Image of the Week: The Aurora Borealis
This image shows the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, shining above Bear Lake, Alaska. It was taken at Eielson Air Force Base.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/05/image-week-aurora-borealis
Clouds Hide Orion’s Fiery Ribbon
A dramatic new image of cosmic clouds in the constellation of Orion reveals what seems to be a fiery ribbon in the sky. This orange glow represents faint light coming from grains of cold interstellar dust, at wavelengths too long for human eyes to see. It was observed by the European Southern Observatory (ESO)-operated Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) in Chile.
Clouds of gas and interstellar dust are the raw materials from which stars are made. But these tiny dust grains block our view of what lies within and behind the clouds — at least at visible wavelengths — making it difficult to observe the processes of star formation.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/05/clouds-hide-orions-fiery-ribbon
Image of the Week: Astronauts Fix ISS
Expedition 35 Flight Engineers Chris Cassidy (pictured) and Tom Marshburn (out of frame) completed a spacewalk at 2:14 p.m. EDT May 11, 2013 to inspect and replace a pump controller box on the International Space Station’s far port truss (P6) leaking ammonia coolant. The two NASA astronauts began the 5-hour, 30-minute spacewalk at 8:44 a.m.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/05/image-week-astronauts-fix-iss
Google’s New Project Shows Land Time Lapse
Google released more than a quarter-century of images of Earth taken from space compiled into an interactive time-lapse experience. Working with data from the Landsat Program managed by the U.S. Geological Survey, the images display an historical perspective on changes to Earth’s surface over time.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/05/google%E2%80%99s-new-project-shows-land-time-lapse
Herschel’s Last Images Show Early Galaxies Were Cooler
Physicists analyzing observations from the Herschel Space Observatory have shown that galaxies in the early Universe were cooler than those we see around us today. The study draws on the star survey work of the HerMES projectled by Prof. Seb Oliver at the Univ. of Sussex and indicates that early galaxies were more bloated, contained more dust and were distributed over larger regions than previously thought.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/05/herschels-last-images-show-early-galaxies-were-cooler
Cassini Views Large Saturn Hurricane
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has provided scientists the first close-up, visible-light views of a behemoth hurricane swirling around Saturn’s north pole.
In high-resolution pictures and video, scientists see the hurricane’s eye is about 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) wide, 20 times larger than the average hurricane eye on Earth. Thin, bright clouds at the outer edge of the hurricane are traveling 330 mph (150 meters per second). The hurricane swirls inside a large, mysterious, six-sided weather pattern known as the hexagon.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/04/cassini-views-large-saturn-hurricane
Soviet Spacecraft Spotted in Mars Photos
Space fans from Russia have spotted what may be parts from a spacecraft that the Soviet Union landed on Mars in 1971.
Poring through images taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the citizen scientists point to what could be the Mars 3 lander along with its parachute, heat shield and other hardware.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/04/soviet-spacecraft-spotted-mars-photos
Hubble Captured Vivid Image of Spiral Galaxy
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a vivid image of spiral galaxy Messier 77, one of the most famous and well-studied galaxies in the sky. The patches of red across this image highlight pockets of star formation along the pinwheeling arms, with dark dust lanes stretching across the galaxy’s energetic center.
Messier 77 is a galaxy in the constellation of Cetus, some 45 million light-years away from us. Also known as NGC 1068, it is one of the most famous and well-studied galaxies. It is a real star among galaxies, with more papers written about it than many other galaxies put together.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/03/hubble-captured-vivid-image-spiral-galaxy
Google Offers Views of Japan Nuclear Zone
Concrete rubble litters streets lined with shuttered shops and dark windows. A collapsed roof juts from the ground. A ship sits stranded on a stretch of dirt flattened when the tsunami roared across the coastline. There isn’t a person in sight.
Google Street View is giving the world a rare glimpse into one of Japan’s eerie ghost towns, created when the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami sparked a nuclear disaster that has left the area uninhabitable.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/03/google-offers-views-japan-nuclear-zone
Archive Users Explore Mars Through Images
ESA’s Mars Express has spent nearly ten years imaging the Red Planet, and there are plenty of hidden treasures buried in the mission’s rich picture archive.
HRSCview is a web interface to the archive that offers a chance to browse and explore any region of the Red Planet through the eyes of Mars Express with images that have not necessarily been highlighted by formal media releases.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/03/archive-users-explore-mars-through-images
Image of the Day: Glowing Jet Comes from Young Star
This Hubble image shows an object known as HH 151, a bright jet of glowing material trailed by an intricate, orange-hued plume of gas and dust. It is located some 460 light-years away in the constellation of Taurus (The Bull), near to the young, tumultuous star HL Tau.
In the first few hundred thousand years of life, new stars like HL Tau pull in material that falls towards them from the surrounding space. This material forms a hot disc that swirls around the coalescing body, launching narrow streams of material from its poles.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/02/glowing-jet-comes-young-star
‘Spider Skin’ Captures Grand Prize in Image Contest
FEI is proud to announce that María Carbajo of the Electron Microscopy Unit in the Research Support Services of the Univ. of Extremadura has been awarded the grand prize in the 2012 FEI Owner Image Contest for her entry “Spider Skin.”
FEI.com visitors were asked to vote for their favorite image among the monthly winners. A total of nearly 1,000 votes were received and María Carbajo’s image, Spider Skin, narrowly beat out other worthy images.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/02/spider-skin-captures-grand-prize-image-contest
Exploding Star Has Never Slowed Down
In 1901 the star GK Persei gave off a powerful explosion that has not stopped growing and astonishing ever since. Now a team of Spanish and Estonian astronomers has reconstructed the journey of the emitted gas in 3D which, contrary to predictions, has hardly slowed down its speed of up to 1,000 km/s after all this time.
Thanks to the images captured from the Isaac Newton Telescope and the Nordic Optical Telescope in La Palma (Canary Islands, Spain), a European team of astronomers has constructed a three dimensional map of the remnant of a nova, or in other words, what was left of the star after its explosion.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/videos/2013/01/exploding-star-has-never-slowed-down
A cost-effective, sustainable solution for producing flexible film with no metal, extra lacquers or lamination has been introduced by Iscent, a Finnish start-up company based on technology from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. The film surface modification technology enables the production of holograph-like images for plastic and fiber-based film materials. Iscent’s new extra-wide production line enables large-volume production of new kinds of products with minimized raw material costs.
At the end of 2012, Iscent made a significant investment in a wide web (1,200 mm) roll-to-roll production line that uses the film surface modification technology. The wider line offers many interesting opportunities for printing, but is especially developed to meet the needs of new consumer package solutions, such as wrappings, flexible packages and labels. Commercial holograms in the printing industry are often printed on narrow-web lines; this makes the new production line very competitive.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/01/technology-enables-printed-holograph-images
Magellanic Cloud Hides a Riot of Color
The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is ablaze with star-forming regions. From the Tarantula Nebula, the brightest stellar nursery in our cosmic neighborhood, to LHA 120-N 11, part of which is featured in this Hubble image, the small and irregular galaxy is scattered with glowing nebulae, the most noticeable sign that new stars are being born.
The LMC is in an ideal position for astronomers to study the phenomena surrounding star formation. It lies in a fortuitous location in the sky, far enough from the plane of the Milky Way that it is neither outshone by too many nearby stars, nor obscured by the dust in the Milky Way’s center. It is also close enough to study in detail (less than a tenth of the distance of the Andromeda Galaxy, the closest spiral galaxy), and lies almost face-on to us, giving us a bird’s eye view.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/01/magellanic-cloud-hides-riot-color
