Original Art & Photography from GOD - slow loading many pics

Dark Globule in IC 1396
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has captured a glowing stellar nursery within a dark globule that is opaque at visible light. These new images pierce through the obscuration to reveal the birth of new protostars, or embryonic stars, and young stars never before seen.

The Elephant's Trunk Nebula is an elongated dark globule within the emission nebula IC 1396 in the constellation of Cepheus. Located at a distance of 2,450 light-years, the globule is a condensation of dense gas that is barely surviving the strong ionizing radiation from a nearby massive star. The globule is being compressed by the surrounding ionized gas.

The large composite image on the left is a product of combining data from the observatory's multiband imaging photometer and the infrared array camera. The thermal emission at 24 microns measured by the photometer (red) is combined with near-infrared emission from the camera at 3.6/4.5 microns (blue) and from 5.8/8.0 microns (green). The colors of the diffuse emission and filaments vary, and are a combination of molecular hydrogen (which tends to be green) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (brown) emissions.

Within the globule, a half dozen newly discovered protostars are easily discernible as the bright red-tinted objects, mostly along the southern rim of the globule. These were previously undetected at visible wavelengths due to obscuration by the thick cloud ('globule body') and by dust surrounding the newly forming stars. The newborn stars form in the dense gas because of compression by the wind and radiation from a nearby massive star (located outside the field of view to the left). The winds from this unseen star are also responsible for producing the spectacular filamentary appearance of the globule itself, which resembles that of a flying dragon.

The Spitzer Space Telescope also sees many newly discovered young stars, often enshrouded in dust, which may be starting the nuclear fusion that defines a star. These young stars are too cool to be seen at visible wavelengths. Both the protostars and young stars are bright in the mid-infrared because of their surrounding discs of solid material. A few of the visible-light stars in this image were found to have excess infrared emission, suggesting they are more mature stars surrounded by primordial remnants from their formation, or from crumbling asteroids and comets in their planetary systems.

SPace is just cool. People spend so much time tryin to recreate its essence in computer grafx but its not like the real thing

What a great concept. You do not have to go so far though. There is equal majesty in a rock, or a tree.

i agree larryweiss about the rock and tree thing
ill be getting round to posting some nature pictures in future... it is all gods creation after all
i just wanted to start with something a bit more far out

Hubble Peers Inside a Celestial Geode

Our Sun and solar system are embedded in a broad pancake of stars deep within the disk of the Milky Way galaxy. Even from a distance, it is impossible to see our galaxy's large-scale features other than the disk.

The next best thing is to look farther out into the universe at galaxies that are similar in shape and structure to our home galaxy. Other spiral galaxies like NGC 3949, pictured in the Hubble image, fit the bill. Like our Milky Way, this galaxy has a blue disk of young stars peppered with bright pink star-birth regions. In contrast to the blue disk, the bright central bulge is made up of mostly older, redder stars.

NGC 3949 lies about 50 million light-years from Earth. It is a member of a loose cluster of some six or seven dozens of galaxies located in the direction of the Big Dipper, in the constellation Ursa Major (the Great Bear). It is one of the larger galaxies of this cluster.

This false-color image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows a dying star (center) surrounded by a cloud of glowing gas and dust. Thanks to Spitzer's dust-piercing infrared eyes, the new image also highlights a never-before-seen feature -- a giant ring of material (red) slightly offset from the cloud's core . This clumpy ring consists of material that was expelled from the aging star.

The star and its cloud halo constitute a "planetary nebula" called NGC 246. When a star like our own Sun begins to run out of fuel, its core shrinks and heats up, boiling off the star's outer layers. Leftover material shoots outward, expanding in shells around the star. This ejected material is then bombarded with ultraviolet light from the central star's fiery surface, producing huge, glowing clouds -- planetary nebulas -- that look like giant jellyfish in space.

In this image, the expelled gases appear green, and the ring of expelled material appears red. Astronomers believe the ring is likely made of hydrogen molecules that were ejected from the star in the form of atoms, then cooled to make hydrogen pairs. The new data will help explain how planetary nebulas take shape, and how they nourish future generations of stars.

How often does a full moon occur twice in a single month? Exactly once in a Blue Moon. In fact, the modern usage of the term "Blue Moon" refers to the second Full Moon in a single month.
The term "Blue Moon" has recently been traced to an error in a magazine article in 1946. It is possible for the Moon to appear tinged by a blue hue, sometimes caused by fine dirt circulating in the Earth's atmosphere, possibly from a volcanic explosion. The above picture was taken not during a full moon but through a morning sky that appeared dark blue. The bright crescent is the only part directly exposed to sunlight - the rest of the Moon glows from sunlight reflected from the Earth. In this dramatic photo, however, the planet Jupiter is also visible along with its four largest moons.

