Science & Technology - Astronomy picture of the day - 2019 January 31 : Sharpless 308: Star Bubble

"Sharpless 308: Star Bubble" 
Image Credit & Copyright: Laubing

Explanation: Blown by fast winds from a hot, massive star, this cosmic bubble is huge. Cataloged as Sharpless 2-308 it lies some 5,200 light-years away toward the constellation of the Big Dog (Canis Major) and covers slightly more of the sky than a Full Moon. That corresponds to a diameter of 60 light-years at its estimated distance. The massive star that created the bubble, a Wolf-Rayet star, is the bright one near the center of the nebula. Wolf-Rayet stars have over 20 times the mass of the Sun and are thought to be in a brief, pre-supernova phase of massive star evolution. Fast winds from this Wolf-Rayet star create the bubble-shaped nebula as they sweep up slower moving material from an earlier phase of evolution. The windblown nebula has an age of about 70,000 years. Relatively faint emission captured in the expansive image is dominated by the glow of ionized oxygen atoms mapped to a blue hue. SH2-308 is also known as The Dolphin Nebula.

Science & Technology - Astronomy picture of the day - 2019 January 30 : From the Northern to the Southern Cross

From the Northern to the Southern Cross 

Image Credit & Copyright: Nicholas Buer

Explanation: There is a road that connects the Northern to the Southern Cross but you have to be at the right place and time to see it. The road, as pictured here, is actually the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy; the right place, in this case, is dark Laguna Cejar in Salar de Atacama of Northern Chile; and the right time was in early October, just after sunset. Many sky wonders were captured then, including the bright Moon, inside the Milky Way arch; Venus, just above the Moon; Saturn and Mercury, just below the Moon; the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds satellite galaxies, on the far left; red airglow near the horizon on the image left; and the lights of small towns at several locations across the horizon. One might guess that composing this 30-image panorama would have been a serene experience, but for that one would have required earplugs to ignore the continued brays of wild donkeys.

Science & Technology : Lua cheia

Lua cheia

Science & Technology - Astronomy picture of the day - 2019 January 28 : Orion over the Austrian Alps

Orion over the Austrian Alps  
Image Credit & Copyright: Lukáš Veselý

Explanation: Do you recognize this constellation? Through the icicles and past the mountains is Orion, one of the most identifiable star groupings on the sky and an icon familiar to humanity for over 30,000 years. Orion has looked pretty much the same during the past 50,000 years and should continue to look the same for many thousands of years into the future. Orion is quite prominent in the sky this time of year, a recurring sign of (modern) winter in Earth's northern hemisphere and summer in the south. Pictured, Orion was captured recently above the Austrian Alps in a composite of seven images taken by the same camera in the same location during the same night. Below and slightly to the right of Orion's three-star belt is the Orion Nebula, while the four bright stars surrounding the belt are, clockwise from the upper left, Betelgeuse, Bellatrix, Rigel, and Saiph.

Science - Il était ...une éclipse : la Lune a pris des teintes bleutées

La Lune a pris des teintes bleutées.

21 janvier 2019, à Miami (Floride, Etats-Unis)

GASTON DE CARDENAS / AFP

Musica video ao vivo - Daniel Barenbom : "Tico tico no fubà"

"Tico tico no fubà"

Science & Technologie - Stelvision : Une belle éclipse totale de Lune le 21 janvier 2019

Une éclipse de Lune a lieu lorsque le Soleil, la Terre et notre satellite sont parfaitement alignés : la Lune se trouve alors dans l’ombre de la Terre. On pourrait croire qu’il est possible de voir une éclipse chaque mois au moment de la pleine lune, mais notre satellite circule sur une orbite inclinée de cinq degrés par rapport à celle de la Terre. La plupart du temps, notre satellite passe donc un peu au-dessus ou un peu au-dessous de l’alignement Soleil-Terre et il n’y a pas d’éclipse. La dernière éclipse totale visible en Europe remonte à juillet 2018 et la prochaine aura lieu en mai 2022.

