Merit-bound Alley

This was covered in every science blog last week, but you see it now. Why? Don’t question me!

On March 19th, the most energetic sky event ever was observed by telescopes across the planet. This even is known as a gamma ray burst. GRBs are huge displays of gamma rays that originate from a star whose core has collapsed into a black hole. GRBs are detected fairly infrequently, mainly by orbiting satellites. The initial event is fairly quick, but it leaves an afterglow that can last for a couple minutes.

This GRB was special in that it exploded with a magnitude that was visible to the naked eye! This is the first to do that. What’s even more amazing is that the star that imploded was 7.5 billion light years away. In other words, this event happened 7.5 billion years ago, and the star was so far away that the light from the GRB didn’t reach us until last week. For some perspective, the universe is estimated to be only 13-15 billion years old, so this outburst occurred when the universe was half as old as it is now!

Now, a light year is equal to 5,878,625,373,183.61 miles. Multiply that number by 7.5 billion, and that’s how far away, in miles, this star was. And we saw it’s death with the naked eye. Holy shit.

The left photo is from the Swift X-ray ’scope, and the right is from an ultraviolet/optical light telescope. That huge-ass explosion was 44,089,690,298,877,080,000,000 miles away and we saw it here.

Update: Here’s another interesting perspective on the distance: our Milky Way galaxy is 100,000 light years across. So, if you line up 440,896,902,988,770,800 Milky Ways end-to-end, you’d finally reach that star.

Compliments of Tom’s Astronomy Blog, we have the excellent news of a full lunar eclipse tomorrow night! The eclipe will begin at 20:43, be in totality from 22:01 to 22:51, then end at 00:09 on the 21st. For those who aren’t into 24-hr timestamps, those time are, repsectively: 8:43PM, 10:01PM, 10:51PM, and 12:01AM.

The NASA Eclipse Home Page has a site dedicated to tomorrow’s eclipe. Check it out here. It includes the below visual aid to the eclipse timing:

I’m going to try to get some pics of the eclipse and will post as I get them.

UPDATE: The Bad Astronomer also notes the eclipse with the added information that this is the last total lunar eclipse we’ll see until 2010.

Anyone who has been around for the past year will know that every once in a while I think of weird shit. Often, I can keep it hidden from the world, but every once in a while, I have to voice it and I lose readers. One of those odd thoughts came to me yesterday, and it made me write the following letter to Dr. Philip Plait, author of the book and website Bad Astronomy:

Phil,

I was thinking about this yesterday while reading your book, and I promise I was sober. The weird thought that occurred to me was this: If space, along with time and matter was created at the big bang, is it possible that the accelerating expansion of the universe is not really the matter of the universe moving away from the other matter at an accelerating rate, but instead of the continuing and increasing rate of the creation of more space separating objects in the universe?

I’m not a scientist, but a scientist fanboy, and I figure if someone is going to demolish this thought, I’d like it to be someone I enjoy reading.

Catch you later!

-Joe     

I’ll let you know if and when I get a response, as I know Phil gets a LOT of emails. In the meantime, I was wondering what you all thought, since I know I have some very smart readers. Comment and let me know how stupid this thought is! 

of the new site with one of the many cool things that science has to offer us.My favorite NASA mission at this time is the Cassini/Huygens mission that has given us more wow moments than anything when it comes to planetary exploration. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory adds to this by giving us an amazing first person perspective into this amazing mission to Saturn and her moons.  Hats off to NASAs JPL for pulling off a mission where, not only can we see such unprecedented sights as this, but for also giving us a unique perspective on our most beautiful planet and for landing a probe onto one of her moons.And the religious think we have nothing which makes us feel wonderment!(h/t to Michael at Slacker Astronomy) 

If you go out and check the southwestern sky just before sunup, you will be treated to the following sight: This is Venus and Jupiter hanging right next to each other. I know my picture is amazing, but go out and see it for yourself. It is a breathtakingly beautiful scene.