I just thought that I would let you know that I'm still reading with interest . These are beautiful pictures, as always .

I was contemplating the majesty of a rock, and this song came to mind:

THE MAJESTY OF ROCK
Spinal Tap

There's a pulse in the new-born sun;
A beat in the heat of noon;
There's a song as the day grows long,
And a tempo in the tides of the moon.
It's all around us and it's everywhere,
And it's deeper than Royal blue.
And it feels so real you can feel the feeling!
And that's The Majesty Of Rock!
The fantasy of Roll!
The ticking of the clock,
The wailing of the soul!
The prisoner in the dock,
The digger in the hole,
We're in this together...and ever...
In the shade of a jungle glade,
Or the rush of the crushing street,
On the plain, on the foamy main,
You can never escape from the beat.
It's in the mud and it's in your blood
And its conquest is complete.
And all that you can do is just surrender.
To the Majesty of Rock!
The Pageantry of Roll!
The crowing of the cock,
The running of the foal!
The shepherd with his flock,
The miner with his coal,
We're in this together...and ever...
When we die, do we haunt the sky?
Do we lurk in the murk of the seas?
What then? Are we born again?
Just to sit asking questions like these?
I know, for I told me so,
And I'm sure each of you quite agrees:
The more it stays the same, the less it changes!
And that's The Majesty Of Rock!
The Mystery of Roll!
The darning of the sock,
The scoring of the goal!
The farmer takes a wife
The barber takes a pole.
We're in this together...and ever...

thanks drom
is the thought that counts as always

and cav i think that calls for a meteorite posting session...
spinal tap...?
werent they like a made up band from a movie??

Meteorites come in 3 main types

Iron
Stony-Iron
Stone

Iron Meteorites

Iron meteorites are one of the most durable and easiest to recognize of all the meteorites, but only one in ten meteorites that fall from the sky is of theiron variety. The other 90% are stone meteorites. Iron meteorites are fragments of the once-molten metal core of an asteroid or demolished moon probably from the asteroid belt. As these moons cooled, their cores crystallized and through later collisions, were destroyed. Chemically, they are an alloy, or combination, of iron (Fe) and nickel (Ni), of approximately the same density and hardness as a blacksmith's anvil.

Silicated Irons

Silicated iron meteorites are sort of a group between groups. While considered irons, they nevertheless contain significant amounts of silicates and other inclusions. Occasionally, as in the case of the Caddo County specimen, two or three categories of meteorite are represented in the same piece at once. Because of their silicate content, silicated irons tend to be lighter than pure irons.

Stony-Iron Meteorites
The term "mesosiderite" (meso - meaning between, siderite - meaning metal-bearing) is a remnant of the classification system devised in 1863 by Maskelyne. Confusion over the classification of meteorites has been going on for decades and persists today. Now scientists are realizing that much of the classification is arbitrary and that many meteorites cross categories.

Col Man, Spinal Tap were indeed a made up band from a movie, which happens to be hilarious. Somehow, the song seemed appropriate, and the meteorites are a very nice compliment.

Pallasites

While all pallasites are by definition a mix of nickel-iron and olivine, the nickel-iron matrix can vary in relative nickel content, and the olivine crystals can range from nearly perfect spherules to broken up, angular fragments. The olivine crystals can also be anywhere from a few millimeters in diameter to groups of crystals literally the size of footballs!

ah yesssss....i remember it well

Stone Meteorites

Stones represent the third main group of meteorites, by far the most diverse group of the three. Nine out of ten meteorites that fall from the sky are stone meteorites. Fewer are found, however, primarily because they resemble Earth rocks, and are therefore harder to recognize. Stone meteorites also decompose more rapidly under terrestrial conditions than irons.
Stone meteorites are divided into two main groups; those with chondrules, the chondrites and those without, the achondrites. Chondrules, from the Greek word for "seed", are the inclusions for which the two types are named. These round spheres of silicates range in size from the microscopic, to the size of marbles. Most, however, are the size of steel shot pellets. These chondrules are time-travelers, dating from the very beginnings of the solar system, some 4.6 billion years ago.

Formed as clouds of pre-solar dust began to condense, these tiny balls were packed into larger and larger masses, eventually forming small moons and asteroids. Some of the "parent bodies" were destroyed before they accumulated enough matter to cause re-melting of their core material. Bits of this material usually contains chondrites in their earliest form.

Other parent bodies continued to accrete material until the mounting high-pressures within destroyed all evidence of the original chondritic structure. Bits of this material represent the achondrites, or those without chondrules.