Une éclipse totale de Lune dure plusieurs heures et comporte différentes phases. Les passages dans la pénombre de la Terre, en début et fin de phénomène, sont peu spectaculaires car la Lune reçoit encore une partie des rayons solaires : elle reste donc grise. Beaucoup plus intéressante, la période ou la Lune se trouve partiellement ou totalement dans l’ombre de notre planète doit retenir toute votre attention : c’est à ce moment que la Lune s’assombrit progressivement et change de couleur !

Une belle éclipse totale de Lune le 21 janvier 2019

Science & Technology - Astronomy picture of the day - 2019 January 21 : InSight Lander Takes Selfie on Mars

InSight Lander Takes Selfie on Mars  
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Explanation: This is what NASA's Insight lander looks like on Mars. With its solar panels, InSight is about the size of a small bus. Insight successfully landed on Mars in November with a main objective to detect seismic activity. The featured selfie is a compilation of several images taken of different parts of the InSight lander, by the lander's arm, at different times. SEIS, the orange-domed seismometer seen near the image center last month, has now been placed on the Martian surface. With this selfie, Mars InSight continues a long tradition of robotic spacecraft on Mars taking and returning images of themselves, including Viking, Sojourner, Pathfinder, Spirit, Opportunity, Phoenix, and Curiosity. Data taken by Mars Insight is expected to give humanity unprecedented data involving the interior of Mars, a region thought to harbor formation clues not only about Mars, but Earth.

Science & Technology video - Astronomy picture of the day - 2019 January 20 : A Total Lunar Eclipse Video

A Total Lunar Eclipse Video 
Video Credit & Copyright: Jun Ho Oh (KAIST, HuboLab), Kwon O Chul (TWAN), Jeong ByoungJun (RainbowAstro)

Explanation: Tonight a bright full Moon will fade to red. Tonight's moon will be particularly bright because it is reaching its fully lit phase when it is relatively close to the Earth in its elliptical orbit. In fact, by some measures of size and brightness, tonight's full Moon is designated a supermoon, although perhaps the "super" is overstated because it will be only a few percent larger and brighter than the average full Moon. However, our Moon will fade to a dim redbecause it will also undergo a total lunar eclipse -- an episode when the Moon becomes completely engulfed in Earth's shadow. The faint red color results from blue sunlight being more strongly scattered away by the Earth's atmosphere. A January full moon, like the one visible tonight, is referred to as a Wolf Moon in some cultures. Tonight's supermoon total eclipse will last over an hour and be best visible from North and South America after sunset. Thefeatured time-lapse video shows the last total lunar eclipse -- which occurred in 2018 July. The next total lunar eclipse will occur only in 2021 May.

Science & Technology - Astronomy picture of the day - 2019 January 18 : Cabin under the Stars

Cabin under the Stars
Image Credit & Copyright: P-M Hedén (Clear Skies, TWAN)

Explanation: Gocka's, a family nickname for the mountain cabin, and a wooden sled from a generation past stand quietly under the stars. The single exposure image was taken on January 6 from Tanndalen Sweden to evoke a simple visual experience of the dark mountain skies. A pale band of starlight along the Milky Way sweeps through the scene. At the foot of Orion the Hunter, bright star Rigel shines just above the old kicksled's handrail. Capella, alpha star of Auriga the celestial charioteer, is the brightest star at the top of the frame. In fact, the familiar stars of the winter hexagon and the Pleiades star cluster can all be found in this beautiful skyscape from a northern winter night.

