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 A waning crescent Moon on Dec. 22, 2011 from British Columbia. Credit: Suraky A beautiful crescent Moon graced the morning and evening skies over the past holiday weekend, and skywatchers around the world were out with with their cameras! Above, Suraky from British Columbia, Canada took this lovely image of the waning sliver of the Moon from his bedroom window. “The Moon was lit by Earthshine on the dark side, at 7am, with Baker poking out between the trees,” he commented on the image. See more from other astrophotographers below.
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Read the rest of Astrophotos: Christmas Crescent Moon from Around the World (212 words)
© nancy for Universe Today, 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Astrophotos, crescent moon, Moon
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 The puzzling universe. Image credit: NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org Day to day life has made us all comfortable with 3 dimensions; we constantly interact with objects that have height, width, and depth. But why our universe has three spatial dimensions has been a problem for physicists, especially since the 3-dimensional universe isn't easily explained within superstring theory or Big Bang cosmology. Recently, three researchers have come up with an explanation. (...)
Read the rest of Why Do We Live in Three Dimensions? (492 words)
© Amy Shira Teitel for Universe Today, 2011. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Astronomy
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Part of the Soyuz rocket that brought the latest trio of crew members to the International Space Station fell back to Earth on Dec. 24, and its fiery re-entry was captured by several skywatchers in Europe. This footage taken from Germany is the best view of it, and there’s another good view below. Some people mistakenly thought it was a comet; and since this lightshow occurred on Christmas Eve, there were a few who suggested it might be Santa flying across the fly. That would have been bad news, however, to see debris breaking off the sleigh… Additionally, there are reports that debris from the failed Soyuz rocket that was supposed to send a communications satellite into orbit fell and hit a house in Siberia. An animation of that event is also posted below. (...)
Read the rest of Soyuz Rocket’s Comet-like Re-Entry Captured on Video (0 words)
© nancy for Universe Today, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: rockets, Soyuz, space junk, Videos
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 Comet Lovejoy on 22 Dec. 2011 from the International Space Station. Comet Lovejoy is visible near Earth's horizon in this nighttime image photographed by NASA astronaut Dan Burbank, Expedition 30 commander, onboard the International Space Station on Dec. 22, 2011. Credit: NASA/Dan Burbank
More Comet Lovejoy photos below Check out this absolutely stunning collection of new Comet Lovejoy photos taken by space station commander Dan Burbank just before the Christmas holidays on Dec. 22, 2011 – what an amazing holiday treat, the Chrtistmas Comet!(...) Read the rest of Absolutely Spectacular Photos of Comet Lovejoy from the Space Station (244 words)
© Ken Kremer for Universe Today, 2011. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Comet Lovejoy, Dan Burbank, ISS, NASA, Soyuz TMA-22
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 Comet Lovejoy from Canberra. Image Credit: Barry Armstead Barry Armstead was among the lucky people who were able to capture the amazing show made by Comet Lovejoy in the skies of the Southern hemisphere the past few days. “I got up on Thursday night/Friday morning at 3am, checked the sky and it was a black blanket of cloud. I observed for around 20 minutes while simultaneously checking the Bureau of Meteorology to confirm that the clouds weren’t going anywhere. Back to bed to grind my teeth and grumble something about Murphy’s law. This morning, I stayed up until 1:30am, had a little snooze on the couch and checked the night sky every half hour. At 2:30am the sky turned crystal clear! I loaded everything in the ute and took off like a bull at a gate for the mountains south-west of Canberra and away from the city light. And there it was! Comet Lovejoy in all it’s glory, lighting up the heavens like a searchlight, signalling passing spacecraft.”
More images from Barry Armstead below!(...)
Read the rest of Astrophoto: Comet Lovejoy from Canberra by Barry Armstead (118 words)
© dcast for Universe Today, 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Astrophotos, Comet Lovejoy
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 Today's Journal Club involves the mysterious case of PSR J1841-500, the pulsar that didn't pulse. According to Wikipedia, a Journal Club is a group of individuals who meet regularly to critically evaluate recent articles in the scientific literature. Since this is Universe Today if we occasionally stray into critically evaluating each other’s critical evaluations, that’s OK too. And of course, the first rule of Journal Club is… don’t talk about Journal Club. So, without further ado – today’s journal article involves the mysterious case of PSR J1841-500, the pulsar that didn’t pulse.(...)
Read the rest of Journal Club: The Pulsar That Wasn’t (340 words)
© Steve Nerlich for Universe Today, 2011. | Permalink | 25 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Pulsars
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 M42 & M43 The Great Orion Nebulae & its Core Complex known as the Trapezium Region. Image Credit: John Chumack The Great Orion nebula is one of the brightest nebulae visible in the night sky. It is located about 1300 light years away in the southern part of the Orion’s belt. We’ve collected several amazing images of the Great Orion nebula submitted by readers online. Here’s hoping that you’ll enjoy them as much as we did! The image above was obtained by John Chumack from the high res close-up image of Trapezium taken with his 10" scope ( 30 sec., 1 minute, & 5 minutes) in his backyard in Dayton combined with the image taken using his homemade 16" scope data (10 minutes) taken at his observatory in Yellow Springs, Ohio. “My image Data was captured in 2010 & 2011 and was then combined. I used my Modified Canon Rebel Xsi (Baader Filter) @ ISO 400, dark frames subtracted, and post processing in Adobe. Total exposure time for all Data was 16.5 minutes. I processed it for the Trapezium's core, I wanted to show all the small dark nebula / Dusty Bok Globules buried in that bright Zone, which is often over exposed in most images of this region! It came out very detailed, especially the Trapezium region and its bright core stars which are also individually visible!”
More images below!(...)
Read the rest of Astrophotos: The Great Orion Nebula (413 words)
© dcast for Universe Today, 2011. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Astrophotos, M42, Orion Nebula
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 A Soyuz 2-1b rocket that launched successfully on November 27, 2011; a similar rocket failed on Dec. 23, 2011. Credit: Space Launch Report A day of highs and lows for the Russian space program: while the Soyuz TMA-03M capsule docked safely at the International Space Station, a Soyuz-2 rocket carrying a communications satellite failed shortly after launch from the Plesetsk spaceport. Reports say the Meridian satellite, which can be used by the military or for civilian purposes, did not reach orbit and crashed near the city of Tobolsk in Siberia, about 2,300 km from Moscow. A combustion chamber burn-through is suspected in today's launch, another failure in what is becoming an alarmingly long list of problems for the Russian space program. Roscosmos director Vladimir Popovkin admitted that Russian spaceflight is “in crisis” after today's launch failure.
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Read the rest of Soyuz Rocket Crashes With Satellite on Board (184 words)
© nancy for Universe Today, 2011. | Permalink | 15 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: launches, Roscosmos, Satellites
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