Brian (or anybody else into Astronomy) thought you might like this.

[MichaelF (FPIE)]

Not sure if you heard about this yet.  Pretty cool.

http://news.aol.com/story/_a/violent-cosmic-blast-seen-for-first-time/20080614205009990001

[PPI Glenn]

With discoveries such as this it'll be a sad day when Hubble goes away.

[ldwalkup]

These are awesome!  No one puts on a show like the forces of nature.

[ttjoon]

Thank you for posting this link, Michael.  These photos are amazing.

[PPI Brian]

Thanks for sharing this, Mike. Yes, I saw these images, but I never get enough. 

NASA announced in May that the Shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to service the Hubble on October 8, 2008. Looking forward to the upgrades!

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/may/HQ_08133_Shuttle_target_dates.html

[MichaelF (FPIE)]

You see this one too?

http://news.aol.com/story/_a/astronomers-find-batch-of-super-earths/20080616145909990002

Now all we need is a way to actually get to these places.....

[PPI Brian]

Haven't seen that one yet, but I am always intrigued by new discoveries. Makes an evening under the stars even more amazing, when you realize that almost every star in the sky has it's own planetary system. 

[ttjoon]

This is pretty cool...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25212851/

[MichaelF (FPIE)]

Haven't seen that one yet, but I am always intrigued by new discoveries. Makes an evening under the stars even more amazing, when you realize that almost every star in the sky has it's own planetary system. 

Yea that was the most mind blowing thing that I remember from my course.  The Hubble Deep View look.  Sooooooo many galaxies, so many starts, so many planets.  We CAN'T be the only ones around.

[PPI Brian]

This is pretty cool...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25212851/

Ah, yes. I love this illusion. Hopefully I will be home in time to watch the moon rise tomorrow night.

[PPI Brian]

Haven't seen that one yet, but I am always intrigued by new discoveries. Makes an evening under the stars even more amazing, when you realize that almost every star in the sky has it's own planetary system. 

Yea that was the most mind blowing thing that I remember from my course.  The Hubble Deep View look.  Sooooooo many galaxies, so many starts, so many planets.  We CAN'T be the only ones around.

The unimaginable distances between stars and galaxies make these observations even more mind blowing. Our galaxy is about 100,000 light years wide, which means if we could travel at light speed it would take us 100,000 years to travel from one end of the galaxy to the other. The Andromeda galaxy is just under 3 million light years away. Some of the brigher galaxies I've observed are over 75 million light years away. These distances are so great they effectively rule out intergalactic travel by living organisms as we know them.

Check out this interactive link from NASA:
http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/SIMGuide2Galaxy_launch_page.html

On the local scale even the distances to the nearest stars are unimaginable. We launched Voyager I & Voyager II in the 1970's and they still have yet to leave the Solar System. Here's a list of the 50 closest stars to Earth: http://jumk.de/astronomie/near-stars/index.shtml  Again, these distances make travel between the stars impossible with our current technology. That's probably a very good thing. Humans may think we're the bad-ass apex predator on the block, but chances are there's someone or something a lot meaner than us out there, and I find comfort in the fact that they would have a hard time making the trip all the way out here.   

[MichaelF (FPIE)]

That's assuming they don't have a technology that we don't have yet.  The good thing is that any civilization that could create a technology that is capable of covering such vast distances is "probably" peaceful.  More violent races probably wipe themselves out before getting that advanced.  In theory anyway.

[PPI Glenn]

And speaking of the Voyager craft... do you know even though they were launched in the mid 1970's they are both still operating? Based on current fuel consumption and power output, Voyager II should be operational until 2025! That's close to 50 years after launch! This is a great testament to what NASA used to be capable of! And a little more trivia...Voyager I is close to 10,000,000,000 miles from earth. It is so far away that signals take close to 15 hours to reach the vehicle.

[ttjoon]

And a little more trivia...Voyager I is close to 10,000,000,000 miles from earth. It is so far away that signals take close to 15 hours to reach the vehicle.

The fact that the signals can even REACH the vehicle at all, is mind boggling in of itself. 