Science & Technology - Astronomy picture of the day - 2019 January 16 : IC 342: The Hidden Galaxy

IC 342: The Hidden Galaxy
Image Credit & Copyright: Arturas Medvedevas

Explanation: Similar in size to large, bright spiral galaxies in our neighborhood, IC 342 is a mere 10 million light-years distant in the long-necked, northern constellation Camelopardalis. A sprawling island universe, IC 342 would otherwise be a prominent galaxy in our night sky, but it is hidden from clear view and only glimpsed through the veil of stars, gas and dust clouds along the plane of our own Milky Way galaxy. Even though IC 342's light is dimmed and reddened by intervening cosmic clouds, this sharp telescopic image traces the galaxy's own obscuring dust, young star clusters, and glowing pink star forming regions along spiral arms that wind far from the galaxy's core. IC 342 may have undergone a recent burst of star formation activity and is close enough to have gravitationally influenced the evolution of the local group of galaxies and the Milky Way.

Science & Technology - Astronomy picture of the day - 2019 January 14 : Meteor and Milky Way over the Alps

Meteor and Milky Way over the Alps 

Image Credit & Copyright: Nicholas Roemmelt (Venture Photography)

Explanation: Now this was a view with a thrill. From Mount Tschirgant in the Alps, you can see not only nearby towns and distant Tyrolean peaks, but also, weather permitting, stars, nebulas, and the band of the Milky Way Galaxy. What made the arduous climb worthwhile this night, though, was another peak -- the peak of the 2018 Perseids Meteor Shower. As hoped, dispersing clouds allowed a picturesque sky-gazing session that included many faint meteors, all while a carefully positioned camera took a series of exposures. Suddenly, a thrilling meteor -- bright and colorful -- slashed down right next the nearly vertical band of the Milky Way. As luck would have it, the camera caught it too. Therefore, a new image in the series was quickly taken with one of the sky-gazers posing on the nearby peak. Later, all of the images were digitally combined.

Ciência e Tecnologia - Cientistas demonstram que nossa 'alma' não morre: ela retorna ao universo

Cientistas acreditam ter desenvolvido uma teoria que esclarece algo sobre a misteriosa natureza da consciência - ou "alma"-, seu mecanismo no cérebro e, quem sabe, seu destino final após a morte.

Desde 1996, o Dr. Stuart Hameroff, emérito do Departamento de Anestesiologia e Psicologia e diretor do Centro de Estudos da Consciência, da Universidade do Arizona, junto com Sir Roger Penrose, físico matemático da Universidade de Oxford, desenvolvevem uma Teoria Quântica da Consciência, que define que a alma fica alojada em microtúbulos das células cerebrais.

"A origem da consciência reflete o nosso lugar no Universo, a natureza de nossa existência. Será que a consciência evoluiu de complexas operações computacionais entre os neurônios do cérebro, como a maioria dos cientistas afirmam? Ou a consciência, em algum sentido, esteve aqui o tempo todo, como as abordagens espirituais afirmam?" questionaram Hameroff e Penrose em uma revisão da sua teoria. "Isso abre uma potencialCaixa de Pandora, mas nossa teoria acomoda ambos os pontos de vista", acrescentam.

As experiências da consciência seriam um efeito da gravidade quântica nesses microtúbulos, que atuam como canais para a transferência da informação responsável pela consciência. “Quando o coração para de bater, o sangue para de correr e os microtúbulos perdem seu estado quântico. A informação quântica nos microtúbulos não é destruída, não pode ser destruída. Ela é simplesmente distribuída e dissipada pelo Universo”, explica Hameroff.

Fonte: ScienceDirect

Science & Technology - Astronomy picture of the day - 2019 January 13 : "Tycho's Supernova Remnant in X-ray"

"Tycho's Supernova Remnant in X-ray"  

Image Credit: NASA / CXC / F.J. Lu (Chinese Academy of Sciences) et al.

Explanation: What star created this huge puffball? What's pictured is the hot expanding nebula of Tycho's supernova remnant, the result of a stellar explosion first recorded over 400 years ago by the famous astronomer Tycho Brahe. The featured image is a composite of three X-ray colors taken by the orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory. The expanding gas cloud is extremely hot, while slightly different expansion speeds have given the cloud a puffy appearance. Although the star that created SN 1572, is likely completely gone, a star dubbed Tycho G, too dim to be discerned here, is thought to be a companion. Finding progenitor remnants of Tycho's supernova is particularly important because the supernova is of Type Ia, an important rung in the distance ladder that calibrates the scale of the visible universe. The peak brightness of Type Ia supernovas is thought to be well understood, making them quite valuable in exploring the relationship between faintness and farness in the distant universe.

