Our Minds May Never Be Able To Comprehend...

I would love to be able to credit the original image, but sadly I have no clue who made it. All I did was add the text.

Amateur Astronomer Captures Rare Glimpse Of Infant Solar System

The photo above was taken by Rolf Wahl Olsen, ‘amateur’ astronomer from New Zealand. The word amateur should be used lightly, as these are the first shots taken of the planetary disk surrounding the popular star Beta Pictoris (β Pic). Olsen took the pictures using a 10-inch telescope from his home. Here are the mind boggling equations he used to get his picture!

First I collected 55 images of Beta Pictoris at 30 seconds each. The dust disc is most prominent in IR so ideally a better result would be expected with the use of an IR pass filter. Since I only have a traditional IR/UV block filter I just imaged without any filter, to at least get as much IR light through as possible.

Next step was to capture a similar image of a reference star under the same conditions. For this purpose I used Alpha Pictoris as the paper suggested. This star is of nearly the same spectral type (A7IV compared to Beta’s A6V) and is also close enough to Beta in the sky so that the slight change in telescope orientation should not affect the diffraction pattern. However, since the two stars have different magnitudes I needed to calculate how long to expose Alpha for in order to get a similar image which I could subtract from the Beta image.

The magnitude difference between the stars is 3.86(Beta) - 3.30(Alpha) = 0.56

Due to the logarithmic nature of the magnitude scale we know that a difference of 1 magnitude equals a brightness ratio of 2.512. Therefore 2.512 to the power of the numerical magnitude difference then equals the variation in brightness.

2.512^0.56 = 1.67, so it appears Alpha is 1.67 times brighter than Beta. This means that exposure for Alpha should be 1/1.67 = 0.597x that of Beta. I took the liberty of using 0.6x for simplicity’s sake…

So I collected 55 images of 18 seconds (30 x 0.6) for Alpha.

You can see more of his work at his site and read more on this story on Discovery!

Record Breaking Storm On Saturn Has Been Encircling Planet For 200 Days

The largest storm seen on Saturn in more than 21 years has now been encircling the planet for a record-breaking 200 days.

First appearing as a tiny blemish on Dec. 5, 2010, the storm is still going strong today, surpassing the ringed giant’s previous longest tempest, which lasted 150 days back in 1903. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, in orbit around Saturn, has given astronomers a front-seat view of this enormous maelstrom and provided valuable data.

From its humble beginnings, the storm has grown to engulf the entire area between Saturn’s 30th and 51st north latitudes. From north to south, the tempest stretches about 9,000 miles — greater than diameter of the Earth — and covers two billion square miles, or eight times the surface area of our planet.

The storm marches through the planet’s atmosphere in the top right of this false-color mosaic from Cassini. Red and orange colors in this view indicate clouds that are deep in the atmosphere. Yellow and green colors, most noticeable along the top edge of the view, indicate intermediate clouds. White and blue indicate high clouds and haze. The rings appear as a thin horizontal line of bright blue.

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

(via WIRED)

3D Printing - It's Not Just Science Fiction Anymore

By now I am sure you have heard the term “3D Printing” and if you’re anything like me you blew it off to gimmicky -easy bake oven- technology. If you are just as moronic as me then prepare to have your mind blown. Below is a clip from National Geographic’s Known Universe that shows the printer in action.

Now all we need to do is learn how to build print with other materials such as aluminum or steel or get even more scientific with some organic printing; then the world will be the limit.

We Are The 99.999999926%

Even 518 seems like a lot. I wonder who compiled this number? It would be interesting to see the names and where they are from.

Space Rocks (Infographic)

Source:LiveScience

This is nothing that I haven’t already learned from Meteorite Men!

The World Today If There Was No Science

I’m glad we don’t have to fear dropping off the planet these days.

Aircraft Carrier Sized Asteroid To Buzz By Earth November 8th

An asteroid some 1,300 wide, code named 2005 YU55, will come just slightly closer than the moon’s orbit on November 8th.

The encounter is being called safe and scientists say they “fully understand the asteroids trajectory”. NASA, who will be tracking 2005 YU55 with the Deep Space Network antenna starting November 4th, say the asteroid will not have any gravitational influence on Earth -meaning our tides and tectonic plates will be fine.

The trajectory of asteroid 2005 YU55 is well understood. At the point of closest approach, it will be no closer than 201,700 miles (324,600 kilometers) or 0.85 the distance from the moon to Earth.  The gravitational influence of the asteroid will have no detectable effect on anything here on Earth, including our planet’s tides or tectonic plates. Although 2005 YU55 is in an orbit that regularly brings it to the vicinity of Earth (and Venus and Mars), the 2011 encounter with Earth is the closest this space rock has come for at least the last 200 years.