Hubble's look at Abell 1689, just WOW! A larger version is linked below. Credit: : NASA, ESA, D. Coe (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, and Space Telescope Science Institute), N. Benitez (Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia, Spain), T. Broadhurst (University of the Basque Country, Spain), and H. Ford (Johns Hopkins University)

This is an amazing Hubble dark matter map in Abell 1689.  Yes dark matter IS invisible it can be inferred as you will read below.  Still the image is really something, do yourself a favor, grab a cup of coffee or your favorite beverage and spend a few minutes looking at a larger version (~366k), you will see numerous galaxies and evidence of gravitational lensing.

Here’s the short version from Hubblesite:

Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope received a boost from a cosmic magnifying glass to construct one of the sharpest maps of dark matter in the universe. They used Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys to chart the invisible matter in the massive galaxy cluster Abell 1689, located 2.2 billion light-years away. The cluster contains about 1,000 galaxies and trillions of stars. Dark matter is an invisible form of matter that accounts for most of the universe’s mass. Hubble cannot see the dark matter directly. Astronomers inferred its location by analyzing the effect of gravitational lensing, where light from galaxies behind Abell 1689 is distorted by intervening matter within the cluster.

Researchers used the observed positions of 135 lensed images of 42 background galaxies to calculate the location and amount of dark matter in the cluster. They superimposed a map of these inferred dark matter concentrations, tinted blue, on a Hubble image of the cluster. The new dark matter observations may yield new insights into the role of dark energy in the universe’s early formative years.

Go over to Hubblesite for the full story AND a zoomable version of the image. Good stuff.

Take a look at this time-lapse video by Dustin Farrell:

Click here to view the embedded video.

It is a compilation of his own work, mostly taken in and around his home state of Arizona.  Each clip was a RAW image sequence (5616 X 3744) which he then rendered out as a 1080P 23.976fps Quick Time movie.

Dustin has some of his stills featured on his website, and they are breathtaking.  I especially like this one:

Image by Dustin Farrell, all rights reserved

Astrophotography is not an easy skill to master, by any means, and these stand out even in that rarefied atmosphere.  If you have a free minute, do browse Dustin’s website.

As always, if you have a question for Dustin, post it to the comments and I’ll forward them to him.

Thanks for sharing, Dustin!

Moons of Jupiter. Click for larger. Credit: findtarget.com

It is said that on a January night in the year 1610 Galileo turned his telescope towards Jupiter and he saw “three fixed stars, totally invisible by their smallness”.  Thoroughly intrigued subsequent observations on different nights showed the “fixed stars” indeed moved, sometimes even disappearing.  He discovered a fourth moon a week after the initial observation.

How could this be?  Well of course he came to the conclusion they were orbiting Jupiter.  He published his observations in pretty short order, in March 1610 in a paper titled Sidereus Nuncius or Starry Messenger.  The observations were confirmed in 1611 at the observatory of Christopher Clavius.

Galileo may have received a hero’s welcome in Rome and had fame in much of Europe the thought of him turning the comfort of Aristotelian Cosmology on it’s ear did nothing for his standing with the church and it wasn’t too many years later his troubles began.

Instead of plowing ahead with his troubles let’s get back to his telescope.  The telescope was invented in 1608 by Dutch spectacle makers, supposedly the inventor was Hans Lipperhey but nobody can prove it.  In early 1609 you could buy one in Paris and by August of that year they made their way to Italy.  Galileo couldn’t get his hands on one but being the resourceful fellow and after he overcame some technical problems, he put his knowledge about lens making to work and he just made his own.

So what does this have to do with anything?  What Galileo could see with that 20 power telescope you can see with a pair of binoculars and I would like to suggest you take a look at Jupiter over the coming nights and look at Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto and note how they move.  Jupiter is super easy to find, just look south (almost due south at 8 pm your local time) it’s the brightest thing out there.  Oh sure if you make a sketch you can even figure out which moon is which quite easily on a number of sites, one of my favorites is at  Western Washington University – simple and clean.

Also while you are at it, okay, a little later in the night or early morning look for comet Hartley 2, it’s a great time because there is no moon.   Basically wait until you can see Orion, then look along a line from Orion’s belt and draw a line from Gemini, the comet will be in that area.  Here’s a little chart to help you.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What the heck?  Apparently a missile launch off the California coast yesterday.

At the moment everybody is saying:

I SEE NOTHING, I HEAR NOTHING, I KNOW NOTHING.

