Source: Hubblesite.org. Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Livio and the Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI)

Today we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope. Hurrah! Although it’s clearly impossible, as I haven’t aged more than, oh, 10 years since then.

The folks at NASA and ESA have released a set of gorgeous new images and videos of the Carina Nebula, a region of active star formation in our Galaxy.

The European Hubble team have also taken the occasion to launch a rather nice looking new website, check it out here.

The same team are organising a competition to find the most artistic, funniest, weirdest, largest and smallest manifestations of Hubble and its images in popular culture – that’s a fun idea. Anyone can join the Flickr group and submit images, and the category winners get some cool prizes. Read more here.

Google joined in the celebration with a lovely doodle for the day:

As its host just told me he reads this blog, I’m going to post the first part anniversary edition of the regular Hubble videocast, HubbleCast, here for the occasion too. Looking sharp in that bow tie, Dr J! (second part here)

The eruption of Eyjafjallajoekull on 21 March (RAGNAR AXELSSON/AFP/Getty Images)

Air travel in Northern Europe is currently being disrupted by the ash cloud spewed out by Icelandic volcano (ok, deep breath:) Eyjafjallajoekull, which started erupting in late March. This is a bit of a pain for anyone with travel plans and a major pain for those actually living near the volcano, but as for once that doesn’t include me, I’m going to delight in the amazing pictures being posted from Iceland of this awesome spectacle. Volcanoes are fantastically photogenic. Never to disappoint, the Big Picture at the Boston Globe posted a great series of images today.

Here’s a few more of my favourites from Flickr:

Flickr user orvaratli

Flickr user orvaratli

Flickr user orvaratli

Some more…. [16/04 +]

Dutch volcanic sunset (Flickr user Danny Mekic)

Flickr user orvaratli

Astronomy Picture of the Day on 19 April was also volcano-themed:

Credit & Copyright: Marco Fulle (Stromboli Online)

And check out Flickr users Richard Crawford Photography, Iriya (with video!),  and this one from Alpha Victor of the sun setting behind the Forth Bridge in Scotland.

I don’t usually envy people who live in places like Iceland or Northern Canada – cold, dark and desolate places. But I am insanely jealous of them for one reason: the Aurora Borealis. Aurorae light up their skies, when charged particles streaming out from the Sun slam into the Earth’s magnetic field, get accelerated along the field lines towards the poles, creating these luminescent showers of light as they interact with the atoms in the upper atmosphere.

I’ve only ever seen the Aurora from an airplane, which is probably the only  exciting thing that’s ever happened to me on a long-haul flight. I instantly turned into nerdy scientist-slash-annoyingly chatty airplane neighbour. But it was an Aurora, seen from above! How cool. I usually prefer my flights uneventful and boring but Aurorae are always welcome.

Anyway, I was reminded of this by reading Amanda’s post on the Astronomy Photographer of the Year pool on Flickr, and the gallery she’s curating for April, called April Apparitions, which contains some stunning Aurora images. After a lengthy quiet period, the Sun’s activity is steadily increasing, and a geomagnetic storm on 5 April has apparently led to some of the most spectacular Aurora displays in recent years for the lucky inhabitants of our polar regions.

It’s not only the lowly Earth-dwellers who’ve been able to enjoy the spectacle – our space-flying buddies have also witnessed the displays from the ISS. Astronaut happy snapper Soichi Noguchi posted this picture online recently from the ISS (more here). Amazing!

Images: orvaratli (top); S. Noguchi (bottom)

Today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day is this stunning image of a section of the Galaxy as seen at far-infrared wavelengths. The high-resolution parts come from the recently launched Planck satellite, the rest from the older infrared satellite IRAS. The bright material shown in the image is very cold gas and dust, whose radiation peaks at these long infrared wavelengths.

Image: ESA, Planck HFI Consortium, IRAS

Astropixie has started a new post on her blog called Dirty Space News, inspired by a rather unfortunate-looking figure in a paper she was reading from astro-ph. There have been lots of contributions with more suggestively shaped figured and images. I wonder if Sarah Gallagher, the paper’s lead author, knows the new movement her last paper has sparked?

I spotted the poster shown above in our corridor – its designers have amazingly managed to make the XMM satellite look even more phallic than it already did…. I’m starting to think X-ray astronomers have had a lot of fun with this over the years.

Go check it out here and send her your own Dirty Space images!

Despite Mike Brown‘s best efforts, Pluto is not dead (yet). These cool new images of the tiny non-planet taken with the Hubble Space Telescope show that it is by no means a boring lump of icy rock. When comparing these images, taken in 2002-2003, to a previous set dating back to 1994, scientists noticed some striking changes. This would suggest that Pluto, just like many bodies in the solar system, shows seasonal activity and all kinds of interesting chemistry as it moves along its looong orbit around the Sun.

