The Carina Nebula: Star Birth in the Extreme

This image, released for Hubble Space Telescope's 17th anniversary, shows a region of star birth and death in the Carina Nebula. The nebula contains at least a dozen brilliant stars that are 50 to 100 times the mass of our Sun.

Download Full Resolution Images:

JPEG | 200.06 MB | 29566x14321px
http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2007-16-a-full_jpg.jpg

TIFF | 479.08 MB | 29566x14321px
http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2007-16-a-full_tif.tif

Credit: NASA, ESA, N. Smith (University of California, Berkeley), and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Auroras In The Night Sky Over Norway

January 22, 2012

Aurora over Tromvik, Troms Fylke, Norway

January 24, 2012

Aurora over Tromso, northern Norway

Astrophoto: Purple Orion

This beautiful photo of the Orion Nebula was taken by Marco T. in Italy on January 25, 2012. It was taken with a Canon 500d, and a Skywatcher Black Diamond ED80 Pro

“Sum of 32 shots of 85 seconds at 800 iso and 10 darks,” Marco says. “From Rome so light pollution is high as always, temperature 2 degrees.”

Comparing The Size Of Planets & Stars

Relative sizes of the planets in the Solar System and several well known stars, including VY Canis Majoris.
1. Mercury < Mars < Venus < Earth
2. Earth < Neptune < Uranus < Saturn < Jupiter
3. Jupiter < Wolf 359 < Sun < Sirius
4. Sirius < Pollux < Arcturus < Aldebaran
5. Aldebaran < Rigel < Antares < Betelgeuse
6. Betelgeuse < Mu Cephei < VV Cephei A < VY Canis Majoris.

What Would Happen If VY Canis Majoris Went NOVA!? =O

When VY Canis Majoris dies, it will die as a core-collapse supernova or even a hyper-nova depending on it’s mass and composition. It’s huge size does not necessarily mean it will explode as a hyper-nova and give rise to a gamma ray burst when some or all of the star becomes a black hole. Even so, it’s much more likely to explode as a core-collapse supernova that will produce a neutron star or a black hole depending on what happens when it’s core is converted into iron. When that happens, the outer layers will initially be ejected back into space at speeds of 5,000 miles per second or more, and the wreckage will outshine the entire galaxy for weeks or months. If VY Canis Majoris had any planets, they would be at the minimum ejected into space due to the sudden loss of 90 percent or more of the star’s mass back to space. Their atmospheres and surface water if present would be flash boiled away into space, and likely their surfaces would melt from being hit with billions of times more energy than they received before. It’s indeed possible they would simply be vaporized in the explosion. If there are any life bearing planets within a few light years of VY Canis Majoris when it blows, all life would be destroyed. Any inhabited planets within 30 or 50 light years of the explosion will either be sterilized or suffer severe mass extinctions due to the massive blast of gamma and x-rays disrupting the ozone layer. Dangerous, even deadly doses of radiation will kill or injure any complex, multi-cellular life forms but single cell microbes can withstand radiation fields that would instantly kill humans and most other higher forms of life. Star systems farther away would be exposed to much more ionizing radiation and cosmic rays, which would induce mutations and leave traces in the soil, ice sheets and oceans, but would not trigger wide spread die offs of species wholesale. From several hundred light years away, VY Canis Majoris’ demise would be no threat to a habitable planet, but a bonanza for astronomers interested in the lives and deaths of stars and how they made our own existence possible. If however, VY Canis Majoris is massive enough and has the right composition to explode as a hyper-nova, the resulting gamma ray burst will destroy life on planets caught in the jets spat out by the newly born black hole thousands of light years away. These jets form along the doomed star’s axis of rotation, and are highly focused like laser beams. If an inhabited planet is not in the way, it would survive unharmed unless it was in close proximity to the supernova. A planet or life on that planet caught in the jet is doomed. Planets within a 100 light years would melt or vaporize from the jet’s onslaught, which are composed of high energy plasma moving at nearly the speed of light.

A Raging Storm On Saturn

It is one of the largest and longest lived storms ever recorded in our Solar System. First seen late last year, the above cloud formation in the northern hemisphere of Saturn started larger than the Earth and soon spread completely around the planet. The storm has been tracked not only from Earth but from up close by the robotic Cassini-Huygens spacecraft currently orbiting Saturn. Pictured above in false colored infrared in February, orange colors indicate clouds deep in the atmosphere, while light colors highlight clouds higher up. The rings of Saturn are seen nearly edge-on as the thin blue horizontal line. The warped dark bands are the shadows of the rings cast onto the cloud tops by the Sun to the upper left. A source of radio noise from lightning, the intense storm may relate to seasonal changes as spring slowly emerges in the north of Saturn.

Largest Star Known To Man!!

VY Canis Majoris (VY CMa) is the largest known star and also one of the most luminous. Located in the constellation Canis Major, it is a red hypergiant, between 1800 and 2100 solar radii, 8.4–9.8 astronomical units in radius, about 3.0 billion km or 1.9 billion miles in diameter, and about 1.5 kiloparsecs (4,900 light years, 4.6×1016 km or 2.9×1016 mi) distant from Earth. Unlike most hypergiant stars, which occur in either binary or multiple star systems, VY CMa is a single star. It is categorized as a semiregular variable and has an estimated period of 2,000 days. It has an average density of 0.000005 to 0.000010 kg/m3.

Placed at the center of our solar system, VY Canis Majoris’s surface would extend beyond the orbit of Saturn, although the astrophysicists Philip Massey, Emily Levesque and Bertrand Plez disagree about the star’s stated radius, suggesting it is smaller: merely 600 times the size of the Sun, extending past the orbit of Mars.