Perseids meteor shower - great time to gaze into space!

The night of Friday, August 12 into the early morning of Saturday, August 13 will certainly be the best time of the year to watch meteor showers. Everyone, get your telescopes out of the garret!

Article:

Stay 'Up All Night' to Watch the Perseids!

08.12.11 - NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama

Looking for a good reason to enjoy an August evening? This year's Perseid meteor shower peaks on the night of Friday, Aug. 12 and into the early morning of Saturday, Aug 13. The Perseids are considered the best meteor shower of the year by many, but with the full moon washing out all but the brightest meteors, rates will probably only be 20-30 per hour at most -- weather permitting. The Perseids rate in the southern hemisphere is quite a bit lower, since the Perseid radiant doesn't climb above the horizon.


Perseid meteor shower. Image credit: NASA / Michael Menefee. Full resolution.

Watch the Perseids! Live Video/Audio Feed

A live video/audio feed of the Perseid shower will be embedded below on the night of the chat. The camera is mounted at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. During the day, you'll see a dark gray box -- the camera is light-activated and will turn on at dusk each evening. At night you'll see white points, or stars, on a black background. You can also access these links to more all sky cameras to have other views of the sky.

Before the camera activates, you can still hear the audio of meteors passing through the sky, creating blips, pings and whistles. The meteors themselves don't make sounds, but they ionize the air around them as they burn up. These ionized air molecules reflect radio waves back to our antenna.

More About the Perseids

The Perseids have been observed for at least 2,000 years and are associated with the comet Swift-Tuttle, which orbits the sun once every 133 years. Each year in August, the Earth passes through a cloud of the comet's debris. These bits of ice and dust -- most over 1,000 years old -- burn up in the Earth's atmosphere. The Perseids can be seen all over the sky, but the best viewing opportunities will be across the northern hemisphere. Those with sharp eyes will see that the meteors appear to radiate from the direction of the constellation Perseus.


Source: nasa.gov

Biggest stars & black holes in our universe

Now let's once again contemplate about our place in the universe. We're small. Tiny midgets in the vastness of space. But still, we're able to go out of our cosmic jail here on Earth, to reach for the stars and discover new worlds never imagined before. Open your mind for the size of space:

The Biggest Stars In The Universe

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bcz4vGvoxQA

Cosmic Journeys: The Largest Black Holes in the Universe


Definitely watch in HD: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cW7BvabYnn8

Forming a galaxy

A Star-Formation Laboratory

 

Source: NASA Goddard Photo and Video, on Flickr

The dwarf galaxy NGC 4214 is ablaze with young stars and gas clouds. Located around 10 million light-years away in the constellation of Canes Venatici (The Hunting Dogs), the galaxy's close proximity, combined with the wide variety of evolutionary stages among the stars, make it an ideal laboratory to research the triggers of star formation and evolution.

Intricate patterns of glowing hydrogen formed during the star-birthing process, cavities blown clear of gas by stellar winds, and bright stellar clusters of NGC 4214 can be seen in this optical and near-infrared image.

Observations of this dwarf galaxy have also revealed clusters of much older red supergiant stars. Additional older stars can be seen dotted all across the galaxy. The variety of stars at different stages in their evolution indicates that the recent and ongoing starburst periods are not the first, and the galaxy's abundant supply of hydrogen means that star formation will continue into the future.

This color image was taken using the Wide Field Camera 3 in December 2009.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration
Acknowledgment: R. O'Connell (University of Virginia) and the WFC3 Scientific Oversight Committee

Source: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hu...-form-lab.html

Nebulae - Interstellar clouds of beauty

The infinity of space can be divinely beautiful. Some examples of stellar nebulae:

Eagle Nebula - A birthplace of endless stars

(Source and full resolution: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eagle_nebula_pillars_complete.jpg)



Cat's Eye Nebula


Cone Nebula


Helix Nebula


Source & More:http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Nebula

Envision your place in the universe

For the beginning, I'd like to make you realize, how small we actually are. The vastness of our universe is almost impossible to comprehend for a human's mind. 
The Milky Way, our home galaxy, consists of an estimated number of around 400 billion stars alone. Now imagine many of them having planets (estimations are ~ 50 billion) - and those having moons! And that's just our galaxy, there are billions of other ones, in some way it can be seen as an infinite number. How many life forms, how many civilizations might evolve in such an endless sea that forms the space above our heads?
This graphic is a scale comparison of our sun to the planets of the solar system, amended by some interesting facts. 1.3 million Earths fit into our Sun! Which is a yellow dwarf star - there are way bigger stars out there in space.

Click the image for full resolution!
Source: http://waynedorrington.blogspot.com/2011/02/infographic-no2-sun.html

And this video shows you how size is all relative - making our Earth and the sun look like tiny mites!

(You can watch it in HD by clicking the video to open the YouTube page.)