Thursday, January 12, 2006

Space Tornado! Danger Will Robinson...

Something beautiful to make up for all of the ugliness chimpy has brought into the world:



Via Space.com, Space Tornado! Cosmic Front Packs a Punch

WASHINGTON, D.C.—High-energy particles spewing out of a young star in a nearby stellar nursery are plowing through interstellar clouds and creating a giant spiral structure in space that looks like a glowing, rainbow-colored tornado, scientists said today.

The star spewing the particle jet lies 480 light-years away in a star-forming region known as Chamaeleon I.

In a photograph taken with NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, that star is actually not visible because it is located off the upper edge of the image.

The luminous tornado-shaped structure is known as a Herbig-Haro object and estimated to be about 0.3 light years, or nearly 2 trillion miles, long and shows up in the infrared.

Go read the rest, it's quite fascinating.

5 comments:

Vicki said...

Damn!

I'm fascinated with space, and I'm loving these great pictures!

Maybe we should all just come over here and hang out when the trolls start infesting the threads.

four legs good said...

That's a great idea!!

Samurai Sam said...

Dude, that's cool. I love Nasa's Hubble site.

Nice blog you've got here. Prepare to be blogrolled...

Cervantes said...

Hey 4LG, didn't know you had a blog. Very aesthetically pleasing.

four legs good said...

Hey 4LG, didn't know you had a blog. Very aesthetically pleasing.


thanks!