I don't know why JPL isn't playing up the coolness factor of this a bit more, but in this panoramic navcam montage of Bonneville, you can clearly see the lander's heatshield to the left, glinting in the sun.
Upon RTFAing, it's not a new nebula, it's a new star which has emerged from an existing nebula: M78, a diffuse nebula in Orion. Is 8x6 arc minutes a very large dimension? Our charts are going to need updating.
>this is an honest-to-goodness new star that >just started lighting up the surrounding nebula. Well, strictly speaking, since M78 is 1,630 light years from Earth, it hasn't *just* started lighting up.;)
I'm reminded of Stephen Baxter's Raft [linked: much earlier short story draft], which takes place in a universe where the gravitational constant is thousands of times higher, humans produce noticable gravity wells, life is concentrated into breathable nebulas, and the black holes at the centers of these nebulas produce such wildly intricate tidal forces that "gravitic chemistry" occurs on the surfaces of their accretion disks. (Fact-check me as needed.) Coasting by one of these black holes, the characters even find intelligent gravitic life.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know why JPL isn't playing up the coolness factor of this a bit more, but in this panoramic navcam montage of Bonneville, you can clearly see the lander's heatshield to the left, glinting in the sun.
(Later on preview) Okay, now MSNBC is mentioning it.
We'll have come full circle when our "laptops" start looking -- and weighing -- like the Compaq "Portable" computer.
Here is the Forbes CEO Approval Poll for Stratton Sclavos. See the steep dip in Sep-Oct 2003? That was Sitefinder. I think it's time to arrest that ratings climb.
(Apologies if Redundant.)
CG animation and screencaps here:0 stardis k.html
http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2004/022
>The new object had appeared alongside the well-known gas cloud known as Messier 78.
D'oh. I stand corrected.
Upon RTFAing, it's not a new nebula, it's a new star which has emerged from an existing nebula: M78, a diffuse nebula in Orion. Is 8x6 arc minutes a very large dimension? Our charts are going to need updating.
>this is an honest-to-goodness new star that ;)
>just started lighting up the surrounding nebula.
Well, strictly speaking, since M78 is 1,630 light years from Earth, it hasn't *just* started lighting up.
I'm reminded of Stephen Baxter's Raft [linked: much earlier short story draft], which takes place in a universe where the gravitational constant is thousands of times higher, humans produce noticable gravity wells, life is concentrated into breathable nebulas, and the black holes at the centers of these nebulas produce such wildly intricate tidal forces that "gravitic chemistry" occurs on the surfaces of their accretion disks. (Fact-check me as needed.) Coasting by one of these black holes, the characters even find intelligent gravitic life.