The first cosmic X-ray detector, launched in 1962. Credit: NASA

GREENBELT, Md., June 22 (UPI) -- Cosmic X-ray astronomy turned 50 years old this month, NASA said, highlighting the 1962 pioneer effort of a small team of scientists in the New Mexico desert.

On June 18, 1962, an X-ray detector, crude by modern standards, was launched from the hot desert sands atop an Aerobee 150 rocket of modest performance, escaping Earth's atmosphere for just 5 minutes 50 seconds and reaching an altitude of 140 miles.

Researchers eagerly reviewing the data from the pioneering instrument found just one discrete X-ray source, which they named Scorpius X-1, and a broad, diffuse X-ray glow that would come to be known as the cosmic X-ray background, NASA said in a release this week.

While astronomers had previously detected X-rays from the sun, this was the first detection of X-rays outside our Solar System, and X-ray astronomy was born.

That crude detector was followed by the first X-ray imaging telescope, sent into space in 1963, in size and shape no bigger than the first optical telescope built by Galileo in 1610.

It took four centuries for optical telescopes to improve their sensitivity by the same 100 million times factor that X-ray telescopes have managed in just 40 years, leading to the field's current flagship, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

More here:

X-ray astronomy celebrates anniversary

Washington, June 22 (ANI): The University of Hawaii has released a remarkable first infrared astronomy image obtained using its new 16-megapixel HAWAII 4RG-15 (H4RG-15) image sensor on the UH 2.2-meter (88-inch) telescope on Mauna Kea.

Go here to see the original:

New infrared sensor captures Whirlpool Galaxy 23mn light years away

On June 14, 2012, the asteroid 2012 LZ1 passed the Earth. It missed us by a wide margin, over 5 million kilometers (3 million miles), so there was no danger of impact. While it does get near us every now and again, using current orbital measurements we know were safe from an impact by this particular rock for at least 750 years. Phew.

Good thing, too. New observations using the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico indicate LZ1 is bigger than we first thought. Much bigger: its about a kilometer across, when it was thought to be half that size before these observations.

Thats a big difference. The problem is that the size of an asteroid is hard to determine. Even a big one may only appear as a dot in a telescope, so even though we may know its distance and trajectory very accurately, directly measuring its size isnt possible. Usually, the size is estimated by knowing its distance and how bright it appears. In general, a bigger rock will look brighter than a smaller one at a given distance.

But that assumes they both reflect the same amount of light. Most asteroids reflect about 4% of the sunlight they receive (this property is called the albedo), but that depends on their surface. Some have darker surfaces, some brighter. If you dont know how reflective it is, the size can only be estimated.

But the Arecibo telescope can actually directly measure the size of a nearby asteroid. It can send pulses of radio waves at an asteroid and then receive the reflected waves, much like a cop on the side of the road uses radar to measure a cars speed. The method is technical (Emily Lakdawalla has a great explanation on her blog), but it was used for LZ1 to get the new size measurement. The picture above is the actual image generated using Arecibo when the rock was still 10 million km (6 million miles) from Earth. Apparently, LZ1 is much less reflective than assumed earlier, which is why the size was underestimated by a factor of two.

An asteroid this size hitting the Earth would be, um, bad. Thats big enough to be considered a global hazard, causing immense devastation. It might not be an extinction event the dinosaur-killing asteroid was 10 km across, so it had 1000 times the mass of LZ1 but it wouldnt be fun. So Im glad were safe from this guy for some time!

But Ill be honest: LZ1 was only discovered a few weeks before it passed us. Asteroids this size passing near us are pretty rare (we havent had an impact from something this big for many, many millennia) so as usual Im not panicking about this. But it just shows once again that we need more eyes on the sky, more people looking. And we need a plan in place in case we do see one with our name on it.

Related Posts:

- Asteroid 2011 AG5: a football-stadium-sized rock to watch carefully - My asteroid impact talk is now on TED - Another tiny rock will pass Earth tomorrow - Updated movie of asteroid YU55, plus bonus SCIENCE - Just to be clear: asteroid YU55 is no danger to Earth - Armageddon delayed by at least a century this time

Continue reading here:

Near-Earth asteroid twice as big as previously thought | Bad Astronomy

Join Dr. Donald Lubowich, coordinator of the Astronomy Outreach Program at Hofstra University, for a series of events bringing astronomy to the public. Concertgoers at several events this summer will get a glimpse of heavens along with their music.

