A cosmic hit-and-run between two speeding galaxies has left one with a wispy tail speckled with stars, according to a new snapshot from a NASA space observatory.

The new galaxy tail photo reveals the aftermath of a collision between the galaxy IC 3418 and a member of its neighboring Virgo galaxy cluster.

The galactic smash-up occurred 54 million light-years from Earth and was spotted by NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) observatory. These new observations from GALEX will help give astronomers a better understanding of how stars form, researchers said.

“The gas in this galaxy is being blown back into a turbulent wake,” said Janice Hester of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., lead author of a recent study that was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

But stars still manage to form despite rough conditions in the galaxy’s tail, which stems from a mix of stellar winds and interstellar gas, Hester added.

“The gas is like sand caught up by a stiff wind,” she explained. “However, the particular type of gas that is needed to make stars is heavier, like pebbles, and can’t be blown out of the galaxy. The new Galaxy Evolution Explorer observations are teaching us that this heavier, star-forming gas can form in the wake, possibly in swirling eddies of gas.”

When galaxies collide

Galaxy collisions are not uncommon in the universe. In fact, it is estimated that our own Milky Way galaxy will eventually crash into the Andromeda galaxy in a few billion years.

Galaxies can become tangled together, kicking gas and dust into space around them. The galaxies that emerge from these tussles a little worse for wear are left with tails of material stripped off during their violent encounters.

Hester and a team of astronomers closely examined the tail of IC 3418, which actually formed in a very different way. Instead of bumping up against one galaxy, IC 3418 is mingling with the entire Virgo cluster of galaxies.

This massive galaxy cluster – which contains approximately 1,500 galaxies and is permeated by hot gas – is pulling IC3418 in, causing it to plunge through the cluster’s gas at a blistering rate of over 2 million mph (3.2 million kph).

At this extraordinary speed, IC 3418′s gas is being shoved back into the choppy tail that is visible in the new image.

Ultraviolet galaxies

The researchers were able to track the galactic tail of IC 3418 using GALEX, which observes the universe in ultraviolet wavelengths in order to measure the history of star formation. The tail is studded with clusters of massive, young stars that glow with ultraviolet light that is easily spotted by the GALEX space telescope.

The tail’s young stars indicate that a crucial ingredient for star formation – dense clouds of gas called molecular hydrogen – formed in the wake of IC 3418′s galactic plunge.

This is the first time astronomers have found solid evidence that clouds of molecular hydrogen can form under the violent conditions present in a turbulent wake, researchers said.

“IC 3418′s tail of star-formation demonstrates that strong turbulence promotes cloud formation,” said Mark Seibert, a co-author of the paper and a member of the Galaxy Evolution Explorer science team at the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena.

Galaxy tails provide an ideal environment for isolating the factors that control star formation, said Hester.

“These tails are unique, exotic locations where we can probe the precise mechanisms behind star formation,” she said. “Understanding star formation is pivotal to understanding the lifecycles of galaxies and the dramatic transformations that some galaxies undergo. We can also study how the process affects the development of planets like our own.”

The Galaxy Evolution Explorer mission aims to better understand the formation of galaxies. Since its launch in 2003, GALEX has imaged over a half-billion objects across two-thirds of the sky.

via Cosmic Hit-and-Run Gives Galaxy Starry Tail – Yahoo! News.

The black eye that Jupiter suffered this month has sparked a host of questions for astronomers as well as for the rest of us: What exactly hit the giant planet, and why didn’t we see it coming? Why is Jupiter’s bruise expanding? How often do these things happen, and how vulnerable are we to a similar cosmic pummeling? Astronomers are closing in on the answers – and helping the public get a better sense of perspective.

The first question is a toughie: What was it that caused Jupiter’s “Great Black Spot,” which was first noticed by an amateur astronomer in Australia back on July 19? “I’m not sure we’ll ever know precisely,” said Glenn Orton, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who is a member of the team studying the impact and its aftermath.

Orton addressed the “whatdunit” mystery on JPL’s Weblog and expanded upon the subject in a phone interview. The best guess is that the impactor was a comet that measured perhaps a quarter of a mile (half a kilometer) wide. Why a comet and not an asteroid? “Almost everything in that part of the solar system is icy,” Orton noted.

(read more @ msnbc cosmic log)

A committee reviewing NASA’s goals has outlined a scheme to send astronauts on progressively longer space trips – including dockings with asteroids and flybys of Venus – to prepare for an eventual landing on Mars.

The White House set up the committee, chaired by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine, to review NASA’s plans for human spaceflight, which are currently focused on returning astronauts to the moon by 2020.

It is examining NASA’s current plans and exploring alternative destinations and hardware that NASA could pursue.

Committee member Edward Crawley of MIT presented a short list of possible destinations for future human missions at a public meeting on Thursday in Cocoa Beach, Florida. He is the head of a subcommittee that is investigating options for exploration beyond low-Earth orbit.

One of the options the team proposed is called the “flexible path”, which Crawley also described as a “deep space” or “in space” option.

(read more @ NewScientist)

Imagine taking your holidays on a hotel near the Moon and nipping off on a pre-lunch excursion around some its hills and craters

Fanciful? Well, maybe, but that’s the dream of Sir Richard Branson and his Virgin Galactic space company.

