Thursday 26 February 2015

Boomerang Nebula Hubble Astronomy iPad Mini Covers

Here's a great iPad case from Zazzle featuring a Hubble-related design. Maybe you'd like to see your name on it? Click to personalize and see what it's like!


tagged with: boomerang nebula, stars, nasa, astronomy, universe, outer space, hubble telescope, cosmos, nature, space picture, nebula, nebulae, esa, hubble space telescope, hubble photograph, hubble photo, astronomical, astrophotography, cosmology, space photograph, deep space, space, natural, science, space photo, space image, nebula picture, nebula photograph, nebula photo, nebula image, blue

Hubble photograph of the Boomerang Nebula

This photograph of the Boomerang Nebula was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1998. It shows the bow-tie-shaped nebula in beautiful blue and white colours, against a dark starry background.

Credit: NASA, ESA, R. Sahai and J. Trauger (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and the WFPC2 Science Team

You can personalise the design further if you'd prefer, such as by adding your name or other text, or adjusting the image - just click 'Customize it' to see all the options. IMPORTANT: If you choose a different sized version of the product, it's important to click Customize and check the image in the Design view to ensure it fills the area to the edge of the product, otherwise white edges may be visible.

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Perfume could be the riskiest gift you’ll ever buy

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Those of a nervous disposition might be better off buying chocolates. Özgür Mülazımoğlu When it comes to making

The post Perfume could be the riskiest gift you’ll ever buy has been published on Technology Org.

 
#materials 
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Perfume could be the riskiest gift you’ll ever buy

original post »

Those of a nervous disposition might be better off buying chocolates. Özgür Mülazımoğlu When it comes to making

The post Perfume could be the riskiest gift you’ll ever buy has been published on Technology Org.

 
#materials 
See Zazzle gifts tagged with 'science'

Vintage Astronomy, Celestial Planisphere Map Poster

Here's a great poster featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: planisphere, constellations, retro, antique, americana, vintage, celestial map, star chart, mythology, nostalgic, antique celestial

Vintage illustration celestial star chart map created in 1702 featuring astrological signs of the zodiac and other figures from Greek mythology. Planisphere Celeste featuring the constellations of the northern and southern night sky, planets (Mercury, Mars, Venus and Saturn), the phases of the moon and the sun. A mythological representation of our universe.

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Why the fight against climate change needs more win-win solutions

Science Focus

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This weekend, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its latest report, which amounts to the starkest warning yet that the world is on unsustainable path toward accelerated climate change. But in a survey filled with dour news, there was evidence that governments have hit on win-win solutions that can overcome the shortsighted political self-interest that has dogged the issue for decades.

The IPCC's Synthesis Report aims to summarize and contextualize a wide body of scientific work in language that policymakers can understand, in an effort to compel them to act in a way commensurate with the totality of the risk before them. It details the radical changes necessary to stave off a calamitous future of resource deprivation and extreme weather risk. If the world does not put itself on a path to zero-carbon by 2100, the probability is extremely high that we will not avoid the worst effects of global warming.

The topline findings underscore both the unprecedented nature of the warming we have experienced so far, as well as the conclusion, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that humans are responsible for it. "The period from 1983 to 2012 was likely the warmest 30-year period of the last 1400 years in the Northern Hemisphere," according to the IPCC. The blame is laid squarely on the energy source that served as a foundation for economic growth in the modern era: "Emissions of CO2 from fossil fuel combustion and industrial processes contributed about 78 percent of the total greenhouse gas emissions increase from 1970 to 2010."

There is no conceivable way, in the estimation of the scientific community, that we would be seeing such warming patterns without the actions of human beings.

The report also highlights climate change's profound geopolitical risk. While animal and plant species will suffer irreversible, lethal effects from radical changes in habitat, it is the effect on people that is ultimately most important — and no less dangerous. For the developing world in particular, the effects will be difficult to adapt to, and threaten to undermine the impressive record of economic growth and poverty alleviation experienced over the past 30 years.