Science & Technology - Astronomy picture of the day, 2019 January 12 - Milky Way Falls

Milky Way Falls 

Image Credit & Copyright: Yuri Beletsky (Carnegie Las Campanas Observatory, TWAN)

Explanation: It can be the driest place on planet Earth, but water still flows in Chile's Atacama desert, high in the mountains. After discovering this small creek with running water, the photographer returned to the site to watch the Milky Way rise in the dark southern skies, calculating the moment when Milky Way and precious flowing water would meet. In the panoramic night skyscape, stars and nebulae immersed in the glow along the Milky Way itself also shared that moment with the Milky Way's satellite galaxies the Large and Small Magellanic clouds above the horizon at the right. Bright star Beta Centauri is poised at the very top of the waterfall. Above it lies the dark expanse of theCoalsack nebula and the stars of the Southern Cross.

Music live - Video - Ennio Morricone - Katica Illényi & Győr Philharmonic Orchestra : "Once Upon a Time in the West"

"Once Upon a Time in the West"

Science - Astronomy picture of the day - 2019 January 11 : Partial Eclipse over Beijing

Partial Eclipse over Beijing 
Image Credit & Copyright: Li Zhaoqi

Explanation: On January 6 the New Moon rose in silhouette with the Sun seen from northeastern Asia. Near maximum, the dramatic partial solar eclipse is captured in this telephoto view through hazy skies. In the foreground, the hill top Wanchun pavilion overlooking central Beijing's popular Forbidden City hosts eclipse-watching early morning risers. This was the first of five, three solar and two lunar, eclipses for 2019. Next up is a total lunar eclipse during this month's Full Perigee Moon. At night on January 21, that celestial shadow play will be visible from the hemisphere of planet Earth that includes the Americas, Europe, and western Africa.

Science & Technologie - Astronomy picture of the day - 2019 January 10 - Vela Supernova Remnant Mosaic

Vela Supernova Remnant Mosaic  
Image Credit & Copyright: Robert Gendler, Roberto Colombari, Digitized Sky Survey (POSS II)

Explanation: The plane of our Milky Way Galaxy runs through this complex and beautiful skyscape. Seen toward colorful stars near the northwestern edge of the constellation Vela (the Sails), the 16 degree wide, 200 frame mosaic is centered on the glowing filaments of the Vela Supernova Remnant, the expanding debris cloud from the death explosion of a massive star. Light from the supernova explosion that created the Vela remnant reached Earth about 11,000 years ago. In addition to the shocked filaments of glowing gas, the cosmic catastrophe also left behind an incredibly dense, rotating stellar core, the Vela Pulsar. Some 800 light-years distant, the Vela remnant is likely embedded in a larger and older supernova remnant, the Gum Nebula. Objects identified in this broad mosaic include emission and reflection nebulae, star clusters, and the remarkable Pencil Nebula.

Science & Technologie - Boeing dévoile un concept d’ailes d'avion ultra fines

Boeing et la Nasa développent depuis dix ans des ailes d’avions ultra-minces à l’aérodynamique particulièrement soignée. 

Décidément, Boeing sait faire preuve d’inventivité quand il s’agit de donner des ailes à ses nouveaux appareils. Après avoir créé des ailes repliables pour son 777X, afin qu’il puisse mieux se faufiler dans les aéroports, il dévoile un concept d’avion à ailes ultra-fines, les ""Transonic Truss-Braced Wings" (TTBW).

Ces ailes ultra-minces de 52 mètres de long (elles aussi pliables) sont soutenues par des mâts. Elles sont destinées à des avions pouvant voler en vol subsonique, jusqu’à Mach 0,8 (980 km/h). Ce design permet d’optimiser l’aérodynamique et de réduire le son émis par l’appareil.

