Name: Norman Anthony Aguero
Currently a student at FIU. My major is chemistry and my minor is physics. My goal is to hopefully earn a Ph.D. in physical organic chemistry.
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The colourful demise of a Sun-like star
Light Echoes From a Red Supergiant
This Hubble Space Telescope image of the star V838 Monocerotis reveals dramatic changes in the illumination of surrounding dusty cloud structures. The effect, called a light echo, unveiled never-before-seen dust patterns when the star suddenly brightened for several weeks in early 2002.
A light echo is light from a stellar explosion echoing off dust surrounding the star that produces enough energy in a brief flash to illuminate surrounding dust. The star presumably ejected the illuminated dust shells in previous outbursts. Light from the latest outburst travels to the dust and then is reflected to Earth.
The phenomena is similar to that of a nova. A typical nova is a normal star that dumps hydrogen onto a compact white-dwarf companion star. The hydrogen piles up until it spontaneously explodes by nuclear fusion -- like a titanic hydrogen bomb -- exposing a searing stellar core with a temperature of hundreds of thousands of degrees Fahrenheit.
By contrast, V838 Monocerotis did not expel its outer layers. Instead, it grew enormously in size. Its surface temperature dropped to temperatures that were not much hotter than a light bulb. This behavior of ballooning to an immense size, but not losing its outer layers, is very unusual and completely unlike an ordinary nova explosion.
The outburst may represent a transitory stage in a star's evolution that is rarely seen. The star has some similarities to highly unstable aging stars called eruptive variables, which suddenly and unpredictably increase in brightness.
V838 Monocerotis is located about 20,000 light-years away from Earth in the direction of the constellation Monoceros, placing the star at the outer edge of our Milky Way galaxy.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
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Pilgrim
This clip sums up the way I feel today.
The secret of places of the earth by Google Earth
Dancing Honeybee Using Vector Calculus to Communicate
Aurora Borealis
Dying Star Sculpts Rungs of Gas and Dust
This intriguing image of the intriguing ladder-like structures surrounding a dying star reveals startling new details of one of the most unusual nebulae known in our Milky Way. Cataloged as HD 44179, this nebula is more commonly called the "Red Rectangle" because of its unique shape and color as seen with ground-based telescopes.
This Hubble Space Telescope image reveals a wealth of new features in the Red Rectangle that cannot be seen with ground-based telescopes looking through the Earth's turbulent atmosphere.
Hubble's sharp pictures show that the Red Rectangle is not really rectangular, but has an overall X-shaped structure, which arises from outflows of gas and dust from the star in the center. The outflows are ejected from the star in two opposing directions, producing its peculiar shape. Also remarkable are straight features that appear like rungs on a ladder, making the Red Rectangle look similar to a spider web, a shape unlike that of any other known nebula.
The star in the center of the Red Rectangle is one that began its life as a star similar to our sun. It is now nearing the end of its lifetime, and is in the process of ejecting its outer layers to produce the visible nebula. The shedding of the outer layers began about 14,000 years ago. Eventually, the star will have become smaller and hotter and begin to release a flood of ultraviolet light into the surrounding nebula; at that time, gas in the nebula will begin to fluoresce, producing what astronomers call a planetary nebula.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, Hans Van Winckel (Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium), and Martin Cohen (University of California, Berkeley)
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In A Drop Of Pond Water
I hurt:
| F-16 and UFO | |
| I watched this clip over and over, I am sure the Pilot is looking at the object, his head turns watching the UFO decend into the clouds. The UFO certainly moves quick and keeps it's self "Flat" unlike a conventional aeroplane that would turn into a move. |
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A Ghostly Presence
This composite image shows Z Camelopardalis, or Z Cam, a double-star system. The Z Cam system features a collapsed, dead star, called a white dwarf, and its companion star, as well as a ghostly shell around the system. The massive shell provides evidence of lingering material ejected during, and swept up by, a powerful explosion that occurred a few thousand years ago.
The image combines data gathered from the far-ultraviolet and near-ultraviolet detectors on NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer on Jan. 25, 2004. The orbiting observatory first began imaging Z Cam in 2003.
Z Cam is the largest white object in the image, located near the center. Parts of the shell are seen as a wispy, yellowish feature below and to the right of Z Cam, and as two large, whitish, perpendicular lines on the left.
Z Cam was one of the first known recurrent dwarf nova, meaning it erupts in a series of small, hiccup-like blasts, unlike classical novae, which undergo a massive explosion.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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Cosmic Pearls
Two decades ago, astronomers spotted one of the brightest exploding stars in more than 400 years.
Since that first sighting, the doomed star, called Supernova 1987A, has continued to fascinate astronomers with its spectacular light show. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is one of many observatories that has been monitoring the blast's aftermath. The supernova is located 163,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
This image shows the entire region surrounding the supernova, the most prominent feature of which is a ring with dozens of bright spots, shining like cosmic pearls. Unleashed by the stellar blast, this material is slamming into regions along the ring's inner regions, heating them up, and causing them to glow. The ring, about a light-year across, was likely shed by the star about 20,000 years before it exploded.
This image was taken in December 2006 with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, P. Challis and R. Kirshner (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysic
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When I was a child, I was exposed to a T.V. series known as 'Star Trek.'
I was, at most, 10 years old, and had the fortune to be able to see the original series in color. Thanks to my Grandmother, who had worked for and aquired a color T.V. set from Motorola, the early video effects captured my imagination.
Science fiction was busting out from rocket propulsion to something exotic as 'star drive' via some matter / antimatter propulsion system we have yet to understand and discover. My generation had a 'quantum leap' when it came to realizing that conventional propulsion will not do the work needed to reach even the most closest star system, Proxima Centauri, just a mere ~4.1 light years away.
As a kid, I was blown away by the size of the ship. The "Enterprise," from fiction. Much larger than the rockets shot into space during the height of "B" movies of the 1950's.
Here it is:
Barsoom
Hit The Full Resolution Link, To See What Mars Looks Like!
"Yes, I have been to Barsoom again ..." begins John Carter in Edgar Rice Burroughs' 1913 science fiction classic The Gods of Mars. In Burroughs' novels of Carter's adventures, "Barsoom" is the local name for Mars. The red planet continues to capture the imagination of science fiction writers and scientists alike and serves as an impetus for exploration.
NASA's Exploration Rover Spirit wintered on a small hill known as "Low Ridge," producing this 360-degree view of the Martian surface. There, the rover's solar panels tilted toward the sun to maintain enough solar power for Spirit to keep making scientific observations throughout the winter on southern Mars.
Spirit completed its 1,000th sol of what was planned as a 90-sol mission. (A sol is a Martian day, which lasts 24 hours, 39 minutes, 35 seconds). The rover has lived through the most challenging part of its second Martian winter and its solar power levels are rising again. Spirit's panaromic camera began shooting component images of this panorama during sol 814 (April 18, 2006) and completed the part shown here on sol 932 (Aug. 17, 2006).
Spirit has stayed busy at Winter Haven during the six-month Martian winter even without driving, acquiring significant new assessments of the elemental chemistry and mineralogy of rocks and soil targets within reach of the rover's arm.
Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell
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