The effect of such setbacks could be quite dire in the eyes of the IPCC: "Climate change can indirectly increase risks of violent conflicts by amplifying well-documented drivers of these conflicts such as poverty and economic shocks." For those who would doubt that climate change is a national security concern, this report should be a wake-up call.

Will another report from the United Nations actually change anything? The international community will have an opportunity to demonstrate that in Paris in 2015, when world leaders will meet to craft a follow-on agreement to the Kyoto Protocol. While countries have made impressive strides in goal-setting for emissions reductions, the pace of those reductions will not likely align with the low- to zero-carbon path the IPCC concludes is necessary to minimize risk. For example, the aggressive emissions reduction target announced by the European Union last week, while among the strongest plans yet proposed, may still not be ambitious enough.

The report's authors blame "inertia" for a lack of ambition when it comes to combating climate change, which is a polite and diplomatic way of pointing out a variety of obstacles: the vested interests of the fossil fuel industry and their political allies, as well as developing world countries that argue, not without merit, that their economic growth should be prioritized over emissions reductions.

This report does acknowledge that, in the short term, mitigation of climate change will pass down costs to consumers, even if they are balanced by avoiding the worst effects of future warming. Importantly, there are also some immediate benefits: energy security derived from reducing usage of imported fuel sources, as well as public health benefits from reducing particulate pollution.

The latter argument has been aggressively used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to justify the cost-effectiveness of its new rules regarding existing power plants. It also should be an attractive rationale for the smog-choked cities of India and China, two of the developing world's biggest carbon emitters, and other countries that have resisted calls for reducing pollution in the name of poverty alleviation.

Perhaps the key obstacle to greater international cooperation has been money. The developing world has long argued that the developed world needs to pony up some financial aid, due to their historical responsibility in emitting carbon into the atmosphere. To date, pledged contributions to the Green Climate Fund have lagged behind what was promised in previous years. A concrete pledge by the United States to contribute to the fund, even a token amount, would go a long way to assuring the developing world that the developed world is committed to following through on their pledges.

It would also buttress bilateral partnerships with India and China, both a priority for the Obama administration, to say nothing of private sector investments in clean energy diffusion.

One of the goals for Paris, then, will be to follow through on these promises and identify methodologies for creating more of these win-win situations, where climate change mitigation is paired with other immediate benefits, in a way which can be embraced by the widest possible range of participating nations. If even that attempt fails, then this planet and the people living on it will be on the path toward an unimaginably dire and dangerous future.

 
#science 
 » see original post http://theweek.com/articles/442546/fight-against-climate-change-needs-more-winwin-solutions
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MUSE goes beyond Hubble: Looking deeply into the universe in 3-D

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The MUSE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope has given astronomers the best ever three-dimensional view of the deep universe. After staring at the Hubble Deep Field South region for only 27 hours, the new observations reveal the distances, motions and other properties of far more galaxies than ever before in this tiny piece of the sky. They also go beyond Hubble and reveal previously invisible objects.

via Science Daily

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Pockets of calm protect molecules around a supermassive black hole

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Researchers have discovered regions where certain organic molecules somehow endure the intense radiation near the supermassive black hole at the center of galaxy NGC 1068, also known to amateur stargazers as M77.

via Science Daily

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Love and War by Moonlight

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Venus, named for the Roman goddess of love, and Mars, the war god's namesake, came together by moonlight in this lovely skyview, recorded on February 20 from Charleston, South Carolina, USA, planet Earth. Made in twilight with a digital camera, the three second time exposure also records earthshine illuminating the otherwise dark surface of the young crescent Moon. Of course, the Moon has moved on from this much anticipated triple conjunction. Venus still shines in the west though as the evening star, third brightest object in Earth's sky, after the Sun and the Moon itself. Seen here within almost a Moon's width of Venus, much fainter Mars approached even closer on the following evening. But Mars has since been moving slowly away from brilliant Venus, though Mars is still visible too in the western twilight.
Tomorrow's picture: pixels at sunset
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Horsehead Nebula - Our Awesome Universe Wall Graphic

Here's a great wall decal featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: breathtaking astronomy images, hrshdneb, stars, nebulae, star clusters, starfields, star nurseries, horsehead nebula, galaxies, vista, european southern observatory, eso

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A gorgeous deep space photograph featuring the Horsehead Nebula.
It's actually a composite colour image based on three exposures in the visual part of the spectrum with the FORS2 multi-mode instrument at the 8.2-m KUEYEN telescope at Paranal.