Image: NASA, ESA, and M. Buie (Southwest Research Institute)

Herschel stares into Aquila

Scientists have gathered in Madrid this week to discuss for the first time the data they have received from the new infrared telescope Herschel that was launched in May of this year. Some fantastic images have been produced as part of the first observing programmes, like the one above of an active star forming region in the constellation Aquila. The region was known as a ‘dark cloud’ – meaning that dust was blocking any visible or near-infrared radiation coming from its interior. Until Herschel came along, and switched on the lights. Observing at longer infrared wavelengths, the telescope is sensitive to radiation from cooler and dusty material, allowing it to peer into the cloud’s interior. The image, created from data from two of Herschel’s images, PACS and SPIRE, shows up to 700 dense pockets of cold and dusty material that may eventually condense into stars; around 100 of them have progressed to the protostellar stage where they begin to resemble a young forming star.

ESA has launched a new site to showcase the Herschel images. A little sparsely populated so far, but the first postings are very promising indeed.

Image credit: ESA and the SPIRE & PACS consortia, Ph. André (CEA Saclay) for the Gould’s Belt Key Programme Consortia

Rubens couldn't get designers to send him size 12 samples either

What is it about women’s magazines these days that makes me want to set fire to something? Or, you know, write a great big angry blog post. They used to be a welcome diversion after a hard day at work but these days, the few times that I still read them, usually on long flights, they just irritate me.

In its November issue, US Glamour magazine tells us they care about women’s body issues and describe how they lead the mag pack in presenting a varied, healthy image of women in their magazine.  It was them, after all, that published the now-renowned picture of model Lizzie Miller with a bit of belly overhang – aka. a normal-looking waistline – that inspired an outpour of collective emotion around the world. Five successful “plus-sized” models are featured in a long article that champions Glamour’s efforts over the years to celebrate women of all shapes, colours and sizes.

But let’s be honest: Glamour don’t really care about all this stuff. They’re riding a wave of media hype against the fashion and cosmetics industry over the extreme skinniness that seems required for models to reach the top of their profession on the one hand, and the excessive airbrushing of images on the other. It’s true, models in make up or skincare adverts these days look like aliens more than real people, all expression and every feature having been erased by the magic photoshop wand.

If Glamour really cared, the models would not be posing naked in some weird modern Rubenesque idylle. They would be wearing clothes and romping around the fashion section on the preceding pages. But no, the clothes are on the back of a very pretty but teeny-sized model. I don’t care if designers won’t send samples in bigger sizes. If Glamour and its publishers Condé Nast are half the powerhouses and bastions of creativity they claims to be, this is simply not a problem.

If Gamour really cared, they would not tell us with pride that “Glamour has been on this wavelength since the early nineties. We’ve put Queen Latifah on the cover twice”. Wow. And still no Nobel Peace Prize? And why do the covers always have to be graced by celebrities, actors or singers? What about politicians, athletes, scientists, entrepreneurs? They too deserve front-page recognition and can be just as beautiful.

If Glamour really cared, they would not have run a 2-page advert for Ralph Lauren inside their cover. Ralph Lauren was criticised and ridiculed in recent weeks for running a freaky-looking advert in which the model’s head is larger than her waist and hips. The model in question, Filippa Hamilton, who worked for the company for 4 years, has since gone on record to say that she was fired by RL earlier this year “for being too fat”.

If Glamour really cared about the fashion industry showing more respect to women an their bodies, they should have pulled the ad – and I hope they do or say something for the next issue. (by the way, a second Ralph Lauren photoshopping disaster is now circulating on the internet, rubbishing the company’s claims that it was “a one-off incident”).

This, to me,  is the worst feature of todays’ representation of fashion and beauty in the media: the relentless removal of every imperfection, wrinkle and skin fold in the media. Every distinguishing feature of the model is just wiped away. As a result, we’ve come to equate “youth” and “skinny” with “perfection”. Without this manipulation, the “skinny vs. normal vs. fat” issue would automatically come down a notch, as people would be able to see that actually, even Brazilian supermodels don’t look like Brazilian supermodels without airbrushing!

And let’s not kid ourselves that this is about women either: men today face the same kind of pressures as women. Clever marketing professionals have spotted an untapped market in male fashion and cosmetics, and they are now too bombarded with unrealistic images of what sexy is supposed to look like.

If Glamour really cared, they would not be giving advertising space to weight loss programs of dubious merit. Tip: If a weight loss pill advises you to exercise more and eat less, and you lose weight, it’s probably not the pills that did it. If a pill makes you lose weight without any additional efforts, it’s probably not very good for you. And don’t even get me started on the anti-depressant ads.

And this is the sticking point: for magazines like Glamour, editorial content is becoming increasingly irrelevant as they act simply as vehicles to deliver advertising. Fashion labels, cosmetic brands and pharmaceutical companies pay for advertising space, and the magazine in turn tries hard to convince the readers that they really need this stuff. Fat is beautiful! Love your fat! (but on p. 35 are some handy pills to help you shed it if you want to fit into the sexy clothes on p. 78).

Magazines like Glamour really need to start waking up to the fact that its readers can see through this act, and that their mixed messages just make matters worse. Quit treating us like we’re stupid. If you really care about how women feel, and about how women are depicted in the media, you have the power to make a difference. So stop patronising us and do something real.