Steps into Space - Commercialisation, Occupation, Colonization: 04/04/14

Friday, 4 April 2014

Virtual space travelling, courtesy of Chandra

Virtual space travelling, courtesy of Chandra
Why not spend a few minutes on a virtual voyage through some of the wonders of deep space?
#outerspace #forwidersharing

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory originally shared:

Explore the X-ray universe in this Chandra Flickr set:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/smithsonian/sets/72157608016866848/

View full size (1512x1037)

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2014 ORBITAL CALENDAR: Solar System Poster

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

2014 ORBITAL CALENDAR: Solar System Poster

tagged with: astronomy poster, circular calendar, phases of the moon, spacetime, calendar cycles, timespace

Astronomy Science Poster EARTH-MOON w/ SOLAR SYSTEM ~ Your Year In Space! ~ Astronomically-correct TimeSpace, MILKY WAY Galaxy in background Perfect for S.T.E.M Education: TEACH astronomy in a flash... . ...from Earth to Moon to Sun, celestial math. Use Dry Erase markers to add your data, meteor showers, study cycles, National Calendar Awards for: Most Original, Most Educational Best Graphic Design

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Watching for a black hole to gobble up a gas cloud: Gas cloud's fate illuminates growth of supermassive black holes

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G2, a doomed gas cloud, is edging closer to Sgr A*, the hungry supermassive black hole at the Milky Way's center. The closest approach between the two is predicted to occur any day now. Astrophysicists have been watching closely, and the data do not show enhanced emission in the X-rays.

via Science Daily

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To understand our climate future, look to the past

Science Focus

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Modern human civilization is fragile — fragile to crop failures, droughts, and extreme weather. We are extremely susceptible to energy and water shortages. We don't fully understand complex, chaotic systems like Earth's climate. And yet, we are rapidly changing the composition of the atmosphere, even though the archeological record shows the difficulty that our ancestors had in adapting to previous rapid climate changes.

That seems suicidally reckless.

Man-made climate change is a massive problem — the species-threatening challenge of our time. And yet, most people struggle to grasp...

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Dissent over key climate report

Science Focus

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Senior researchers and government officials gather in Japan to agree a critical report on the impact of global warming.
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4 scientific ways to become luckier

Science Focus

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It sounds crazy at first: How can you possibly become luckier?

But it turns out luck isn't chance and magic. There's a science behind it.

Richard Wiseman studied very lucky people to figure out what they had in common. In his book, Luck Factor, he explains the four principles you can use to increase luck in your life.

1. Maximize opportunities

It makes intuitive sense: if you lock yourself in your house, how many exciting, serendipitous things are going to happen to you? Not many.

Lucky people create, notice, and act upon the chance opportunities in their lives.

Certain personality types...

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Monogram, M106 Spiral Galaxy, Canes Venatici Stickers

Here's a great sheet of stickers featuring a beautiful image from deep space

Monogram, M106 Spiral Galaxy, Canes Venatici Stickers

tagged with: monogram initials, star galaxies, outer space picture, deep space astronomy, hubble galaxy photography, supermassive black hole, spiral arms, constellation canes venatici, hunting dog stars, m106cv, messier 106, seyfert ii galaxy

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series Messier 106 (also known as NGC 4258) is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici. It was discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1781. M106 is at a distance of about 22 to 25 million light-years away from Earth. It is also a Seyfert II galaxy, which means that due to x-rays and unusual emission lines detected, it is suspected that part of the galaxy is falling into a supermassive black hole in the center.
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image code: m106cv

Image credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), and R. Gendler (for the Hubble Heritage Team), J. GaBany

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Name, Celestial Bauble - SXP1062 space picture Gift Wrap Paper

Get your out-of-this-world gift wrap here! Perfect for Christmas gifts for anyone who is fascinated by what the universe holds in store for us!

Name, Celestial Bauble - SXP1062 space picture Gift Wrap Paper

tagged with: sculptured gas clouds, hot young stars, star galaxies, outer space picture, supernova remnant, star factory, small magellanic cloud, smc, celestial bauble, hrbstslr sxp1062, star incubator

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series In this composite image, X-rays from Chandra and XMM-Newton have been colored blue and optical data from the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile are colored red and green. The flowering shape on the left is a star factory and on the right is the pulsar. Known as SXP 1062, it's the bright white source located on the right-hand side of the image in the middle of the diffuse blue emission inside a red shell. The diffuse X-rays and optical shell are both evidence for a supernova remnant surrounding the pulsar. The optical data also displays spectacular formations of gas and dust in a star-forming region on the left side of the image. A comparison of the Chandra image with optical images shows that the pulsar has a hot, massive companion.
Astronomers are interested in SXP 1062 because the Chandra and XMM-Newton data show that it is rotating unusually slowly - about once every 18 minutes. (In contrast, some pulsars are found to revolve multiple times per second, including most newly born pulsars.) This relatively leisurely pace of SXP 1062 makes it one of the slowest rotating X-ray pulsars in the SMC.
Two different teams of scientists have estimated that the supernova remnant around SXP 1062 is between 10,000 and 40,000 years old, as it appears in the image. This means that the pulsar is very young, from an astronomical perspective, since it was presumably formed in the same explosion that produced the supernova remnant.
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image code: sxp1062

Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ.Potsdam/L.Oskinova et al & ESA/XMM-Newton; Optical: AURA/NOAO/CTIO/Univ.Potsdam/L.Oskinova et al

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Color pixels made of nanowires offer new paradigm for digital cameras

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(Phys.org) —Most of today's digital cameras achieve color by using red, green, and blue Bayer color filters through which light passes on its way to the camera's image sensors, which then convert the light into electrical signals. Although this color filter technology is very widespread, it has some disadvantages related to durability, low absorption coefficient, and fabrication complexity. In addition, the absorbed light in the color filter cannot be converted into photocurrent. To maximize the efficiency in the trends of higher pixel density, this light needs to be converted to photocurrent.

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140404

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Astronomy Picture of the Day

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Cute cartoon Planet with rings Wall Decals

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

Cute cartoon Planet with rings Wall Decals

tagged with: planet, science fiction, saturn, 'ringed, astronomy, science, fiction, planets, rings, cartoon, moon, space, space exploration, exo planet, exo world, cartoon exo world, nobbly planet, universe, galaxy, nebula, milky way

Cute cartoon Planet with rings infront of a Nebula and twinkling stars.

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Hoag's Object 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!

Hoag's Object iPad Mini Cover

tagged with: le0054, nasa, etoiles, les etoiles, astronomy, science, galaxy, hubble, space, scientific, outer space, deep space, sky, galaxies, hst, hubble telescope, hoag, hubble space telescope, irregular, black, blue, yellow, gold, golden, ring, circle, pretty, unusual, strange, celestial

"A nearly perfect ring of hot, blue stars pinwheels about the yellow nucleus of an unusual galaxy known as Hoag's Object. This image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captures a face-on view of the galaxy's ring of stars, revealing more detail than any existing photo of this object. The entire galaxy is about 120,000 light-years wide, which is slightly larger than our Milky Way Galaxy. The blue ring, which is dominated by clusters of young, massive stars, contrasts sharply with the yellow nucleus of mostly older stars. What appears to be a "gap" separating the two stellar populations may actually contain some star clusters that are almost too faint to see."

(qtd. from Hubblesite.org NewsCenter release STScI-2002-21)

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

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Gravity measurements confirm subsurface ocean on Saturn's moon Enceladus

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In 2005, NASA's Cassini spacecraft sent pictures back to Earth depicting an icy Saturnian moon spewing water vapor and ice from fractures, known as "tiger stripes," in its frozen surface. It was big news that tiny Enceladus -- a mere 500 kilometers in diameter -- was such an active place. Since then, scientists have hypothesized that a large reservoir of water lies beneath that icy surface, possibly fueling the plumes. Now, using gravity measurements collected by Cassini, scientists have confirmed that Enceladus does in fact harbor a large subsurface ocean near its south pole, beneath those tiger stripes.

via Science Daily

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Monster 'El Gordo' galaxy cluster is bigger than thought

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Astronomers have weighed the largest known galaxy cluster in the distant universe and found that it definitely lives up to its nickname: El Gordo (Spanish for "the fat one"). By precisely measuring how much the gravity from the cluster's mass warps images of far-more-distant background galaxies, a team of astronomers has calculated the cluster's mass to be as much as 3 million billion times the mass of our Sun. The Hubble data show that the cluster is roughly 43 percent more massive than earlier estimates based on X-ray and dynamical studies of the unusual cluster.

via Science Daily

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Meet space station’s small satellite launcher suite

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It used to be that building and launching a working satellite was an enormously expensive and complex undertaking, feasible only for governmental and military agencies. But the CubeSat revolution of the past decade has placed satellite technology within reach of private companies, universities and even unaffiliated individuals. That revolution has been boosted by the existence of the International Space Station, which provides an additional launching platform enabled through regular commercial cargo flights.

via Science Daily

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Scientists Develop 3D SEM Metrology for 10 nm Structures

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PML researchers have devised an idea for determining the three-dimensional shape of features as small as 10 nanometers wide. The model-based method compares data from scanning electron microscope (SEM) images with stored entries in a library of three dimensional (3D) shapes to find a match and to determine the shape of the sample. The work provides a powerful new way to characterize nanostructures. The SEM is widely used in various fields of industry and science because it is one of the most versatile imaging and measurement instruments. The size and shape of nanometer-scale structures are important pieces of information to know especially for manufacturing integrated circuits (ICs) and nanoscale features. The SEM, with better than 1 nanometer resolution, provides information on these structures that is typically interpreted as two dimensional (2D) images. But those images contain a wealth of information related to all three dimensions, and the PML scientists set out to capture it. At the beginning of this work, there were two obstacles to achieving very high accuracy, one affecting the quality of measurements and the other the interpretation: (1) the image and measurement quality is degraded by drift of the sample and the electron beam, as even slight

The post Scientists Develop 3D SEM Metrology for 10 nm Structures has been published on Technology Org.