[PPI Brian]

Awesome, isn't it? Not only are the 31 year old Voyagers still operational, they are still conducting valid science. 

In 2003 at the end of the solar maximum the sun ripped lose with an X23 Coronal Mass Ejection (the most powerful CME that had ever been recorded) that could have fried almost all of the satellites in orbit around the Earth, including the International Space Station. Fortunately it was pointed away from us. Solar probes such as SOHO and Ulyses recorded the event, as did Mars Global Surveyor, Cassini and the Voyagers. It was the first time a CME was tracked from origin to the ege of the solar system. Absolutely amazing.

Here's a link to the Voyager Mission:  http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/interstellar.html

[PPI Glenn]

And a little more trivia...Voyager I is close to 10,000,000,000 miles from earth. It is so far away that signals take close to 15 hours to reach the vehicle.

The fact that the signals can even REACH the vehicle at all, is mind boggling in of itself. 

Well, get this one. The Voyager spacecraft were equipped with redundant transponders (receiver/transmitters) of which the maximum output was 22 watts! To put that in perspective, your typical microwave oven operates at around 750-1000 watts and a major AM station (KNX in LA comes to mind) operates at around 50,000 watts. The dish used is only around 3 meters wide (or about the size of an old TV satellite dish people used 10-20 years ago.)  The only site left on the planet capable of talking with the craft is part of NASA's Deep Space Network in Australia and uses 230' dish. Now that's big! I can't find anything showing the current signal strength but even when these craft were inside the orbit of Jupiter, tracking their signal was like being in LA and listening to someone whispering in NY! To me its just amazing what we're capable of when we really put our minds to it.

[ttjoon]

And a little more trivia...Voyager I is close to 10,000,000,000 miles from earth. It is so far away that signals take close to 15 hours to reach the vehicle.

The fact that the signals can even REACH the vehicle at all, is mind boggling in of itself. 

Well, get this one. The Voyager spacecraft were equipped with redundant transponders (receiver/transmitters) of which the maximum output was 22 watts! To put that in perspective, your typical microwave oven operates at around 750-1000 watts and a major AM station (KNX in LA comes to mind) operates at around 50,000 watts. The dish used is only around 3 meters wide (or about the size of an old TV satellite dish people used 10-20 years ago.)  The only site left on the planet capable of talking with the craft is part of NASA's Deep Space Network in Australia and uses 230' dish. Now that's big! I can't find anything showing the current signal strength but even when these craft were inside the orbit of Jupiter, tracking their signal was like being in LA and listening to someone whispering in NY! To me its just amazing what we're capable of when we really put our minds to it.

What is REALLY scary is to ponder what we are REALLY capable of and what is REALLY going on.....that our government doesn't share with us. 

[PPI Glenn]

What is REALLY scary is to ponder what we are REALLY capable of and what is REALLY going on.....that our government doesn't share with us. 

Very true.

[ttjoon]

I used to know someone who was a cryptology technician in the Navy. That person would always tell me that if I knew what the government knew, I would be so scared that I'd want to move to Mars.   :o

[MichaelF (FPIE)]

I used to know someone who was a cryptology technician in the Navy. That person would always tell me that if I knew what the government knew, I would be so scared that I'd want to move to Mars.   :o

Probably true.

[PPI Brian]

I used to know someone who was a cryptology technician in the Navy. That person would always tell me that if I knew what the government knew, I would be so scared that I'd want to move to Mars.   :o

Nah, Mars wouldn't be far enough away.    And the weather sucks there too. I think some famous guy wrote an unflattering song about Mars once...

Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids.
In fact it's cold as hell.
And there's no one there to raise them if you did.

[ttjoon]

I used to know someone who was a cryptology technician in the Navy. That person would always tell me that if I knew what the government knew, I would be so scared that I'd want to move to Mars.   :o

Nah, Mars wouldn't be far enough away.    And the weather sucks there too. I think some famous guy wrote an unflattering song about Mars once...

Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids.
In fact it's cold as hell.
And there's no one there to raise them if you did.

Yeah...I seem to remember someone writing about that as well.   

Oh...how about Pluto?  Oh...wait....Pluto doesn't rank as a planet anymore!      (who decides these things anyway?)

[PPI Glenn]

I used to know someone who was a cryptology technician in the Navy. That person would always tell me that if I knew what the government knew, I would be so scared that I'd want to move to Mars.   :o

Nah, Mars wouldn't be far enough away.    And the weather sucks there too. I think some famous guy wrote an unflattering song about Mars once...

Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids.
In fact it's cold as hell.
And there's no one there to raise them if you did.

Yeah...I seem to remember someone writing about that as well.   

Oh...how about Pluto?  Oh...wait....Pluto doesn't rank as a planet anymore!      (who decides these things anyway?)

It's a planet! No! It's a Kuiper Belt Object! No! Its a Plutiod!

Where the hell did they come up with Plutoid?!?!

[PPI Brian]

I know, it's crazy. The International Astronomical Union decided that anything under a certain mass should be considered a dwarf planet. To make matters clearer (in their opinion) they renamed Pluto Minor Planet 134340 Pluto. Ah yes, that makes it better, doesn't it? Is it a dwarf planet or a minor planet? 

I guess it was inevitable: astronomers continue to find Pluto-sized objects in the Kuiper Belt. They started publishing their discoveries in scientific journals and started calling these new worlds KBOs (Kuiper Belt Objects). Debate raged about increasing the number of planets in our solar system from 9 to 10 or more. But the official catalog of small bodies in the solar system is under the exclusive authority of the IAU, and that means they get to tell us what a planet is, and what a minor planet is. During their international summit last fall they decided to define the term "planet" for the first time.

At first there were only three objects in the dwarf planet catalog: Pluto, Ceres, and the distant object 2003 UB313, which is unofficially named Xena. The IAU will decide on an official name for 2003 UB313 soon. They will also have to deal with other huge KBOs that were discovered about the same time as Xena: other large TNOs, including 136199 Eris, 50000 Quaoar, 90482 Orcus, and 90377 Sedna. Eris is even larger than Pluto, and it has at least one moon, but what's really crazy is the fact that it takes 557 years to circle the sun one time. 

Here's a link that shows some of the largest KBOs compared to Earth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:EightTNOs.png

[MichaelF (FPIE)]

Calling them Plutoids now is an attempt to give Pluto some respect since it got downgraded.  Can't hurt those planets feelings you know.

[PPI Karl]

. . . the distant object 2003 UB313, which is unofficially named Xena. The IAU will decide on an official name for 2003 UB313 soon.

And the winner is . . . Eris, the Greek goddess of strife and disharmony.  Personally, I like "Xena" much better.  But now, Lucy Lawless is playing Deanna.  And Eris is a dwarf planet.  And next month, the IAU are changing their name to the International Congress for Universal Reassignment of Monikers and Terminology (ICURMT).  It's all so confusing.  (Okay, that last one is just a confabulation.)

As for "plutoid," I think they now make a topical ointment to treat that. Ask your pharmacist for a recommendation.

[ttjoon]

. . . 

As for "plutoid," I think they now make a topical ointment to treat that. Ask your pharmacist for a recommendation.

Once again, Karl.....I spit my coffee all over my keyboard.  I must learn not to read your posts and drink a beverage at the same time.

[PPI Brian]

. . . the distant object 2003 UB313, which is unofficially named Xena. The IAU will decide on an official name for 2003 UB313 soon.

And the winner is . . . Eris, the Greek goddess of strife and disharmony.  Personally, I like "Xena" much better.  But now, Lucy Lawless is playing Deanna.  And Eris is a dwarf planet.  And next month, the IAU are changing their name to the International Congress for Universal Reassignment of Monikers and Terminology (ICURMT).  It's all so confusing.  (Okay, that last one is just a confabulation.)

As for "plutoid," I think they now make a topical ointment to treat that. Ask your pharmacist for a recommendation.

ROTFLMAO! 
That's a good one, Karl.

[MichaelF (FPIE)]

Whats even worse is if the Plutoid gets into a close orbit around Uranus.  Sorry, was to good an opportunity to pass up.