The Heat is On: Spitzer's Infrared Views of the Cosmos

RCW 38 is at a distance of ~1.7 kpc (~5500 light years) from us, near the famous Vela supernova remnant and the Gum nebula. This starforming region contains a number of highly massive O stars embedded in a dense obscuring cloud. The stars are about 2 million years old, indicating that star formation is ongoing is this relatively young region.

Telescope snaps most distant object

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Astronomers tracking a mysterious blast of energy called a gamma ray burst said on Tuesday they had snapped a photograph of the most distant object in the universe -- a smudge 13 billion light-years away.

Hawaii's Gemini Observatory caught the image earlier this month after a satellite first detected the burst.

"Our infrared observations from Gemini immediately suggested that this was an unusually distant burst, these images were the smoking gun," said Edo Berger of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Distortions in the light signature of the object show it is 13 billion years old -- at the speed of light, 13 billion light-years away. A light-year is 6 trillion miles (10 trillion km).

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Geostationary Solar Powered Airship

May-01-09
U.S. Defense contractor Lockheed Martin is developing a $400 million airship surveillance and telecommunications platform called the High Altitude Airship (HAA).The HAA is an un-tethered, unmanned lighter-than-air vehicle that will operate above the jet stream in a stationary position. The airship will be able to survey a 600-mile diameter area to deliver telecommunications relay, weather data or surveillance. The ship will be built using high-strength fabrics to minimize hull weight. Lift is provided by helium and leakage, as well as migration of air and water vapor into the helium enclosure, will be minimized by the envelope design.

Peanut-shaped Stellar Explosion Spotted By Hubble

ScienceDaily (Apr. 25, 2009) — Using the NASA / ESA Hubble Space Telescope (HST), an international team of astronomers have taken the first optical images of a dramatic stellar outburst and discovered a peanut-shaped bubble expanding rapidly into space.

Team member Valerio Ribeiro, a graduate student from Liverpool John Moores University presented their results on Wednesday 22nd April at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science conference at the University of Hertfordshire. Read more......