Volcano Fever April 15, 2010
Posted by sarah in: geology, pics . Add a comment
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:
APOD: Cold dust, Hot image March 22, 2010
Posted by sarah in: astronomy, pics . 1 comment so far
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
APOD: Supernova remnant E0102-72 September 7, 2009
Posted by sarah in: pics, science . Add a comment
Beautiful picture of a supernova remnant, featured on APOD a couple of days ago. It’s located in the Small Magellanic Cloud, one of our Galaxy’s closest neighbours, at a distance of around 190,000 lightyears.
The image is a composite of X-ray and optical observations.
Credit: X-ray – NASA / CXC / MIT / D.Dewey et al., NASA / CXC / SAO / J.DePasquale; Optical – NASA / STScI
APOD: Earth's changing distance to the Sun July 4, 2009
Posted by sarah in: pics . 1 comment so far
Today, the 4th of July, the Earth’s elliptical orbit takes our planet to its farthest point from the Sun (‘aphelion‘). This composite image demonstrates nicely how this causes the Sun to appear just a tad smaller in the sky compared with the perihelion size, at the closest approach.
Image credit: E.L. Cervigon
APOD: Shuttle magic May 13, 2009
Posted by sarah in: pics, space . Add a comment
In keeping with this week’s Launchtastic theme, today’s APOD is a beatiful picture of Space Shuttle Atlantis on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral. Atlantis is currently under way to rendez-vous with the Hubble Space Telescope to carry out essential repairs to ready the telescope for 5 more years of science operation.
Click to enlarge.
Image credit: Charles Danforth (CASA, U. Colorado)