Usine Nouvelle

Science - Astronomy picture of the day - 2019 January 9 - Quadrantids

"Quadrantids"  
Image Credit & Copyright: Daniel López (El Cielo de Canarias)

Explanation: Named for a forgotten constellation, the Quadrantid Meteor Shower is an annual event for planet Earth's northern hemisphere skygazers It usually peaks briefly in the cold, early morning hours of January 4. The shower'sradiant on the sky lies within the old, astronomically obsolete constellation Quadrans Muralis. That position is situated near the boundaries of the modern constellations Hercules, Bootes, and Draco. About 30 Quadrantid meteors can be counted in this skyscape composed of digital frames recorded in dark and moonless skies between 2:30am and local dawn. The shower's radiant is rising just to the right of the Canary Island of Tenerife's Teide volcano, and just below the familiar stars of the Big Dipper on the northern sky. A likely source of the dust stream that produces Quadrantid meteors was identified in 2003 as an asteroid. Look carefully and you can also spot a small, telltale greenish coma above the volcanic peak and near the top of the frame. That's the 2018 Christmas visitor to planet Earth's skies, Comet Wirtanen.

Astronomie - Le ciel du 9 janvier 2019

Bienvenue, voici votre carte réglée pour votre lieu d'observation.

Repérez facilement les principales étoiles et planètes, et observez que tout le ciel semble tourner autour de l' étoile polaire ! Ainsi, les astres se lèvent et se couchent, et l'aspect du ciel change au long de la nuit...

Utilisation dehors : imprimez cette carte et placez-la au dessus de votre tête, le repère "Horizon NORD" vers le nord. Comparez au ciel observé !

Pourquoi le ciel change-t-il en permanence ? A cause des mouvements de la Terre: comme la Terre tourne sur elle-même, nous voyons défiler le ciel comme si nous étions sur un manège : tout le ciel paraît tourner au fil des heures, autour d'un point voisin de l'étoile polaire (au centre de la carte). Ceci provoque les "levers" et "couchers" des astres. De plus, la course de la Terre autour du Soleil nous fait découvrir une portion de ciel différente selon la période de l'année.à cause des mouvements des astres eux-mêmes:le Soleil, la Lune, les planètes, ont un mouvement perceptible au fil des jours (ou des semaines) par rapport au fond des étoiles. A l'inverse, les étoiles à l'extérieur de notre système solaire sont tellement lointaines qu'elles paraissent fixes au cours d'une vie humaine.

Stelvision

Astronomy picture of the day - 2019 January 8 - HESS Telescopes Explore the High-Energy Sky

HESS Telescopes Explore the High-Energy Sky  
Video Credit & Copyright: Vikas Chander, H.E.S.S. Collaboration; Music: Emotive Piano by Immersive Music

Explanation: They may look like modern mechanical dinosaurs but they are enormous swiveling eyes that watch the sky. The High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) Observatory is composed of four 12-meter reflecting-mirror telescopes surrounding a larger telescope housing a 28-meter mirror. They are designed to detect strange flickers of blue light -- Cherenkov radiation --emitted when charged particles move slightly faster than the speed of light in air. This light is emitted when a gamma ray from a distant source strikes a molecule in Earth's atmosphere and starts a charged-particle shower. H.E.S.S. is sensitive to some of the highest energy photons (TeV) crossing the universe. Operating since 2003 in Namibia, H.E.S.S. has searched for dark matter and has discovered over 50 sources emitting high energy radiation including supernova remnants and the centers of galaxies that contain supermassive black holes. Pictured last September, H.E.S.S. telescopes swivel and stare in time-lapse sequences shot in front of our Milky Way Galaxy and the Magellanic Clouds -- as the occasional Earth-orbiting satellite zips by.

