Abell 2218

Taken by the Hubble Space Telescope this image below is of the galaxy cluster Abell 1063. 

Located in the constellation of Grus, it lies about 4 billion light-years away from Earth.

Inside the cluster you can see many more galaxies and distant lights moving from the background. Those that are even very far away are visible because the enormous mass of the foreground galaxy cluster, it is so large that it is actually bending spacetime and light that is passing by. This high energy galaxy cluster creates a magnifying glass or something known as a gravitational lensing event that makes it possible for Hubble to see very faraway galaxies. An event foreseen by A. Einstein many years ago.

What Is Gravitational Lensing

Gravitational lensing is the bending of light from a distant source by a massive object like a Galaxy Cluster in front of it. The spacetime around massive objects is curved as predicted by Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. Gravitational lenses can be used to see very far off and distant galaxies throughout space time.

What Is A Galaxy Cluster?

Credit: NASA/Hubble

A galaxy cluster is a group of sometimes up to thousands of galaxies bound together by gravity & energy. Several galaxy clusters together can form a supercluster. 

The StarGazer's Guide to the Milky Way and Beyond - Gaia

Credit: ESA

A Star Gazer's Guide to the Milky Way

Gaia Sky is a free and open source software package that can guide you through your travels in the stars.

Gaia Sky serves as a visualization tool you can use to explore our very own solar system, the milky way galaxy and beyond. Once you have downloaded and installed this software package you can move freely throughout the cosmos guided by many different star data sets. This software package also comes planetarium ready being capable of producing videos for full dome systems, it can also run in 360 mode with spherical, cylindrical and hammer projections. You can also observe the Gaia satellite while in orbit around earth to learn how it moves and it's altitude and positions in the sky.



Gaia sky contains a simulation of our own Solar System complete with all the planets, dwarf planets, some of the satellites, moons, asteroids, locations, trajectories and more. If has the capability to add levels of detail based views into different Gaia release data sets such as: Gaia DR2, Gaia Sky Catalogues and different sections dedicated to parallax relative errors, each data set ranges from millions to hundreds of millions of stars available and classified by Gaia. Included also is additional astronomical and cosmological data such as star clusters (MWSC), nearby galaxies (NGB), and distant galaxies and quasars (SDSS).

This wonderful edition to twenty first century computing Gaia Sky is designed for astronomy fans and professional enthusiasts, it was developed in 2014 directly into the framework of the data processing consortium of ESA's Gaia Cornerstone Astrometry Mission. The special focus of this project is to deliver visualization of the Gaia catalogue and to provide further support and aid of related outreach materials. Additionally, Gaia sky has a wide range of other scientific applications ranging from purely recreational to scientific exploration.



Completely flexible by design, you can navigate the galaxy with your own controllers and gamepads. It has 6 stereoscopic modes with which you can select Anaglyphic (red cam), VR Headset, 3DTV, Cross Eye and Parallel View. You can implement SAMP commands to interoperate with SAMP-ready software like Topcat and Aladdin. Gaia is also compatible if you want to upload your own data sets in TGAS, NGB, SDSS, MWSC, FITS, CSV and many other formats. Gaia is also scriptable and extendable because it is compatible with Python Scripting to specialize and extend performance capabilities built to suit.

Functioning as a visualization engine Gaia Sky represents the multi-dimensional nature of our universe and data collected with positions, parallaxes, proper motions of objects, tangential velocities projected throughout the sky, radial velocities if available, magnitudes of objects and even colors. the software package includes a stereoscopic mode with five 3D properties, a planetarium mode and a 360 panorama mode with three different projections. In this software package you will find a scripting engine that is built-in with a comprehensive API, a Gaia Sky VR spinoff is also in the works and is now in functional state.



Gaia Sky Software is available for Linux, macOS and Windows.

The minimum system requirements for version 2.0.0 are the following:

CPU: Intel core i5 3rd generation
GPU: Intel HD 4000, Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT, Radeon HD 5670 / 1 GB VRAM / OpenGL 3.0
RAM: 4+ GB RAM
Disk: 1 GB of free space


Credit: ESA

The September 2016 release

A new all sky star catalog of our very own favorite galaxy the Milky Way has been released by Gaia. This mission lead by ESA started its scientific work in July 2014. This first release is based on data collected during its first 14 months of scanning the sky. "Today's release gives us a first impression of the extraordinary data that awaits us and how that will revolutionize our understanding of how stars are distributed and move across our galaxy."

