The Hubble Telescope spots a 'smile' in space

In the centre of this image, taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, are two faint galaxies that seem to be smiling.The grinning figure actually shows an enormous galaxy cluster. SpaceTelescope.org explains:

"You can make out two orange eyes and a white button nose. In the case of this “happy face”, the two eyes are the galaxies and the misleading smile lines are actually arcs caused by an effect known as strong gravitational lensing.

Massive structures in the Universe exert such a powerful gravitational pull that they can warp the spacetime around them and act as cosmic lenses which can magnify, distort and bend the light behind them. This phenomenon, crucial to many of Hubble’s discoveries, can be explained by Einstein’s theory of general relativity."

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What do you think about this cosmos smile? Does anyone else think it looks a tad sinister?

ShellCore Command

ShellCore Command Ep1 is strategy-defense science-fiction adventure type game. The plot is, you start off will a little green ship fighting for an army of other green ships/buildings, against the infected red ships/building. Throughout the game you need to play through the story and make your ship stronger. You get stronger by adding more parts to your ship. They don't need to go in any particular order, place or logic. If the piece is available, stick it on. The more you add the bigger you get and heavier you get, thus becoming a bigger target and slower, but heck you can add more engines to make you go fast. Different weapons like bullets, missiles and lazer beams and fun and a good idea to mix them up.

If you ship gets damaged you will heal, if parts of your ship get blown off, all is not lost, because you can go to an allied mechanic and get your ship reset to your last custom build, that means full health/armor/energy/equipment.

All in all, it's a pretty fun game. After a while you stop caring about what your ship looks like and just want to tack on as many parts as you can and get back into the action. The game can be rather short, especially if you play like a pirate (explained below) but temporary fun is better than no fun at all.

Play like a Pirate

So I figured out how to be a hulking doom machine in this game, typically your supposed to earn money from missions then buy parts. But common, that takes too long. Being a Pirate is when you destroy enemy ships quickely and tow the scavaged parts back to your garage and add them onto your ship. So to be a pirate all you need to do is choose a section of space with an abundance of enemies that is right beside a safe zone (so you can get back to the garage fast), just fly around shooting up the red ships until one of them drop an item, tow it back to the garage and place it onto your ship.
And presto.
Do that a could of times and you've effectively doubled the power of your ship, without spending a cent (or in this case a credit).

Spaceman Illustration

NOOK: Sakura Spaceman/Return of the Space Plane/Send Help: S.O.S. Sakura

It was Aliens

Aliens are coming, they are going to blow everything up. And how does this make you feel?

The Horsehead Nebula

The Horsehead Nebula (also known as Barnard 33 in emission nebula IC 434)

The Horsehead Nebula (also known as Barnard 33 in emission nebula IC 434) is a dark nebula in the constellation Orion. The nebula is located just to the south of the star Alnitak, which is farthest east on Orion's Belt, and is part of the much larger Orion Molecular Cloud Complex. The nebula was first recorded in 1888 by Williamina Fleming on photographic plate B2312 taken at the Harvard College Observatory. The Horsehead Nebula is approximately 1500 light years from Earth. It is one of the most identifiable nebulae because of the shape of its swirling cloud of dark dust and gases, which is similar to that of a horse's head when viewed from Earth.

The red or pinkish glow originates from hydrogen gas predominantly behind the nebula, ionized by the nearby bright star Sigma Orionis. The darkness of the Horsehead is caused mostly by thick dust, although the lower part of the Horsehead's neck casts a shadow to the left. Streams of gas leaving the nebula are funneled by a strong magnetic field. Bright spots in the Horsehead Nebula's base are young stars just in the process of forming. The nebula exhibits a noticeable change in the density of the stars which indicates that a red ribbon of radiant red hydrogen gas at the precipice of a sizable dark cloud. The underside of the horse’s visible ‘neck’ reflects this concept of shade and density because it casts a great shadow across the field of view just below the horse’s ‘muzzle’. The visible heart of the nebula emerges from the gaseous complex to serve as an active site of the formation of “low-mass” stars. A glowing strip of hydrogen gas marks the edge of the massive cloud and noticeable densities of stars are present on either side. The dark cloud of dust and gas is a region in the Orion Nebula where star formation is taking place right now. A complex housing forming stars, known as a stellar nursery, can contain over 100 known organic and inorganic gases as well of dust consisting of large and complex organic molecules. The region of the Orion Nebula containing the Horsehead is a stellar nursery. The darkness of the massive nebula is not explained by this dust and gas, but by the complex blocking the light of stars behind it.The heavy concentrations of dust in the Horsehead Nebula region and neighbouring Orion Nebula are localized, resulting in sections of almost complete transparency.

