Our universe is so rad!

[dimejinky99]

isnt that the noise wolverine's claws make when they pop out?

[Alex]

yeah

[dimejinky99]

http://www.iflscience.com/space/astrono ... e-hole-sun

Astronomers Spot Square Hole In Sun
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory recently spotted something peculiar on the Sun: a square hole. There are high-speed solar winds shooting out of this area, and the lack of material makes the UV image look dark in comparison to surrounding areas. This hole was spotted in a video that that collected data from May 5-7.

The SDO’s description on the YouTube video reads: Inside the coronal hole you can see bright loops where the hot plasma outlines little pieces of the solar magnetic field sticking above the surface. Because it is positioned so far south on the Sun, there is less chance that the solar wind stream will impact us here on Earth.”

Researchers still aren’t sure what causes these coronal holes, but they are related to the fluctuations in the solar cycle when the magnetic poles reverse.


Read more at http://www.iflscience.com/space/astrono ... SAiITsr.99

[Kaius]

I'm an awful smelly hippy(haven't showered since Christmas!)

Really?

[Alex]

I'm an awful smelly hippy(haven't showered since Christmas!)

Really?

the gnome in his backyard told him he could enter the square hole in the sun if he didn't shower for a year

[dimejinky99]

Sky-watchers are in store for a once-in-a-lifetime meteor storm when the Earth passes through the tail of a comet.

Astronomers are predicting that up to 1,000 shooting stars an hour could rain down on Earth hour as our planet passes through debris from Comet 209P/LINEAR in the next week.

The head of Astronomy Ireland, David Moore, has urged the public to get outside next Friday night, May 23, to try to catch a glimpse of the celestial fireworks that will fly from dusk till dawn.

“Imagine a thousand shooting stars per hour. It could be one every five to 10 seconds. It could be really spectacular,” he said.

“Shooting stars are very rare and most people accidentally see one once every few years. If they go out for five to 10 minutes on that particular night they could see more than an astronomer sees in a lifetime. It is a very big event cosmically.”

Comet 209P/LINEAR, discovered in February 2004 by Nasa, is described as a relatively dim comet that dips inside the orbit of Earth once every five years as it loops around the sun.

Forecasters say the newly named Camelopardalids shower has never been seen before, unlike the annual Perseids shower in August. Experts expect to see up to 1,000 meteors an hour, as well as the Earth encountering debris from the comet.

Mr Moore said the science for predicting meteor storms has greatly advanced but is still not completely foolproof.

He said: “This particular [shower] will be caused by dust off a comet five million miles away. The conditions are just right for us to get a decent shooting star shower this one year.

“We have had meteor storms in living memory. There were some huge ones in the 20th century, in 1933 and in 1966 they had 40 shooting stars per second.

“In 1990, we had a shooting stars shower which produced 300 or 400 shooting stars per hour and we’re hearing this one will be a couple of times better than that.

“Every decade or two there is a meteor storm but now they’ve figured out what causes them and they have been able to predict them.

“It will blast one half of the Earth. It is a very big event cosmically. In the past, they weren’t able to predict them but they have figured out now how to predict them, although it is still not totally reliable science.

“It’s more than likely the star shower will materialise and there is a decent chance it could be a storm. You definitely want to be outside watching. If it does happen you are in for the celestial fireworks display of a lifetime.”

Mr Moore said North America will see the shooting star shower at its height as it will be night there when the Earth hits the comet dust.

“It currently favours north America but we are the last country to North America. We could catch the whole event,” he said.

“People should get outside on the night of the 23rd and the morning of the 24th from dusk till dawn if you can stay up that long.”

He said Astronomy Ireland will be urging people to count the shooting stars.

“We will be asking people around Ireland to count every one they see every 15 minutes and email the results in to us for a survey we will be doing.

“That survey will be very important. We are the last population on the west coast of Europe and there will be very few people watching from the Atlantic Ocean.

“Our observations in things like this are often critically important because of where we are located. We are not surrounded by other countries. We will be trying to motivate the country to go out and look and count them.”

To log the shooting stars, go to astronomy.ie

© Irish Examiner Ltd. All rights reserved
http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/pu ... 68969.html

[mf]

Awesome. I'm hoping to get out after midnight to photograph the event....assuming the sky clears enough here. it's sitting at 50/50 right now

[dimejinky99]

we're totally covered but i think its raning it's self out..might blow over..

[elliseamos]

this better not be a dud.

