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The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has gone live, after months of moving into a geosynchronous orbit. Today, NASA scientists revealed "first light" images taken by the telescope. Let me introduce you, folks, to our very own star, the Sun (Latin: Sol). It is much more spectacular than you've ever imagined. in reference to: "With SDO looking on, decaying sunspot 1060 unleashed a minor "B3-class" solar flare. A shock wave issued from the blast site and raced across the surface of the sun (movie). SDO images clearly show magnetic loops and other structures rocking back and forth when the wave passes over them. Eventually, the wave disappeared over the sun's horizon--but the show wasn't over. Four hours after the initial blast, and some 200,000 km away, a massive prominence erupted (image)." - First Light for the Solar Dynamics Observatory - NASA Science ( view on Google Sidewiki )

Just when we think we've got a handle on what's going on, along comes some new knowledge that shakes our understanding of it all. NASA scientists have now confirmed findings reported a few years ago, that yes indeed, "dark flow", is real. Using a larger data set of 1,400 galaxy clusters and looking further out, they've been able to confirm that something has been pulling the known universe towards it -- at least to 2.5 billion light-years back -- and most likely, out to beyond the edge of the known universe. in reference to: New Proof Unknown "Structures" Tug at Our Universe ( view on Google Sidewiki )

MilkyWay@Home, the distributed computing project using the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing platform, is now the fastest computing project on that platform -- and probably the second fastest public distributed computing program, behind Folding@Home. MilkyWay@Home, using volunteer computing power from home users across the planet, has achieved 1,382 TFlops, as of January 12. Just for context -- that's just behind Jaguar, the Cray XT5 supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, that has performed at 1,759 TFlops and uses 224,162 Opteron cores -- compared to the 45 thousand users volunteering on MilkyWay@Home. For more on the MilkyWay@Home project, click here . in reference to: PCs around the world unite to map the Milky Way ( view on Google Sidewiki )

I just found out that I missed this playing at the Fox Theatre on Dec. 6th. I was in China, so I wouldn't have caught if I had known -- but still -- damn! damn! damn! I would have wanted to see this. in reference to: "The Matter of Everything is a feature documentary that explores quantum reality and the interconnectedness of nature from the quantum to the universe. Challenging us to see beyond our everyday sense of experience, the film reveals what we are, a billionth of a billionth of the human scale. At that level, physicists at Fermilab, one of the world’s largest particle accelerators, describe a world more unified than ever imagined." - THE MATTER OF EVERYTHING » SYNOPSIS ( view on Google Sidewiki )

While the science itself is interesting -- and cool, in that the long left-for-dead Voyager spacecrafts continue to aid in scientific discoveries -- the real reason I'm writing this short post is because the Local Interstellar Cloud is also called the "Local Fluff." Currently, our solar system, moving through the Milky Way, is running into this interstellar cloud of mostly hydrogen and helium. in reference to: "Astronomers call the cloud we're running into now the Local Interstellar Cloud or "Local Fluff" for short. It's about 30 light years wide and contains a wispy mixture of hydrogen and helium atoms at a temperature of 6000 C. The existential mystery of the Fluff has to do with its surroundings. About 10 million years ago, a cluster of supernovas exploded nearby, creating a giant bubble of million-degree gas. The Fluff is completely surrounded by this high-pressure supernova exhaust and should be crushed or dispersed by it." - Voyager make...

NASA is looking to name the International Space Station's (ISS) Node 3 , a new connecting module and its cupola (that sounds rude), in the tradition set by the naming of Node 1 -- Unity -- and Node 2 -- Harmony . Plans are for Endeavour to deliver Node 3 to the ISS in December, but ahead of the launch schedule, NASA is running a contest to pick the name. It all seems simple, boring and straight forward. Enter the clowns. The user vanillagamer submitted the post to reddit (and similar submissions were made on digg, with all of this possibly originating on 4chan), giving instructions to vote on the NASA naming site, with the suggestion that Battletoad be entered as the suggested name. Apparently, NASA doesn't find it the least bit humorous, and is blocking the name from being counted. The comments on the reddit submission are hilarious however, and the submission has even made it to reddit's front page. speaker219 : It looks like they're blocking out votes for B...

