Astronomy Picture of the Day

who you talkin to L?????

I think she's talking to me

Yes I am interested in the answer also. Will tell you why later.

Oh maybe L222 is talking to sky....lol

I didn't know what a lapis was when I posted my comment

Sorry guys I was talking to R, when I first saw that picture mic I thought it looked like a large chunk of Lapis Lazuri.

http://www.gehnabazaar.com/gemstones/42/lapis-lazuli.html

L
i thought the same thing and that's why i said that...only i can't speel..hahahahahaha

looks like we are really all connected here...
that's fun and wonderful
and at the same time
scary as hell

ok. M..tell us why

:toilet4:

No sky I'm the one who can't spell these days, your spelling was right...lol.

Yes Mic we're all hanging on waiting for your response.

no L..you were right..spelling..hahahahahahah
found a good pic of lapis at http://www.bestcrystals.com/

hehe

Well awhile back I posted how I awoke one morning and as I opened my eyes there was this blueish aura in my vision. It looked exactly like this pic. (color that is)

So when L said get out of my head I wondered if she had a similar experience.

That's all, sorry to disappoint.

I've had many strange things in my head mic..but not that one! Most large eyes that change colors (yeah I know pretty strange huh?)

What a beautiful stone Sky.

Planck telescope reveals universe image

Published: 11:13AM BST 05 Jul 2010

The first image of the entire universe taken from Europe's Planck telescope has been published.



The first full-sky image from Europe's Planck telescope which was sent into space last year to survey the oldest light in the cosmos Photo: ESA

The satellite, costing 600m euros, was launched last year by the European Space Agency.
It was sent nearly a million miles into space to record the origins of the universe. The Planck observatory's job was to look at the age, contents and evolution of the cosmos by studying the heat left behind by the Big Bang.

In September it began to reveal its first images showing strips of ancient light across the sky. Now it has revealed a full picture of the sky.
The image shows what is visible beyond the Earth to instruments that are sensitive to light at very long wavelengths.
Dominating the picture are large parts of our Milky Way Galaxy. The bright horizontal line running across the middle of the image is the galaxy's main disc and where the Sun and Earth are.
Also seen are huge bursts of cold dust that reach thousands of light-years above and below the galactic plane.
Scientists will spend years analysing the image to better understand how the Universe came to look the way it does.
"What you see is the structure of our galaxy in gas and dust, which tells us an awful lot about what is going on in the neighbourhood of the Sun; and it tells us a lot about the way galaxies form when we compare this to other galaxies," Professor Andrew Jaffe, a Planck team member from Imperial College London, told BBC News.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/7872190/Planck-telescope-reveals-universe-image.html

Whoa!!!

I am having trouble picking out earth.

Goodluck.

I still think the universe is bigger. To the infinity as Nassim would put it.

to infinity plus 2 as my 5 yr old would have said it

and as the character in toy story says ( have seen the commercials..lol)

to infinity and beyond

Explanation: For reasons unknown, NGC 6357 is forming some of the most massive stars ever discovered. One such massive star, near the center of NGC 6357, is framed above carving out its own interstellar castle with its energetic light from surrounding gas and dust. In the greater nebula, the intricate patterns are caused by complex interactions between interstellar winds, radiation pressures, magnetic fields, and gravity. The overall glow of the nebula results from the emission of light from ionized hydrogen gas. Near the more obvious Cat's Paw nebula, NGC 6357 houses the open star cluster Pismis 24, home to many of these tremendously bright and blue stars. The central part of NGC 6357 shown spans about 10 light years and lies about 8,000 light years away toward the constellation of the Scorpion.

Anticrepuscular Rays Over Colorado
Credit & Copyright: John Britton

Hubble Zooms in on a Space Oddity

ScienceDaily (Jan. 11, 2011)

In this image by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, an unusual, ghostly green blob of gas appears to float near a normal-looking spiral galaxy. The bizarre object, dubbed Hanny's Voorwerp (Hanny's Object in Dutch), is the only visible part of a 300,000-light-year-long streamer of gas stretching around the galaxy, called IC 2497. The greenish Voorwerp is visible because a searchlight beam of light from the galaxy's core illuminated it. This beam came from a quasar, a bright, energetic object that is powered by a black hole. The quasar may have turned off about 200,000 years ago. (Credit: NASA, ESA, W. Keel (University of Alabama), and the Galaxy Zoo Team)



http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110110090425.htm

Explanation: What's happened to our Sun? Nothing very unusual -- it just threw a filament. At the end of last month, a long standing solar filament suddenly erupted into space producing an energetic Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). The filament had been held up for days by the Sun's ever changing magnetic field and the timing of the eruption was unexpected. Watched closely by the Sun-orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory, the resulting explosion shot electrons and ions into the Solar System, some of which arrived at Earth three days later and impacted Earth's magnetosphere, causing visible aurorae. Loops of plasma surrounding an active region can be seen above the erupting filament in the ultraviolet image. If you missed this auroral display please do not despair -- over the next two years our Sun will be experiencing a solar maximum of activity which promises to produce more CMEs that induce more Earthly auroras.

I saw this pic this morning. I go to that site everyday. A most violent place indeed.

Mind boggling.

My daughter asked me how long a light year is. I tried to explain using a calculator, but I ran out of numbers....doh!

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1209/selfportrait_iss032_4288.jpg


http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1209/selfportrait_iss032_4288.jpg

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1209/selfportrait_iss032_4288.jpg

Just ignore this, I was trying to learn how to copy a picture from astronomy picture of the day to a page here.....lol I am not very good at using this iPad yet.

I cannot figure out how to take something from another page and put it here. I know there must be a way, I'll keep trying.

Gabe, save the picture to your iPad, then upload it under the 'host an image' button on this forum. Just like you would from a PC.

Thank you sky, I will try that......