Messier 30 is an unusual cluster. It's an ancient cluster, and yet it is filled with blue stars, stars that tend to age and die more quickly than other types of stars. Astronomers have termed these unusually old blue stars "blue stragglers," and they believe that there are two reasons these stars still exist.

Some of the blue stragglers in Messier 30 are vampires; when they get near a more massive star, they are able to siphon off hydrogen from that star, effectively lengthening its life. But more recent studies have found that some of the stars are the results of high-powered collisions. When two older stars collide head-on, it restokes their nuclear fusion, resulting in larger, seemingly younger blue stars than before.

Vampires and collisions rejuvenate stars [Hubble Information Centre via Bad Astronomy]

(Thanks, James!)

The Hubble telescope can take pictures in the visible spectrum, and the Herschel telescope can take sharp pictures in the infrared wavelengths. The combined images are high resolution and can show new details about the objects they capture. Here, the red clumps are known areas of star formation.

Herschel yields new galaxy image [via the BBC]

Scientists theorize that the "G" ring formed from icy debris that scattered when meteorites crashed into the newly discovered moon. Said Cornell University astronomer Matthew Hedman:

Before Cassini, the G ring was the only dusty ring that was not clearly associated with a known moon, which made it odd. The discovery of this moonlet, together with other Cassini data, should help us make sense of this previously mysterious ring.

Meanwhile, NASA was seeking your votes on where to point the Hubble Space Telescope next, and nearly half of the 140,000 voters chose an interacting pair of spiral galaxies, Arp 274, which appear to be shaking hands. The full-color image of this galactic get-together will come out during the 100 Hours of Astronomy event, April 2-5.

M13 is about 25,000 light years away from us, and it contains some of the oldest stars in the universe. The reddish stars you see here are red giants, nearing the end of their lifecycles.

[via Space.com]

Each of the cards is available on the Hubble website with instructions on how to print the cards on a photo printer at home or through a third party printing service. For a purely online holiday Hubble experience, the Boston Globe has set up an advent calendar, revealing one Hubble image each day until Christmas.

[Hubble via Cosmic Log]

The planet Fomalhaut-B orbits the star Fomalhaut, and it's a balmy 260 degrees (Fahrenheit), cooler than other exo-planets. And meanwhile, Lawrence Livermore researchers believe they've snapped pics of three other exo-planets, in the Pegasus constellation. Click through for more pics.

That giant red ring, by the way, is a 21.5 billion mile debris disk surrounding Fomalhaut, which is Arabic for "mouth of the fish." The planet is a white speck over towards the right.

The three Pegasus planets are orbiting the star HR 8799, which is just barely visible in the night sky using binoculars. The Lawrence Livermore crew had found these planets in 2007, but waited to confirm their findings. Like Fomalhaut-B, the other three planets are gas giants, but they're way hotter than Fomalhaut-B. None of these planets is likely to support life, at least as we understand it. Here's an infrared picture of HR 8799 that shows its planets:

And here are some more pics of Fomalhaut-B, including a porny artist's impression.

[Hubble and AP and Science News]

The ESA has posted the footage of the Automated Transfer Vehicle's last ride here; until I saw it, I never thought burning garbage could look so transcendent. But this isn't just for decoration: the ESA announced that its engineers will be analyzing Jules Verne's fiery final path.

Following its undocking on 5 September, the ATV had spent 23 days carrying out “rephasing” manoeuvres to bring it to the correct position behind and underneath the ISS. This predefined position allowed the re-entry to be viewed and recorded from the Station itself, as well as from two specially-equipped observation planes located in the vicinity of the ATV’s flight path in the skies above the South Pacific. This observation campaign will serve to determine whether the vehicle’s break-up matched the computer modelling.

This news comes at a troubling time for NASA. At a press conference on Monday, program administrators announced a second delay for the Space Shuttle Atlantis's mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. Originally scheduled for October 10, the servicing mission will now take place sometime in 2009. What needs to be fixed is the Science Instrument Control and Data Handling Unit, which is the box of fun you see below.

While NASA deals with its issues, you'll have to look to the ESA for your space porn. Good thing they're already building the next ATV!