The European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT)

The European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT)

The European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) is a ground-based extremely large telescope for the optical/near-infrared range, that is being planned by the European Southern Observatory (ESO). Early designs included a filled single aperture mirror with a diameter of 42 metres and area of about 1300 m2, with a secondary mirror with a diameter of 5.9 m. However, in 2011 a proposal was put forward to reduce its size by 13% to 978 m2, for a 39.3 m diameter primary mirror and a 4.2 m diameter secondary mirror. This reduces the projected costs from 1.275 billion to 1.055 billion euros and should allow the telescope to be finished sooner. However, it will likely make it harder for the telescope to image Earthlike exoplanets, though that goal is still possible.

Supernova in The Milky Way

Multiwavelength X-ray, infrared, and optical compilation image of Kepler's supernova remnant, SN 1604

It was a supernova that occurred in the Milky Way, in the constellation Ophiuchus. It is the most recent supernova to have been unquestionably observed in our own galaxy, occurring no farther than 6 kiloparsecs or about 20,000 light-years from Earth. Visible to the naked eye, it was brighter at its peak than any other star in the night sky, and all the planets (other than Venus), with apparent magnitude −2.5. It was visible during the day for over three weeks.

The Carina Nebula

Carina Nebula

Lying 7,500 light years from Earth, the Carina Nebula buzzes with activity. Countless stars are being born among the glowing clouds of dust and gas and, over several million years, this nebula – which was named after the keel of the mythical ship Argo – has created some of the most massive stars known to astronomers.

The nebula is one of the largest diffuse nebulae in our skies. Although it is some four times as large and even brighter than the famous Orion Nebula, the Carina Nebula is much less well known, due to its location far in the Southern Hemisphere. It was discovered by Nicolas Louis de Lacaille in 1751–52 from the Cape of Good Hope.

M16: Pillars of Creation

M16: Pillars of Creation
Image Credit: J. Hester, P. Scowen (ASU), HST, NASA

"It was one of the most famous images of the 1990s. This image, taken with the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995, shows evaporating gaseous globules (EGGs) emerging from pillars of molecular hydrogen gas and dust. The giant pillars are light years in length and are so dense that interior gas contracts gravitationally to form stars. At each pillars' end, the intense radiation of bright young stars causes low density material to boil away, leaving stellar nurseries of dense EGGs exposed. The Eagle Nebula, associated with the open star cluster M16, lies about 7000 light years away. The pillars of creation were imaged again in 2007 by the orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope in infrared light, leading to the conjecture that the pillars may already have been destroyed by a local supernova, but light from that event has yet to reach the Earth."

Kepler 22b

Kepler 22b

This is an artist rendering of Kepler 22b, which lies 600 light years away from Earth in the constellation of Cygnus. It's the first planet we've found that's located right smack in the middle of the habitable zone around its star (sun), making it an earth-twin in the right spot for sustaining possible life. Discovered by the Kepler space mission, this planet is the first world smaller than Neptune to be found in middle of its star's habitable zone.

Also called the Goldilocks zone, the habitable zone is the region around a star where a planet's surface is not too hot and not too cold for liquid water—and thus life as we know it—to exist. In fact, only two known planets fit this description so far—Gliese 581d and HD 85512—and both worlds orbit at the very edges of their stars' habitable zones, making them more akin to Venus and Mars than to Earth. It's also orbiting a star that's almost a twin of our sun, whereas the other two detections are orbiting significantly cooler stars.

Kepler 22b is about 2.4 times the radius of Earth, but scientists don't yet know its composition, because they are still missing a crucial piece of information: Kepler 22b's mass.

However, no information is available about the shape of the planet's orbit. Many extrasolar planets are known to move in highly elliptical orbits. We only know that the semi-major axis of its orbit is within its host star's habitable zone. If Kepler-22b has a highly elongated orbit it may well only spend a small fraction of its time within this habitable zone, which would cause extreme temperature differences on the planet and make it inhospitable.

It's exciting to think there could be life on another planet, I for one am waiting eagerly to see what new things we can learn about Kepler 22b.

Atheism a Non-Prophet Organization

There is no polite way to suggest to someone that they have devoted their life to a folly.

