovery in an upcoming Astronomy & Astrophysics Letters.

So I have to hope that we find a Earth-like planet and we can communicate with them and we find out that their is hope for intelligent life. I hope that their is a planet where war is not raging and where cooperation is one of the highest ideals.

Another Earth?

Exoplanets
Sister Earth
Apr 25th 2007 EARTHFrom Economist.com
Is there anybody out there?
IF EXTRATERRESTRIAL life were to exist, it would need a planet on which to evolve. All but one of 200-or-so planets outside the solar system discovered by astronomers so far would be quite unsuitable. That is because these planets are composed of gas. Yet the one whose discovery was announced in the early hours of Wednesday April 25th is different. Astronomers think it is rocky, like the Earth, and that it may harbour liquid water. This makes it the best candidate yet for supporting life.
The planet in question orbits a star called Gliese 581 that lies a mere 20 light years away in the constellation Libra. The temperature of the sun is such that it supports nuclear fusion that generates bright sunlight. By contrast, Gliese 581 is a red dwarf, so-called because the star is small and the fusion reaction proceeds slowly, creating a dim glow. Nevertheless, because the planet is much closer to its star than the Earth is to the sun, it lies in what astronomers call the "habitable zone"-the region surrounding a star where water would be liquid.
Seeing such faint objects is difficult. Astronomers used to detect them by indirect methods, such as picking up a small wobble in the position of the star that indicated it was being pulled very slightly towards an orbiting planet. New telescopes and techniques have found other exoplanets directly, by sensing a slight fading in the luminosity of the star as the planet crosses its face. But these techniques only work with massive planets and, in general, giant planets are gaseous.
Looking for planets orbiting red dwarfs is easier because the stars are less massive. This not only means that any planets orbit much more closely but also that the wobbles are more readily seen. The researchers—a team of Swiss, French and Portuguese planet-hunters using a telescope based in Chile—used an indirect method called the “radial velocity” technique. This exploits the Doppler effect familiar when a siren changes pitch as the fire engine on which it is mounted speeds past you. Using this technique, changes in the velocity of the star—that is, the wobble caused by the previously unseen planet—can be measured extremely accurately.
The planet, dubbed Gliese 581c, has a radius 50% larger than this planet. It has five times the mass of the Earth and orbits its star every 13 days. The same team of astronomers who discovered it had earlier found another planet, this time a gaseous giant similar to Neptune, orbiting the same star every 5.4 days. They say they have strong evidence for another planet in the same system that has about eight times the mass of the Earth and orbits every 84 days. The evidence is reported in a paper submitted to Astronomy and Astrophysics.
According to theory, a planet the size and mass of Gliese 581c should be rocky, like the Earth. It could, too, be covered in oceans, perhaps completely. The mean temperature on the surface of the planet would be between 0°C and 40°C, making it far more hospitable than either Venus or Mars, Earth’s nearest neighbours.
The race is now on to detect whether the planet has an atmosphere and whether it contains water. Just a fortnight ago, astronomers using the Hubble space telescope identified water vapour in the atmosphere of an exoplanet, albeit a gaseous exoplanet some 150 light years away. The planet, called HD209458b, passes in front of the Earth every three-and-a-half days, making accurate measurements possible over time.
Even if Gliese 581c turns out to be void of little green men, there is time yet. The sun is thought to be about 5 billion years old and halfway through its lifetime as a “main sequence” star. After that it is expected to become a red giant, as the hydrogen that presently comprises it is exhausted and the sun switches to burning helium instead. At that point, the Earth’s atmosphere and water will be boiled away, leaving the planet uninhabitable.

Red dwarfs, meanwhile, burn for hundreds of billions of years. This not only gives plenty of time for life to evolve on the recently discovered planet. It may make the place a useful bolthole in some 5 billion years’ time.

From Astronomer to Suicide Bomber

In astronomy many words come from the Arabic people. Two examples are zenith and nadir;

Zenith - the point on the celestial sphere vertically above a given position or observer. From Arabic samt (ar-ra's), path (over the head).

Nadir- the point on the celestial sphere directly beneath a given position or observer and diametrically opposite the zenith. From Arabic naīr (as-samt),

How do you go from observing the heavens, from being some of the first astronomers to stapping explosives to your body and killing yourself and as many people as you can?

Topics of interest to me

I work six days a week and spend my off time studying astronomy and middle eastern history. Astronomy holds my greatest interest and the issues of cosmology are very interesting - black holes, the event horizon, big bang, string theory; all hold many interesting concepts to contemplate. On my drive to and from work I listen to astronomy pod casts from Astronomy Cast, Slaker Astronomy and a college level astronomy course. The iPod is great, I am using a mini iPod now but want to get a video iPod in a few months as more or more interesting content is becoming available, especially in the area of astronomy.

Astronomy

The Arabs were astronomers and contribued to the science of astronomy. Their is a great podcast from Astronomy Cast (http://www.astronomycast.com) that talks not only about intersting astronomy subjects but talks about how we know what we know. It is very interesting to understand how we know what we know. This looking back to how we know what we know is something we should do in all areas of knowledge. You can also subscribe to the Astronomy pod cast by going to iTunes and searching for "Astronomy Cast"