The Indians have landed on the Moon. Yesterday, the Moon Impact Probe (MIP) separated from the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft for a dusty splash down. Immediately after landing, the MIP righted itself, and started to dance. See more images of this historic event for India at the ISRO site .

Astronomers have taken the first ever direct photos of planets outside of our solar system . Three planets orbiting the star HR 8799, have been photographed in the infrared. And another, photographed by Hubble, orbits Fomalhaut. The planets are all larger than Jupiter. These planets are gas giants, but it can't be far off before direct photos are taken of smaller terrestrial planets. And won't that be cool?! We know we're not the only solar system. How long more before we find out that we're not alone?

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has detected snow falling from Martian clouds, from about 4km above the surface of the planet -- the snow is vapourizing before it hits the ground, however. Still, ain't that cool news? Phoenix also found evidence from soil experiments of past interaction between liquid water and minerals. It should be noted that Phoenix was developed with some funding and work by the Canadian Space Agency ... which just goes to figure ... it had to take a Canadian team to find snow falling on Mars.

Astrobiologists at the Cardiff Centre have built a model of our solar system travels through our galaxy. Our solar system is on the outer edges of one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way, taking its sweet ole time to complete a complete revolution (around 250 million years, if I remember correctly). But that's not the only movement of the solar system. Apparently, it bounces up and down through the plane of the Milky Way every 35-40 million years -- and with each bounce through the plane, the solar system is exposed to a denser region of the galaxy -- the plane has much more stuff. A bounce through that stuff could lead to catastrophic events -- such as comets colliding with Earth. In fact, the 35-40 million year cycle coincides quite well with mass extinction events on Earth. Now here's the bad news. We're up for another bounce through the galactic plane -- tomorrow in fact -- so place your head firmly between your knees, it's going to be a rough ride.

In the mispent youth of science classes and houses of ignorance, where robed mystics babble incoherently, we were led to the belief that there was a beginning. That the beginning was something miraculous and mysteriious, and if we stared too long we'd probably go mad with more questions -- or worse, blind. In the beginning, there was nothing, and from it, everything emerged -- space, time and the very laws of nature. The Man (Purusha) has a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, a thousand feet. He pervades the earth everywhere and extends beyond for ten fingers' breadth. The Man himself is all this, whatever has been and whatever is to be. He is the lord of immortality and also lord of that which grows on food. Such is his greatness, and the Man is yet greater than this. All creatures make up a quarter of him; three quarters are the immortal in heaven. With three quarters the Man has risen above, and one quarter of him still remains here, whence he spread out everywhere, pervadin...

Ever wonder how large everything is? Well, at least the known universe? People have been wondering for a long, long time about it. Some folks over at Princeton produced this map published in 2005, in the Astrophysical Journal [PDF], of the known universe. We have produced a new conformal map of the universe illustrating recent discoveries, ranging from Kuiper belt objects in the Solar system, to the galaxies and quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey . This may projection, based on the logarithm map of the complex plane, preserves shapes locally, and yet is able to display the entire range of astronomical scales from Earth's neighborhood to the cosmic microwave background. The conformal nature of the projection, preserving shapes locally, may be of particular use for analyzing large scale structure . Prominent in the map is a Sloan Great Wall of galaxies 1.37 billion light years long, 80% longer than the Great Wall discovered by Geller and Huchra and therefore the la...

The most massive black hole known, has been discovered -- weighing in at a massive 18-billion Suns. And it gets better. This black hole is so massive, it has another black hole, weighing about 100-million Suns, orbiting it. The smaller black hole makes a complete orbit of the larger one every 12 years, ploughing through its accretion disk twice during an orbit. Each time the smaller black hole moves through the larger's accretion disk, huge outbursts of radiation is released, causing the system to brighten. The two black holes form the heart of the quasar QJ287. As general relativity predicts, astronomers have observed the decay of the smaller black hole's orbit. At the rate of decay, the smaller black hole will be swallowed by the larger in 10,000 years.

