kalaya - beautiful australian night sky timelapse

the australian night sky never disappoints, especially when viewed from far out into the outback.  a talented australian astrophotographer, greg priestley, was able to capture the milky way and the "emu" rising above uluru and kata tjuta in may 2014.

kalaya is the aboriginal word for emu.

beautiful work!

Kalaya - David Malin Awards from Greg Priestley on Vimeo.

dirty space news update

here are a few pieces of dirty space news that i've collected recently, all together in one happy place for your enjoyment.

from a paper simulating magnetic fields called "High Energy Neutrino Emission from Astrophysical Jets in the Galaxy."  i particularly like the last line of the abstract: "One of the main ingredients of the present work is the presence of a toroidal magnetic field that confines the jet flow and furthermore greatly affects the distribution of the high energy neutrinos." 

Caption from paper: A plot of the magnetic field magnitude roughly half way into the simulation. We can see the jet self-confinement due to magnetic forces resulting in a narrow beam.

Adrian Price-Whelan on twitter shared a graph he created for his research and wondered "maybe it's not that bad, just my inner 11 year old showing." i think we can all agree that it is that bad.  

helpfully, a fellow astronomer suggested that "if you switched x and y, it might not be quite so snigger-worthy." i'm not sure it helped... 

and finally, yet another space vehicle for our dirty space news entertainment - Blue Origin's New Shepard space vehicle completed its first developmental test flight.

there is even a viedo of the launch!

planetary pair: venus & jupiter approaching!

venus is incredibly bright in the evening sky right now, and if you get out and LOOK UP, you won't miss the other bright object right by it - the planet jupiter!  they will keep getting closer and closer to each other over the next week and a half, culminating in what will appear to be a very bright double star system on july 1st.

it's quite a beautiful sight - make sure you enjoy it!  read more by tanya munro at the conversation.

here was the view from Brno, Czech Republic as photographed by Pavel Gabzdyl.

Photo by Pavel Gabzdyl

the view it turned around from the southern hemisphere!  this shot was taken by chris wyatt in australia.

Photo by chris wyatt