Feb 18 2013

Where Have Meteors Fallen on Earth and What Are the Differences?

Earth Impact Locations

 A very common question we all ask is where have meteors fallen on Earth? Also how big are these rocks or how heavy are they? These are good questions to ask to know the real danger of these space travellers. Well I took this first image from a cool facebook page called The Earth Story, check them out if you have time.

 

VERY KNOWN METEORITE FALL ON EARTH

This map shows every meteorite fall on Earth that we know about; where scientists have found either meteorites or impact craters. Some of these craters and meteorite fragments date as far back as the year 2,300 BCE. The data for the image is from the US Meteorological Society and does not show places where meteorites might have fallen but no trace has yet been found.To view the interactive map, where you can click on each meteorite spot to learn more, go here:

http://bit.ly/Xmuvy5

 

The data used for the image is available here:

http://bit.ly/VZzCrh

 

An alternative visualisation:

http://bit.ly/12Yd1gA

 

-TEL

Visualisation by Simon Rogers, using data from the US Meteorological Society

 

One common question asked by many people is the difference between a comet, asteroid, meteor, and meteorite. Well here’s an awesome infographic to show you the way!

 

Differences Between Meteors, Comets, and Asteroids

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Feb 17 2013

The Four Armed Spiral Galaxy M106

Galaxy M106

 

This is the gorgeous spiral galaxy M106 or also known as NGC 4258. It is located 23.5 million light years away and it would take you 80,000 light years to cross from one end of the galaxy to the other. What is interesting about this particular galaxy is the fact that it has an unusual amount of arms. It has 4 arms that are in spiral formation and the two arms that are mostly red (known as anomalous arms, because they don’t line up well with the other arms) is hydrogen that is spewing out from the supermassive black hole. That red color is also an indicator to astronomers that the hydrogen is excited. So what is causing all this excitement? The jets coming from the supermassive black hole are likely to be caused by matter falling into it then the beam of cosmic death rays shoot out and excite the material around it. This is not a galaxy you would want to fly anywhere near because those cosmic death rays shoot out at least a thousand light years out.

We know that all big galaxies have a supermassive black hole in the center. Our very own Milky Way has a supermassive black hole that is 4 million times the mass of our sun. This galaxy has a supermassive black hole that is 30 million times the mass of our sun! 

 

Here is a video of where the galaxy M106 lies. It’s pretty cool to see in perspective!

For more readings you can check out the sources used: http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/02/05/spiral_galaxy_m106_a_galaxy_zapped_by_its_own_black_hole.html

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2013/06/image/a/

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Feb 15 2013

BREAKING: Deadly Meteor Over Russia – 750+ Injured

BDHoYXiCUAIcUEk.jpg-large

 

Deadly Meteor Over Russia Shocks World

Wow what a day! While everyone’s eyes were on 2012DA14 this surprise meteor comes out of nowhere over Russia. Not only that but there are tons of photos and footage on this! Sadly there have been at least 750 people reported injured.

I first heard news from my main guy Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy and the story goes that at 9:30 a.m a meteor broke over  Russia or 1500 km east of Moscow. It was in broad daylight and was even brighter than the sun! There was a sonic boom from the explosion which blew out most of the windows.

ALRIGHT lets get to the media part of it!

 

 

Impact

 

Impact 2

 

 

 

More on this: http://chelyabinsk.ru/text/news/621775.html and http://zyalt.livejournal.com/722930.html

 

 

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Feb 15 2013

How Asteroid 2012DA14 Could Potentially Wipe Out a Major City

2012da14

credit: NASA

2012 DA14 Killer Asteroid or Just Passing Neighbor?

 

You may have already heard something about an asteroid passing by Earth today. Even more so, the closest predicted fly by on record. Well one question a lot of people have asked is if this asteroid will come swoop down and hit us. Well let’s take a closer look at the details of this asteroid.

First off the size of the asteroid is about 50m (160 ft) which doesn’t sound like a whole lot because whenever a meteor or asteroid enters our atmosphere it burns up on entry. Furthermore, the burn up causes the size to diminish or even break up into even smaller meteors and give nothing more than a great display. However that’s not the full story.