Will have information about positions (α, δ) and G magnitudes for all stars with acceptable formal standard errors on positions. Positions and individual uncertainties are computed using a generic prior and bayes' rule detailed in the "Gaia astrometry for stars with too few observations. A Bayesian approach" For this release approximately 90% of the sky will be covered.

"The beautiful map we are publishing today shows the density of stars measured by Gaia across the entire sky, and confirms that it collected superb data during its first year of operations” says Timo Prusti Gaia project scientist at ESA.

At the beginning of the routine phase a special scanning mode repeatedly covering the ecliptic poles on every spin was executed for calibration purposes. Photometric data of RR Lyrae and Cepheid Variable Stars including these high-cadence measurements will be released. The five parameter astrometric solution positions, parallaxes, and proper motions for stars in common between the Tycho 2 Catalog and Gaia will be released. The catalog is based on the Tycho Gaia Astrometric Solution.

Future releases may Include:

Five parameter astrometric solution of objects with single star behavior will be released under the assumption that at least 90% of the sky can be covered. Integrated BP/RP photometry, with appropriate standard errors for sources where basic astrophysical parameter estimation has been verified. Mean radial velocities for objects showing no radial velocity variation and for which an adequate synthetic template could be selected, under the assumption that this can be done for 90% of the bright stars on the sky.

Orbital solutions, together with the system radial velocity and five parameter astrometric solutions, for binary's having periods between 2 months and 75% of the observing time will be released. Object classification and astrophysical parameters, together with BP/RP spectra and/or RVS spectra they are based on will be released for spectroscopically and photometrically well behaved objects. Mean radial velocities will be released for those stars not showing variability and with available atmospheric parameter estimates.

Variable star classification will be released together with the epoch photometry used for the stars. Solar system results will be released with preliminary orbital solutions and individual epoch observations. Non single star catalogs will be released. Full astrometric, photometric and radial velocity catalogs will also be released. All available variable star and non single star solutions. Source classification plus multiple astrophysical parameters for stars, unresolved binaries, galaxies, and quasars. Some parameters may not be available for fainter stars.

Your Invited! New Generations of Planet Hunters

 

Every once in a while a new opportunity is presented to us of an all-together different nature. After the hugely successful Kepler planet hunting million launched in 2011 we now know there is many thousands of planets existing throughout our universe, in fact they are almost as common as stars!. Nasa's has had a successful launch with TESS and first data downlinks of the light signatures of 200,000 stars will be delivered beginning in January 2019. On April 18, 2018 SpaceX successfully launched and deployed NASA’s brand new planet-hunting satellite named TESS on Wednesday night, delighting scientists and space exploration fans worldwide. The enthusiasts anticipate that the spacecraft will discover many new planets in our Galaxy capable of supporting life.

TESS stands for Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, i's a telescope and camera array that will hunt for many thousands of new worlds around very nearby stars. The Kepler Mission studied the Lyrae and Cygnus star constellations beyond the horizon of our galaxy, this time TESS will be looking right here in our own Galaxy, literally in our own stellar back yard.

TESS will provide new targets to study planetary classifications, atmospheric physics, elemental abundancy and will help to aid advancement of star & planetary research. TESS will spend the first 60 days getting into its proper orbit. Nasa' and SpaceX has an exceedingly perfect launch and deployment, deployment happened right on schedule and the solar arrays will “give the spacecraft the power it needs to search for worlds beyond our solar system.” With the help of a gravitational assist from the moon, the spacecraft will first settled into a 13.7-day orbit around Earth. The orbit of the new TESS satellite is carefully planned to account for the moon’s gravity.

The spacecraft will be looking for transit phenomenon, this happens when a planets crosses in front of a stars light signature. When a planet passes in front of its star causing a periodic or regular dip in the star’s brightness when can identify new planetary systems. NASA’s history making transit survey telescope the Kepler used the same transit method to detect thousands of planets. TESS is designed to concentrate on stars less than 300 light-years away, about 200,000 of them in total initially with many more to follow after. NASA says the satellite will begin its initial two year mission 60 days after launch following successful testing of its instruments. Four wide-field cameras will give TESS a field-of-view that covers 85 percent of our entire sky.

