Our daily (known) universe

The Atlas of the Universe website offers maps of the known universe up to 14 billion light years away from sun, which spans the entirety of the known universe.

Here’s the universe from 1 billion light years out, showing neighboring superclusters:

Credit: atlasoftheuniverse.com/Neighboring superclusters

And from 14 billion light years out, here is the visible universe:

Credit: atlasoftheuniverse.com/The known universe

Our daily universe: Moon, troposphere

Amazing shot from the International Space Station:

From NASA:

Photographed by the Expedition 28 crew aboard the International Space Station, this image shows the moon, the Earth’s only natural satellite, at center with the limb of Earth near the bottom transitioning into the orange-colored troposphere, the lowest and most dense portion of the Earth’s atmosphere. The troposphere ends abruptly at the tropopause, which appears in the image as the sharp boundary between the orange- and blue-colored atmosphere. The silvery-blue noctilucent clouds extend far above the Earth’s troposphere.

[Photo credit: NASA, aboard the International Space Station]

Our daily universe: UARS R.I.P.

After 20 years and 10 days in orbit, the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS), went down in a ball of glory this weekend, with no reports so far of injuries or damage.

From Universe Today:

After a night of changing predictions and hopes of many to see a fireball in the sky, the UARS (Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite) finally met it’s fiery demise.

The decommissioned, 6.5 ton satellite is believed to have re-entered the Earths atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean, and in it’s death throes the massive satellite broke up, and the surviving debris likely landed in the ocean, off of the West coast of North America.

In regard to the exact re-entry point and position of the debris field, Nicholas Johnson, chief orbital debris scientist at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, said “We don’t know where the debris field might be… We may never know.”

Here is a photo of the satellite’s ground track:

Credit: NASA/The green circle indicates the possible reentry point of UARS.

Our daily universe: scientists discover ‘super-Earth’

Astronomers announced today the discover of a “super-Earth” planet that is apparently 3.5 times the size of Earth. The planet, which is on the warm side of the habitable zone in relation to its star, is 36 light years away. I haven’t done the math to verify this (feel free), but one commenter to the above-linked story noted that the Voyager aircraft would need more than 600,000 years to get there at its present speed capacity.

Credit: European Southern Observatory/M. Kornmesser

Our daily universe: 9/11 attacks from space

I seem to be in a posting kind of mood today after a fairly long slump. As usual, I have been preoccupied with Counter Strike: Source, reading this and well, work has been a gom.

Just when you thought you had seen all the photographs from Sept. 11, 2001, here are some views of New York following the Sept. 11 attacks taken by Frank Culbertson from the International Space Station:

Credit: NASA

 

 

Credit: NASA

 

See here for more information.

Our daily universe: symmetry, rotation

New evidence suggests that the universe, previously thought to have been both symmetrical and born as a symmetric shape, like a ball, may have begun in rotation and without isotropic properties.

Credit: NASA, ESA

The researchers found evidence that galaxies tend to rotate in a preferred direction. They uncovered an excess of left-handed, or counter-clockwise rotating, in the part of the sky toward the north pole of the Milky Way. The effect extended beyond 600 million light years away.

“The excess is small, about 7 percent, but the chance that it could be a cosmic accident is something like one in a million,” Longo said. “These results are extremely important because they appear to contradict the almost universally accepted notion that on sufficiently large scales the universe is isotropic, with no special direction.”

The work provides new insights about the shape of the . A symmetric and isotropic universe would have begun with a spherically symmetric explosion shaped like a basketball. If the universe was born rotating, like a spinning basketball, Longo said, it would have a preferred axis, and galaxies would have retained that initial motion.

Of course, commentators on the above-linked article make a good point: we are witnessing this supposed “spinning” from own insignificant and rather random place within the universe. As a person named Raygunner noted:

We are measuring this from Earth’s point of view. Unless we are in the center of the Universe looking outwards I agree with david534, it makes no sense. It’s likely we are on the outer parts looking around but we have no idea where the center is. So we could see a handedness favoring one galaxy rotation direction or another depending on a) our location, b) expansion rates in our neighborhood, c) universal rotation and rotation direction, and d) the possibility that we are looking THROUGH the Universal center of rotation to the far side without knowing this.

