“The magnitude of the magnetic field B at time tΩp=135 is represented by a logarithmic colour scale in the units of nT. Overplotted are trajectories of particles traced from the solar wind as they interact with the magnetic field of the planet.” Via.
Coronal Rain on the Sun
“What you’re seeing is the profound impact of magnetism on the material in the Sun. The energy flowing along those magnetic loops is immense, enough to power our entire planet for many millennia. That barely constrained violence can be difficult to square with the grace and elegance of the motion. The Sun can damage our civilization, yet we also depend on it for our existence.”
Music by Lars Leonhard.
A glowing jet from a young star
This image shows an object known as HH 151, a bright jet of glowing material trailed by an intricate, orange-hued plume of gas and dust. It is located some 460 light-years away in the constellation of Taurus (The Bull), near to the young, tumultuous star HL Tau.
In the first few hundred thousand years of life, new stars like HL Tau pull in material that falls towards them from the surrounding space. This material forms a hot disc that swirls around the coalescing body, launching narrow streams of material from its poles. These jets are shot out at speeds of several hundred kilometres per second and collide violently with nearby clumps of dust and gas, creating wispy, billowing structures known as Herbig-Haro objects — like HH 151 seen in the image above.
Such objects are very common in star-forming regions. They are short-lived, and their motion and evolution can actually be seen over very short timescales, on the order of years. They quickly race away from the newly-forming star that emitted them, colliding with new clumps of material and glowing brightly before fading away.
The Needle Galaxy
IC 2233 is a prime example of a super-thin galaxy, where the galaxy’s diameter is at least ten times larger than the thickness. These galaxies consist of a simple disc of stars when seen edge on. This orientation makes them fascinating to study, giving another perspective on spiral galaxies. An important characteristic of this type of objects is that they have a low brightness and almost all of them have no bulge at all.
Forces of Nature by karaniwangbinatilyo
A look at what makes up the Milky Way and our galactic neighborhood, from Nature.
(Galactify this image by clicking here)
The little green thing under the big purple thing is the fastest pulsar (a rapidly spinning, super-dense star) ever seen, known as IGR J1104-6103, and is thought to be racing away from that supernova remnant at about 6 million miles per hour. Read more: Chandra + Bad Astronomy.