This NASA-sponsored program will include optical and radio telescope observations of the Sun prior to the concerts. Observations of the moon, planets, multi-colored double stars, star clusters and nebulae will be featured at intermission and after the concerts. Videos, posters, hands-on activities and the sounds of the sun will also be available.

For more information and to see a full schedule of events, visit http://www.hofstra.edu/Academics/Colleges/HCLAS/PHYSIC/physic_underthestars.html.

Please follow SpaceRef on Twitter and Like us on Facebook.

Original post:

2012 Music and Astronomy Under the Stars Events

Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He's written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic and fights the abuse of science, but his true love is praising the wonders of real science.

The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking, movie reviews, and all that) can be found here.

Read the original here:

No words | Bad Astronomy

[I've been holding off writing about the Chinese space launch due to prior commitments and also because I've been trying to gather my thoughts about it. I'm still not sure where I fall, so here are some of my feelings. They are, of course, subject to change upon better arguments and evidence. I'll note also not everyone thinks crewed exploration of space is important. To be clear: those people are wrong, and I have a list of blog posts explaining why.]

Last week, the Chinese launched a crew of three into space. Their destination: the Chinese space station Tiangong-1, which for now consists of a single orbiting module about 10 meters long by 3 across. The Shenzou 9 capsule carrying the astronauts (sometimes called taikonauts) successfully docked with the station on Monday the first time the Chinese have docked a crewed capsule, making them only the third nation to have achieved this feat (after Russia and the US). Video from the event was posted on YouTube:

Thats pretty amazing the docking was done by remote control from Earth, and appears to have gone pretty well. The crew is now aboard Tiangong-1, getting it set up. Much like the International Space Station which was launched one piece at a time and assembled in orbit, its clear China plans on expanding Tiangong-1. Tiangong-1 is the first in a series of planned space stations by China.

Ive been reading about Chinas space efforts, and I have to say I am uneasy by a lot of it. My first impulse, as Ive written before, is that space is open to everyone, and the more the merrier. Ive also been vocal about the need to avoid a "Space Race" mentality: us versus them doing something first. The problem with that is that it isnt sustainable. Once you win (or lose) youre done. I think its the main reason Apollo scaled so far back after even the first landing, and why we didnt continue on to build a moonbase, or at least the 2001-style orbiting space station.

On the other hand, we also need to avoid the been-there-done-that mentality as well. For one thing, the NASA that went to the Moon is literally no longer the NASA that exists today. We have different rockets, different technology, and most importantly different people, both in political office as well as in the NASA engineering departments. Sure, we went to the Moon in 60s and 70s, but it is literally impossible for us to go back at the current time, and will be for many years to come. Thats worth remembering.

I say this because Amy Shira Teitel has an excellent summary of the Chinese space program on her blog. Its a repost from last year, but it covers a lot of the background of where we are. However, she makes a point I think needs discussing:

It could go two ways. Either China will become an ally like modern Russia, or it could become an adversary like the former Soviet UnionBut China isnt really a threat yet, at least not enough of one that NASA would enter into another space race.

I think we need to have a care here. If we take a snapshot of NASA and China, then this may be true. But looking over time, Im not so sure. China is showing a capability now to do things NASA cannot do: most obviously, launch humans into space. That capability may be back soon, whether through NASAs own rocket system or commercial ventures like SpaceX. But right now, China has far more momentum than NASA does. In the US were arguing over this or that project getting its funding cut, while we make very little progress in crewed exploration. Its worrisome.

Amy goes on:

Thats one thing China has available to its space program that NASA doesnt: money.

Follow this link:

What to make of the Chinese space effort? | Bad Astronomy

I got an email recently from BABloggee Mark Sunderland, pointing out this photo to me. It shows the Toronto skyline with the Milky Way and thousands of stars blazing behind it.

I had to chuckle: the picture is obviously fake (and now the caption at Flickr says as much, though it didnt when I first saw it). Theres no way you could see the Milky Way from a city like Toronto. The city lights flood the air with illumination, lighting up the sky and drowning out faint stars. A long exposure photo of the sky over Toronto would make it worse; the sky would be washed out, with only a handful of stars visible. This is called light pollution, and its a serious problem for astronomers. Thats why we build our telescopes far from civilization centers.

To really see the stars, you have to get away from cities, to a place with few lights to to compete with the sky. Thats a big reason my wife and I chose the C Lazy U Ranch for our premier Science Getaways vacation. This is a dude ranch nestled in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, where the nearest large town is Estes Park, 50 km to the northwest, and even thats blocked by the mountains. The skies there are dark.