Images from ESA and NASA.

The image above is a composite, combining data from the Hubble Space Telescope with x-ray imagery from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. Hubble captured the blue areas by detecting the gravitational lensing of light shining around the cluster. Dark matter in the cluster is causing the lensing. The pink area is a mass of hot gas, made of ordinary matter, which radiates the x-rays detected by Chandra.

What's amazing about the image is how clearly it shows that the dark matter separated from the ordinary matter when the clusters collided. The gases interacted with each other gravitationally, causing them to slow down and "pile up" in the middle of the clusters. The dark matter evidently did not interact with itself, sliding to the outer edges of the clusters. Astronomers think the mass of all this dark matter is what holds clusters together - without it, the galaxies are moving too fast to stay together. The cluster collision provides a lot of direct evidence that dark matter exists. Image by: NASA/ESA.

You can see the full image in high-resolution here.

Collision of galaxy clusters captured by astronomers. [EurkeAlert!]

And no, I don't know why part of the image is censored. Is it not work-safe? Is there something happening that NASA doesn't want us to know about?

That circle of blue gas at the bottom center may be hiding another young star cluster. This "fantasy-like landscape" is 100 light years wide and features dark dust towers rising above a glowing wall of gases on the surface of the dark molecular cloud that births new stars. Scientists theorize a supernova explosion may have triggered this frenzy of star creation. Happy orbitversary, Hubble! [Hubblesite]

According to Marcus, Jupiter's equatorial regions are getting warmer and the South Pole appears to be cooling. The difference in temperature between the two parts of the planet is causing increased cloud convection and turbulence — meaning more storms.

Red Spot III: Rise of the Clouds may be short-lived, though. Astronomers expect that it will meet up with the Great Red Spot by August, when it could be consumed by the much more massive, ancient raging storm.

Source: HubbleSite.org via Space Telescope Science Institute

First, two caveats: most of these satellites are representative of an entire class of satellites. There may be others that serve similar functions, but the satellites listed are exemplars. Also, the list is obviously U.S.-centric. If you live in Europe or Asia, there are likely different satellites that fill the roles of these all-star orbiters.

Hubble Space Telescope - By taking thousands of breathtaking photos unhindered by the blurring effects of Earth's atmosphere, the Hubble has brought the beauty and mystery of space to more people than any other observatory, not to mention the massive amount of scientific research accomplished with it.

Galaxy 14 - This communications relay carries digital TV signals for much of the east coast, including ESPN, Lifetime, Sci-Fi, CNN, A&E and my personal favorite, the History Channel.

GOES-12 - From its high-altitude geosynchronous orbit, GOES-12 keeps a constant watch on weather conditions in most of North America.

The Moon - Tides, werewolves, the Apollo Program: without our natural satellite, we'd have none of these things.

KH-13 - This U.S. spy satellite is so secret, even the name is probably wrong (the government started giving them random names after people caught onto to the KH numbering system). Who knows what black budget, cutting edge satellite intelligence gathering devices are capable of these days?

GPS IIR11 - The U.S. government's NAVSTAR program brought global positioning abilities first to the military, then to the general public. It takes a constellation of these things for the system to work, so IIR11 is just one cog among many. Without it, there'd be no geocaching!

GoldenEye - With the ability to fire an EM pulse that could have wiped out an entire nation's financial records, GoldenEye is typical of fictional satellites and representative of our fears of orbiting weapons.

International Space Station - It's a symbol of international cooperation and a frontier outpost in the quest to colonize space. The low orbit maintained by the ISS makes it one of the easiest satellites to spot with the naked eye.

NOAA 17 - Unlike the GOES satellites, the NOAA satellites have asynchronous orbits, spinning around the globe to spot developing weather patterns that affect billions of people.

LANDSAT 7 - NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey teamed up in the 1970s to create a catalogue of Earth images shot from space. Since then, not only has the data improved with huge advances in digital photography, but numerous companies (including Google) have licensed the images for their mapping software.

Graphic by Stephanie Fox.

Sources: The Landsat Program

NAVSTAR - GPS Block IIR

Geostationary Satellites

Galaxy 14 at 125.0°W