Outer Space, or why I have a headache

:shock:

Cool. Did y'all see the photos of the 4 new planets discovered right outside our solar system? Apparently, they circle around a sun 4X larger than ours.

(run for your lives)

You need some serious sunscreen. :shock:

HOLY CRAP!



ANTARES IS THE 15TH BRIGHTEST STAR IN THE SKY .. IT IS MORE THAN 1000 LIGHT YEARS AWAY.



NOW HOW BIG ARE YOU?

WOw- those stars are HUGE!

PAris Hilton would say "That's hot!"

I'm going back to bed.

Now try to wrap your mind around this.........

This is a hubble telescope ultra deep field infrared view of countless 'entire' galaxies billions of light-years away.

:shock:Covers pulled over head.

Space balls..........

Please pass the excedrine. My brain is not big enough.

Please pass the excedrine. My brain is not big enough.

This is prescription strength stuff.

Two teams of US astronomers have taken what are believed to be the first pictures of planets outside the Earth's solar system.
The pictures, published on Thursday in the journal Science, show four small white dots that scientists say are giant gaseous planets.
One was found using the Hubble Space Telescope which orbits the Earth, and is the first planet outside our own solar system to be found visually.
Scientists at the University of California used the telescope to image a planet orbiting the star Fomalhaut that they have named Fomalhaut b, about 25 light-years (250 trillion km) from Earth in the constellation Piscis Australis (the Southern Fish).
The other set of images, taken by a team using telescopes in Hawaii, shows three giant planets orbiting a star named HR8799 in the constellation Pegasus, about 130 light-years away from the Earth.
None of the four planets are believed to be habitable but they raise the possibility that more hospitable planets could be found elsewhere.
"It is only a matter of time before we get a dot that's blue and Earthlike" said astronomer Bruce Macintosh of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, who led the Hawaii team of photographers, said.
"It is a step on that road to understand if there are other planets like Earth and, potentially, life out there", he said.
Exciting finding

Two of the three planets pictured orbiting
the giant star Pegasus [Reuters] In the past 13 years, scientists have discovered more than 300 planets outside the solar system, but they have done so indirectly by measuring changes in gravity, speed or light around stars. Ed Weiler, Nasa's space sciences chief, said the new photos were important and compared the effort to a hunt for elusive elephants.
"For years we've been hearing the elephants, finding the tracks, seeing the trees knocked down by them, but we've never been able to snap a picture. Now we have a picture," he said.
But doubts persist about whether these are the first photos of exoplanets, or planets outside our own solar system.
Other astronomers have made earlier claims, but their pictures have not been universally accepted.
The photos released on Thursday have still not convinced all experts.
Alan Boss, an exoplanet expert at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and Lisa Kaltenegger, a Harvard exoplanet hunter, both said more study was needed to confirm the new set of photos were those of proven planets and not just brown dwarf stars.

Swinging high, Jackie says to Me: "Mommy you wanta go up in the sky with me?!"

Me: "of course I do, that would be so funn!"

Jackie, After a few seconds of thought:

"Maybe a space ship would help!"

Cool pics BB!


PS Love your siggy line...

so cool!

I feel tiny.

I feel tiny.

-er.

Space balls..........

:roll:

The truth?

The entire universe is contained in an empty shoebox on a shelf in BB's Closet.

It makes stuff like money seem so trivial, doesn't it?

Mind boggling!!!!

The world was much simpler in the days of Chris Columbus...

Why are you freaking out? I love this! It makes me feel not so bad about the pan of brownies I made a few nights ago...nom, nom, nom...

Now that's what I'm talking about! Or...my kind of stars.



The Hubble Telescope has captured an amazing glimpse of more than 100,000 stars moving about closely together in the M13 globular cluster some 25,000 light-years away. The ball of stars, which resembles a sparkling snow globe, has some of the oldest stars in the universe.

Beautiful, BB!!!

BB. Great thread to review on a stormy night. Thanks. I like thinking about impossibly large topics.