Does this not depend on your point of view or is it the same result no matter where you are?

Then again, we know that Earth turns counter-clockwise around its axis, and even before rockets, we had some sense of the way Earth rotated, thanks to Leon Foucault and others. We didn’t need to get to space or at the center of Earth to determine this. We are unable to get “outside” of the universe, and it’s almost nonsensical to even talk about such a possibility, unless we leave open the possibility of existence multiverses. Regardless, one would think that if the universe is rotating, like planets or galaxies, it would need something to rotate in reference to, like an axis.

This 3D rendering of the universe (pictured below) appears to place the our [[Milky Way Galaxy]] at the apparent center of the universe, but I imagine this was done for simplicity and because the mapped galaxies were obviously mapped in reference to our own. For more information, see here.

Credit: Thomas Jarrett (IPAC/Caltech)

Credit: Thomas Jarrett (IPAC/Caltech)

 

Our daily universe: solar storms

Credit: National Space Weather Program

Most people don’t realize that solar activity can have a profound effect on certain operations on Earth, ranging from drilling for oil, power grids, railway signaling and other areas of industry.

The United States and Great Britain last month decided to collaborate to create a space weather warning system, which will be able to more accurately predict the sun’s activity. The sun is currently in a slow or relatively quiet weather pattern. Scientists expect to see more intense solar activity in the coming years.

Here is an article from The New York Times with more details:

… Modern society depends on a variety of technologies that are susceptible to the extremes of space weather. Spectacular explosions on the Sun’s surface produce solar storms of intense magnetism and radiation. These events can disrupt the operation of power grids, railway signaling, magnetic surveying and drilling for oil and gas. Magnetic storms also heat the upper atmosphere, changing its density and composition and disrupting radio communications and GPS units. The storms’ charged particles can be a hazard to the health of astronauts and passengers on high altitude flights.

Severe storms in 1989 and 2003 caused blackouts in Canada and Sweden. In 1859, a solar super storm sparked fires in telegraph offices. Such storms are predicted every century or so, and perhaps we’re overdue. According to a 2008 National Academies report, a once-in-a-century solar storm could cause the financial damage of 20 Hurricane Katrinas.

A quiet Sun causes its own problems. During the two-year quiet spell, our upper atmosphere, normally heated and inflated by the Sun’s extreme ultraviolet radiation, cooled off and shrank. This altered the propagation of GPS signals and slowed the rate of decay of space debris in low Earth orbit. In addition, the cosmic rays that are normally pushed out to the fringes of the solar system by solar explosions instead surged around Earth, threatening astronauts and satellites with unusually high levels of radiation.

The more we know about solar activity, the better we can protect ourselves. The Sun is surrounded by a fleet of spacecraft that can see sunspots forming, flares crackling and a solar storm about 30 minutes before it hits Earth. NASA and the National Science Foundation have also developed sophisticated models to predict where solar storms will go once they leave the Sun, akin to National Weather Service programs that track hurricanes and tornadoes on Earth. Thanks to these sentries, it is increasingly difficult for the Sun to take us by surprise.

 

Our daily universe: Earth at night

This scaled-down version doesn’t quite do it justice, but here is a shot from NASA of the planet at night (Nov. 27, 2000), showing both densely populated and developed regions versus less urban parts of Africa, South America, Asia and elsewhere:

Credit: C. Mayhew & R. Simmon (NASA/GSFC), NOAA/ NGDC, DMSP Digital Archive

Here are links to the full-sized picture and more information.

Our daily universe: when galaxies collide

Scientists now believe that the [[Milky Way]] and [[Andromeda]] galaxies are expected to collide much sooner than previously anticipated. The cosmic smashup is supposed to take place at about the same time that are sun uses the remainder of its nuclear fuel or in about 7 billion years. According to estimates, our galaxy is moving at 600,000 miles per hour, and we previously thought it was moving at a mere 100,000 mph. Here is a simulation of collision day:

As you can see, after a dramatic collision, the two galaxies will be at separate poles for awhile and then eventually merge into one super galaxy.