Posted on 03/14/2012 9:20:06 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Explanation: What shines in the gamma-ray sky? The answer is usually the most exotic and energetic of astrophysical environments, like active galaxies powered by supermassive black holes, or incredibly dense pulsars, the spinning remnants of exploded stars. But on March 7, a powerful solar flare, one of a series of recent solar eruptions, dominated the gamma-ray sky at energies up to 1 billion times the energy of visible light photons. These two panels illustrate the intensity of that solar flare in all-sky images recorded by the orbiting Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. On March 6, as on most days, the Sun was almost invisible to Fermi's imaging detectors. But during the energetic X-class flare, it became nearly 100 times brighter than even the Vela Pulsar at gamma-ray energies. Now faded in Fermi's view, the Sun will likely shine again in the gamma-ray sky as the solar activity cycle approaches its maximum.
(Excerpt) Read more at 129.164.179.22 ...
[Credit: NASA, DOE, International Fermi LAT Collaboration]
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Awesome...To be honest, considering the size of the flare, a bit scary.
The Sun blowing off some energy and a sizable amount of plasma is not as scary as that pulsar. I would not want to be within 100 parsecs of that thing as the earth would look like a toasted marshmallow at a scout picnic.
The Sun blowing off some energy and a sizable amount of plasma is not as scary as that pulsar. I would not want to be within 100 parsecs of that thing as the earth would look like a toasted marshmallow at a scout picnic.
This is about 6400 lights years distance from us.
It was reportedly first seen as a bright supernova by the Chinese in 1054.
M-1 Nebula - 14x60sec, ISO800-Combined, calibrated and stacked, w/ 6.3 FR and LP filters.
M1 is the remnant of a star that exploded as a supernova. At the center of the nebula lies the Crab Pulsar, a neutron star about 30 km across, with a spin rate of 30.2 times per second.
Pulsars are indeed scary.
YIKES!
Didn’t see that, but I did see Jupiter and Venus the past 2 nights, and they were awesome.
Very bright in the clear sky here. My daughter and I were just commenting about it last night.
I just read this morning that there will be a crescent moon in conjunction with them toward the end of the month (around the 23rd I think) which should also be beautiful. I thought maybe worth getting the tripod out for.
:’) This is the year of the transit of Venus across the solar disk, hmm, this summer I think. The previous time was in 2008, and the next time will be, well, we’ll all be long dead when it happens.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_of_Venus,_2012
The next transit of Venus will occur on June 5-June 6 in 2012, succeeding the previous transit on June 8, 2004. After 2012, the next transits of Venus will be in December 2117 and December 2125.
Hey hey hey! Maybe YOU will be... ;)
Heh... I’ll be the one wearing the red carnation.
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