Cosmic Shredders

Another nice picture from SPACE.com.
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Marking the 17th anniversary of the deployment of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, a team of astronomers is releasing one of the largest panoramic images ever taken with Hubble's cameras, a 50-light-year-wide view of the central region of the Carina Nebula with greatly enhanced detail.

What appears as an impressionist painting is rather an enormous maelstrom of star birth and death. The nebula is approximately 7,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina the Keel. This image is a 48-frame mosaic assembled from taken with Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys. The images were taken in the light of neutral hydrogen. Red corresponds to sulfur, green to hydrogen, and blue to oxygen emission.

The filamentous appearance of the nebula has been shaped by outflowing winds and scorching ultraviolet radiation from the gigantic stars within. In the process, these stars are shredding the surrounding material marking the last vestiges of the giant cloud from which the stars were born.

The immense nebula contains over a dozen brilliant stars estimated at least 50 to 100 times the mass of our Sun. The most unique of these is the star Eta Carinae, at far left, in the final stages of its brief and eruptive lifespan,

The nebula's first generation of newborn stars condensed and ignited three million years ago in a cloud of cold molecular hydrogen. Radiation from these stars carved out an expanding bubble of hot gas. The dark clouds visible across the nebula are nodules of dust and gas that are resisting being eaten away by photoionization.

The stellar winds and blistering ultraviolet radiation blasting within the cavity now compresses the surrounding walls of cold hydrogen, triggering a second stage of new star formation. Our Sun and solar system may have form inside a similar cosmic crucible 4.6 billion years ago. The Carina Nebula displays the genesis of star making as it commonly occurs along the dense spiral arms of a galaxy.

--Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) and Space.com Staff
Credit: NASA, ESA, N. Smith (University of California, Berkeley), and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA

Candy-Colored Cup-Shaped Craters of Carbon Dioxide Ice

Subhaanallah. The space has so much for us to explore. These nice picture are taken from the Space.com website. Allah through the Quran, has asked us to look out for His signs. Only through His creations, we get to know how tiny and independant we are and how almighty He is.

By adding the 7 layers of atmospheres protecting the earth, we are filtered from all the harmful rays. (Note: The other planet has no atmosphere like the earth, the planet are taking in the direct sun rays.) He set the sun and moon and planets in their own course (orbit) so they will not collide with one another.

So colourful... so beautiful out there, waiting for us to explore. By visiting the website, I am learning more things about our Creator.

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Quote from: SPACE.com [Images of the day]
Candy-Colored Cup-Shaped Craters of Carbon Dioxide Ice

For the first time, NASA's Cassini spacecraft revealed surface details of Saturn's moon Hyperion. During a flyby in September 2005, it saw cup-like craters filled with hydrocarbons. These substances may indicate a more widespread presence of basic chemicals necessary for life in our solar system.

Water and carbon dioxide ices were found, as well as dark material that fits the spectral profile of hydrocarbons.

Cassini's ultraviolet imaging spectrograph and visual and infrared mapping spectrometer captured compositional variations in Hyperion's surface. These instruments, which map mineral and chemical features of the moon, returned data confirming the presence of frozen water found by earlier ground-based observations, but also discovered solid carbon dioxide (dry ice) mixed in unexpected ways with the ordinary ice. Images of the brightest regions of Hyperion's surface show frozen water that is crystalline in form, like that found on Earth.

In this map, blue shows the maximum exposure of frozen water, red denotes carbon dioxide ice ("dry ice"), magenta indicates regions of water plus carbon dioxide, yellow is a mix of carbon dioxide and an unidentified material.

The July 5 issue of Nature reports details of Hyperion's surface craters and composition observed during this flyby, including keys to understanding the moon's origin and evolution over 4.5 billion years. This is the first time scientists were able to map the surface material on Hyperion.

Hyperion, Saturn's eighth largest moon, has a chaotic spin and orbits Saturn every 21 days.

--NASA and SPACE.com Staff
Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/Ames

Sun's Coronal Loops

Extending above the photosphere or visible surface of the Sun , the faint, tenuous solar corona can't be easily seen from Earth, but it is measured to be hundreds of times hotter than the photosphere itself. What makes the solar corona so hot? Astronomers have long sought the source of the corona's heat in magnetic fields which loft monstrous loops of solar plasma above the photosphere. Still, new and dramatically detailed observations of coronal loops from the orbiting TRACE satellite are now pointing more closely to the unidentified energy source. Recorded in extreme ultraviolet light, this and other TRACE images indicate that most of the heating occurs low in the corona, near the bases of the loops as they emerge from and return to the solar surface. The new results confound the conventional theory which relies on heating the loops uniformly. This tantalizing TRACE image shows clusters of the majestic, hot coronal loops which span 30 or more times the diameter of planet Earth.

Image Credit: NASA

1 Rejab Islamic Calender

Just checked the Islamic calender, it's already 1 Rejab 1428.

Ramadhan is only 2 months away. Suddenly I get a big shock... panic. What have I archieved so far? Hope I didn't have sins added from the last fasting month, inshaAllah.

Zakat... have I paid my zakat... NO and Alarmed!
I have both March and May's not settled, I don't even know the nisab amount. Now it's already in July... if ONLY I can combined the 3 zakat into one then I won't be in stress... but zakat is a good value that we have to be very caution of our assets to be in halal means. It's a way to increasing your blessings and cleanse your soul and better still... Allah increased your savings and substenances when you paid ZAKAT!!!

Ooh... I better start calculate the soonest. And hope I can read more Quran starting now till Ramadhan. Must target to finish the whole Quran before last night of Ramadhan.

I think still can buy the Dates next month.

May Allah gives my family good news this year, ameen!