Science Getaways is a company my wife and I started to add science to otherwise non-sciencey vacations. For this first one we have a geologist, biologist, and me at the dude ranch. Every day there will be science talks followed by short and long field trips (to accommodate different physical abilities) where well check out the local nature, and at night there will be stargazing sessions. Im really exited about that last bit (duh). Its been a while since Ive used a scope under really clear, dark skies I have an 8" Celestron and just seeing Saturn (which well do) is cool enough but unlike that composite Toronto picture, the Milky Way over the mountains will be quite real, and quite spectacular. Well be looking at nebulae, clusters, and other objects, too, and there will be plenty visible just to the unaided eye. Ill have binoculars people can use as well, which to be honest is one of my favorite ways to soak up dark skies. Its amazing what you can see with a decent pair of binocs.

This Getaway is from September 16 20, 2012 just three months from now. We have about 20 spots left open, so if youre on the fence about this, nows the time to decide. The skies are calling.

Related Posts:

- Science Getaways: T- 4 months - Science Getaways: Update - Science Getaways

Here is the original post:

Science Getaways: Dark skies | Bad Astronomy

19-06-2012 15:46 This is an OSU Astronomy "Coffee Brief" for the Clanton et al. (2012) paper titled "Precision Near Infrared Photometry for Exoplanet Transit Observations - I: Ensemble Spot Photometry for An All-Sky Survey" posted on the astro-ph archive on June 20, 2012. For more details, see the paper at: Video made by Chris Clanton (OSU Astronomy).

The rest is here:

Clanton et al. (2012): OSU Astronomy Coffee Brief - Video

The Canadian High Arctic offers continuous darkness during the winter months -- an enormous advantage for astronomers searching for repeating events like planetary transits of stars. Exceptionally clear, arctic winter skies and calm atmospheric conditions also make for excellent conditions for astronomy.

In February 2012, members of a team of astronomers and graduate students from the University of Toronto and the National Research Council braved -40 degrees Celcius temperatures to perform the first astronomical surveys, and continue measurements of atmospheric turbulence, at the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL) on Ellesmere Island. Since 2009, the National Research Council has been organizing observations at PEARL. The results confirm the observatory -- at 80 degrees North -- as among the best in the world; it is an excellent location from which to search for exoplanets, an excellent future home for the half-metre Dunlap Institute Arctic Telescope, and an important opportunity to establish a unique astronomical facility in Canada.

The team tested two Arctic Wide-field Cameras (AWCams) at Environment Canadas Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL), located 15 kilometres from Eureka, Nunavut. The AWCams are designed to search for transiting exoplanets around nearby, bright stars. In the High Arctic, without the interruption of daylight, such cyclical events are much more likely to be detected, especially at the longer orbital periods which are very difficult to reach from current ground-based observatories.

The top of the Ridge Lab roof, where our cameras were deployed.

According to Law, Finding planets around nearby stars is particularly important. Because of their proximity to us, we can obtain a much more detailed understanding of their atmospheres and compositions compared to more distant worlds. In addition, the data collected is currently being used for variable star measurements, and to search for transient events like supernovae and micro-lensing events.

The researchers also measured the atmospheric turbulence, or astronomical seeing, at the sitea condition vital to understand before placing larger telescopes at the location. Graduate student, Wayne Ngan , spent 17 days at PEARL and says, Despite the challenges of working in a cold, dark, and windy location, our tests indicate that the location has excellent potential for large telescopes like the Dunlap Institutes half-meter telescope thats currently undergoing testing in New Mexico.

Law and the team look forward to returning to Ellesmere Island later this year. Because of the continuous winter darkness, relative ease of access via the PEARL laboratory, and excellent astronomical conditions, says Law, we are all very excited about the arctic sites exceptional potential.

Provided by Canadian Astronomical Society

Originally posted here:

Extremely cool astronomy: Searching for exoplanets from the Canadian High Arctic

Because why not, I have two more Venus Transit shots to show you. Well, one picture and one quick time lapse video. I know its been a couple of weeks since the transit, but since today is the solstice, what the heck. And these are really special.

The first is a picture taken by friend-of-the-blog Babak Tafreshi, who founded and directs the wonderful project The World at Night, which shows people how lovely our skies are. He took several shots of the transit from Norway and put them together into this gorgeous composite photo:

[Click to ensolarnate, and you really need to; I had to shrink it quite a bit to fit the width of the blog.]