TESS is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission led and operated by MIT and managed by NASA's Goddard. Orbital ATK manufactured and designed the satellite for NASA.

SpaceX Vice President for Mission Assurance Hans Koenigsmann said previously that the second stage of the rocket carrying TESS would not be recovered. He also stated there is something new happening here with the current mission, SpaceX planned to fire the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket and kick it out of orbit so that it doesn’t become space trash. Leading the way to new understandings upcoming TESS data releases will create tons of buzz and excitement in our science communities, stay in touch to get follow ups.

Join Us @ PlanetHunters.org

Most Amazing Views In The Galaxy: NGC 4028 and 4039

NGC 4038 and 4039 an amazing view of the Antennae Galaxies, taken by Alma radio telescope and Hubble space telescope.

Galaxy IC342

Also called the hidden galaxy, this spiral beauty is often hidden behind the Milky Way. New stars burst and form here about 10 million light years away in the constellation Camelopardalis. It's 62000 light years across. Beautiful

Soul Nebulas Heart Caught on Camera

NASA released this mosaic of the Soul Nebula. It is an open cluster of stars surrounded by dust and gas over 150 light years across and 6500 light years from Earth. In the constellation Cassiopeia.

Carina Nebula

The collection of bright young stars to the right is open star cluster Trumpler14. Many well known objects can be seen in and near the violent Carina Nebula in this wide field image. In the bottom left is one of the most impressive binary stars in the universe, Eta Carinae, with the famous keyhole Nebula just adjacent. 

Orion Nebula

The new Hubble image of the Orion Nebula shows dense pillars of gas and dust that are likely home to young stars.

The Hubble Space Telescope: Crab Nebula

NGC 6334

This Picture of the Cats Paw Nebula was created with the wide field imager instrument a La Silla Observatory in Chile.

CREDIT: NASA / ESU / La Silla

Milky Way Imaging

Our Galaxies One City Center

Arp 273

To celebrate the 21st anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers pointed Hubble's eye at an especially photogenic pair of interacting galaxies.

Messier 70

This globular cluster experienced a core collapse in the past, meaning that even more stars squeeze into the object's core than on average. The brightness of the cluster increases steadily towards its center. Messier 70 orbits close to the center of the Milky Way, about 30 000 light-years away from the Solar System. Image released April 13, 2012.

Super Nova In The Sky

Supernova 1987A occurred in the Large Magellanic Cloud a galaxy only 160,000 lights years from Earth. The Brightest know Super Nova in 400 years.

The Hubble Space Telescope captures

The Hubble Space Telescopes striking image of curious Planetary Nebula NGC 6210 which is located about 6500 light years from the constellation Hercules. Last Breath of a Dying Star.

Abell 33 

An unusually beautiful and photographic Planetary Nebula Abell 33 lies in the constellation of Hydra in the night sky.

Abell 383

Abell 383 has such heavy gravitational distortion that it may actually mirror images in or around it. Distant Galaxies seen by Hubble and NASA.

Nasa's Kepler Mission - Exploring our Universe

NASA's Kepler Mission
The Search For New Worlds

Ever since the beginning of time mankind has gazed upon the stars with all the beauty of the heavens, wondering if we are truly alone on this sanctuary we call earth.

Never before have we possessed the technology and resources to answer this question before. NASA's Kepler Mission has newly illuminated our universe, we now understand that planetary and star systems like our own exist everywhere in the universe.

Our interpretation of the results will ultimately define how we perceive habitable zones and the many types of harmonic and chaotic planetary star systems that exist in our universe. We will learn more about universal elemental abundances, atmospheric compositions and conditions for life. Here we will find the future of planetary sciences.

The Kepler Mission provided researchers with over 3 years of continuous light data for over 503,506 stars in  our neighboring Lyrae, Draco and Cygnus star constellations. Someday we may even understand that exoplanets exist more commonly in the universe than stars. 

Results from the Kepler Mission have indicated that many more massive planets were found around massive stars. Information gathered allows analysis of the moving dynamics of star systems, atmospheric structures and with this information we can create planetary profiles.

To date all known planets have been discovered from a variety of techniques including transit surveys, radial velocities, gravitational lenses, interactions, infrared heat signatures, and visual confirmations.