Music live - Video - Mozart - Aksel Rykkvin (13 years) : "Laudate Dominum"

"Laudate Dominum"

Astronomy picture of the day 2019 January 7 - Stars, Meteors, and a Comet in Taurus

Stars, Meteors, and a Comet in Taurus  
Image Credit & Copyright: Juan Carlos Casado (TWAN, Earth and Stars)

Explanation: This was an unusual night to look in the direction of the Bull. The constellation Taurus is always well known for hosting two bright star clusters -- the Pleaides, visible on the right, and the comparatively diffuse Hyades, visible on the left. This night last month, however, was atypically the peak of the Geminid meteor shower, and so several meteors were caught shooting through the constellation with parallel trails. More unusually still, Comet Wirtanenwas drifting through the constellation, here appearing near the image bottom surrounded by a greenish coma. The comet was near its brightest as it sped past the Earth. The orange star on the upper left is Aldebaran, considered to be the eye of the Bull. Aldebaran is the brightest star in Taurus and the 15th brightest star in the sky. The featured image is a combination of nearly 800 exposures taken from the Spanish village Albanyà.

Music live - Video - Antonio Fauró - Vivaldi - ""Gloria in excelsis Deo"

"Gloria in excelsis Deo"

*Concierto: "Voces para la Paz" (Músicos Solidarios) 2013

Auditorio Nacional de Música de Madrid*

Astgronomy picture of the day - 2019 January 6 - A Laser Strike at the Galactic Center

A Laser Strike at the Galactic Center 
Image Credit: Yuri Beletsky (Carnegie Las Campanas Observatory, TWAN), ESO

Explanation: Why are these people shooting a powerful laser into the center of our Galaxy? Fortunately, this is not meant to be the first step in a Galactic war. Rather, astronomers at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) site in Chile are trying to measure the distortions of Earth's ever changing atmosphere. Constant imaging of high-altitude atoms excited by the laser -- which appear like an artificial star -- allow astronomers to instantly measure atmospheric blurring. This information is fed back to a VLT telescope mirror which is then slightly deformed to minimize this blurring. In this case, a VLT was observing our Galaxy's center, and so Earth's atmospheric blurring in that direction was needed. As for inter-galaxy warfare, when viewed from our Galaxy's center, no casualties are expected. In fact, the light from this powerful laser would combine with light from our Sun to together appear only as bright as a faint and distant star.

Astronomy picture of the day - 2019 January 5 - Yutu 2 on the Farside

Yutu 2 on the Farside 
Image Credit: Chinese National Space Administration

Explanation: On January 3, the Chinese Chang'e-4 spacecraft made the first successful landing on the Moon's farside. Taken by a camera on board the lander, this image is from the landing site inside Von Karman crater. It shows the desk-sized, six-wheeled Yutu 2 (Jade Rabbit 2) rover as it rolled down lander ramps and across the surface near local sunrise and the start of the two week long lunar day. Ripe for exploration, Von Karman crater itself is 186 kilometers in diameter. It lies within the Moon's old and deep South Pole-Aitken impact basin with some of the most ancient and least understood lunar terrains. To bridge communications from the normally hidden hemisphere of the Moon, China launched a relay satellite, Queqiao, in May of 2018 in to an orbit beyond the lunar farside.

Reportage video - La Chine réussit le premier alunissage sur la face cachée de la Lune

La fusée transportant le module d’exploration Chang’e-4
décolle du centre de lancement de Xichang (Chine),
le 8 décembre 2018. STR / AFP

Enfin ! Après trois semaines d’attente, la Chine peut célébrer l’alunissage réussi de la mission Chang’e 4. Jeudi 3 janvier à 10 h 26 heure de Pékin (3 h 26 à Paris), l’atterrisseur, qui avait quitté la Terre le 8 décembre, a touché le sol lunaire avec à son bord un engin d’exploration lunaire, au terme d’un voyage de vingt-et-un jours dans l’espace. Il a pris une première photo de la surface peu connue de la Lune, transmise par le satellite Queqiao envoyé dans l’orbite lunaire en mai 2018.

Le Monde

Les meilleurs logiciels 2019 gratuits pour PC - GIMP (Retouche photo)

GIMP est un logiciel très abouti, gratuit et open source de traitement et de retouche photo.

