Common Themes

Get your pencils ready…. This beautiful image comes from a January APOD by Ken Crawford, and features NGC 2736, The Pencil Nebula. Wispy and… sharp!

This shock wave plows through space at over 500,000 kilometers per hour. Moving right to left in the beautifully detailed color composite, the thin, braided filaments are actually long ripples in a sheet of glowing gas seen almost edge on. Cataloged as NGC 2736, its narrow appearance suggests its popular name, the Pencil Nebula. About 5 light-years long and a mere 800 light-years away, the Pencil Nebula is only a small part of the Vela supernova remnant. The Vela remnant itself is around 100 light-years in diameter, the expanding debris cloud of a star that was seen to explode about 11,000 years ago. Initially, the shock wave was moving at millions of kilometers per hour but has slowed considerably, sweeping up surrounding interstellar gas.

Spotted this on collectSPACE — beautiful, delectible space-themed/named chocolates by Choclatique. Choclatique needs to get itself a findable press release/image resource section. The box of 15 lovely chocolates can be ordered at the aforementioned product page, where the pictures are far from sufficiently sized, but the descriptions are worth a peek!

Flavors include: Apollo Almond, Basalt Boysenberry, Cosmic Crunch Caramel, Galactic Grape, Extraterrestrial Mint, Lunar Lemon Caramel, Lift Off Lime, Mission Control Fig, Moon Rocks Mousse, Nasa Nuts, Pluto Pomegranate Caramel, Solar Sesame, Rocket Raspberry, Stellar Strawberry Shortcake and Tangy Orange. And believe me, based on the descriptions I am prepared to eat the entire box by myself.

It has been 40 years since the crew of Apollo 11 braved the new frontier of space. Commander Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon. He, and the crew of the “Sea of Tranquility,” are truly American heroes.

In celebration of this monumental achievement in human history, Choclatique is proud to present our 40th Anniversary tribute to all of the “Moon Walkers” and those who made those historic steps possible, with our chocolate Moon Rocks Collection.

Never having been to the moon, we used our imaginations as to what a real moon rock might look like, including lots of facets, and the use of vibrant colors and even gold streaks to show striations and differing geological patterns. We hope we did them justice!

This beautiful image by Don Goldman features a ghostly halo around emission nebula NGC 6164:

Beautiful emission nebula NGC 6164 was created by a rare, hot, luminous O-type star, some 40 times as massive as the Sun. Seen at the center of the cosmic cloud, the star is a mere 3 to 4 million years old. In another three to four million years the massive star will end its life in a supernova explosion. Spanning around 4 light-years, the nebula itself has a bipolar symmetry. That makes it similar in appearance to more familiar planetary nebulae – the gaseous shrouds surrounding dying sun-like stars. Also like many planetary nebulae, NGC 6164 has been found to have an extensive, faint halo, revealed in this deep telescopic image of the region. Expanding into the surrounding interstellar medium, the material in the halo is likely from an earlier active phase of the O star. The gorgeous skyscape is a composite of narrow-band image data highlighting the glowing gas, and broad-band data of the surrounding starfield. NGC 6164 is 4,200 light-years away in the southern constellation of Norma.

Back in April I posted some retro-futurist art, mostly German. Turns out there’s a 2010 calendar with more of the same… if you can speak German and can pay EUR 24,95. (Via Etherbrian.)

Eventually I had to get back to the series naming I started with, right? This week’s edition would be better-named as “Randomspam”, but oh well. To start, a lovely image of the Iris Nebula by Alvin Jeng.

Next, a page from the Dunhuang Star Atlas, a Chinese work dating from 649-684 AD:

This ancient Chinese map of planet Earth’s northern sky is part of the Dunhuang Star Atlas, one of the most impressive documents in the history of astronomy. The oldest complete star atlas known, it dates to the years 649 to 684, discovered at the Silk Road town of Dunhuang in 1907. A recent analysis that examines the accuracy and projections used to make it notes the atlas marks positions of over 1,300 stars and outlines 257 Chinese star groups or asterisms. The star positions in the hand drawn atlas were found to be accurate to within a few degrees. In this example showing the north polar region, a very recognizable Big Dipper, part of the modern constellation Ursa Major, lies along the bottom of the chart. An additional 12 charts depict equatorial regions in 30 degree sections and also include a grouping resembling the modern constellation Orion. The atlas is on display at the British Library in London to celebrate the International Year of Astronomy.

On June 15th, the LOIRP released another Lunar Orbiter image, this time of the Apollo 12 landing site:

(There’s also a version at the site without annotations, if you want it. Both images come in a large version.)

Finally, as Saturn approaches its equinox in August, Cassini is recording interesting nearly-edge-on images of Saturn’s rings, and a tiny moon among them:

(You really need to see them large to get the full effect. I hate how image sizing puts kinks in diagonal lines, blah.)

To understand what you’re seeing, I highly recommend this article by Phil Plait, as he does a great job explaining what’s going on and why it’s significant. Below is another view of the tiny moon Daphnis, chugging along in Saturn’s rings.