The Pithy Amateur Astronomer

The adventure and aggregation of a short-winded amateur astronomer.


"OOOOOO PRETTY" -What my nephew would say.

This star cloud was featured on APOD and, as always, I thought I would share it.

Source: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100809.html

Explanation: What's lighting up nebula IRAS 05437+2502? No one is sure. Particularly enigmatic is the bright upside-down V that defines the upper edge of this floating mountain of interstellar dust, visible near the image center. In general, this ghost-like nebula involves a small star forming region filled with dark dust that was first noted in images taken by the IRAS satellite in infrared light in 1983. Shown above is a spectacular, recently released image from the Hubble Space Telescope that, although showing many new details, has not uncovered a clear cause of the bright sharp arc. One hypothesis holds that the glowing arc was created by a massive star that somehow attained a high velocity and has now left the nebula. Small, faint IRAS 05437+2502 spans only 1/18th of a full moon toward the constellation of the Bull (Taurus).

Older video but still worth to watch. I keep hearing people go on about 2012 blah blah blah. This video brings up some pretty good points refuting those ideas.

Enjoy!


Source: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100806.html / NASA / Goddard / SDO AIA Team

Earlier this week, the Sun released a Coronal Mass Ejection that made the 93 million mile trip to Earth. I have been searching for images of the auroras and finally found one on Space.com. Thankfully the Earth possesses safety measures to keep us from getting nuked by our nearest star.


Source: Space.com and www.fredrik_broms.fotosidan.se

I was looking forward to hearing about my favorite Mars robot (Spirit) waking up but it isn't looking like it will happen. It is a sad but good outcome for the little rover. Who knows, maybe one day when no one is looking she will wake up and talk our ears off.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/30jul_spirit2/



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