Il est destiné à la fois aux débutants qui peuvent y trouver tous les outils d’édition classiques (découpage, remplissage de zone, texte, brosse, etc.) et une gestion des calques poussée et intuitive. Il convient aussi aux designers graphiques, illustrateurs et photographes grâce à sa multitude d’effets visuels avancés (notamment, flou et distorsion) et à la possibilité d’utiliser, de configurer du matériel dédié comme une tablette graphique avec stylet ou un contrôleur MIDI.

Par ailleurs, les utilisateurs experts ont l'opportunité de rajouter des plug-ins attrayants comme DarkTable pour retoucher vos photos RAW, G’MIC pour ajouter plus de 500 filtres et effets supplémentaires ou l’indispensable Resynthesizer pour enlever avec facilité les objets non désirés d’une photo.

Futura Sciences

Astronomy picture of the day - 2019 January 3 - Ultima and Thule

Ultima and Thule  Image Credit: NASA, Johns Hopkins University APL, Southwest Research Institute

Explanation: On January 1 New Horizons encountered the Kuiper Belt object nicknamed Ultima Thule. Some 6.5 billion kilometers from the Sun, Ultima Thule is the most distant world ever explored by a spacecraft from Earth. This historic image, the highest resolution image released so far, was made at a range of about 28,000 kilometers only 30 minutes before the New Horizons closest approach. Likely the result of a gentle collision shortly after the birth of the Solar System, Ultima Thule is revealed to be a contact binary, two connected sphere-like shapes held in contact by mutual gravity. Dubbed separately by the science team Ultima and Thule, the larger lobe Ultima is about 19 kilometers in diameter. Smaller Thule is 14 kilometers across.

Astronomy picture of the day - 2019 January 2 - The Orion Nebula in Infrared from WISE

The Orion Nebula in Infrared from WISE   Image Credit: WISE, IRSA, NASA; Processing & Copyright : Francesco Antonucci

Explanation: The Great Nebula in Orion is an intriguing place. Visible to the unaided eye, it appears as a small fuzzy patch in the constellation of Orion. But this image, an illusory-color four-panel mosaic taken in different bands ofinfrared light with the Earth orbiting WISE observatory, shows the Orion Nebula to be a bustling neighborhood of recently formed stars, hot gas, and dark dust. The power behind much of the Orion Nebula (M42) is the stars of theTrapezium star cluster, seen near the center of the featured image. The orange glow surrounding the bright stars pictured here is their own starlight reflected by intricate dust filaments that cover much of the region. The current Orion Nebula cloud complex, which includes the Horsehead Nebula, will slowly disperse over the next 100,000 years.

Découvertes médicales récentes : Vaccin contre le cancer

L'Université de Stanford a annoncé le début d'une phase d'expérimentation d'un nouveau traitement contre le cancer. La référence au vaccin ne concerne que le mode d'administration, c'est-à-dire par injection : la substance est cependant composée de deux agents stimulants du système immunitaire capables d'éliminer les cellules cancéreuses.

Curioctopus

Astronomy picture of the day - 2019 January 1 - The Sombrero Galaxy in Infrared

The Sombrero Galaxy in Infrared 
Image Credit: R. Kennicutt (Steward Obs.) et al., SSC, JPL, Caltech, NASA

Explanation: This floating ring is the size of a galaxy. In fact, it is a galaxy -- or at least part of one: the photogenic Sombrero Galaxy, one of the largest galaxies in the nearby Virgo Cluster of Galaxies. The dark band of dust that obscures the mid-section of the Sombrero Galaxy in optical light actually glows brightly in infrared light. The featured image, digitally sharpened, shows the infrared glow, recently recorded by the orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope, superposed in false-color on an existing image taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in optical light. The Sombrero Galaxy, also known as M104, spans about 50,000 light years across and lies 28 million light years away. M104can be seen with a small telescope in the direction of the constellation Virgo.