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Stars and Dust Pillars in NGC 7822 from WISE.

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Luc Desmarchelier

Astronomers discover dizzying spin of the Milky Way Halo

Astronomers at the University of Michigan’s College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA) discovered for the first time that the hot gas in the halo of the Milky Way galaxy is spinning in the same direction and at comparable speed as the galaxy’s disk, which contains our stars, planets, gas, and dust. This new knowledge sheds light on how individual atoms have assembled into stars, planets, and galaxies like our own, and what the future holds for these galaxies.

“This flies in the face of expectations,” says Edmund Hodges-Kluck, assistant research scientist. “People just assumed that the disk of the Milky Way spins while this enormous reservoir of hot gas is stationary-but that is wrong. This hot gas reservoir is rotating as well, just not quite as fast as the disk.”

The new NASA-funded research using the archival data obtained by XMM-Newton, a European Space Agency telescope, was recently published in the Astrophysical Journal. The study focuses on our galaxy’s hot gaseous halo, which is several times larger than the Milky Way disk and composed of ionized plasma.

Read more ~ SpaceDaily

Image: Artist’s impression. Our Milky Way galaxy and its small companion galaxies are surrounded by a giant halo of million-degree gas (seen in blue in this artist’s rendition) that is only visible to X-ray telescopes in space. U-M astronomers discovered that this massive hot halo spins in the same direction as the Milky Way disk and at a comparable speed.    Credit: NASA/CXC/M. Weiss/Ohio State/A. Gupta et al.

The Art Of Deep Space

November 2, 2177 - by Paul Pepera

Here’s how fast you’d have to go to leave every planet in the solar system:

A Mechanical Harmony to NASA’s Webb Telescope Sunshield

NASA’s Webb telescope sunshield, opened for inspection. In this photo, engineers and scientists examine the sunshield layers on this full-sized test unit.    Image courtesy Northrop Grumman and Alex Evers. For a larger version of this image please go here. Watch a video on the research here and here.

Read more ~ SpaceDaily

Haleakala Observatory atop a volcano

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(In the Paratus universe, the Soviets landed on the Moon first.)

Newly Released High Resolution Film Scans from Apollo Missions

8,434 photos from the Apollo missions were just uploaded to flickr by NASA! 

Cone Nebula

A large, faint emission nebula and bright galactic association of stars known as The Christmas Tree Cluster form object NGC 2264, which itself contains a unique feature known as the Cone Nebula. The Cone Nebula’s shape comes from a dark absorption nebula consisting of cold molecular hydrogen and dust in front of a faint emission nebula containing hydrogen ionized by nearby star S Monocerotos, the brightest star of NGC 2264. The faint nebula is approximately seven light-years long and is 2,700 light-years away from Earth.

Credit: David M. Jurasevich