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An Astronomy Blog

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Don't be afraid to ask astronomy questions! One of the four members will respond. -Emily, Melissa, Jenn, and George

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Floating Metropolis - NGC 253 by strongmanmike2002 on Flickr.
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LBN-406 (and friends) by neutronman61 on Flickr.
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messier 81-82 by Graham M Green on Flickr.
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infinitylooper:

The effect shown in the gif is called gravitational lensing. What is gravitational lensing?Gravitational lensing is the effect seen when an object behind a massive object is in the line of sight with the earth. For example:Earth ————>Massive Object—————->Far away objectWhen we try looking at the far away object, the massive object bends space-time around it, causing the light rays from the far away object to travel in a curved path around into our line of sight.As a result of this, we can often see the far away object magnified which helps astronomers understand the early universe. The gif shows a far away galaxy being gravitationally lensed by a closer black hole.
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scinerds:

Earth’s Rotating Inner Core Shifts Its Speed

Earth’s solid-metal inner core is a key component of the planet, helping to give rise to the magnetic field that protects us from harmful space radiation, but its remoteness from the planet’s surface means that there is much we don’t know about what goes on down there. But some secrets of the inner core are being revealed by acoustic waves passing through the planet’s heart and iron squeezed to enormous pressures in the lab.
Two new studies, both detailed online May 12 in the journal Nature Geoscience, reveal that Earth’s inner core may actually be softer than previously thought, and that the speed at which it spins can fluctuate over time.
Under the liquid-metal outer layer of the Earth’s core is a solid ball of superhot iron and nickel alloy about 760 miles (1,220 kilometers) in diameter. Scientists recently discovered the inner core is, at 10,800 degrees Fahrenheit (6,000 degrees Celsius), as hot as the surface of the sun.
Churning in the liquid outer core results in the dynamo that generates Earth’s magnetic field. Geoscientists think interactions between the inner and outer cores may help explain the nature of the planet’s dynamo, the details of which remain largely unknown.
“The Earth’s inner core is the most remote part of our planet, and so there is a lot we don’t know about it because we can’t go down and collect samples,” said Arianna Gleason, a geoscientist at Stanford University in California. 

Full Article
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2013May12 MothersDayMoon by TaviGreiner2011 on Flickr.Via Flickr:
Crescent Moon and Jupiter on Mother’s Day evening. That little star at upper-right of Moon is zeta Tau. The Crab Nebula, thought not visible in this image, is directly right of zeta.
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This sequence shows high-energy (100 Mev to 100 GeV) gamma rays starting three minutes before the burst to 14 hours after. Following an initial one-second spike, the LAT emission remained relatively quiet for the next 15 seconds while Fermi’s GBM instrument showed bright, variable lower-energy emission. Credit: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration.
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astrodidact:

Spacewalking Astronauts Hopeful New Pump Fixes Space Station Leak
Two spacewalking astronauts may have fixed an ammonia leak outside the International Space Station today (May 11), perhaps bringing the outpost’s vital cooling system back up to full strength.
Clad in bulky spacesuits, NASA astronauts Chris Cassidy and Tom Marshburn replaced a pump control box thought to be responsible for the leak of ammonia, which cools down the orbiting lab’s systems. It looks like this fix did the trick, as no ammonia flakes were seen streaming into space when Mission Control turned on the newly installed gear.
“We’re not seeing anything,” Cassidy said at around 12:35 p.m. EDT (1635 GMT), several minutes after the pump was turned on. “No snow.
NASA officials stopped short of declaring total victory, however, saying that time will tell if the fix holds.
“It will take some diagnostics, still, over the course of the next several days by the thermal systems specialists to fully determine that we have solved the problem of the ammonia leak,” NASA spokesperson Rob Navias said during live mission commentary. “But so far, so good.”
An emergency spacewalk
Cassidy and Marshburn floated outside the space station at 8:44 a.m. EDT (1244 GMT) today, beginning what officials described as a six-hour detective’s investigation to find — and hopefully fix — the ammonia leak.
Cassidy, who led the spacewalk, reported seeing “no smoking gun” as he and Marshburn began their inspection of the old ammonia pump control box, one of several on the space station’s far left segment, known as the Port 6 truss. It is part of the cooling system for the two wing-like solar arrays extending from the Port 6 segment.
Upon removing the box, the spacewalkers still saw no signs of ammonia flakes.
“It looks really, really clean, surprisingly so,” Cassidy said while peering deep inside the box using what looked like a dentist’s mirror. Still, he and Marshburn proceeded to swap out the box, fitting a spare in its place.
The ammonia leak was first spotted by space station astronauts on Thursday (May 9), when the crew reported seeing flakes of frozen coolant floating outside. They recorded video of the ammonia leak and sent it down to Mission Control for analysis.
While the leak posed no danger to the space station’s crew, it could have impacted the amount of power available for daily operations on the orbiting laboratory if left unchecked, NASA officials said. So Cassidy and Marshburn were sent out on an emergency spacewalk to attempt a fix.
The roughly 48-hour turnaround made this the fastest spacewalk plan of its kind ever devised for a space station crew, mission managers have said.
By around 1:00 p.m. EDT (1700 GMT), a little more than four hours into the spacewalk, Cassidy and Marshburn started heading back to a space station airlock, where they cleaned their spacesuits to make sure they didn’t bring any toxic ammonia into the orbiting lab. By 2:14 p.m. EDT, re-pressurization of the airlock was complete, officially ending the spacewalk, which lasted a total 5 1/2 hours.
A history of ammonia leaks
This is not the first time astronauts have had to tackle ammonia leaks in the space station’s cooling system during a spacewalk.
Last year, astronauts Sunita Williams of NASA and Akihiko Hoshide of Japan performed a spacewalk to fix a leak that was also found on the Port 6 truss. That ammonia leak was in the same coolant loop as the current leak, but engineers do not yet know if the two leaks are related.
The station’s Port 6 truss is the oldest piece of the space station’s scaffolding-like backbone and carries two of the outpost’s eight wing-like solar arrays. It launched in November 2000 and was originally installed on the station’s roof, towering over the orbiting lap. In 2007, visiting shuttle astronauts relocated the P6 truss to its final location on the station’s far left side.
This was the fourth spacewalk for both Marshburn and Cassidy, and the 168th total to support space station assembly and maintenance. Inside the International Space Station, commander Chris Hadfield of Canada and Russian cosmonauts Roman Romanenko, Alexander Misurkin and Pavel Vinogradov followed the spacewalkers’ progress.
Today’s spacewalk comes just two days before Hadfield, Marshburn and Romanenko are due to return to Earth to end their five-month mission in space.
The three men are due to leave the space station on Monday (May 13) and land on the steppes of Kazakhstan in Central Asia. Those plans are still going forward, space station mission managers said.
http://www.space.com/21099-space-station-leak-spacewalk-fix.html
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M81_LRGB by tak530 on Flickr.
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NGC3628 by lightclad on Flickr.
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Large Magellanic Cloud by Narayan Mukkavilli on Flickr.
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M42 and the Running Man by lrargerich on Flickr.
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The Moon
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Star field :) 50mm by Mikey Mack on Flickr.