An earlier version of this panoramic image was an Astronomy Picture Of The Day in 2001, but the Panorama 2.0 is much, much more detailed, and Mellinger has eliminated some distortions and other problems in the original image.

According to a press release from the University of Chicago Press:

Piecing together 3000 individual photographs, a physicist has made a new high-resolution panoramic image of the full night sky, with the Milky Way galaxy as its centerpiece. Axel Mellinger, a professor at Central Michigan University, describes the process of making the panorama in the forthcoming issue of Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. An interactive version of the picture can viewed on Mellinger's website.

"This panorama image shows stars 1000 times fainter than the human eye can see, as well as hundreds of galaxies, star clusters and nebulae," Mellinger said. Its high resolution makes the panorama useful for both educational and scientific purposes, he says.

Mellinger spent 22 months and traveled over 26,000 miles to take digital photographs at dark sky locations in South Africa, Texas and Michigan. After the photographs were taken, "the real work started," Mellinger said.

Simply cutting and pasting the images together into one big picture would not work. Each photograph is a two-dimensional projection of the celestial sphere. As such, each one contains distortions, in much the same way that flat maps of the round Earth are distorted. In order for the images to fit together seamlessly, those distortions had to be accounted for. To do that, Mellinger used a mathematical model-and hundreds of hours in front of a computer.

Another problem Mellinger had to deal with was the differing background light in each photograph.

"Due to artificial light pollution, natural air glow, as well as sunlight scattered by dust in our solar system, it is virtually impossible to take a wide-field astronomical photograph that has a perfectly uniform background," Mellinger said.

To fix this, Mellinger used data from the Pioneer 10 and 11 space probes. The data allowed him to distinguish star light from unwanted background light. He could then edit out the varying background light in each photograph. That way they would fit together without looking patchy.

The result is an image of our home galaxy that no star-gazer could ever see from a single spot on earth. Mellinger plans to make the giant 648 megapixel image available to planetariums around the world.

[University of Chicago via Axel Mellinger via Examiner]

[The Big Picture]

Bad Astronomy]

Observers of the Moon's surface have seen "sinuous rilles," or long, winding depressions on its surface that suggest the presence of underground tunnels. Such tunnels would be formed when lava rips through an underground area, then drains away, leaving a long tube behind. (Such structures exist on Earth, too.) At last, a satellite captured solid evidence for these tunnels when it snapped this picture of a massive hole in the Moon's surface.

The hole is actually what's called a "skylight," or a rift in the top of an ancient lava tunnel. According to New Scientist:

The team found the first candidate skylight in a volcanic area on the moon's near side called Marius Hills. "This is the first time that anybody's actually identified a skylight in a possible lava tube" on the moon, [researcher Carolyn] van der Bogert, who helped analyse the feature, told New Scientist.

The hole measures 65 metres across, and based on images taken at a variety of sun angles, the the hole is thought to extend down at least 80 metres. It sits in the middle of a rille, suggesting the hole leads into a lava tube as wide as 370 metres across.

It is not clear exactly how the hole formed. A meteorite impact, moonquakes, or pressure created by gravitational tugs from the Earth could be to blame. Alternatively, part of the lava tube's ceiling could have been pulled off as lava in the tube drained away billions of years ago.

We may not be able to explore this tube any time soon, however. Like lava tubes on Earth, it's possible that this tunnel is filled with debris and would require excavation to unblock.

What's important, however, is that we now have solid evidence that lava tubes exist beneath the Moon's surface, which means Moon real estate just got a little more appealing. Unless, of course, Moon natives already live there.

via New Scientist

(Thanks, Kle!)

I first spotted this chart on Laughing Squid, and it was created for IEEE's special issue on traveling to Mars.

See more brilliant and weird concept design at Bryan Christie.

According to The Register, this is the tallest rocket NASA has built in three decades, and it has 700 sensors on board to understand how a rocket this tall can fly. Photos by AP/John Raoux.

Attack on the V838 Energy Collectors
Black Eye Galaxy
Cone Nebula
Crab Nebula
Milky Way
Orion Nebula
Phobos
Reflection Nebula
Starburst Galaxy
Butterfly Nebula

Scientists are using IBEX to create a more accurate map of the boundary between interstellar space and our heliosphere - the bubble of space created by solar winds from our sun. This bubble shields the planets from cosmic particles that zoom from interstellar space towards the sun at speeds ranging from 100,000 mph to more than 2.4 million mph. What scientists thought they'd find was a boundary between the heliosphere and interstellar space that was fairly regular and shifted gradually from one region to the other. But instead they discovered that the charged particles streaming out of our sun are a distinctive ribbon shape (the blue and red regions in the heliosphere model above), almost like an intense jet stream moving rapidly through the solar system.

Said Dr. David J. McComas, IBEX principal investigator:

The IBEX results are truly remarkable, with emissions not resembling any of the current theories or models of this never-before-seen region. We expected to see small, gradual spatial variations at the interstellar boundary, some ten billion miles away. However, IBEX is showing us a very narrow ribbon that is two to three times brighter than anything else in the sky.

This suggests that in some ways, space weather resembles Earth weather. Except instead of hot fronts and cold fronts, you have the magnetic fields of distant stars changing the shape of solar winds here at home.

Here's a closer look at the ribbon.

One question arose immediately when scientists made this discovery: Why didn't the Voyager spacecraft see this ribbon? It turns out that it flows directly between the two satellites' flight paths (see top image).

Eric Christian, the IBEX deputy mission scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said:

The Voyagers are providing ground truth, but they're missing the most exciting region. It's like having two weather stations that miss the big storm that runs between them.

Looks like we have a destination for the next generation of Voyager-style craft.

Even more exciting is that this solar wind ribbon appears to be highly concentrated in some areas, as if the magnetic fields of our interstellar neighborhood are creating eddies and whirlpools of charged particles. Researchers poring over the IBEX data say they need to spend much more time analyzing what they've found before they can make any definitive statements about what all of this means. But one thing they can say for sure. Our solar system's weather - and by extension our solar system itself - is far more affected by nearby stars than anyone realized before.

via Southwest Research Institute

Only two bodies in the Asteroid Belt are bigger than 2 Pallas - the protoplanets 1 Ceres and 4 Vesta. And unlike a lot of other asteroids in the Belt, 2 Pallas has most likely remained unchanged since the rocky region between Mars and Jupiter first formed. Scientists speculate that 2 Pallas was originally made from "water-rich material," and that early in its history it was smashed by a massive impact that broke off a number of smaller asteroids that share 2 Pallas' rough orbit. So not only do we have a protoplanet on our hands, but it spawned a bunch of smaller asteroids too.

According to Science:

Researchers identified color variations and topography that may be linked to the asteroid's thermal evolution and to the formation of its orbital "family" – the population of asteroids that share the same orbital properties as 2 Pallas and are thought to be the fragments of a collision. In particular, a large impact crater could represent the source of the Pallas family.

Above, you can see an artist's interpretation of that impact.

Things are rough out in the Belt. But at least there's another protoplanet out there now, ready to be hollowed out and turned into a generation ship.

via Science

Actually there will be no bombs involved. The LCROSS, or "lunar impacting probe," will itself smash into the Moon's surface near a crater-shadowed region where scientists have predicted that ice would form. Though radar of the Moon's surface lately has suggested strongly that such icy liquids are abundant on the Moon, the evidence remains inconclusive. Which is why we have to do the smash test.

The LCROSS will hit the Cabeus A site marked in the image below at 11:30 AM GMT October 9 - on the near side of the Moon, so you'll be able to see the explosion on impact if you have a decent telescope.

Phil "bad astronomer" Plait explains:

The plume from the impact should stretch up many kilometers. It will almost certainly be too thin to be seen by amateur instruments, but the impact itself should make a bright enough flash to be seen if you have a telescope. The crater itself will be in shadow, making the light flash easier to spot. It'll only last a second or two, so if you want to observe it, be prepared!

And if the plume contains melted water particles, tossed into the local volume of space on impact, that means a self-sustaining lunar colony is a more realistic goal than ever.

via Bad Astronomy

The Herschel Space Observatory includes two cameras, studying different wavelengths of light — the British SPIRE camera (responsible for the above image) studies light measuring 250-500 microns. And the German PACS camera measures light of 70-170 microns. (Next image). They tested both cameras on a stretch of sky near the Southern Cross, and were surprised by what they found. According to Herschel:

The resulting images reveal an extremely rich reservoir of cold material in the Galactic Plane that is seen to be in a previously unsuspected state of turmoil. Interstellar material appears to be condensing in a continuous and interconnected maze of filaments and strings of newly-forming stars in all stages of development. The observations yield additional information about this cold material - such as how much there is, its mass, temperature and composition, and whether or not some of it is collapsing to form new stars.

[ESA]

PACS image

Composite SPIRE/PACS image

The Virgo Cluster is the nearest big collection of galaxies to Earth, and it's filled with a collection of gas called the intercluster medium, whose pressure drives the galaxies' own internal gas out into the cluster, roiling up the galaxies' dust. The image above is NGC 4402, and here's the other one, NGC 4522.

It's well worth reading Phil Plait's whole write-up about these galaxies and why they're so weirdly shaped, over at his "Bad Astronomer" blog at Discover Magazine.

[HubbleSite and HubbleSite via Discover Magazine]

Above you can see a gorgeous rendition of what Spitzer saw, by a NASA artist, showing what is happening. Often disks of debris form around stars, and over millions of years solidify into lumps that turn into planets. In the case of young star LRLL 31, astronomers observed the lump forming within weeks - extremely unusual behavior. They speculate that this unusual pattern is probably caused by a companion planet or star whose gravitational pull is distorting the disk.

Astronomer James Muzerolle of Baltimore's Space Telescope Science Institute helped to discover the phenomenon, and will be publishing about it in Astrophysical Journal Letters. He said:

We don't know if planets have formed, or will form, but we are gaining a better understanding of the properties and dynamics of the fine dust that could either become, or indirectly shape, a planet. This is a unique, real-time glimpse into the lengthy process of building planets.

He discovered the phenomenon when he and his team noticed that the intensity of infrared light coming from the disk was changing dramatically over time - sometimes it would change a lot over just one week. They surmise that the change in intensity might come from more light being reflected by the disk's large lump as it passed behind its star (behind its star relative to Earth, that is).

Still, doesn't it seem kind of weird that this planet or star or whatever just wandered into the orbit of LRLL 31 so recently? And is already changing the shape of the star's accretion disk? Obviously a better explanation is that an alien civilization is building an orbital or other enormous space structure - the "planet" or "star" is actually their alien technology shaping matter together into a vast habitat for billions of aliens. Or maybe they'll make dozens of these "lumps" and turn them into generation ships. Mozorolle and his team may actually be catching a glimpse of the biggest engineering project the Earth has ever seen.

via NASA

The diffuse X-ray light suffusing the image comes from gas that has been heated by stellar explosions, massive young stars — and outflows powered by the supermassive blackhole at the heart of the galaxy, Sagittarius A. Scientists believe Sagittarius A gave off giant X-ray flares 50 years and 300 years earlier. (So when we finally visit the center of the galaxy searching for the mythical planet Sha-Ka-Ree in order to meet God and ask him why he wants a spaceship, we should time our visit to avoid one of those irregular X-ray bursts.) [Chandra]