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NASA shows how black hole powered jets turned a galaxy into a giant doughnut
What happens when a black hole 100 million times more massive than our sun ploughs into a galaxy? The galaxy forms a giant “doughnut” of blocked light around the black hole.
At least that’s what NASA shows in a recently released photograph which combines data from their Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue), visible light obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope (gold) and radio waves from the National Science Foundation’s Very Large Array (pink).
“This multi-wavelength view shows 4C+29.30, a galaxy located some 850 million light years from Earth. The radio emission comes from two jets of particles that are speeding at millions of miles per hour away from a supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy,” the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics wrote in a release explaining the image. (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)
‘It’s like when you come off a ride at the CNE’: Chris Hadfield describes the hard return to gravity
Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield says his body feels confused and banged-up by the effects of gravity after a five-month stay in space.
After floating around weightlessly for months, suddenly, he needs to keep his own head aloft. He feels dizzy. And because there are no callouses on his feet anymore, he says, he feels like he’s walking on hot coals.
A first trip to the gym was excruciating, he says, because it felt like two people had jumped on him when he was trying to do a situp.
”My neck is sore and my back is sore,” Hadfield told a news conference from Houston on Thursday.
”It feels like I played a hard game of rugby yesterday or played full-contact hockey yesterday and I haven’t played in a while.” (THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP, Mikhail Metzel)
![The three biggest solar flares of the year all happened in a 24-hour period yesterdayWhen the sun fired off a massive flare late on Sunday, it was the strongest solar eruption this year. That was until another, even stronger flare followed it a few hours later. Soon a third flare, almost twice as powerful as the first blasted out of the sun.“The [third flare] was also associated with a coronal mass ejection, or CME. The CME began at 9:30 p.m. EDT and was not Earth-directed. Experimental NASA research models show that the CME left the sun at approximately 1,400 miles per second, which is particularly fast for a CME. The models suggest that it will catch up to the two CMEs associated with the earlier flares,” NASA said on it’s website.Solar flares are graded as A, B, C, M or X with each category being ten times more powerful than the one before it. The flares in the past day were all “X” flares, the first ones of 2013.“‘X-class’ denotes the most intense flares, while the number provides more information about its strength. (NASA/SDO/AIA)](http://25.media.tumblr.com/6e30a75f3303d44ae27ae6675bc56f89/tumblr_mmt2s7Qkb81qze0z6o1_1280.jpg)
The three biggest solar flares of the year all happened in a 24-hour period yesterday
When the sun fired off a massive flare late on Sunday, it was the strongest solar eruption this year. That was until another, even stronger flare followed it a few hours later. Soon a third flare, almost twice as powerful as the first blasted out of the sun.
“The [third flare] was also associated with a coronal mass ejection, or CME. The CME began at 9:30 p.m. EDT and was not Earth-directed. Experimental NASA research models show that the CME left the sun at approximately 1,400 miles per second, which is particularly fast for a CME. The models suggest that it will catch up to the two CMEs associated with the earlier flares,” NASA said on it’s website.
Solar flares are graded as A, B, C, M or X with each category being ten times more powerful than the one before it. The flares in the past day were all “X” flares, the first ones of 2013.
“‘X-class’ denotes the most intense flares, while the number provides more information about its strength. (NASA/SDO/AIA)
Seven lessons Chris Hadfield taught us from outer space
After five months in orbit, astronaut Commander Chris Hadfield, the first Canadian to command the International Space Station, returned to Earth Monday night. The Post‘s Sarah Boesveld rounded up seven lessons he brought us from the great beyond:
1. Space is still awesome
Planetary obsession has mostly been the domain of science nerds since the heyday of the Apollo missions, but Cmdr. Hadfield changed all that by bringing life on a space ship “down to earth” for every day people, said fellow Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques. “He’s brought space back into the public eye and he’s made it cool again,” he said. (Chris Hadfield; NASA; The Canadian Press)
Canadian ‘pop astronaut’ Chris Hadfield finally back on Earth after five-month mission in space
Astronaut Chris Hadfield returned to Earth Monday night after a five-month mission at the International Space Station that saw him become the first Canadian to command the orbiting laboratory.
The 53-year-old touched down in Kazakhstan on a Russian Soyuz capsule which was also carrying Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko and NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn — the same pair Hadfield blasted off with on Dec. 19, 2012.
The journey was Hadfield’s first return space flight inside the cramped Russian space capsule. The craft tore into the atmosphere before a parachute opened, slowing its descent until it hit the ground at 10:31 p.m. ET. (Canadian Space Agency)
Watch live as astronaut Chris Hadfield descends back to Earth after five months in space
This evening, Chris Hadfield will begin his decent to Earth after spending five months in space. Hadfield arrived at the International Space Station on December 21, 2012 and was the first Canadian commander of the ISS after the previous crew returned to Earth.
Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield set to return to Earth today after five-month mission to make space cool again
Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield has handed over command of the International Space Station as he prepares to return to Earth.
The first Canadian to command the station said it’s time to turn over the reins to Pavel Vinogradov, a Russian cosmonaut.
David Bowie tweeted “Hallo Spaceboy…” after Hadfield wrapped up his five-month visit to the giant laboratory by posting a rendition of Space Oddity.
Astronauts prep for spacewalk after ammonia starts leaking out of the International Space Station
The International Space Station has a radiator leak in its power system. The outpost’s commander calls the situation serious, but not life-threatening.
The six-member crew on Thursday noticed white flakes of ammonia leaking out of the station. Ammonia runs through multiple radiator loops to cool the station’s power system. NASA said the leak is increasing from one previously leaking loop that can be bypassed if needed. NASA spokesman Bob Jacobs said engineers are working on rerouting electronics just in case the loop shuts down. The Earth-orbiting station has backup systems. (AP Photo/NASA)
NASA captures stunning photos of gigantic hurricane whipping across Saturn’s North Pole
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has captured stunning views of a monster hurricane at Saturn’s North Pole. The eye is an enormous 2,000 kilometres across. That’s 20 times larger than the typical eye of a hurricane here on Earth. And it’s spinning super-fast. Clouds at the outer edge of the storm are whipping around at 530 kilometres per hour. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI)
Watch three years of solar activity in four minutes: NASA releases mesmerizing new video of the sun
It’s the job of NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory to keep an eye on the sun, a job the SDO has presented in a new video showing off three years’ worth of solar activity.
“In the three years since it first provided images of the sun in the spring of 2010, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory has had virtually unbroken coverage of the sun’s rise toward solar maximum, the peak of solar activity in its regular 11-year cycle,” NASA said in a release.
New planets painted — Scientists using NASA’s Kepler telescope have found two distant planets that are in the right place and are the right size for potential life. This handout image from Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics shows an artist concept of what these two planets, called Kepler-62-e and Kepler-62-f look like. The larger planet in the left corner is somewhat covered by ice and is f, which is farther from the star. The planet below it is e, which is slightly warmer and has clouds and may be a water world. (AP Photo/Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)
Kepler Planetary Discovery Live: What did NASA find on its mission to find ‘Earth-size planets’?
Right now, NASA is unveiling new planetary results from its Kepler mission.
Kepler is “the first NASA mission capable of finding Earth-size planets in or near the habitable zone, which is the range of distance from a star where the surface temperature of an orbiting planet might be suitable for liquid water.”
Although click-baiting headlines suggesting that NASA has found alien life are probably false, NASA is giving this press conference a lot of exposure, so they are probably announcing something pretty notable.
Keeping an eye on the Sun — This NASA image obtained April 10, 2013 and taken by the Solar Dynamics Observatory’s Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) instrument at 171 Angstrom shows the current conditions of the quiet corona and upper transition region of the Sun on April 9, 2013. (NASA/AFP/Getty Images)
This image which looks like a scene from the Star Wars shows the tip of the “wing” of the Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy in a view from NASA’s Great Observatories. The Small Magellanic Cloud, or SMC, is a small galaxy about 200,000 light-years way that orbits our own Milky Way spiral galaxy. The colors represent wavelengths of light across a broad spectrum. X-rays from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory are shown in purple; visible-light from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is colored red, green and blue; and infrared observations from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope are also represented in red. The spiral galaxy seen in the lower corner is actually behind this nebula. Other distant galaxies located hundreds of millions of light-years or more away can be seen sprinkled around the edge of the image.The SMC is one of the Milky Way’s closest galactic neighbors. Even though it is a small, or so-called dwarf galaxy, the SMC is so bright that it is visible to the unaided eye from the Southern Hemisphere and near the equator. Many navigators, including Ferdinand Magellan who lends his name to the SMC, used it to help find their way across the oceans. (NASA/AFP/Getty Images)
Memo on puported UFO discovery in New Mexico becomes most read file in FBI’s electronic reading room
A single-page FBI memo relaying a vague and unconfirmed report of flying saucers found in New Mexico in 1950 has become the most popular file in the bureau’s electronic reading room.
The memo, dated March 22, 1950, was sent by FBI Washington, D.C. field office chief Guy Hottel to then-Director J. Edgar Hoover.
According to the FBI, the document was first made public in the late 1970s and more recently has been available in the “Vault,” an electronic reading room launched by the agency in 2011, where it has become the most popular item, viewed nearly 1 million times. The Vault contains around 6,700 public documents.(FBI/The Associated Press)
