PeteUplink's Universe: Archive

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Dust Plumes off Morocco

Parallel dust plumes blew off the coast of Morocco and over the Atlantic Ocean in late December 2010. Blowing toward the north-northwest, the plumes just missed Lanzarote, the easternmost member of the Canary Islands. read more NASA image credit: Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC. Caption by Michon Scott.

Dec 30th

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Sparkle - NASA Image of the Day

This Hubble Space Telescope image of galaxy NGC 1275 reveals the fine, thread-like filamentary structures in the gas surrounding the galaxy. The red filaments are composed of cool gas being suspended by a magnetic field, and are surrounded by the 100-million-degree Fahrenheit hot gas in the center of the Perseus galaxy cluster. The filaments are dramatic markers of the feedback process through...

Dec 30th

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Cassini Celebrates 10 Years Since Jupiter...

Ten years ago, on Dec. 30, 2000, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft made its closest approach to Jupiter on its way to orbiting Saturn. The main purpose was to use the gravity of the largest planet in our solar system to slingshot Cassini towards Saturn, its ultimate destination. But the encounter with Jupiter, Saturn’s gas-giant big brother, also gave the Cassini project a perfect lab for...

Dec 30th

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The Long and Winding Road

ESO Picture of the Week This splendid panorama shows the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) on Cerro Paranal in the Chilean Atacama desert. The mountaintop, 120 km south of the town of Antofagasta, is a remote haven for scientific exploration. Its distance from populated areas means that light pollution is essentially non-existent, which helps to guarantee...

Dec 30th

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Still Life with NGC 2170

Astronomy Picture of the Day Image Credit: Adam Block, Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter, U. Arizona Explanation: In this beautiful celestial still life composed with a cosmic brush, dusty nebula NGC 2170 shines at the upper left. Reflecting the light of nearby hot stars, NGC 2170 is joined by other bluish reflection nebulae, a compact red emission region, and streamers of obscuring dust against a backdrop...

Dec 30th

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Doing Cartwheels to Celebrate the End of an Era

An image of the Cartwheel Galaxy taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has been reprocessed using the latest techniques to mark the closure of the Space Telescope European Coordination Facility (ST-ECF), based near Munich in Germany, and to celebrate its achievements in supporting Hubble science in Europe over the past 26 years. Astronomer Bob Fosbury, who is stepping down as Head of...

Dec 29th

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Dec 29th

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Dec 28th

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Dec 28th

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Not Much Time

Hi all! Sorry I’ve not kept this blog updated the last couple of days. I’ve been rather busy doing Christmassy stuff, but it should be back to full posting soon.

Dec 27th

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Dec 27th

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Dec 25th

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Dec 24th

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Dec 24th

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Opportunity Studying a Football-Field Size Crater

On Dec. 16, 2010, NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity reached a crater about the size of a football field-some 90 meters (295 feet) in diameter. The rover team plans to use cameras and spectrometers during the next several weeks to examine rocks exposed at the crater, informally named “Santa Maria.” A mosaic of image frames taken by Opportunity’s navigation camera...

Dec 24th

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Watch

ISS Update - Dec. 23, 2010 I’ve been that busy this week that I’ve been forgetting to post the ISS updates. Here’s the latest from NASA.

Dec 23rd

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Dec 23rd

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Dec 23rd

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Dec 22nd

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More Meteors Inbound Tonight (But Don't Get Too...

Just been checking my calendar and it appears that the Ursids Meteor Shower is due to reach it’s peak tonight. However the shower does have a very low ZHR of about 10 meteors per hour, and the Moon is still pretty much full and will likely drown them out. So I think you’ll be lucky to see anything this year. I just thought it was worth a mention.

Dec 22nd

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Lack of News

I’ve been rather busy with one thing or another this week and that means I’ve not been able to spend as much time on the PC looking for news and talking to other astronomers. I will continue to post the daily APOD and AAPOD pictures as well as post any videos and podcasts that get sent my way, and I will be up to full posting power after Christmas. I just hope nothing truly ground...

Dec 22nd

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Dec 22nd

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Dec 21st

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Dec 21st

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How Can We Tell if Exoplanets are Inhabited?

I just found an interesting article by Ray Villard over at Discovery News, asking how we will know if life exists on any exoplanets we find. We can’t very well just set up a large telescope and peer in on any exoplanets we discover, we just wouldn’t be able to get the resolution to see that far, so how will we know if life really does exist there? It’s all very well finding...

Dec 21st

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Dec 21st

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Supermassive Black Holes

This two-panel graphic contains two composite images of galaxies used in a recent study of supermassive black holes. In each of the galaxies, data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory are blue, and optical data from the Sloan Digital Sky survey are colored red, green and blue. The galaxy on the left, Abell 644, is in the center of a galaxy cluster that lies about 1.1 billion light years...

Dec 21st

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Dec 20th

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Watch

This Year at NASA - 2010 (Part 1) Part one of NASA’s review of the year video

Dec 20th

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Get Ready for the Solstice Lunar Eclipse!

The first total lunar eclipse in two years will grace the sky the night of Monday, Dec. 20, and we want you to be there. Sure, it’s a school night, but with winter solstice and a new year upon us, what better time to gather your family and friends to see the moon in a new light? At NASA, we’re pretty excited for this year’s lunar eclipse, so we’re offering a number of...

Dec 20th

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Dec 20th

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See The Most Detailed Topographic Map of the Moon

Researchers have used NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to create the most complete maps of the lunar surface. Read the full article here

Dec 20th

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Dec 20th

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Dec 20th

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Dec 19th

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Dec 19th

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Dec 18th

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Dec 18th

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Watch

ISS Update - Dec. 17, 2010 The International Space Station video update for Dec. 17, 2010.

Dec 17th

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Dec 17th

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Dec 17th

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ISS Update - Dec. 16, 2010 The International Space Station video update for Dec. 16, 2010.

Dec 16th

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Dec 16th

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The Zooniverse has a New Project

Being, as I am, an avid follower of everything Zooniverse, I was quite happy to find that they have another new project on their website. This makes the 10th Zooniverse project so far, and it looks to be very interesting. It’s called Planet Hunters, and as the name suggest it’s all about looking for planets around other stars. You do this by looking at graphs that show changes in...

Dec 16th

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