Center of The Swan Nebula Skateboards

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A gorgeous design. Click to customize and personalize. Maybe you'd like to see your name or initials on it?

Center of The Swan Nebula Skateboards

tagged with: swan nebula, galaxies stars, hydrogen gas clouds, star forming activity, young hot stars, newly born stars, astronomy photography, outer space, hrbstslr midswneb, hrfptraz, m17

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series Amazingly this could almost be some underwater scene with strange creatures swimming in the aquamarine waters. It's actually the centre of the Swan Nebula, or M17, a hotbed of newly born stars wrapped in colourful blankets of glowing gas and cradled in an enormous cold, dark hydrogen cloud. This stunning picture was taken by the newly installed Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
The region of the nebula shown in this picture is about 3500 times wider than our Solar System. The area also represents about 60 percent of the total view captured by ACS. The nebula resides 5500 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius. Like its famous cousin in Orion, the Swan Nebula is illuminated by ultraviolet radiation from young, massive stars - each about six times hotter and 30 times more massive than our Sun.

The powerful radiation from these stars evaporates and erodes the dense cloud of cold gas within which the stars formed. The blistered walls of the hollow cloud shine primarily in the blue, green, and red light emitted by excited atoms of hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and sulphur. Particularly striking is the rose-like feature, seen to the right of centre, which glows in the red light emitted by hydrogen and sulphur.
As the infant stars evaporate the surrounding cloud, they expose dense pockets of gas that may contain developing stars. Because these dense pockets are more resistant to the withering radiation than the surrounding cloud, they appear as sculptures in the walls of the cloud or as isolated islands in a sea of glowing gas. One isolated pocket is seen at the centre of the brightest region of the nebula and is about 10 times larger than our Solar System.

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image code: midswneb

Image credit: NASA, the ACS Science Team

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Eagle Nebula, M16 - Hubble Astronomy Neckwear

A gorgeous best-selling design. Click to customize or personalize. How would it look with your name or monogram on it - why not have a look-see right now?

Eagle Nebula, M16 - Hubble Astronomy Neckwear

tagged with: star forming regions, eagle nebula, unfolding creation, gorgeous space pictures, celestial factories, inspirational astronomy, beautifui heavens, hubble space photographs, cosmological, hrbstslr egnebtwr, eso, european southern observatory, vista, beautiful, heavens

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A great picture from deep space featuring the beautiful Eagle Nebula, M16, taken in November 2004 with the Advanced Camera for Surveys aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. It shows a billowing tower of cold gas and dust, 9.5 light-years high, rising from a stellar nursery. Stars in the Eagle Nebula are born in these clouds of cold hydrogen gas, and the tower may be a giant 'incubator' for those newborn stars.
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ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA www.eso.org
Reproduced under the Creative Comns Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

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Cute White Puppy Stamp

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How can you resist this cute puppy design? Maybe you'd like to see your name or initials on it? Click to customize and personalize...

Cute White Puppy Stamp

tagged with: postage, stamp, stamps, cute, pets, dogs, dog, puppy, puppies, westies

Have some fun sending mail with this cute white puppy stamp! Available in various postage stamp sizes!

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Cute ponies for the bedroom and school

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Palomino Trotting Cartoon Horse Canvas Print | Black Cartoon Shetland Pony Sleeve For iPads | Customize Product Courier Bag

Cute ponies for the bedroom and school

If you know a boy or girl who loves ponies then here's a collection that should give you some gift ideas.
Any boy or girl will love them - some for bedroom and some for school. Which of these would be best?

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A 19th Century Telephone Network Covered Stockholm in Thousands of Phone Lines

Fun and Random

In the late 19th century, shortly after the patent of the telephone, the race was on to connect everyone to the phone grid. However, due to technical limitations of the earliest phone lines, every telephone required its own physical line strung between a house or business to a phone exchange where the call was manually connected by a live operator. The somewhat quixotic result of so many individual lines was the construction of elaborate and unsightly towers that carried hundreds to thousands of phone lines through the air.

In Stockholm, Sweden, the central telephone exchange was the Telefontornet, a giant tower designed around 1890 that connected some 5,000 lines which sprawled in every direction across the city. Just by looking at historical photos it’s easy to recognize the absurdity and danger of the whole endeavor, especially during the winter months. Everything that could possibly go wrong did. From high winds to ice storms and fires, the network was extremely vulnerable to the elements. Luckily, phone networks evolved so rapidly that by 1913 the Telefontornet was completely decommissioned in favor of much simpler technology. The remaining shell stood as a landmark until it too caught fire in 1953 and was torn down.

If you want to see more, the Tekniska Museet (the Museum of Technology) in Stochkholm has hundreds of photos from this strange period over on Flickr organized into four main galleries: Linjeras och eldsvådor (accidents), Telefonstationer Stockholm, telephone stations in other parts of Sweden, and the Telefontornet.

(via Retronaut, Twisted Sifter, thnx Johnny!)

 
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Tiny Shrimp-like Organisms Try to Illuminate the Insides of Fish That Eat Them

Fun and Random

No, these aren’t light vomiting fish, though you would be forgiven for thinking so because that’s exactly what it looks like. What you’re seeing is the defense mechanism of a tiny crustacean called an ostracod, a shrimp-like organism about 1mm in size that some fish accidentally eat while hunting for plankton. When eaten by a translucent cardinalfish, the ostracod immediately releases a bioluminescent chemical in an attempt to illuminate the fish from the inside, making it immediately identifiable to predators. WHAT. Not wanting to be eaten, the cardinalfish immediately spits out the ostracod, resulting in little underwater fish fireworks. What an incredible game of evolutionary cat and mouse. The clip above is from a new show on BBC Two called Super Senses. If you’re in the UK you can watch it online in HD for a few more days. (via For Science Sake)

 
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