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Dark Clouds in Aquila: Part of a dark expanse that splits the crowded plane of our Milky Way galaxy, the Aquila Rift arcs through the northern hemisphere's summer skies near bright star Altair and the Summer Triangle. In silhouette against the Milky Way's faint starlight, its dusty molecular clouds likely contain raw material to form hundreds of thousands of stars and astronomers eagerly search the clouds for telltale signs of star birth. This telescopic close-up looks toward the region at a fragmented Aquila dark cloud complex identified as LDN 673, stretching across a field of view slightly wider than the full moon. In the scene, visible indications of energetic outflows associated with young stars include the small red tinted nebulosity RNO 109 at top left and Herbig-Haro object HH32 above and right of center. The dark clouds in Aquila are estimated to be some 600 light-years away. At that distance, this field of view spans about 7 light-years.

Image Credit & Copyright: Adam Block, Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter, University of Arizona

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Religion	vs.	Reality
	Embrace
Faith  Myths  Slavery		Evidence  Facts  Freedom

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"When you live on a round planet, there's no choosing sides."

Dr Wayne Dyer

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We'll let you teach creationism in our schools. When you let us teach evolution in your churches.

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Atheism Isn't Scary -- Well, it may ne scary at first (it really is), but when you think about it, that means that all of this; our planet, our moon, our stars and the trillions of lifeforms crawling everywhere, are all brilliantly interconnected. Our home is the heroic survivor of a collision from the black, as evidenced by the Moon. Our star is a nuclear furnace, powering our weather, our plants, and ultimately our very bodies. We're brothers and sister to the other apes, cousins of the cats and dogs, distant relatives of the spiders and crocodiles, and all children of exploding stars, showering us with the ingredients for life.

We aren't just beings placed here in a tailor-made Universe. We are the Universe, brought alive through chance and power, of conflict and an endless string of love: our only purpose to huddle together on a sea-soaked rock hurtling through time and space as we live our lives and learn about ourselves and our origins.

That to me, is so much more beatiful than any god could ever make it. There's nothing that could compare. A godless Universe isn't scary. It's amazing.

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Incidentally, disturbance from cosmic background radiation is something we have all experienced. Tune your television to any channel it doesn't receive, and about 1 percent of the dancing static you see is accounted for by this ancient remnant of the Big Bang. The next time you complain that there is nothing on, remember that you can always watch the birth of the universe.

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What can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.

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"It's my view that the simplest explanation is, there is no God. No one created the universe and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization. There is probably no heaven and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe and for that, I am extremely grateful."

- Stephen Hawking

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"Every atom you possess has almost certainly passed through several stars are been part of millions of organisms on its way to becoming you. We are each so atomically numerous and so vigorously recycled at death that a significant number of our atoms - up to a billion for each of us, it has been suggested - probably once belonged to Shakespeare.

A billion more each came from Buddha and Genghis Khan and Beethoven, and any other historical figure you care to name.

So we are all reincarnations - though short-lived ones. When we die our atoms will disassemble and move off to find new uses elsewhere - as part of a leaf or other human being or drop of dew.

- Bill Bryson - A Short History of Nearly Everything

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Life is More Beautiful Without a God

We are all part of this beautiful & amazing Universe - made up of ancient stars and cosmic dust.

- Kat Blackheart

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What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.

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Milky Way

We live on a hunk of rock and metal than circles a humdrum star that is one of 400 billions other stars that make up the Milky Way Galaxy which is one of billions of other galaxies which make up a universe which may be one of a very large number, perhaps an infinite number, of other universes. That is a perspective on human life and out culture that is well worth pondering.

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Venus Alignment between The Earth and Sun

A transit of Venus occurs when Venus passes directly between the sun and earth.  This alignment is rare, coming in pairs that are eight years apart but separated by over a century. 

The most recent transit of Venus was a thrilling sight in 2004.  After the June 2012 transit of Venus (the last one in your lifetime), the next such alignment occurs in 2117.

Location, location, location.

Whether and when you can see the 2012 transit of Venus depends on your location.  Key highlights include the four "contacts" near the beginning and end of the transit when Venus appears to touch the edge of the sun.  Most of North America sees the beginning of the transit in the afternoon and evening (find a clear western horizon!) on June 5, whereas much of Eurasia sees the end of the transit in the morning (find a clear eastern horizon!) on June 6.

So, is the transit of Venus visible June 5 or June 6?

It depends on your time zone.  Generally, for the Americas where it is visible (blue colors on map below) the 2012 transit occurs the evening of Tuesday, June 5, 2012.  For Eurasia and Africa where it is visible (sage colors on map), the latter part of the transit is seen the morning of June 6, 2012.  Map courtesy of Steven van Roode.