50m asteroids are no joking matter at all. In fact if this asteroid did come down and hit Earth it could easily wipe out a major city like Atlanta or Chicago. You have to remember what makes these asteroids dangerous is their velocity. Size has some to do with it of course but speed is definitely where you don’t want to skip over details. A good example of what it may do is the Barringer Crater in Arizona. It looks like this:

azcrater

credit: NASA

 

This is about 10 megatons of force. You could even say that it has the power of 1000 atomic bombs. What most people don’t know is that it’s not even the asteroid or meteor hitting the ground that is the scariest but when it explodes above the surface. One event that proved this is the Tunguska event, you should check out the link and read up because it’s quite an interesting find, especially in 1908.

 

Final Thoughts:

 

Now even though this asteroid will pass by the Earth at 27,000 km (17,200 miles) you won’t even get to see this with your own eyes because it’ll be too dim. It has an apparent magnitude of 7 which is the same as looking at Neptune at its brightest and for that you’d need a good telescope. Nonetheless you DO have a chance to watch it! The planetary society (Bill Nye is actually the chief!) you can see it live. Here are the details:

 

When: Today at 19:30 UTC or 14:30 Eastern time.

Where: http://www.planetary.org/explore/projects/neo-grants/2012da14.html

 

So there is nothing to be afraid of but as I said before you should have a nice breath of relief because of the damage it could potentially do. We just got lucky today and as Neil DeGrasse Tyson says: Asteroids are natures way of saying “How’s that Space program coming along?”. We need to be ready for the day one will hit us and figure out how to stay out of harms way and survive the vast universe. More on this later. Have a great day and don’t forget to check out the live event at 2:30 p.m Eastern! I’ll be socially sharing it out right before as well!

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Jan 29 2013

Coolest Animation of a Variable Red Star in Action (V838 Monocerotis)

V838 Monocerotis

This is located 20,000 light years away in the constellation Monoceros. It’s one of the most interesting red variable stars (variable star is a star whose brightness fluctuates as seen from Earth) because at first astronomers thought this was a classic case of a nova but in fact it’s something completely different and to make matters even juicier, they aren’t even sure why! This red star is 5-10 times the mass of our own Sun and has been seen rapidly heating up and expanding in matter of months! This is rarely seen with stars and is telling about how fast this is all happening.

 

Source: http://observatory.open.ac.uk/data_store/fun_stuff/v838_monocerotis.html

Make sure to check out the smoother animation in the source link! It’s even better!

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Jan 21 2013

What Are Blazars?

Blazars in Action

 

For most people they have only heard of cool space terms like black holes, supernovas or maybe even quasars. Well blazar isn’t a common term you’ll hear a lot and it’s actually not very different from a quasar. The picture above is essentially a blazar. It has an intensely bright central nucleus (or part of a classification called “active galactic nuclei” or AGN) containing a supermassive black hole. What’s really crazy about blazars is that the emitted light which sometimes includes extremely high energy gamma rays, can be over a hundred million times more energetic than the highest energy X-rays that the Chandra X-ray Observatory can study. Now just imagine a swirling disk filled with massive amounts of energy. We are talking about high energy gamma rays shooting out at 99% the speed of light! Also to make you feel even more uneasy, blazars are viewed with the barrel aiming right at Earth (actually that is the defining difference between the term quasar vs. blazar, is that a quasar isn’t necessarily pointing towards us whereas blazars ARE). It’s usually the down jet pointing towards Earth but most of these are so far away that they can’t harm us. The jets are interesting as the beam is shot out by a combination of intense magnetic fields and powerful winds from the accretion disk.

 

blazars

Credit: io9

There’s a better idea of how blazars work. It truly is frightening as well as unbelievable that these exist out in the universe. You can only imagine what that thing would do to you if your space ship was travelling by and you suddenly get hit by an immense wave of gamma radiation. However to make you feel a little more at ease here is a picture of what I mean when I say blazars are pointed at us.

 

Jet Line

 Credit: Wikipedia

See it’s not so bad? Nevertheless, more studies need to be done on these since there are only ~200 examples out there. Scientists want to know what provokes this process to begin with anyway. I’m sure in the next 3-5 years we will have enough data to understand these death rays.

Read more here:

http://phys.org/news/2011-09-blazars.html#jCp

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/science/blazers.html

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2008/apr/23/astronomers-get-clear-view-of-blazar

 

 

 

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