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Hubble Captures Bubbles and Baby Stars

The Large Magellanic Cloud contains many bright bubbles of glowing gas. One of the largest and most spectacular has the name LHA 120-N 11, from its listing in a catalog compiled by the American astronomer and astronaut Karl Henize in 1956, and is informally known as N11. Close up, the billowing pink clouds of glowing gas make N11 resemble a puffy swirl of fairground candy floss. From further away, its distinctive overall shape led some observers to nickname it the Bean Nebula. The dramatic and colorful features visible in the nebula are the telltale signs of star formation. N11 is a well-studied region that extends over 1000 light-years. It is the second largest star-forming region within the Large Magellanic Cloud and has produced some of the most massive stars known.

It is the process of star formation that gives N11 its distinctive look. Three successive generations of stars, each of which formed further away from the center of the nebula than the last, have created shells of gas and dust. These shells were blown away from the newborn stars in the turmoil of their energetic birth and early life, creating the ring shapes so prominent in this image.

Beans are not the only terrestrial shapes to be found in this spectacular high resolution image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. In the upper left is the red bloom of nebula LHA 120-N 11A. Its rose-like petals of gas and dust are illuminated from within, thanks to the radiation from the massive hot stars at its center. N11A is relatively compact and dense and is the site of the most recent burst of star development in the region.
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Space:

Astronomers Get First Images of Exoplanet Orbiting its Star

For the first time ever, astronomers have captured images of an exoplanet orbiting its star from one side of the star to the other. The orbit of the exoplanet is at about the same distance as that of Saturn to our Sun. After interpreting the data, scientists believe that this star system may have formed in the same way as our Solar Sytem.

The star, Beta Pictoris, is actually quite young, only about 12 million years old, which is relatively young in cosmic terms. Even though the star is less than three-thousandths of our Sun’s age, it is roughly 75% more massive. At 60 light-years away, Beta Pictoris is one of the best-known examples of another star, like our Sun, that is surrounded by a debris-filled disc.

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last update: May 17, 2012

Space:

Scientists Create Artificial Black Hole

Well, they’ve done it. Researchers in China have built a mini ‘black hole’ capable of absorbing microwave frequencies, and they’ve done it without using the LHC (which many feared would cause a black hole to develop that would swallow the earth). The device they created, officially called a “omnidirectional electromagnetic absorber,” is made of a thin cylindrical layer comprising of 60 concentric rings of metamaterial.

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Space:

Atlantis Space Shuttle Has Grounded For Good

With six astronauts on board, returning from it’s 12-day mission from the International Space Station, the Atlantis has landed back on Earth successfully. This mission marks the shuttle’s thirty-second and final trip over a 25-year career (logging a cool 120 million miles in total).

For NASA, the shuttle was the fourth in the series and has spent 294 days in orbit, circled the Earth 4,648 times, carried 189 astronauts, flown to Mir Station 7 times and been to the ISS 11 times. There were 1,200 guests on-hand at Kennedy Space Center to witness the historic landing.

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Space:

NASA’s Real-life Ironman On His Way To Space

The Robonaut 2 created by NASA and General motors has just been cleared for takeoff. This humanoid robot has been in development for many years and is now in its second form. The larger more capable R2 weighs in at 300 pounds, with a head, torso and two fully functional arms.

R2 will make its home permanently on the International Space Station this September after its flight there on the Space Shuttle Discovery, part of the STS-133 mission. NASA says that the R2 will assist astronauts with regular tasks such as handing them tools, holding wires, etc. within the space station and on space walks. The chief advantage of a machine such as R2 is its ability to use the same tools as astronauts.
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Comet Gets Gobbled Up by the Sun

The NASA and ESA’s sun observatory, SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory), snapped a pic of a newly found comet moments before it is gobbled up by the sun. You can see the comet here is pretty bright, though it dims as it gets closer to the sun and eventually disappears into the fiery mass.

[photo via Space.com]

The comet, which appeared in photos on Friday, finally disappeared a day later. With close to 1,600 comets in our solar system, watching one get eaten by the sun is surely a sight to see. Here are some more photos captured by SOHO:

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