I love this shot, because. he took it at midnight! From northern Norway in June the Sun doesnt set; it skims the horizon at midnight, circling nearly parallel to it for a time. This coincided with the transit, making this one of the single most interesting sequences of the transit Ive seen. I also like how the Sun went behind a hill there on the right, with Venus and a sunspot still peeking over the edge. Babak says hes working on a time lapse video of the event too. [This picture was also on today's APOD.]

Speaking of which, the second transit shot is a time lapse video sent to me by Mark Ellis (who took the pink aurora picture I posted yesterday). He took this sequence in Minneapolis as Venus crossed the Suns face:

Short, but neat! I also like the music; it was written by Marks son Ryan. It fits the feel of the video very well.

I love these time lapse videos of the transit. The Sun is setting due to the Earth spinning on its axis, and Venus transiting the Sun due to its orbital geometry combined with our own. I like to picture all that motion in my head as I watch Venus silhouetted on the setting Sun, imagining myself affixed to a spinning world whirling around a star with other attendant worlds, all of us in a constant and complicated dance, moving to the tune of gravity.

How wonderful it is that we can understand and appreciate this celestial clockwork!

Image credit: Babak Tafreshi/Dreamview.net/TWaN

The rest is here:

Transit on the Midnight Sun | Bad Astronomy

18-06-2012 15:32

Read more:

Astronomy Cast 266 - Archimedes - Video

19-06-2012 14:49 Just when you think you understand it, light will do some amazing things. Just look at the discovery of lasers, and their use in almost every technology you can think of: from cutting, to transmitting information to, yes, astronomy. And nature has figured out its own version of laser technology, called the maser, which has kept astronomers puzzled and excited for years.

See the original post here:

Astronomy Cast Ep 260 The Technology of LASERS and MASERS - Video

Ive been seeing more shots of the pink aurora from a couple of days ago, and they are all really pretty! I love pink; its why I got a phone cover that color.

Photographer Mark Ellis captured the magnificent magenta magnetic maelstrom from northern Minnesota, and made a lovely time lapse video of it:

Heres a photo he took that is actually part of the time lapse:

[Click to embiggen.]

Aurorae are formed when subatomic particles from the Sun slam into our atmosphere. Note the streamers; those are caused by the varying strength and direction of the Earths magnetic field as it channels the particles down. As I describe in the earlier article, the colors are from different types of atoms and molecules in the air. Oxygen atoms glow red and green, sodium atoms yellow, and nitrogen molecules produce red and blue-violet. The nitrogen colors can blend and form pink or magenta, which is what were seeing here. Mark got more green in his aurora than Brad Goldpaint did in his, but Brad was in Oregon, thousands of kilometers west of Mark, and so he was seeing different effects from the solar storm.

I suspect things will quiet down a bit now; the sunspot that unleashed this storm is being carried around to the other side of the Sun as our star rotates, and itll soon disappear from view [UPDATE: SDO posted a video of the sunspot rotating out of view.] But as always, the Sun is feisty, and another may appear any day. SpaceWeather.com always has the latest info, so check there for updates and keep alert for more aurorae!

Image credit: Mark Ellis, used by permission

Related Posts:

- Aurora, in the pink More photos and videos by Mark Ellis: - Paradise, above and below - Faith and begaurora - Superb time lapse: "My Soul"

Original post:

Followup: More pink aurorae | Bad Astronomy

tis the season for solar storms, and Im hearing reports that Active Region 1504 (the same sunspot featured in a dramatic video I posted recently) has been getting feisty, blowing out some flares and causing auroral activity here on Earth.

Photographer Brad Goldpaint was in the right place at the right time Saturday night to see some of this: he went to Crater Lake, Oregon, and at 3:30 a.m. local time on June 17th he took this surpassingly beautiful picture of a somewhat rare event: pink aurorae!

[Click to recombinate.]

Gorgeous! And weird. The colors you see in aurorae depend mostly on whats in the air. Literally! A solar storm is an eruption of subatomic particles launched from the Sun at high speed. These interact with the Earths magnetic field, which, through a complicated process, sends those little beasties down into our air. They slam into the molecules and atoms in the upper atmosphere, blasting off electrons like bullets hitting concrete and sending out shrapnel.

