The World Beyond BetterMost > Anything Goes
NASA's Picture of the Day
injest:
--- Quote from: brokeplex on August 31, 2008, 08:33:25 pm ---lovely pictures, thank you.
--- End quote ---
your welcome. I have always been interested in astronomy.
injest:
NGC 1316: After Galaxies Collide
Credit & Copyright: Martin Pugh
Explanation: Astronomers turn detectives when trying to figure out the cause of startling sights like NGC 1316. Their investigation indicates that NGC 1316 is an enormous elliptical galaxy that started, about 100 million years ago, to devour a smaller spiral galaxy neighbor, NGC 1317, just above it. Supporting evidence includes the dark dust lanes characteristic of a spiral galaxy, and faint swirls of stars and gas visible in this wide and deep image. What remains unexplained are the unusually small globular star clusters, seen as faint dots on the image. Most elliptical galaxies have more and brighter globular clusters than NGC 1316. Yet the observed globulars are too old to have been created by the recent spiral collision. One hypothesis is that these globulars survive from an even earlier galaxy that was subsumed into NGC 1316.
injest:
I know that is happening over a million years but can you imagine if there are intelligent beings there with enough technology to see what is happening and knowing all that destruction is coming?
injest:
31 Million Miles from Planet Earth
Video Credit: Donald J. Lindler, Sigma Space Corporation, GSFC,
Univ. Maryland, EPOCh/DIXI Science Teams
Explanation: On July 4th, 2005, the Deep Impact spacecraft directed a probe to impact the nucleus of Comet Tempel 1. Still cruising through the solar system, earlier this year the robotic spacecraft looked back to record a series of images of its home world 31 million miles (50 million kilometers) away. In a sequence from top left to bottom right, these four frames from the video show a rotating Earth. They combine visible and near-infrared image data with enough resolution and contrast to see clouds, oceans, and continents. They also follow a remarkable transit of Earth by its large, natural satellite, the Moon. The Moon's orbital motion carries it across the field of view from left to right. Imaging the Earth from this distant perspective allows astronomers to connect overall variations in brightness at different wavelengths with planetary features. The observations will aid in the search for earth-like planets in other solar systems.
Brokeback_Dev:
Wow our Planet is beautiful
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