From these we see giant gas planets, mini Neptune's, water worlds and many exotic super earth like planets. We have also find that binary and trinary star systems are abundant with planets as well, these systems may exist more frequently that single stars like our sun!



Binary and Trinary star systems tend to have large transit timing variations due to many gravitational interactions. Planets revealing transit timing variations hint the presence of other planets.

Planetary and star systems exhibit strong resonance via conservation of angular momentum; the key foundation of moving dynamics and star system harmonics. Information can be extracted revealing the details of moving dynamics, Keplerian Motion, orbital timings, planet to planet interactions, light travel time and spectral analysis.

A Habitable Zone is the area around a star where liquid water may exist, This defines whether or not a planet may be hospitable to life as we know it.

The inner edge or the hot zone is typically up to 340 Kelvins where water vapor dramatically increases and creates strong greenhouse atmospheric conditions. At 373 Kelvins Oceans evaporate entirely on earth like planetary models.



The opposite edge of the habitable zone is 273 Kelvins where water freezes. This is also about 1.7 AU from a sun-like star because planetary atmospheres become opaque to stellar radiation. In addition short period planets with non zero eccentricity hint the presence of other low mass planets. Internal planetary structures may be probed if 2 planets exist.

Exploring the results of the Kepler Mission below estimates now that up to %30 of stars may harbor earthlike planets that our technology may not be easily able to detect yet; we however do find many larger super-earth like planets. Our results also indicate that older red dwarf stars tend to be deficient of gas planets. Hot Jupiter's were missing from Kepler results possibly due to reflectivity. Hot Neptune's and super earths have been found most frequently.


Confirmed Planets 4,197

Detected By Kepler 2,622

Kepler Candidates 2418

Detected By K2 409

K2 Candidates 889

TESS Confirmed 66

TESS Candidates 2120

Ice Giants 1,250

Gas Planets 1,001

Super Earths 776

Terrestrial 348

By Detection Method

Astrometry 1

Imaging 44

Radial Velocities 686

Transit 2960

Transit Timing Variations 15

Eclipsing Timing Variations 9

Microlensing 64

Pulsating Timing Variations 2

Orbital Brightness Modulations 6

By Kepler Light Curves 2622

Transiting 2983










Exoplanets -NASA's search for other planets like earth, maybe even life. Making History is a first time opportunity for citizens to work with NASA and Kepler Mission survey data. Aiding the search to find other planets like earth. This Opportunity is for looking a bit more fine-tuned into the mass of data from NASA's survey missions. 

Your efforts are welcomed because of the overwhelming amount of data, and the fact that people are likely to discover planets that technology used sometimes overlook. Many discoveries have already happened, citizens scientists are welcomed to work with NASA and PlanetHunters.org

100,000+ Stars in Omega Centauri Globular Cluster

Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team

A colorful collection of 100,000 stars are displayed in this small region inside the Omega Centauri globular cluster, a dense group of nearly 10 million stars. This beautiful destination in the sky lies about 16,000 light years away from Earth. Omega Centauri is one of the biggest star clusters in our very own Milky Way Galaxy.

This picture was snapped by the panoramic view of the Hubble Space Telescope. Color versatility reflects the type and age of stars throughout their lifecycles. Yellow and white stars are very much like our sun, they shine brightly as hydrogen is fused deep inside their cores. Later-life stars appear to us as orange and red, they will become cooler and larger as time passes. Stars that are older will accumulate heavier elemental abundances like metals and carbon; whereas young stars have mostly hydrogen and helium, along with a small amount of heavier elements mixed in from their days of their creation.



This picture revealed a small region inside the massive star cluster called Omega Centauri that is home to more than 10 million stars! Hubble observed Omega Centauri on July 15, 2009, in ultraviolet and visible light spectrums.




Bright white and yellow stars are very much like our sun, they shine brilliantly as hydrogen is fused deep inside their cores. Later-in-life stars may appear as orange and red as they become cooler and expand.

Older stars begin to produce and accumulate heavier elements like metals and carbons; whereas young stars are composed of mostly hydrogen and helium. Large planets are also made of hydrogen and helium as well, these lighter gases can be lost in smaller planets.

Omega Centauri is one of the few stars clusters that can be seen with the naked eye, it appears as a small cloud from the Southern Sky in the constellation of Centaurus; Omega Centauri is one of the biggest and brightest star clusters in the Milky Way.