When electrons recombine with the atoms and molecules, a little bit of energy is released in the form of light, and the color of that light depends on whats doing the emitting. Oxygen atoms, for example, tend to glow green and/or red. Oxygen molecules (two atoms combined, like the kind we breathe) glow blue. Nitrogen molecules can glow either red or blue. Heres a diagram from the excellent Atmospheric Optics website:

As you can see, several colors are emitted by the various atoms and molecules. One color you wont see there, though, is pink. Thats because pink isnt a spectral color; that is, part of the ROYGBIV red-orange-yellow-green-blue-indigo-violet spectrum.

If you have a source of red and blue light, these can combine to make something look magenta or pink, like in the diagram here. I strongly suspect thats whats going on here; were seeing a combination of red and blue light emitted by nitrogen molecules high over the Earth, and our eyes see that balance as pink. Cameras are designed to see colors much the way our eyes do, so the aurora looks pink in pictures as well.

Pink aurorae arent unknown, but it is rare to see the color this strongly with no almost no other coloring at all. And of course, Brads photographic skills are excellent, so its not just the color but the scene itself in his photo that is so breathtaking. He has another shot he took that night, too. Crater Lake is one of my favorite places on Earth, and if youve never been, go! If you time it well, you may be mesmerized not just by the Earth below, but by the heavens above as well.

Continue reading here:

Aurora, in the pink | Bad Astronomy

Photographer Randy Halverson whose pictures and time lapse videos have been featured here on the BA Blog many times; see Related Posts below just posted an epically cool picture he took just last night: The Milky Way looming over Devils Tower in Wyoming.

[Click to closeencountersofthethirdkindenate.]

He and his son (who also got a nice shot of it) were to the northwest of the gigantic butte-like structure; the night started out cloudy but it cleared after midnight. Im glad! I love pictures like this for many reasons. Obviously, the Milky Way itself is amazing; the central bulge of our spiral galaxy is obvious, studded with stars, gas clouds, and dark bands of dust.

But the icing on the mashed potatoes is that silhouetted against it is such a recognizable landmark and one that plays an essential part in one of my all-time favorite movies. Devils Tower has a fascinating geologic history, and I plan on visiting sometime. Its a long drive from Boulder, but I swear, it would make my fanboy (of both Hollywood and geology) heart sing to be able just to stand there and soak it in.

Image credit: Randy Halverson, used by permission.

Related Posts:

- Temporal Distortion - Reflecting on the ISS - Gorgeous aurorae - A meteors lingering tale

Original post:

The Milky Way and the Mashed Potatoes Mountain | Bad Astronomy

[BAFacts are short, tweetable astronomy/space facts that I post every day. On some occasions, they wind up needing a bit of a mathematical explanation. The math is pretty easy, and it adds a lot of coolness, which I'm passing on to you! You're welcome.]

Todays BAFact: To scale, if the Earth/Sun distance were one inch, a light year would be exactly one mile.

Humans have a miserable sense of scale. Space is huge thats why we call it "space" but how huge? Heres a fun trick my friend Dan Durda pointed out to me many years ago when we were in college together (forgive my not using metric units, but what the heck, this only works in imperial):

The average distance of the Earth to the Sun (what we call an astronomical unit) is about 92.8 million miles. If you made a scale model of the solar system where that distance were equal to one inch, then one mile in the model would be almost exactly a light year in the real world!

The math is easy. One light year is the distance light travels in a year. The speed of light is 186,282 miles/second, and distance equals speed multiplied by time. So:

186,282 mi/sec x 86,400 sec/day x 365.25 days/year = 5.88 trillion miles

[Note: I'm rounding the answer to two decimal places for ease of comparison.]

OK, now what about our scale? There are 12 inches to a foot, and 5280 feet to a mile. That means there are

12 in/ft x 5280 ft/mile = 63,360 inches/mile

If we let 1 inch = 92.8 million miles, then 63,360 inches = 5.88 trillion miles.

Visit link:

BAFact math: Give him an inch and he’ll take a light year | Bad Astronomy

There are times when I see an astronomical image so powerful that Im momentarily stunned, my brain kicked hard enough that all I can do is stare at it and soak it in.

This picture of Saturn is the latest to affect me this way:

[Click to embiggen.]

This astonishing image was taken on June 13, 2012 by the Cassini spacecraft when it was 2.6 million kilometers (1.6 million miles) from the ringed planet thats more then six times farther than the Moon is from the Earth. Even then Saturns rings span too broad a space to see completely. But artistically, perhaps, it works even better; their vast size is intimated instead of spoken aloud, the thousands of thinner component rings only hinted at. You can see their shadow on the tops of Saturns southern clouds thousands of kilometers below, the Sun shining down from the north to the left as seen in this oddly-angled shot. The clouds themselves are almost featureless, but you can still see some boundaries between oppositely-blowing wind belts, and even the long, snaking remnants of a titanic storm that raged in the north last year. Its incredible.

