On a very different note, I'm doing this post on astronomy. Over the years I have developed a keen interest in astronomy and almost every night I check some of my favorite astronomy websites for new discoveries and pictures of deep space. With Hubble, Chandra and other extremely powerful telescopes, we are looking at deep space that was not possible before. Last month Voyager 1, after traveling for 36 years has finally left our solar system and has crossed into interstellar space. It is the first man made object to do so. As I write these lines, Voyager 1 is at a distance of approximately 18.8 million kilometers from earth and traveling away at a speed of 35,000 miles an hour. According to NASA from now and next 40,000 years, there will be no other star or object in Voyager 1's path.
We see millions of stars in the night sky however the nearest star Alpha Centauri is 4.37 light years from us. This gives an indication at the vast distances between the stars of our milky way galaxy and the vastness of our universe itself. It is so humbling and spiritual.
Here are some of my favorite images, a number of them are composite images. (A combination of X Ray, infrared and optical images.) Enjoy!
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| Earth as seen from the International Space Station |
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| Earth from the space |
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| Saturn with its moons (Photo by Hubble telescope) |
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| Voyager 1's picture of Earth from 6 billion km |
The above picture of Earth was phrased by Carl Sagan as the "Pale blue dot". On Car's request, NASA made the Voyager 1 take some of these pictures in 1990. Voyager 1 was at a distance of 6 billion kilometers from earth. These are the last pictures Voyager 1 took.
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| A composite image of center of our Milky Way galaxy |
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| Super nova remnant |
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| Sombrero Galaxy 50 million light years away |
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A rose shape made of galaxies at at distance of
300 million light years
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| Ultra deep view of space by Hubble telescope |
The above image of ultra deep space taken by Hubble is of a portion of the sky that was one tenth of the moon. It contains approximately 5,500 galaxies.
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| NGC 6240 image by Chandra telescope. |
Credits: http://NASA.gov, http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/, etc.
