The diffuse glow of the Milky Way, only just seen within a sea of stars, rises from behind the distant peaks of the Chilean Atacama Desert. The foreground desert road and surrounding flora are illuminated by a weak red lamp.
A long-exposure Hubble Space Telescope image shows a
majestic face-on spiral galaxy located deep within the Coma
Cluster of galaxies, which lies 320 million light-years away in
the northern constellation Coma Berenices.
The galaxy, known as NGC 4911, contains rich lanes of dust
and gas near its center. These are silhouetted against glowing
newborn star clusters and iridescent pink clouds of hydrogen,
the existence of which indicates ongoing star formation.
Hubble has also captured the outer spiral arms of NGC 4911,
along with thousands of other galaxies of varying sizes. The
high resolution of Hubble’s cameras, paired with considerably
long exposures, made it possible to observe these faint
details.
NGC 4911 and other spirals near the center of the cluster are
being transformed by the gravitational tug of their neighbors.
In the case of NGC 4911, wispy arcs of the galaxy’s outer
spiral arms are being pulled and distorted by forces from a
companion galaxy (NGC 4911A), to the upper right. The resultant
stripped material will eventually be dispersed throughout the
core of the Coma Cluster, where it will fuel the intergalactic
populations of stars and star clusters.
The Coma Cluster is home to almost 1,000 galaxies, making it
one of the densest collections of galaxies in the nearby
universe. It continues to transform galaxies at the present
epoch, due to the interactions of close-proximity galaxy systems
within the dense cluster. Vigorous star formation is triggered
in such collisions.
Galaxies in this cluster are so densely packed that they
undergo frequent interactions and collisions. When galaxies of
nearly equal masses merge, they form elliptical galaxies.
Merging is more likely to occur in the center of the cluster
where the density of galaxies is higher, giving rise to more
elliptical galaxies.
This natural-color Hubble image, which combines data obtained
in 2006, 2007, and 2009 from the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2
and the Advanced Camera for Surveys, required 28 hours of
exposure time. ~ NASA.gov
Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Acknowledgment: K. Cook (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)
It’s already been a year since the European Space Agency’s Rosetta
mission spacecraft made it’s historic landing on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on 12
November 2014.
The observations made by the Rosetta orbiter and Philae lander are reshaping researchers’ ideas about comets. The year of research includes the comet’s unusual surface terrace structure, its formation
from two colliding objects producing the unusual rubber duck shape, and the
surprising detection of molecular oxygen - familiar on Earth but not on
a comet. you can see more about it here
Above, you can see the difference of vantage points: a telescopic image of Comet 67P captured from Earth versus the view from Rosetta’s NAVCAM 127 km (79 miles) from the comet, both taken recently.
Credits: Damian Peach, ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM – CC BY-SA IGO 3.0
Remember my post on how a tibetan monk was able to dry wet sheets by meditation?
Well here’s another amazing example of mind over matter.
After hearing stories of yogis spending 28 days underground and surviving, researchers traveled to India to see if it was true.
A subject was placed in a small underground pit that was sealed from the top with bricks and cement. There was no food only a bucket of water, which the Yogi said he needed to keep the air humid, but NOT for drinking.
He was kept in there for 8 days and was in the state of intense meditation.
An ECG was kept inside to monitor heartbeats.
And what they found was astonishing.
As you can see the Yogi alternated between states of unrealistic hyper-heartbeat to a completely FLAT LINE NO heart-beat.
When the Yogi was taken out of the chamber after 8 days, he was completely fine other than being a bit cold.
