every week, Technology World and #AstroMiniBR brings together five relevant and entertaining astronomical curiosities produced by collaborators. twitter profile To spread the knowledge of this science, which is the oldest!
#1: Beautiful Fukang meteorite
Look at the over 1 ton Fukang Meteorite found in China in 2000, how beautiful it is. It is a ferrous rock type pallasite and its yellow parts are Olivine crystals. It is estimated to be 4.5 billion years old, that is, from the time of our planet’s formation! #AstroMiniBR pic.twitter.com/HJHgvNCrnp
— Mariella Patti??? ?????????? ¬¬ (@PattiMariella) 6 March 2023
If you thought every meteorite was gray and soft, look again at the images above. This is the Fukang meteorite, discovered in 2000 in the Gobi desert near Fukang province, China.
Found by an unnamed person, this one-ton space rock is part of a rare class of meteorite: pallasite. These extraterrestrial jewels, with their vibrant colors and compositions, reflect the stellar beauty of the cosmos and feature the Fukang meteorite as the most beautiful representative of this category. It consists mainly of yellow-green olivine crystals embedded in a nickel and iron matrix that vary greatly in size and shape, ranging from round shapes of a few millimeters to angular shapes of tens of centimeters.
The Fukang meteorite is about 4.5 billion years old, and its origins date back to the beginning of the Solar System, where planets, moons, and asteroids are still emerging.
#2: Why is the sky blue during the day and orange at dusk?
The sky is blue. But why does it turn reddish in the evening?
Visible light?? ?????? consists of colors.
The particles that make up the Earth’s atmosphere bend light in the sharpest way??? This ?? supporting red light in our eyes#AstroMiniBR pic.twitter.com/1ZxQWFafKc
– Ana Carolina Owner (@astroposses) March 7, 2023
In science, simple questions hide great answers, and this is one of them. The answer to him is that on planet Earth (but not only), the angle at which sunlight enters the atmosphere affects the color of the sky.
During sunrise or sunset, when the Sun is near the horizon, light must travel through a greater portion of the atmosphere than when the Sun is overhead. This causes more scattering of light, including longer wavelengths such as yellow, orange, and red, which create colorful skies at sunrise and sunset. In contrast, blue light is scattered more during the day because photons travel a shorter distance through the atmosphere and scatter shorter wavelengths more.
#3: An image of 84 million stars
The Milky Way with 9 billion pixels!
This stunning video from the VISTA survey shows 84 million stars in the central region of our galaxy!
Zoom in 25Gb image here: https://t.co/4v6W289CY5
(c) via ESO @Rainmaker1973pic.twitter.com/d8Q90yF2vi
— Nicolas Oliveira (@nicooliveira_) March 8, 2023
This stunning video shows the central parts of the Milky Way observed by the VISTA astronomical survey from Paranal Observatory in Chile.
The image frame is 108,200 x 81,500 pixels and contains approximately nine billion pixels. In fact, it is the combination of multiple separate VISTA images taken at infrared wavelengths that gave rise to this magnificent mosaic. The advantage of looking at the Milky Way in infrared is that these filters can see most of the dust that obscures the view of optical telescopes, but many more opaque dust fibers are still visible in this video.
This image is too large to easily view at full resolution and enjoy it best using the zoom tool, where you can navigate among 84 million stars!
#4: A galactic neighbor
Barnard’s galaxy is one of our galactic neighbors!
It is an irregular dwarf galaxy of the Local Group (including the Milky Way)!
you can see that the galaxy has many young blue stars and star forming regions (pink glow).
(c)ESO#AstroMiniBR pic.twitter.com/J3HBK0BnDf
— Giovanna Liberato (@liberato_gio) 10 March 2023
In the universe, large spiral galaxies often seem to retain all the beauty and splendor, displaying bright young blue star clusters in beautiful spiral arms. However, small scattered and irregular galaxies also have their characteristic beauty and form stars such as the neighboring galaxy NGC 6822, known as the Barnard Galaxy.
This cosmic neighbor is only 1.5 million light-years away, closer than the famous Andromeda galaxy, and is a member of our Local Group of Galaxies. It spans about 7,000 light-years and is filled with young blue stars with patches of pink glow that separate hydrogen from new star forming regions.
#5: A supernova in another galaxy
Supernovas are explosive and bright events that mark the end of the life of stars.
here we see the standard behavior of a type Ia supernova: a light curve whose top decreases as the days go by. Did this example occur in spiral galaxy NGC2525?#AstroMiniBR pic.twitter.com/aQOXvEn9Ha
— yanna martins franco (@martins_yanna) March 11, 2023
Supernovas are by far one of the favorite subjects of astronomy lovers and enthusiasts around the world. A term used for any class of stars that explode violently and whose luminosity increases millions of times above its normal level. They are characterized by an intense and rapid glow lasting several weeks, followed by a slow darkening.
You can see exactly this in the animation above, made with Hubble telescope time-lapse observations of a supernova occurring in spiral galaxy NGC 2525, 70 million light-years away. Snapshots taken by Hubble have been combined into a video that reveals the epic of the massive starburst until it was completely lost in the cosmic darkness.
Source: Tec Mundo
I’m Blaine Morgan, an experienced journalist and writer with over 8 years of experience in the tech industry. My expertise lies in writing about technology news and trends, covering everything from cutting-edge gadgets to emerging software developments. I’ve written for several leading publications including Gadget Onus where I am an author.
