8 Stunning Photos From Space

The images made by Chris Hadflield presents stunning visuals of our planet from a unique perspective.

Top 10 Star Mysteries

#1 Stellar Rumbles

A starquake is thought to be the tearing apart of the surface of a neutron star, much like an earthquake here on Earth. In 1999 astronomers identified these bursts as the cause of gamma rays and X-rays coming from neutron stars. Predicting these powerful bursts has remained a mystery. Recently, John Middleditch of Los Alamos National Laboratory and his team found that for a particular type of spinning neutron star called a pulsar, the time to the next quake is proportional to the size of the last quake.

Stellar Rumbles  (source: link)

Total Lunar Eclipse

Total lunar eclipse  15th April 2014  (source: link)

Lunar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes directly behind the Earth into its umbra (shadow). This can occur only when the Sun, Earth, and Moon are aligned (in "syzygy") exactly, or very closely so, with the Earth in the middle. Hence, a lunar eclipse can only occur the night of a full moon. The type and length of an eclipse depend upon the Moon's location relative to its orbital nodes.

MAGNETIC STORM

Magnetic Storm  (source: link)

A magnetic storm is a disturbance in the Earth's magnetic field caused by coronal mass ejections (CMEs) or solar flares from the Sun. It usually begins between 24 and 36 hours after the solar event, when a shock wave of solar wind reaches the Earth's ionosphere. The storm then typically lasts 24 to 48 hours, though some may last as long as days. The effects of such a storm include disruption of communications and navigation systems, intense auroras, damage to satellites, and during the most extreme storms, induced currents in power lines and pipelines that result in power outages and corrosion.

FLAME NEBULA

Flame Nebula and Alnitak by Palomar, Samuel Oschin Telescope  (source: link)

The Flame Nebula, designated as NGC 2024 and Sh2-277, is an emission nebula in the constellation Orion. It is about 900 to 1,500 light-years away.

SOLAR FLARE

Solar flare by melissasoup (image source: link)

A solar flare is a sudden brightening observed over the Sun's surface or the solar limb, which is interpreted as a large energy release of up to 6 × 1025 joules of energy (about a sixth of the total energy output of the Sun each second or 160,000,000,000 megatons of TNT equivalent, over 25,000 times more energy than released from the impact of Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 with Jupiter). They are often, but not always, followed by a colossal coronal mass ejection also known as a CME. The flare ejects clouds of electrons, ions, and atoms through the corona of the sun into space. These clouds typically reach Earth a day or two after the event. The term is also used to refer to similar phenomena in other stars, where the term stellar flare applies.

Beautiful images of the Milky Way

Milky Way

The Milky Way is the galaxy that contains our Solar System. Its name “milky” is derived from its appearance as a dim glowing band arching across the night sky in which the naked eye cannot distinguish individual stars. The term “Milky Way” is a translation of the Latin via lactea, from the Greek γαλαξίας κύκλος (galaxías kýklos, "milky circle"). From the Earth, the Milky Way appears like a band because its disk-shaped structure is viewed from within the Galaxy. Galileo Galilei first resolved the band of light into individual stars with his telescope in 1610. In the past, astronomers thought that all of the stars in the universe were contained inside of the Milky Way. Following the 1920 Great Debate between the astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis, observations by Edwin Hubble definitively showed that the Milky Way is just one of many galaxies.