It was produced from three images, obtained on February 1, 2000, with the FORS2 multi-mode instrument at the 8.2-m KUEYEN Unit Telescope and extracted from the VLT Science Archive Facility.

The frames were obtained in the B-band (600 sec exposure; wavelength 429 nm; FWHM 88 nm; here rendered as blue), V-band (300 sec; 554 nm; 112 nm; green) and R-band (120 sec; 655 nm; 165 nm; red).

The original pixel size is 0.2 arcsec.

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more items in the Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series

image code: hrshdneb

ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA www.eso.org
Reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

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Cat's Eye Nebula Hubble Space iPad Mini Cover

Here's a great iPad case from Zazzle featuring a Hubble-related design. Maybe you'd like to see your name on it? Click to personalize and see what it's like!


tagged with: cat's eye nebula, astronomy, cats eye nebula blue, hubble, nebula photo, gas clouds, stars, universe, outer space, nature, ngc-6543, nebula, nebulae, nasa, hubble telescope, hubble space telescope, hubble photo, cosmos, cosmic, astronomical, astrophotography, cosmology, space photograph, space picture, space image, deep space, space, natural, science, abstract, space photo

The Cat's Eye nebula (NGC 6543) is a planetary nebula with an unusually complex structure. This Hubble telescope image shows a sequence of spherical gas shells around the central star.

Credit: NASA, ESA, HEIC, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Acknowledgment: R. Corradi (Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes, Spain) and Z. Tsvetanov (NASA)

You can personalise the design further if you'd prefer, such as by adding your name or other text, or adjusting the image - just click 'Customize it' to see all the options. IMPORTANT: If you choose a different sized version of the product, it's important to click Customize and check the image in the Design view to ensure it fills the area to the edge of the product, otherwise white edges may be visible.

See more in my shop
If you like this product, you can find more like it in my store:

Click here to view all the other items with this design.

Click here to see a wide range of other space designs.

»visit the AstronomyGiftShop store for more designs and products like this
The Zazzle Promise: We promise 100% satisfaction. If you don't absolutely love it, we'll take it back!

Building blocks of the Large Hadron Collider

The future of electronics—now in 2D

original post »

The future of electronics could lie in a material from its past, as researchers from The Ohio State

The post The future of electronics—now in 2D has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Vintage Astronomy, Map of Christian Constellations Poster

Here's a great poster featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: antique, constellations, retro, vintage, americana, nostalgic, zodiac, celestial map, star chart, universe, antique celestial

Vintage illustration Renaissance era astronomy and celestial image featuring an antique star chart of the sky, Map of the Christian Constellations of the northern skies as depicted by Julius Schiller (c. 1580-1627), from The Celestial Atlas, or The Harmony of the Universe by Andreas Cellarius. Andreas Cellarius (c.1596-1665) was a Dutch-German cartographer, best known for his Harmonia Macrocosmica of 1660, a major star atlas, published by Johannes Janssonius in Amsterdam.

Julius Schiller was a lawyer from Augsburg, Germany, who like his fellow citizen and colleague Johann Bayer published a star atlas in celestial cartography.

In the year of his death, Schiller, with Bayer's assistance, published the star atlas Coelum Stellatum Christianum which replaced pagan constellations with biblical and early Christian figures. Specifically, Schiller replaced the zodiacal constellations with the twelve apostles, the northern constellations by figures from the New Testament and the southern constellations by figures from the Old Testament.

»visit the YesterdayCafe store for more designs and products like this
Click to customize with size, paper type etc.
via Zazzle Astronomy market place