A new era in private space tourism might just have been launched this week with the first public showing of WhiteKnighttwo, Virgin Galactic’s “mothership”, which will take private tourists on their first journey into space.

(read more @ mirror.co.uk)

If Richard Branson turns up somewhere, you can be fairly certain there’ll be a photo opportunity attached. But Branson’s appearance on Monday at EAA Airventure, the world’s largest private air show, was more than a PR stunt. It also marked the first public flight of Virgin Galactic’s “Mothership” Eve, and signaled space tourism is now closer than ever.

(read more @ gizmag)

Aabar Investments’ buy-in gives British billionaire Sir Richard Branson’s space tourism venture a big financial kickstart at a time when many funding sources have dried up because of the global recession. It also gives the wealthy Persian Gulf sheikdom of Abu Dhabi a chance to build its own space flight industry as it broadens its economy. The Mideast investment fund that recently bet big on Mercedes-Benz said Tuesday it will pay about $280 million to buy nearly a third of commercial space travel startup Virgin Galactic.

(read more @ Sci-Tech Today)

The Hubble Space Telescope, still undergoing tests and checkout after a May shuttle servicing mission, snapped a dramatic photo of Jupiter this week showing the atmospheric disturbance left behind after a presumed comet or icy asteroid crashed into the giant planet.

The photograph, taken by the new Wide Field Camera 3, is the first science observation released from Hubble since the telescope was upgraded and repaired.

(read more @ cnet news and Yahoo News)

As the 40th anniversary celebrations of the first manned moon landing end, a human voyage to Mars remains a holy grail for NASA.

“We’re still looking at human exploration of Mars as one of the goals of the future at the top level,” said NASA researcher Bret Drake with Lunar and Mars Integration at Johnson Space Center in Houston. “Having a human actually set foot on another planet would be one of the greatest adventures possible, one of the greatest monuments to history.”

A crewed mission to the red planet is a daunting challenge that lies at the edge of current technological capabilities and possibly beyond. Still, NASA keeps a strategy to go there and constantly keeps up to date with new ideas.

(read more @ Yahoo News)

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has found clay-bearing rocks lying directly in the path ahead for the Mars rover Opportunity, giving the rover the unexpected chance to sample a totally new rock type that could have provided a wet, warm, and non acidic habitat for the formation of early life on Mars. The finding increases stakes for Opportunity to reach the site which scientists at Cornell University now find has the same high priority geologic character as those on the final landing target list for the Mars Science Laboratory ( MSL) rover “Curiosity” planned for launch in 2011.

(read more @ Spaceflight Now)

This day marks the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11, the first manned landing on the moon. Three american astronauts, Neil Armstrong, “Buzz” Aldrin and Michael Collins fulfilled President John F. Kennedy‘s goal and a whole nation’s dream of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth before 1969 came to a close.

Over 400,000 people and billions of dollars in human and material investment for an 8-day long utopian journey there and back. And they did come back to tell the story. In pictures, even. Here to commemorate a brilliant day in Humanity’s history, certainly one of the most memorable of the 20th century, we link you to an astonishing set of high-resolution photos published by The Boston Globe’s online website in The Big Picture.

Also visit NASA’s Apollo 11 40th Anniversary website and for a nice piece of memorabilia, here’s a link to July 1969′s issue of Popular Mechanics magazine, with a 14-page antecipation special on the event.

Nature has provided five huge rest stops far out in space for the convenience of spacecraft traveling from Earth.

Some NASA folks call them “parking lots” in space.

They’re unusual locations where gravity loses its pull and a spaceship can loiter, rather like a marble at the bottom of a cup, without using a lot of fuel. Three of them are 930,000 miles outside Earth’s orbit. One is between the Earth and the sun, and another is hidden on the far side of the sun.

A pair of U.S. unmanned scientific satellites will pass through two of these sites this fall. NASA may eventually park a permanent space weather station at one of them.

Their scientific names are Lagrange points, after the French mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange , who predicted their existence more than 200 years ago.

(read more @ Yahoo News and check their links on this too!)

No, this is not some cool new taskforce for fighting alien invasions or any official front for a Star Trek’s Federation-like agenda. It’s actually a lot more discrete. No wonder most people have never heard it even exists, although its relevance is not to be cast aside by any means. Here’s a bit of history:

The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs was initially created as a small expert unit within the Secretariat to service the ad hoc Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space established by the General Assembly in its resolution 1348 (XIII) of 13 December 1958. It became a unit within the Department of Political and Security Council Affairs in 1962, when the permanent Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space met for the first time, and was transformed into the Outer Space Affairs Division of that Department in 1968. In 1992, the Division was transformed into the Office for Outer Space Affairs within the Department for Political Affairs. In 1993, the Office was relocated to the United Nations Office at Vienna. At that time, the Office also assumed responsibility for substantive secretariat services to the Legal Subcommittee, which had previously been provided by the Office of Legal Affairs in New York. Questions relating to the militarization of outer space are dealt by the Conference on Disarmament, based in Geneva.

The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs implements the decisions of the General Assembly and of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. The office has the dual objective of supporting the intergovernmental discussions in the Committee and its Scientific and Technical Subcommittee (S&T) and Legal Subcommittee, and of assisting developing countries in using space technology for development. In addition, it follows legal, scientific and technical developments relating to space activities, technology and applications in order to provide technical information and advice to Member States, international organizations and other United Nations offices.

(read more @ iol.co.za)