thenewenlightenmentage:

What is a Pulsar?

It is predicted that supernovae triggered by stars that do not have enough mass for their cores to form black holes will result in neutron stars.

Neutron stars are small (about 20km across), rotate rapidly and are incredibly dense. They are mostly made of neutrons that formed as electrons combined with protons in the atomic nuclei of the dying stars’ collapsing cores. Their powerful magnetic fields lead to radio pulses that can be detected on the Earth each time they rotate. These objects are known as pulsars when the pulses can be detected on the Earth.¹

History

The British astronomer Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered pulsars while completing her PhD at Cambridge University in the late 1960s. Using a radio telescope designed by her adviser Anthony Hewish and Martin Ryle (both men later shared a Nobel prize for their work), Bell Burnell found strange radio pulses coming from a single point in the sky.

After a period of confusion about what was causing the pulses, Bell Burnell and her colleagues confirmed that pulsars, as the sources of pulses came to be known, are emitted by rapidly spinning neutron stars.²

Known Pulsars

The Vela Pulsar (watch here)

The Crab Pulsar

47 Tucanae

Bonus: Pulsar Sounds (Listen Here)

1 http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/universe/sights/pulsars

2 http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/universe/scientists/jocelyn_bell_burnell

spaceplasma:

An Expanding Bubble in Space

A star 40 times more massive than our sun is blowing a giant bubble of material into space. In this colorful picture, the Hubble Telescope captured a glimpse of the expanding bubble, dubbed the Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635). The beefy star [lower center] is embedded in the bright blue bubble. The stellar powerhouse is so hot that it is quickly shedding material into space. The dense gas surrounding the star is shaping the castoff material into a bubble. The bubble’s surface is not smooth like a soap bubble’s. Its rippled appearance is due to encounters with gases of different thickness. The nebula is 6 light-years wide and is expanding at 4 million miles per hour (7 million kilometers per hour). The nebula is 7,100 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cassiopeia.

Image Credit: NASA, Donald Walter (South Carolina State University), Paul Scowen and Brian Moore (Arizona State University)

(Source: caerula-mare, via melanholicno-dete)

the-city-is-my-church:

majestic-w0lf:

tattoos | landscapes | vintage & more

☾†☾vintage/indie ☾†☾

(Source: inchanelwetrust, via anoreksicnakaludjerica)

matt-molloy:

186 photos of the sunset merged into one image using the lighten layer-blending mode in photoshop. I like the pattern in the clouds created from the interval between shots.

(via corallina)

Yulya Bolotova. <3

A photo of an Eta Aquarid meteor taken at Mount Bromo, East Java, Indonesia, May 5, 2013.

dahliafyodorovna:

“Perun” by Andrei Klimenko

Often compared to Thor of the Norse mythological world, Perun was considered the highest of all gods and was one of Svarog’s three sons. Perun was seen to be the creator and master of rain, lightning, and thunder (and anything that had to do with hurricanes and storms), Perun’s name is even based off the old Indo-European root “parg” meaning ‘to strike’, much like lightning would. In fact, the Polish word for ‘thunderbolt’ is Piorun. He possessed the ability to shoot lightning strikes from a bow as well as create storms to aid farmworkers.

As well as being associated with weather, he is known for his attribution to war, believed to be a fearsome and unforgiving god who through his leadership of the military maintained order in the world. During times of war or hardship, the ancient Slavic people looked towards Perun, who they sought to punish their enemies or grant life and fertility to them through rain.

It is said Perun was born to the Mother Sva (or the goddess Lada), after she consumed a Pike fish containing an embodiment of Rod, the creator god. The Book of Kolyady contains possibly one of the only known myths on the birth of Perun:

                              “The sky rings with thunder,
                          Then the clouds shined with lightning
                   And he appeared into existence, as if by lightning
                         The son of Svarog, Perun the Thunderer!”

(via tumbrloslav)

300,000,000 light-years away, the “rose galaxy” is really a group of interacting galaxies.