[dimejinky99]

1am here and totally clouded over

[mf]

1am here and totally clouded over

yeah things didn't go well here either. clouded over at 10pm and 4am when i checked. pretty disappointed

[dimejinky99]

I blame Obama

[dimejinky99]

this is interesting
http://www.astronomy.com/news/2014/05/f ... ter-jacket

Failed dwarf galaxy survives galactic collision thanks to full dark-matter jacket
Without the protective shell, the Smith Cloud would have disintegrated long ago.
By NRAO, Socorro, New Mexico | Published: Tuesday, May 27, 2014
RELATED TOPICS: GALAXIES | DWARF GALAXIES
TheSmithCloud
This is a false-color image of the Smith Cloud made with data from the Green Bank Telescope (GBT).
NRAO/AUI/NSF
Like a bullet wrapped in a full metal jacket, a high-velocity hydrogen cloud hurtling toward the Milky Way appears to be encased in a shell of dark matter, according to a new analysis of data from the National Science Foundation's Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT). Astronomers believe that without this protective shell, the high-velocity cloud (HVC) known as the Smith Cloud would have disintegrated long ago when it first collided with the disk of our Galaxy.

If confirmed by further observations, a halo of dark matter could mean that the Smith Cloud is actually a failed dwarf galaxy, an object that has all the right stuff to form a true galaxy, just not enough to produce stars.

"The Smith Cloud is really one of a kind. It's fast, quite extensive, and close enough to study in detail," said Matthew Nichols with the Sauverny Observatory in Switzerland and principal author on a paper accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. "It's also a bit of a mystery; an object like this simply shouldn't survive a trip through the Milky Way, but all the evidence points to the fact that it did."

Previous studies of the Smith Cloud revealed that it first passed through our Galaxy many millions of years ago. By reexamining and carefully modeling the cloud, astronomers now believe that the Smith Cloud contains and is actually wrapped in a substantial "halo" of dark matter -- the gravitationally significant yet invisible stuff that makes up roughly 80 percent of all the matter in the Universe.

"Based on the currently predicted orbit, we show that a dark matter free cloud would be unlikely to survive this disk crossing," observed Jay Lockman, an astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia, and one of the coauthors on the paper. "While a cloud with dark matter easily survives the passage and produces an object that looks like the Smith Cloud today."

The Milky Way is swarmed by hundreds of high-velocity clouds, which are made up primarily of hydrogen gas that is too rarefied to form stars in any detectable amount. The only way to observe these objects, therefore, is with exquisitely sensitive radio telescopes like the GBT, which can detect the faint emission of neutral hydrogen. If it were visible with the naked eye, the Smith Cloud would cover almost as much sky as the constellation Orion.

Most high-velocity clouds share a common origin with the Milky Way, either as the leftover building blocks of galaxy formation or as clumps of material launched by supernovas in the disk of the Galaxy. A rare few, however, are interlopers from farther off in space with their own distinct pedigree. A halo of dark matter would strengthen the case for the Smith Cloud being one of these rare exceptions.

Currently, the Smith Cloud is about 8,000 light-years away from the disk of our Galaxy. It is moving toward the Milky Way at more than 150 miles per second and is predicted to impact again in approximately 30 million years.

"If confirmed to have dark matter this would in effect be a failed galaxy," said Nichols. "Such a discovery would begin to show the lower limit of how small a galaxy could be." The researchers believe this could also improve our understanding of the Milky Way's earliest star formation.

[ABNorman]

This blew my mind a little bit: Stick all the planets in a row and they still just about fit between Earth and the moon.

[dimejinky99]

This blew my mind a little bit: Stick all the planets in a row and they still just about fit between Earth and the moon.

that cant be right...Jupiter is ginormous..

[Simple Torture]

This blew my mind a little bit: Stick all the planets in a row and they still just about fit between Earth and the moon.

that cant be right...Jupiter is ginormous..

The moon's distance from the earth is about 400,000 km, and Jupiter's radius is about 71,500 km, so yeah, it can be right. Space is weird!

[ABNorman]

This blew my mind a little bit: Stick all the planets in a row and they still just about fit between Earth and the moon.

that cant be right...Jupiter is ginormous..

I know, right? It seems ridiculous. And yet, Wikipedia informs me that Jupiter has a diameter of under 90,000 miles.

[dimejinky99]

seriously??
wow. that's something else..
so if the moon looks that big in the sky, what would jupiter look like...thats crazy

[Simple Torture]

This blew my mind a little bit: Stick all the planets in a row and they still just about fit between Earth and the moon.

that cant be right...Jupiter is ginormous..

The moon's distance from the earth is about 400,000 km, and Jupiter's radius is about 71,500 km, so yeah, it can be right. Space is weird!

Er, seems like my numbers were a bit off. But it's still possible!

[ABNorman]

This blew my mind a little bit: Stick all the planets in a row and they still just about fit between Earth and the moon.

that cant be right...Jupiter is ginormous..

The moon's distance from the earth is about 400,000 km, and Jupiter's radius is about 71,500 km, so yeah, it can be right. Space is weird huge!