The Hanscom Family Weblog

Winds of change
This composite image, released March 3, shows the spiral galaxy NGC 1068, which has a rapidly growing supermassive black hole at its center. X-ray readings from NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory are shown in red, optical emissions are in green, and radio emissions are in blue. The X-ray data suggest that a strong wind is being driven away from the galaxy’s center at a rate of about a million miles per hour. These results help explain how an “average” supermassive black hole can alter the evolution of its host galaxy.

Cosmic bat
The reflection nebula NGC 1788 seems to spread gigantic dusty wings in a picture captured by the European Southern Observatory’s MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope in Chile. The batwings are actually clouds of gas and dust that scatter light emanating from a cluster of young stars in the constellation Orion. This picture was released on March 3.

Blooming with stars
An infrared image from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, shows the young blue stars of the Berkeley 59 cluster amid a huge cloud of glowing dust that has been compared to a “cosmic rosebud.” The image was released on March 16.

A total solar eclipse from space
Solar eclipse enthusiasts will travel to the ends of the Earth to watch the moon momentarily blot the sun from the sky. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station caught this view of the moon’s shadow sweeping across Turkey, northern Cyprus, and the Mediterranean Sea during the total solar eclipse of March 29, 2006.

Going green
Some crew members, according to Evans, are fascinated by aurora – the nighttime lights in the skies that occur when oxygen and nitrogen atoms are bombarded by charged solar particles. They “and spend a good deal of time learning how to take photographs of the aurora that are meaningful.” Expedition Six crew member Donald Petit took several pictures of aurora in January and February of 2003, including this one of a green aurora over the night side of Earth just after sunset.

Two faces of Andromeda
NASA’s Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, highights the Andromeda Galaxy in one of the first images sent down from orbit. The top image shows our next-door galaxy’s older stellar population in shades of blue. The image was taken using the shortest-wavelength camera on WISE. You can clearly see a pronounced warp in the spiral arm on the upper left side of the galaxy’s disk. Scientists believe the warp is the result of a collision with another galaxy. The bottom image is a mosaic created by combining data from all four of WISE’s infrared detectors. Once again, shades of blue highlight mature stars. The yellow and red areas indicate where dust has been heated by newborn, massive stars. The images were released Feb. 17.

This infrared image from NASA’s WISE space telescope shows a cosmic rosebud blossoming with new stars, including the Berkeley 59 cluster and a supernova remnant. Read the full story. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA