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Star Dust - by Dmitry Vishnevsky

Patrol the inner Solar System and defend your homeworld!

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.

(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! 

We want you to guard the exosphere.

Just a typical day on Mars.

It’s a real problem.

A Space Station

Another kind of trip.

Eerie And Dreamy Science Fiction Paintings Of Astronaut Exploring The Earth

Artist Scott Listfield paints surreal pictures of an astronaut exploring urban landscapes filled with subliminal messages of consumerism references to pop culture and iconic movie scenes and characters. Find his work in his Society6 shop.

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1936 … coming soon! by James Vaughan