Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known
Founder: Joseph Barone
Contributors: crookedindifference, bumerangue, propagandery, rocketmagic, rostenbach
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
How exploding stars might well have changed the course of evolution: http://nyr.kr/117eF9g
This digital project by Paris-based photographer Thierry Cohen is an imaginative tale about how urban landscapes might appear if we turned out all of the lights. In a big city glowing with street lamps, store signs, car headlights, and rows of illuminated apartment buildings, it’s almost impossible to see the stars in the sky. One project review says, “Atmospheric and light pollution combine to make looking into the urban sky like looking past bright headlights while driving.”
To bring a sense of nature back into these environments, Cohen has taken a bit of a scientific approach. He travels to places free from light pollution and captures the skies that rotate on the same axis as the urban skylines. Those same skies that were at some point visible above the cities are then superimposed into the darkened cityscapes.
The result is Darkened Cities, Cohen’s project in which cold, dark, and desolate cityscapes sit below these atmospheric wonders overhead. In a sense, Cohen is bringing a forgotten nature back into these places. His darkened landscapes are a frightening visual of what it might look like if a city had to be completely shut down. His images are a reminder of the magical beauty of nature and through this project, he encourages viewers to take a step back from the hustle and bustle of everyday life and to appreciate—most importantly, not take for granted—the natural world around us.
Wow
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Beautiful art with starry night.
So my boyfriend and I were out stargazing earlier tonight and we took these pictures of the stars. The pictures turned out really great so I thought I would post them up here for other people to enjoy.
Switch-off for stargazers in Somerset, UK
The town of Dulverton in Somerset has plunged itself into utter darkness as part of an astronomy event designed to highlight the effects of light pollution.
All the residents and the local authority switched off their lights to give stargazers the best view of the skies, but many were left disappointed as they found cloud cover obscuring the view.
The event is part of the BBC series Stargazing Live. Video on the link.
Starry Night necklace by Lana Pineapple on etsy!
Billions of years ago, when the universe was still in its infancy, the formation of stars is believed to have occurred at a much faster rate than it does today. Now, a recent discovery by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (HST) suggests that the universe’s earliest galaxies may have been pumping out stars even faster than we thought.
The video featured here zooms in on Hubble imagery to reveal the young galaxies that are brimming with starbirth.
[io9]
APOD: Young Suns of NGC 7129
Image Credit & Copyright: Johannes Schedler (Panther Observatory)
Explanation: Young suns still lie within dusty NGC 7129, some 3,000 light-years away toward the royal constellation Cepheus. While these stars are at a relatively tender age, only a few million years old, it is likely that our own Sun formed in a similar stellar nursery some five billion years ago. Most noticeable in the sharp imageare the lovely bluish dust clouds that reflect the youthful starlight. But the compact, deep red crescent shapes are also markers of energetic, young stellar objects. Known as Herbig-Haro objects, their shape and color is characteristic of glowing hydrogen gas shocked by jets streaming away from newborn stars. Paler, extended filaments of redish emission mingling with the bluish clouds are caused by dust grains effectively converting the invisible ultraviolet starlight to visible red light throughphotoluminesence. Ultimately the natal gas and dust in the region will be dispersed, the stars drifting apart as the loose cluster orbits the center of the Galaxy. At the estimated distance of NGC 7129, this telescopic view spans about 40 light-years.
“Magnificent Milky Way and Radiant Stars”
(via WeHeartIt)
/ragingjealousy
Why we should get out of the city every once in a while.
Light pollution is robbing us of dark skies.
(Source: ikenbot)
Tempest Milky Way
this is what it looks like when a star is born.
A team of scientists has collected enough high-resolution Hubble Space Telescope images over a 14-year period to stitch together time-lapse movies of powerful jets ejected from three young stars.
NASA’s press release (with images)
Hickson 44 in Leo
Image Credit & Copyright: Stephen Leshin
Scanning the skies for galaxies, Canadian astronomer Paul Hickson and colleagues identified some 100 compact groups of galaxies, now appropriately called Hickson Compact Groups. The four prominent galaxies seen in this intriguing telescopic skyscape are one such group, Hickson 44, about 100 million light-years distant toward the constellation Leo. The two spiral galaxies in the center of the image are edge-on NGC 3190 with its distinctive, warped dust lanes, and S-shaped NGC 3187. Along with the bright elliptical, NGC 3193 at the right, they are also known as Arp 316. The spiral in the upper left corner is NGC 3185, the 4th member of the Hickson group. Like other galaxies in Hickson groups, these show signs of distortion and enhanced star formation, evidence of a gravitational tug of war that will eventually result in galaxy mergers on a cosmic timescale. The merger process is now understood to be a normal part of the evolution of galaxies, including our own Milky Way. For scale, NGC 3190 is about 75,000 light-years across at the estimated distance of Hickson 44.
