Pillars of Creation: Womb of Stars

NASA has released an image this week to commemorate the Hubble Space Telescope’s 100,000 orbit. This nebula, imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope on August 10, is about 170,000 light-years away.

“The image reveals dramatic ridges and valleys of dust, serpent-head ‘pillars of creation,’ and gaseous filaments glowing fiercely under torrential ultraviolet radiation. The region is on the edge of a dark molecular cloud that is an incubator for the birth of new stars. The high-energy radiation blazing out from clusters of hot young stars is sculpting the wall of the nebula by slowly eroding it away. Another young cluster may be hidden beneath a circle of brilliant blue gas. In this approximately 100-light-year-wide fantasy-like landscape, dark towers of dust rise above a glowing wall of gases on the surface of the molecular cloud. The seahorse-shaped pillar at lower, right is approximately 20 light-years long, roughly four times the distance between our sun and the nearest star, Alpha Centauri. The region is in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite of our Milky Way galaxy. It is a fascinating laboratory for observing star-formation regions and their evolution. Dwarf galaxies like the Large Magellanic Cloud are considered to be the primitive building blocks of larger galaxies.”

You might also want to check out the The First Universe of Galaxies Map.

Midnight in Paris by Van Cleef & Arpels

Pick the stars from the sky and wear the universe at your wrist. Oh isn’t that romantic? Reading time with the stars under the Paris constellation can now be done through the Midnight in Paris timepiece. It represents the map of stars under the Parisian sky. The mechanical movement is unique, its extreme complexity linking the concept of time to that of the Cosmos as a dazzling homage to that other mysterious and fascinating world.

The Midnight in Paris timepiece recreates the map of the celestial dome. This is done by a rotating disk made of aventurine glass. The mechanism of this jewel-like timepiece is visible thanks to a sapphire glass case back that is protected by a pink gold moveable flap. On the back of the timepiece, the disk surrounding the calendar is set with real meteorite stone.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Case
Dimensions: Ø 42 mm. Rose gold. Scratch-proof sapphire crystal. Water resistant 3 ATM (20m)

Dial
Rotating blue aventurine glass disc. Polished and brushed hands. Signature Van Cleef & Arpels.

Strap and buckle
Alligator. Rose gold folding clasp with integrated security system mechanism

Movement
Swiss mechanical movement exclusively developed for Van Cleef & Arpels on a Jaeger-LeCoultre Basis. 28,800 alternations / hour. Autonomy 40 hours. 24 jewels

Price
48,000 euros

When you’re in space….

In celebration of The First Universe of Galaxies Map, here’s a comic strip from Cyanide and Happiness.  When you’re in space, no one can hear you say no. Right on eh?

The First Universe of Galaxies Map

Remember the spacecraft GALEX (which means Galaxy Evolution Explorer) that was sent to space with the mission of observing galaxies in ultraviolet light across 10 billion years of cosmic history through an incorporated telescope on April 28th of 2003? It’s now officially been traveling the space and sending information back to Earth for five years.

“GALEX’s ultraviolet observations are telling the scientists how galaxies, the building block of our Universe, evolve and change. GALEX observations are providing data for NASA’s investigators to find out when and how the stars that we see today were formed and which chemical elements are the galaxies made off.”

Now GALEX has already observed more than 100 million galaxies. The first comprehensive map of the Universe of galaxies is now ready for construction, helping us understand how galaxies like our own Milky Way were formed.

“In effect, GALEX acts like a time machine through which humans see the universe as it was a few billion years after its birth because it observes places so far away that the light reaching GALEX, even traveling at 299.792.458 meters per second is still the same as billions of years before.”

Read the full article

Tourist space travel, not that far away?

Xcor Aerospace announced plans for a two-seater commercial spacecraft called the Lynx on Wednesday. It was also announced that Lynx could probably take its first test flight by 2010. The spacecraft would allow passengers to take a 25-minute spaceflight. “Our company’s goal has always been to build rocket-powered vehicles that can be flown like regular aircraft,” said company president Jeffrey Greason, who claims that the Lynx is relatively environmentally friendly: “They are fully reusable, burn cleanly, and release fewer particulates than solid-fuel or hybrid rocket motors,” he says.

 

The Desire for Space and its Toys

Got the desire for space? Space Desire Service can help you send your stuff to outer space via their rockets. It can be anything such as DNA sample, hair, accessories, engagement ring, or even digital data such as photos, text, video files, music or other data files. Wouldn’t it be nice to have the photos of you and your lover fly to outer space along with your oath and vows?

It comes with a certificate and a dvd recording of the whole process. But again, for me the toys just look a little bit more attractive than the plan itself.

For more information, visit www.spacedesire.com