When stars expand they also eject materials from their cores, exhausting their fuel supplies. When a star runs out of helium it has reached the end of its life, only a burned up core called a white dwarf will remain. 

White dwarfs no longer generate heat energy via nuclear fusion, instead they will gravitationally contract  as they  continue to cool and dim for billions of years.. until all their energy is gone.

The stars making up Omega Centauri average from 10 billion to 12 billion years of age. Globular clusters are large swarms of stars tightly bound by gravity through out space time. Globular clusters can remain intact for over 12 billion years and can also be incorporated into Galaxies.

If we lived in Omega Centauri we would see a sky brightly lit with stars a hundred times brighter than on Earth.



As stars emit radiation in different electromagnetic wavelengths; the type of radiated light-waves emitted is dependent upon the temperature and conditions of each star. 

A cooler star at about 3000 Kelvins emits light in the infra-red spectrum. A star with a temperature above 4000 Kelvins will also emit light-waves in the ultra-violet light spectrum. Stars like our sun, burn above 5000 Kelvins and emit the visible light that we can see.

Extremely hot stars can be either; Type A of type B stars which can have temperatures above 10,000 Kelvins. These stars shine in brilliant blue spectrums.

Omega Centauri is actually a global cluster; not an open cluster which makes it different than other star clusters like the Pleiades and Hyades that are open star clusters.

Somethings Are Left Unseen!

Credit: NASA Somethings Are Left unseen

In 2011 Saul Perlmutter of Berkeley National Laboratory, Brian Schmidt of the Australian National University, and Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Institute were awarded the Nobel prize for running 3 independent teams; all studying the effects of our galaxy 's expansion and confirming that the expansion is speeding up.

It is suspected that a mysterious force called dark matter makes up a good percentage of the material value of our universe. Scientists are working hard to confirm this theory, which might not be possible unless there was a force working against the inward pull of gravity.

Orion In The Sky

Orion as a great legend and hunter of the skies travels way back to Greek mythology when he was famed for his admiration of Artemis. As a result, the gods transformed Orion into a constellation. Orion has been a subject of interest to many ancient writers such Homer and Hesiod and often looked upon as a important tool for navigation by sailors.

Orion was the son of Poseidon and Euryale. He is known as one of the great Greek lovers as he is famed to have fathered over 50 sons to nymphs of the sea. Unsatisfied by his quests of the nymphs and landed in Chios where he chased after Merope, as one of the great Pleaides herself. It is said that Merope's father promised his daughter to Orion if the island was cleared of troublesome animals. In time Orion did so with very little trouble. The father was loathsome to loose his daughter so easily asked Dionysus for help. Dionysus a god of wines and drink did so help by making Orion drunk so that he was blinded by satyrs.

Orion was said to have taken his prize Merope anyways, but her father would not allow the two to marry. Eventually as the fates were kinder to Orion his sight returned upon visiting Helios on the ocean at the point where the sun first rises each day faraway in the east.

When reaching his destination in the east Helios has been said to have restored Orion's sight and Helios's sister Eos, who is known as the dawn of the morning in legends, well she fell immediately in love with the handsome hunter. Their passionate love is said to have given us our beautiful mornings and is the cause of the blush of dawns.

Only time passing by would tell legends that Orion had more pursuits in love and one day later he proved himself to be ambitious enough to attack the goddess Artemis herself.

For his audacity, Orion was cast into the stars by the gods. Below are the three stars of Orion's belt on the right with his dog Sirius as the brightest star in the sky.

As written by Homer the Iliad shows Orion appearing upon the great shield of Achille's and notes that Orion was as a constellation made by Hephaistos. Also appearing again later in Homer's writings Orion was very far from the stars and the heavens in the depth's of Hades Prison.

Orion was mentioned by Odysseus as well. He was known to never be satisfied and he continued chasing prey all over the earth armed with a weapons of indestructible bronze. He was mentioned by Calypso as well. The Orion Constellation had been used as a guide for Odysseus on his way home. Hesiod mentioned Orion's position in the night sky in many writings related to agricultural seasons. Throughout the ages mankind has used many additional constellations for navigation as well.



The Pleaides; the seven sisters of the stars are seen in constant pursuit by Orion. All throughout myth's and legends it has been said that the Pleaides rise in the sky just before Orion symbolizing the chase.