The subject of Saturday’s riddle, Hind’s Crimson Star (R Leporis) is a Mira variable carbon star in the constellation Lepus.  Described in 1845 by astronomer J.R. Hind, R Lep is often cited as being one of the most beautiful of the ruby-esque carbon stars.

The constellation Lepus - by Torsten Bronger

With an apparent magnitude variance of +5.5 to +11.7 in an approximate 430 day cycle, R Lep appears the most crimson during the time its magnitude is dimmest.  This is probably due to variations in the amount of carbon in the star’s outer atmosphere.  The more carbon present, the more blue light is filtered from the visible light spectrum.

R Leporis, image by Adam Block/NOAO/AURA/NSF

Described as a “drop of blood on a black field”, a “glowing red coal”, and a ruby (of course), R Lep is said to eclipse even the ruddy Betelgeuse and Antares.  Easily visible with binoculars or a small telescope, this beauty is a sight worth the search.  Lepus (the “Hare”) is located south of Orion, and is best seen mid-January.  You’ll have the added bonus of viewing T Leporis and M79.

Lepus - R Leporis is in the center, Mu Leporis is in the lower left

Let me know what you think of it when you find it.

First a short video on the EPOXI/Hartley 2 flyby:

Click here to view the embedded video.

And then a little more about the shuttle delay and yet more on the comet flyby:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Hopefully the coming week won’t have me running around like the poor proverbial chicken “com a sua cabeça cortada” .

“INTRODUCTION: Although men appear to be more interested in sexual stimuli than women, this difference is not completely understood. Eye-tracking technology has been used to investigate visual attention to still sexual images; however, it has not been applied to moving sexual images. AIM: To investigate whether sex difference exists in visual attention to sexual videos. METHODS: Eleven male and 11 female healthy volunteers were studied by our new methodology. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The subjects viewed two sexual videos (one depicting sexual intercourse and one not) in which several regions were designated for eye-gaze analysis in each frame. Visual attention was measured across each designated region according to gaze duration. Sex differences, the region attracting the most attention, and visually favored sex were evaluated. RESULTS: In the nonintercourse clip, gaze time for the face and body of the actress was significantly shorter among women than among men. Gaze time for the face and body of the actor and nonhuman regions was significantly longer for women than men. The region attracting the most attention was the face of the actress for both men and women. Men viewed the opposite sex for a significantly longer period than did women, and women viewed their own sex for a significantly longer period than did men. However, gaze times for the clip showing intercourse were not significantly different between sexes. CONCLUSIONS: A sex difference existed in visual attention to a sexual video without heterosexual intercourse; men viewed the opposite sex for longer periods than did women, and women viewed the same sex for longer periods than did men. There was no statistically significant sex difference in viewing patterns in a sexual video showing heterosexual intercourse, and we speculate that men and women may have similar visual attention patterns if the sexual stimuli are sufficiently explicit.”

Photo: flickr/dutchlad

Related content:
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: What kind of erotic film clips should we use in female sex research? An exploratory study.
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Salvia divinorum: the pot of the future (at least according to YouTube).
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Sex differences in Nintendo Wii performance as expected from hunter-gatherer selection

WTF is NCBI ROFL? Read our FAQ!

Sister Discover Blog 80beats reports:

Fossilized dinosaur embryos, found still in their eggshells, have claimed the title of the oldest vertebrate embryos ever seen–they were fossilized in the early Jurassic Period, around 190 million years ago, researchers say. The embryos are from the species Massospondylus, a prosauropod, the family of dinosaurs which gave rise to iconic sauropods like the Brachiosaurus.

Of course, just because we found the well-preserved bones of a dinosaur embryo doesn’t mean we can bring the thing back to life with a snap of the fingers (or even with a crack scientific team “sparing no expense”). But remember that most scientists were very skeptical that any viable tissue could be found in dinosaur bones until Mary Schweitzer did just that—and faced a lot of misguided attacks before her results were confirmed.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the discovery was the fact that these dinosaur babies are in some important ways baby-like: big heads, no teeth, get around on four legs instead of two (as did Massospondylus adults). The researchers suspect that these little ones therefore probably couldn’t survive on their own, and must have depended on their parents—the oldest ever example of parental care. And if that’s the case, it sort of makes sense that they’d appeal to our weakness for things baby-like, even if they’re not of our species.

So if and when we do bring Massospondylus back from the mass grave of extinction, we better be ready to raise the kids well. Any ideas on how to parent a prosauropod?