ikenbot:

Black Hole ‘Bonanza’: Millions Found by NASA Space Telescope

A jackpot of previously unknown black holes across the universe has been discovered by the infrared eyes of a prolific NASA sky-mapping telescope.

The cosmic find comes from data collected by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey (WISE) telescope, which scanned the entire sky in infrared light from December 2009 to February 2011. The full catalog of observations by WISE during its mission was publicly released in March, and astronomers are still poring through this celestrial trove for discoveries.

“WISE has found a bonanza of black holes in the universe,” astronomer Daniel Stern of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., said during a news briefing today (Aug. 29). WISE turned up about three times as many black holes as have been found by comparable surveys in visible light, offering up a total of 2.5 million new sources across the sky.

ikenbot:

Melotte 15

inquisitormusic:

Viking 1 Launch Anniversary

Viking 1 was the first of two spacecraft sent to Mars as part of NASA’s Viking program. It was the first spacecraft to successfully land on Mars and perform its mission, and held the record for the longest Mars surface mission of 6 years and 116 days (from landing until surface mission termination, Earth time) until that record was broken by the Opportunity Rover on May 19, 2010.

Viking 1 launched aboard a Titan IIIE rocket August 20, 1975 and arrived at Mars on June 19, 1976. The first month was spent in orbit around the martian planet and on July 20, 1976 Viking Lander 1 separated from the Orbiter and touched down at Chryse Planitia.

ikenbot:

NGC 253: Silver Coin Galaxy in Sculptor

sklogw:

A three-dimensional time-for-space wiggle image of the Sun taken by STEREO

solari-s:

Two Hours Before Neptune - Two hours before closest approach to Neptune in 1989, the Voyager 2 robot spacecraft snapped this picture. Clearly visible for the first time were long light-colored cirrus-type clouds floating high in Neptune’s atmosphere. Shadows of these clouds can even be seen on lower cloud decks. Most of Neptune’s atmosphere is made of hydrogen and helium, which is invisible. Neptune’s blue color therefore comes from smaller amounts of atmospheric methane, which preferentially absorbs red light. Neptune has the fastest winds in the Solar System, with gusts reaching 2000 kilometers per hour. Speculation holds that diamonds may be created in the dense hot conditions that exist under the cloud tops of Uranus and Neptune. (via APOD)

the-star-stuff:

Energetic X-rays Seen for First Time from Young Supernova

Astronomers make the deepest X-ray image of spiral galaxy M83 and take the first X-ray pics of supernova 1957D remnant.

The findings will appear in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

Image: X-ray: NASA/CXC/STScI/K.Long et al., Optical: NASA/STScI

looking-at-the-universe:

Size of the Sun seen from the other planets of the Solar System

ikenbot:

Cygnus in Ha Grayscale

“How would the sky look like if we could see hydrogen-alpha radiation with our own eyes? This image comes close. It was made from 9 images made from my backyard using a 100mm Canon lens with a SXV-H9 ccd camera. It’s the tail of the Swan (Cygnus).” — Andre vd Hoeven