As results from our various instruments pour in, we get an increasingly accurate view of our universe, and our place in it. Recently, researchers analyzing data from the Voyager spacecrafts, began to piece together an image of our solar system’s place within the galaxy. The solar system travels in an invisible bubble, created by solar particles streaming towards interstellar space. The edge of our solar system is in fact, defined as the point where particles from the Sun and those of interstellar space, reach a happy medium -- undulating against each other. Our solar system moves through the Milky Way, carving it’s way through interstellar space -- with the bubble of solar particles shaped like a bullet , forming a protective shell around the system. The edge of this bubble, carves a path through the Milky Way’s magnetic field at an angel of 60-degrees, traveling at 1/3 the speed of light. The bullet shaped is formed from the solar particles hitting the galactic magnetic field. ...

We send a lot of stuff into space. A lot. Not everything that goes up and stays out there, necessarily had a primary mission. Upper rocket stages of spacecrafts for instance -- they're just there to make sure the crafts we send up, get to where they're going, and have a chance at completing their missions. Upper rocket stages -- well, they just sort of get left to their own devices when they've been spent. As Space.com points out in a recent article, an interesting possibility arises from that scrap metal. The spacecrafts that get sent out are usually sterilized to ensure they're clean -- not so with the upper rocket stages. They're teeming with bacteria from the engineers who built them. The amazing thing about bacteria is their ability to survive. Bacteria has been known to hibernate for millions of years -- waiting for the right conditions to arise so they continue doing what bacteria do -- multiple, and evolve. Right now, upper rocket stages are hurt...

Astronomers using the ESO's 3.6m telescope, have discovered a planet orbiting Gliese 581, a red dwarf star, that bear a striking resemblance to Earth . The planet has a radius 50% larger than Earth, with five times more mass and is 14 times closer to its star. Its orbit allows the planet to complete an orbit in 13-days. At that proximity to its star, you'd think the planet would be hot, but because Gliese 581 is smaller, cooler and is less luminous that our star, this new planet may actually have comfortable temperatures, and possibly even liquid water. Gliese 581 is just over 20-light-years away from us, in the constellation Libra. It belongs to the group of most prevalent and stable stars in our galaxy. Due to their low luminosity however, they are difficult to observe. While the newly discovered planet is gaining a lot of press lately for being Earth-like , the chances that the system could support life as we know it, is fairly small. While red dwarfs are stable, ha...

The Cassini spacecraft has sent images back of a weird, six-sided hexagon that covers the entire north pole of Saturn. The hexagon shape was first imaged by the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecrafts, and is 25,000 km across -- a size that could hold about four Earths -- and 100 km deep. The hexagon has a system of clouds that is whipping around in it, as can seen in movies made from the Cassini images.

Researchers using the MARSIS radar instrument on board the Mars Express spacecraft have found a huge deposit of frozen water under Mars' south pole. If the ice was convert to water and placed on the surface of Mars, it would be enough to cover the entire planet 11 metres deep. A striking find -- which gives more support to evidence that water once flowed on the surface of Mars. Millions, or even billions of years ago, Mars may have resembled a young Earth, and had possibly supported life similar to that of Earth. The hunt continues.

NASA's Stereo A and Stereo B spacecrafts, launched in the fall of 2006, are on a mission to study the Sun. The spacecrafts have each taken up position in Earth's orbit around the Sun -- with Stereo A being 1 million miles ahead of Earth in orbit, and Stereo B being 1 million miles behind Earth in orbit. The orbits have been planned to afford the spacecrafts the ability to create stereoscopic images and videos of the Sun -- specifically, coronal mass ejections. On Feb. 25 however, Stereo B made a cool video. In an exercise to calibrate its CCD detectors, the spacecraft made a movie of the Moon transiting the Sun. A couple of remarkable things show up on this video. Since the spacecraft is further away from the Moon than we are, the Moon appears smaller than the Sun -- unlike how we would see it on Earth. Secondly, because the spacecraft's cameras see in the extreme ultraviolet, the colours of the Sun are just plain alien. Check out the video below.