Moreover, this image has not been processed in any way: its raw, taken right off Cassinis detectors and sent home to Earth (I shrank it a bit to fit the blog, but otherwise didnt touch it). The sky behind the planet isnt entirely dark, there are a handful of hot pixels you can see on the planet, and there are other defects here and there that catch the eye. But even that takes nothing away from the power of this image to me, and in many senses actually adds to it.

Cassini is out there. Its well over a billion kilometers away from Earth and the Suns warmth, moving through space, enthralled by the deep and long-reaching gravity of this huge planet. Quietly, obediently, and with hardly any glitches or complaints, it takes picture after picture, reads and records the environment around it, saves the data, and then sends it via radio waves back to Earth, no more than a blue dot in its sprawling sky.

This is what I see, this is how my mind reacts once my brain has a moment to compose itself. Its a fantastic tableau, a static shot of a magnificent planet such a long, long way away. And always, when I see these, I also think: we did this. We flung this complex machine into the distant solar system to study Saturn, and we did it because we want to find things out.

It is among the best things we do.

Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute. Thanks to Michael Interbartolo for posting about this latest batch of raw images in his Google+ stream.

Continue reading here:

Saturn, raw | Bad Astronomy

Saturday, June 16, the Ames Area Amateur Astronomers will be holding part two of theirRobots in Space show at the Story County Conservation Center in McFarland Park.

The outreachcoordinator forAmateur Astronomers,Evan Zerby, who is also one of two speakers at the lecture, explained whatpart one entailed, as well as a few major points in Saturdays lecture.

What we covered last year was Sputnik [up to] current times," Zerby said. "What this months lecture is about iscurrent space missions, the replacement of the Hubble Space Telescope, and Robonaut, the firsthumanoid robot.

In addition to the future missions being discussed, the failures of spacecraft will be examined.

All in all weve had hundreds of missions fail, Zerby said. Twelve of the missions to Mars havefailed.

One example of the many Mars failures is the Mars Climate Orbiter. The satellite wasdisintegrated in the atmosphere after it made calculations sending it too close to Mars surface.

The problems were caused by simple human error: The Orbiter was set to work with the metricsystem, while human operators on Earth were imputing data in imperial measurements.

Another topic of focus is the New Frontier missions, specifically the New Horizons mission,which is sending a spacecraft to Pluto. Although it was launched in 2006, it still has three moreyears to travel before flying by the dwarf planet.

It wasnt till very recently that we learned that Pluto has four moons, and possibly even a ring,Zerby said, explaining that Pluto still has many unknowns for this mission to discover.

The Hubble Telescopes predecessor, the James Webb Space Telescope, will be explained to theaudience.

Read more:

Astronomy Club to host show June 16

Hubble has captured this beautiful new view of NGC 3314, two spiral galaxies located in the constellation Hydra, between 117 and 140 million light-years away from Earth. But they are not really colliding. If they were, they would look like this.

It's an optical effect: NGC 3314A (on the foreground) and NGC 3314B (on the background) are just overlapping, separated "ten times the distance between our Milky Way and neighboring Andromeda galaxy."

I just like to think they are in love and smooching. [NASA]

Read more:

Spectacular View of Two Seemingly Colliding Galaxies Captured By Hubble [Astronomy]

Traveling over west Africa at 8 kilometers per second in the International Space Station, astronaut Andr Kuipers took this eerie and lovely picture of a storm cloud just as it was illuminated by a lightning stroke:

[Click to enlighten yourself.]

Wow. This is easily as cool as another amazing shot of a lightning-illuminated cloud over Brazil taken from space in 2011, too.

And hmmmm. Scientists have detected gamma rays extremely high-energy light presumably generated by lightning storms and shooting straight up into space. I hope nothing makes Andr stressed any time soon. The ISS is no place for him to Hulk out!

[P.S. Before anyone asks -- and as much as I hate to explain a joke, I guess I really should in this case -- the gamma rays emitted by lightning storms are extremely weak, and not a danger to the astronauts.]

Credit: ESA/NASA

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- The softly glowing night sky - Buenos noches - Rocky Mountain (very) high - Astronaut opens up the window to see the Moon rise

The rest is here:

Looking down into the throat of a lightning storm | Bad Astronomy