Posted on by Tammy Plotner

Messier 96 – the NGC 3368 Spiral Galaxy

This new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows Messier 96, a spiral galaxy just over 35 million light-years away in the constellation of Leo (The Lion). It is of about the same mass and size as the Milky Way. It was first discovered by astronomer Pierre Méchain in 1781, and added to Charles Messier’s famous catalogue of astronomical objects just four days later. The galaxy resembles a giant maelstrom of glowing gas, rippled with dark dust that swirls inwards towards the nucleus. Messier 96 is a very asymmetric galaxy; its dust and gas is unevenly spread throughout its weak spiral arms, and its core is not exactly at the galactic centre. Its arms are also asymmetrical, thought to have been influenced by the gravitational pull of other galaxies within the same group as Messier 96. This group, named the M96 Group, also includes the bright galaxies Messier 105 and Messier 95, as well as a number of smaller and fainter galaxies. It is the nearest group containing both bright spirals and a bright elliptical galaxy (Messier 105).

Welcome back to Messier Monday! Today, we continue in our tribute to our dear friend, Tammy Plotner, by looking at the barred spiral galaxy known as Messier 95!

During the 18th century, famed French astronomer Charles Messier noticed the presence of several “nebulous objects” while surveying the night sky. Originally mistaking these objects for comets, he began to catalog them so that others would not make the same mistake. Today, the resulting list (known as the Messier Catalog) includes over 100 objects and is one of the most influential catalogs of Deep Space Objects.

One of these objects is Messier 96 (M96, NGC 3368), an intermediate double-sparred spiral galaxy located about 31 million light-years away in the constellation Leo. This galaxy is known for having a small inner bulge through the core, an outer bulge, and is comparable in size to the Milky Way. M96 is the brightest member of the Leo I group of galaxies (which includes M95, M105, and a number of fainter galaxies), hence why it’s also known as the M96 group.

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Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Tonga’s Incredible Underwater Volcano Eruption Seen From Space

The Tonga Hunga volcanic eruption sent a tsunami across the Pacific. Air pressure disturbances from the tsunami distorted GPS signals. GOES imagery courtesy NOAA,NESDIS.
The Tonga Hunga volcanic eruption as seen by a GOES satellite. Credit: NOAA,NESDIS.

An undersea volcano erupted near the Pacific island of Tonga, and several satellites caught the incredible explosion in action. The blast of the Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha’apai volcano created a  plume of ash, steam and gas mushrooming above the Pacific Ocean, with a quickly expanding shockwave visible from orbit. Japan’s Himawari-8 weather satellite recorded this dramatic video:

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Posted on by Matthew Cimone

“TrekTalks” Telethon Calls upon Star Trek Fandom to Meet the Needs of the Many

I grew up watching Star Trek inspired by what Trek imagined the future could be.

Earth had done away with poverty, disease, war. Humanity, in cooperation with other alien civilizations, explored the Galaxy on ships like the USS Enterprise doing good where possible. Diplomatic missions, crisis relief, medical aid. Star Trek is a view of what humanity could be if we were brave and bold but also empathetic and kind – us at our best.

Lately our 21st century world has been…well…a hard place to be – harder for some than others. What if the Star Trek fandom could take some inspiration from that imagined future to make change in the present? This weekend is a chance to make it so with “TrekTalks” – a livestream telethon featuring an incredible lineup of Star Trek cast and crew to benefit the Hollywood Food Coalition starting tomorrow (January 15th) at 11:45am Pacific Time and running to 7:45pm PT

TrekTalks livestream link
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Posted on by Evan Gough

Nearby Supernovae Exploded Just a few Million Years Ago, Leading to a Wave of Star Formation Around the Sun

Artist's illustration of the Local Bubble with star formation occurring on the bubble's surface. Scientists have now shown how a chain of events beginning 14 million years ago with a set of powerful supernovae led to the creation of the vast bubble, responsible for the formation of all young stars within 500 light years of the Sun and Earth. Credit: Leah Hustak (STScI)

The Sun isn’t the only star in this galactic neighbourhood. Other stars also call this neighbourhood home. But what’s the neighbourhood’s history? What triggered the birth of all those stars?

A team of astronomers say they’ve pieced the history together and identified the trigger: a series of supernovae explosions that began about 14 million years ago.

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Posted on by Evan Gough

Nancy Grace Roman Telescope Will do its Own, Wide-Angle Version of the Hubble Deep Field

This synthetic image visualizes what a Roman ultra-deep field could look like. The 18 squares at the top of this image outline the area Roman can see in a single observation, known as its footprint. The inset at the lower-right zooms into one of the squares of Roman's footprint, and the inset at the lower-left zooms in even further. The image, which contains more than 10 million galaxies, was constructed from a simulation that produced a realistic distribution of the galaxies in the universe. Image Credit: Nicole Drakos, Bruno Villasenor, Brant Robertson, Ryan Hausen, Mark Dickinson, Henry Ferguson, Steven Furlanetto, Jenny Greene, Piero Madau, Alice Shapley, Daniel Stark, Risa Wechsler

Remember the Hubble Space Telescope’s Deep Field and Ultra-Deep Field images?

Those images showed everyone that what appears to be a tiny, empty part of the sky contains thousands of galaxies, some dating back to the Universe’s early days. Each of those galaxies can have hundreds of billions of stars. These early galaxies formed only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. The images inspired awe in the human minds that took the time to understand them. And they’re part of history now.

The upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (NGRST) will capture its own version of those historical images but in wide-angle. To whet our appetites for the NGRST’s image, a group of astrophysicists have created a simulation to show us what it’ll look like.

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Posted on by Tammy Plotner

The Gemini Constellation

The two bright stars Castor and Pollux each mark a starry eye of a Gemini Twin. If you have binoculars and a dark sky, be sure to check out Gemini’s beautiful star cluster, Messier 35, or M35, in western Gemini near the Taurus border. See it, at the foot of Castor? Image via AugPi/ Wikimedia Commons.

Welcome to another edition of Constellation Friday! Today, in honor of the late and great Tammy Plotner, we take a look at “the Twins” – the Gemini constellation. Enjoy!

In the 2nd century CE, Greek-Egyptian astronomer Claudius Ptolemaeus (aka. Ptolemy) compiled a list of the then-known 48 constellations, the sum of thousands of years’ worth of charting the heavens. This treatise, known as the Almagest, would be used by medieval European and Islamic scholars for over a thousand years to come, effectively making it the astrological and astronomical canon until the early Modern Age.

One of the original 48 is Gemini, a constellation located on the ecliptic plane between Taurus (to the west) and Cancer (to the east). Its brightest stars are Castor and Pollux, which are easy to spot and represent the “Twins,” hence the nickname. Gemini is bordered by the constellations of Lynx, Auriga, Taurus, Orion, Monoceros, Canis Minor, and Cancer. It has since become part of the 88 modern constellations recognized by the International Astronomical Union.

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