Beautiful Universe

A Visit to the Zoo

Melanie — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 19:52:17 +0000

We went last week to the World Wildlife Zoo up in Phoenix, one of my favorite zoos on the planet.

Scroll down to see some of the beautiful creatures I captured on my new Nikon camera.

The Orion Nebula

Melanie — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 16:04:58 +0000

You are looking at the birth of new stars!

The Orion Nebula is what astronomers call a “stellar nursery”.

New stars are being born in a cozy bed of elemental gases.

>> how to see Orion from your back yard

How to see Orion from your back yard

Between 7 & 9 pm MST, look up at the sky
in the south – southeast direction.

Look for the brightest star in that part of the sky.
That’s Sirius (the Dog Star)

From Sirius, look up and to the right until you see
2 sets of 3 stars that line up in a straight line.
That’s Orion.

>> let’s zoom in a little closer

Looking south – southeast.

Another easy way to recognize Orion is its kite-like shape, as you can see in this picture.

The constellation of Orion, though, is not a sweet little kite. It is a great hunter/warrior from Greek mythology.

>> see Orion the hunter

Here is the actual form of the constellation Orion.

The Orion Nebula is located in Orion’s sword,
which hangs from the belt of Orion.

Orion’s belt is the three blue diagonal stars seen in the center.

Orion’s sword is the set of three vertical stars below the center of the belt.

The Orion nebula is the center “star” in the sword.

>> see the Orion Nebula up close

>> next

Above is another nebula in the constellation Orion, the famous Horsehead Nebula, which is located in Orion’s belt.
Scroll down to see a 2 minute video, a visual voyage to and through the Orion Nebula.

A Little Neighborhood in Antiqua

Melanie — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 19:44:32 +0000

Where in the Universe Are We?

Melanie — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 17:17:10 +0000

My irrepressible fascination with scale and the the enormity of the universe led me to find this wonderful map made by Andrew Colvin. It shows a mere 150 million light-year-wide slice of the entire universe, which extends 13 billion light years wide.

I’ve taken Andrew’s map apart, section by section, to give you a view of this little sliver of the universe where our solar system is nestled. I hope you enjoy this tour of 150 million light years, which is 900 trillion miles wide!

Begin scrolling now to see the local supercluster (at the far right of Andrew’s map) and continue scrolling to narrow in on our own Milky Way galaxy and sun.

Life in the Rocks: Sedona

Melanie — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 17:40:22 +0000

The beauty of desert plant life

is its ability to take root

and grow

and flourish

in the red red rock.

This particular rock is part of the massive rock formation that supports the Chapel of the Holy Cross, designed by Marguerite Brunswig Staude, who was a student of Frank Lloyd Wright.

I took hundreds of shots in and around Sedona this day, in late June 2010.

Below are a few more angles on the Chapel, in case you’ve never seen it.

The Chapel entrance.

Chapel lights.

The Chapel altar.

This is a view from the Chapel, looking out at Sedona. The commanding structure in the foreview is a private residence, owned, we’re told by Sedona locals, by a Hungarian business tycoon. Do you see the blue-ish dome on top of the main residence? That’s an ash dome telescope, about the size of our own. Bill is eager to meet this fellow and talk astronomy. And if you know Bill, you know it’s already in the works.

Deep Inside the Trifid Nebula

Melanie — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 16:42:19 +0000

The Trifid Nebula is one of our favorite objects to look at through the telescope.

This view is what the Hubble Telescope sees from space.

To see what we see through our telescope and astronomical binoculars, click on the image.

Be Joyful Jane Goodall

Melanie — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 16:41:53 +0000

Deep Space; Up Close and Mind Blowing

Melanie — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 17:38:46 +0000

I invite you to an experience,

a one minute experience of awe and wonder

an attempt to take in — to grok — the incredibly amazing immense enormity of the universe.

Nothing short of mind blowing, unless you don’t care.

But if you do care, if you’re curious, follow me, … deep into deep space…

it will only take a second to get there.

You’ve just traveled 13 billion light years from Earth to a small dark corner of the southern sky.

From Earth, the size of this little piece of space is no larger than a dime.

Every speck and smudge you see, large and small, is an entire galaxy!

We’re looking at hundreds and hundreds of galaxies, in the space of a dime.

If you’re curious still,
read on for a few fascinating numbers that help reveal to our Earthly minds
the incredible enormity of the universe we live in.

How many galaxies are there in the observable universe?

100 billion galaxies, according to the current estimate

And how many stars does a galaxy contain?

10 million to 100 trillion stars

How many stars are there in the observable universe?

When they put all the numbers together, astronomers estimate that there are as many as 10²⁴ stars in the universe.

1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars.

How long is a light year?

1 light year = 6,000,000,000 miles (6 trillion)
13 billion light years = 78,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles

2 light seconds = distance to the Moon
8 light minutes = distance to the Sun

Photo credit: This extraordinary image of deep space is an untouched piece of a larger photograph captured by the Hubble Space Telescope during 2003 and 2004. Image courtesy of NASA/ ESA/ S. Beckwith (STScI)/ HUDF Team. Below is the larger Hubble image. Click on the image to see it enlarged.

Love is the Soul of Genius

Melanie — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 15:45:19 +0000

Advice from Picasso

Melanie — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 17:04:55 +0000