#materials
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Let's hope it becomes the home..

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Let's hope it becomes the home..
...for some fantastic new discoveries and helps set the foundations for humankind's steps into #outerspace

BUDGET 2014: Could Manchester be set for fresh graphene boost?
attached image

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Gas cloud's fate could reveal information on growth of supermassive black holes

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(Phys.org) —Right now a doomed gas cloud is edging ever closer to the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. These black holes feed on gas and dust all the time, but astronomers rarely get to see mealtime in action.

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Space, stars, galaxies and nebulas posters

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

Space, stars, galaxies and nebulas posters

tagged with: space, galaxy, stars, star, sky, night, astronomy, geek, nerd, universe, cluster, outer space, science fiction, sci-fi, sci fi, scifi, nebula, purple, blue, navy, black, dark, galaxies, starry, milky way, glittering, glowing, glitter, sparkle, sparkles, sparkling, sparkly, glittery, nasa, hubble, pretty, astronomical, fantasy, geeky, nerdy

This is a unique fantasy space composition made from a collage of real space images.

space, galaxy, stars, star, cluster, sky, night, "outer space", "science fiction", "sci-fi", "sci fi", scifi, nebula, purple, blue, navy, black, dark, galaxies, starry, "milky way", dusting, sprinkling, glittering, twinkling, twinkle, glow, glowing, glitter, sparkle, sparkles, sparkling, sparkly, glittery, nasa, hubble , pretty, astronomy, astronomical, fantasy, beauty, texture, beautiful, amazing, universe, cosmology, stellar, geek, geeky, nerd, nerdy, geeks, nerds, science, telescope, hipster, pink,"outer space", outerspace, exploration, explore, exploring, explorer, futuristic, future,

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Researchers probe the next generation of 2-D materials

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As the properties and applications of graphene continue to be explored in laboratories all over the world, a growing number of researchers are looking beyond the one-atom-thick layer of carbon for alternative materials that exhibit similarly captivating properties.

via Science Daily

Making the most of carbon nanotube-liquid crystal combos

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Physical response of combination materials made of nanotubes with ferroelectric liquid crystals could lead to new applications. Dispersions of carbon nanotubes with liquid crystals have attracted much interest because they pave the way for creating new materials with added functionalities. Now, a new study focuses on the influence of temperature and nanotube concentration on the physical properties of such combined materials.

via Science Daily

Name, Cassiopeia, Milky Ways Youngest Supernova Gift Wrapping Paper

Get your out-of-this-world gift wrap here! Perfect for Christmas gifts for anyone who is fascinated by what the universe holds in store for us!

Name, Cassiopeia, Milky Ways Youngest Supernova Gift Wrapping Paper

tagged with: star galaxies, outer space picture, supernova explosion, supernovae remnant, milky way youngest supernova, cosmic ray, neutron star, cassasn, deep space astronomy, cassiopeia

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series This extraordinarily deep Chandra image shows Cassiopeia A (Cas A, for short), the youngest supernova remnant in the Milky Way. New analysis shows that this supernova remnant acts like a relativistic pinball machine by accelerating electrons to enormous energies. The blue, wispy arcs in the image show where the acceleration is taking place in an expanding shock wave generated by the explosion. The red and green regions show material from the destroyed star that has been heated to millions of degrees by the explosion.
Astronomers have used this data to make a map, for the first time, of the acceleration of electrons in a supernova remnant. Their analysis shows that the electrons are being accelerated to almost the maximum theoretical limit in some parts of Cas A. Protons and ions, which make up the bulk of cosmic rays, are expected to be accelerated in a similar way to the electrons. Therefore, this discovery provides strong evidence that supernova remnants are key sites for energizing cosmic rays.
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image code: cassasn

Image credit: NASA/CXC/MIT/UMass Amherst/M.D. Stage et al.

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Monogram Cassiopeia, Milky Ways Youngest Supernova Sticker

Here's a great sheet of stickers featuring a beautiful image from deep space

Monogram Cassiopeia, Milky Ways Youngest Supernova Sticker

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Little Ghost Nebula (NGC 6369) Room Graphic

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

Little Ghost Nebula (NGC 6369) Room Graphic

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"NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has recently obtained images of the planetary nebula NGC 6369. This object is known to amateur astronomers as the "Little Ghost Nebula," because it appears as a small, ghostly cloud surrounding the faint, dying central star. NGC 6369 lies in the direction of the constellation Ophiuchus, at a distance estimated to be between about 2,000 and 5,000 light-years from Earth."

(qtd. from Hubblesite.org NewsCenter release STScI-2002-25)

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

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Cats Eye Nebula iPad Case

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!

Cats Eye Nebula iPad Case

tagged with: cosmological, cosmos, nebulae, cats eye, cats eye nebula, hubble, space, telescope, stars, stellar

This is the Cat's Eye Planetary Nebula, one of the first such nebulae discovered, as well as one of the most complex. Image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

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