The Cosmic Bat in Orion. Click for a larger version. Image credit: ESO

From ESO:

The Cosmic Bat The delicate nebula NGC 1788, located in a dark and often neglected corner of the Orion constellation, is revealed in a new and finely nuanced image that ESO is releasing today. Although this ghostly cloud is rather isolated from Orion’s bright stars, the latter’s powerful winds and light have had a strong impact on the nebula, forging its shape and making it home to a multitude of infant suns.

As the caption says NGC 1788 is in the constellation or Orion. If you were to neglect the Great Orion Nebula, Orion is still a fabulous place to poke around with a telescope.

I’ve spent many hours cruising around. The number of double and triple star systems is pretty amazing. I will admit to never seeing this particular feature, it’s rather small and not actually “inside” the figure of Orion, besides the brightest star in nebula is a magnitude 10, not exactly dim for a telescope but it doesn’t stand out like a triple hot blue star system either.

I may try and find it though and it’s really pretty easy to find. Just go from Rigel not quite half way to the lowest star in the shield, and to the right of 28-Eta Orionis.  Yeah, that’s right, just above the Witchhead nebula (another reflection nebula).

Want a desktop of this? Head on over to the ESO site.

Don’t forget to participate in the GAN project (click the GAN banner to the right).

Coming up on the 15th, we have the bonus riddle.  Tom and I are working on that now, but we have the prize ready to ship out to the winner.

The Universe, Season 4 DVD collector’s set will be sure to keep you glued to your seat.  The episodes are interesting, with appeal to a wide range of educational backgrounds and age groups.  The graphics are well done; I didn’t once roll my eyes and mutter, “Yeah, right.”  The 12 episodes are divided 3 per disc, with extra’s on the 4th disc.

The episodes deal with a good mix of subjects, some close to home (“10 Ways To Destroy The Earth”), and some not (“Death Stars”).  They are easy to follow, even when dealing with some complex topics (Pulsars & Quasars”).

I can see these DVDs working equally well in the home or classroom.  The 4 DVDs are in individual cases, so it’s easy to find a specific episode and go right to it.  I think you’ll find it hard not to sit and watch all 12 episodes at once.  I did.

So, get ready to rumble on March 15th, and solve the bonus riddle.  We have one more “regular” riddle to go (on the 13th); one last chance to be eligible for the bonus riddle and a shot at winning The Universe Season 4 DVD set.

By the way, the set I reviewed is NOT the set we’ll be mailing out as a prize!

You hear the terms “redshift” and “blue shift” in astronomy talking about the velocity and direction of travel of celestial bodies.  This isn’t a difficult basic concept to understand, but it’s a little bulky to explain.  Also, like everything else in science, it gets more difficult as you go along.  The least difficult is the Doppler redshift.

You know about the Doppler shift in sound as an object approaches you or moves away from you.  The pitch of a train whistle seems to change as it approaches and passes you.  You know the sound doesn’t actually change in pitch at the source (the train), but due to the movement of the train the sound waves are compressed or lengthened, changing the pitch you hear.  In Doppler redshift, the visible light waves are compressed or lengthened depending on the velocity and direction of the source relative to you.  I say “relative to you” because if the source is moving away from you, the visible light shifts to red.  If it’s moving toward you, the visible light shifts to blue.

Doppler redshift - Image Ales Tosovsky, All Rights Reserved

That, in a nutshell, is Doppler redshift.

From there it gets more complicated and bulkier to explain.  For example, you have cosmological redshift (or Hubble redshift) which deals with the expansion of the universe; the relativistic Doppler effect, which deals with time dilation of objects traveling at near light speed; the gravitational redshift (or Einstein redshift) which handles redshift in a gravitational well (i.e., near a black hole).  Each “complication” tells you something new, exciting, and different.  For example, the Hubble redshift applies to objects far, far away – in the neighborhood of 13 billion light years away.  That’s creeping up on the time of the Big Bang.  Anyway, scientists know these objects are that far away because the Hubble redshift tells us that the further away an object is, the larger the redshift.

Red and Blue Shifting - Image, WikiPedia user Anynobody, All Rights Reserved

Redshifting tells us how far away an object is, how fast it’s moving, in what direction it’s moving.  It gives us ideas about what the object is and how old it is.  We get information about black holes, exoplanets, and the nature of the universe itself.

Pretty great, right?  Also, when you get caught speeding on radar… you can blame Doppler redshift.

It’s going to be another nice day here, I’m going to hoe out the observatory.  Skies are starting to show promise from the “normal” cloudy state. Since I just fixed some electrical issues the scope is back in business and after doing a calibration etc., I want to try and get a look at the little asteroid in the video, not sure if I can but the fun is in the trying.

Looks like my bees came through the winter in fine shape.  Spring can’t possibly get here fast enough!

Video

UPDATE:  SOLVED by Bill at 12:32 CDT

Is everybody ready for this today?  Remember, there is only this riddle and the one on the 13th left for a chance to qualify for the bonus riddle (on March 15th).  Good luck!

Museum of Anthropology - Calendar Stone

Today’s riddle subject is an object.

It is composed of many parts, only a few of which are commonly known or visible to the unaided eye.

This was well known to ancient man; in every civilization.

Very well represented in literature, today’s object is not only in the Iliad and the Odyssey, but also the Bible and possibly the Qur’an.

PhotoBucket - Home Library

Often discovered by accident, you are likely to mistake it for something else when you first see it.

There is usually something tremendously beautiful seen very close to it.

On a cosmic time scale, this is very young.

Venus de Milo

Well?  What do you think?  In case you’re wondering, these are the people who have solved a riddle up to today:  Bruce, Adrianus V, Jim, Patricia, Doug, Dwight Decker, Rob, Alejandro, Stuart, Jim Hammill, Nick, Stephen, Jerry Thornton, and Roger.

I sure would like to add your name to the list!

(you know I’m lurking… don’t you, Trudy)

I'm SO cute!

Artist's Rendition of the Kepler spacecraft. Credit: JPL/NASA

First, we are into the time period for the GLOBE at Night project.  If you have clear skies please participate.  You need no special equipment and if you don’t know a star from a stone, don’t worry, just click on the GAN banner in the sidebar to the right and they will tell you everything you need to know.  I think I will get the chance tonight!  Last year I noted a drop in the number of stars I could see from the year before.   Do it, it’s simple.

Will the shuttle missions be extended? They could be, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (TX) is either going to, or already has introduced legislation to do just that.  If you are tempted to comment that “ah that money could be used for <insert social program here>”  don’t,  social programs are ok, but   NASA’s budget is only one half of one percent of the 3 -TRILLION dollar budget.  IMHO we get a lot more goodness for our money with NASA than we do in some other areas – just saying.

The Kepler spacecraft started its search for earthlike planets, one year ago this week.  Wow, hardly seems possible.  The first of the discoveries have been announced, you can see a table of them here.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has set a record.  MRO is going to complete its fourth year at Mars.  During that time the MRO has passed 100 terabits of data!  NASA is saying that is more than all other deep-space missions combined – that’s every mission that has flow past the orbit of the moon.  Here’s the story.

And finally:

The New Horizons probe is now a little better than half way to Pluto.  New Horizons is speeding along at 16.35 km/sec and still won’t arrive until July 2015.  Wondering about that speed?  16.35 km/sec is 36,574 miles per hour!  So I could fly from New York to the UK in less than six minutes and New York to LA in four!

By the way if you know of anybody born on January 19, 1996 you might be interested in the New Horizons Kids Club.  It also occurs to me they really ought to change that name.  Anybody born on that date will soon not be kids anymore.