This glittery spray of ancient stars is about 16,700 light-years away from Earth toward the constellation Tucana. Globular clusters like this one are isolated star cities, home to hundreds of thousands of stars that are held together by their mutual gravity. And like the fast pace of cities, there’s plenty of action in these stellar metropolises. The stars are in constant motion, orbiting around the cluster’s center.
Past observations have shown that the heavyweight stars tend to crowd into the “downtown” core area, while lightweight stars reside in the less populated suburbs. But as heavyweight stars age, they rapidly lose mass, cool down and shut off their nuclear furnaces. After the purge, only the stars’ bright, superhot cores – called white dwarfs – remain. This weight loss program causes the now lighter-weight white dwarfs to be nudged out of the downtown area through gravitational interactions with heftier stars.
Until these Hubble observations, astronomers had never seen the dynamic conveyor belt in action. The Hubble results reveal young white dwarfs amid their leisurely 40-million-year exodus from the bustling center of the cluster.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.
Incredible view of Fanjingshan or mount Fanjing, Guizhou, China
Guizhou, China 😍✈️
Daphnis and the Rings of Saturn : What’s happening to the rings of Saturn? A little moon making big waves. The moon is 8-kilometer Daphnis and it is making waves in the Keeler Gap of Saturn’s rings using just its gravity – as it bobs up and down, in and out. The featured image is a colored and more detailed version of a previously released images taken in 2017 by the robotic Cassini spacecraft during one of its Grand Finale orbits. Daphnis can be seen on the far right, sporting ridges likely accumulated from ring particles. Daphnis was discovered in Cassini images in 2005 and raised mounds of ring particles so high in 2009 – during Saturn’s equinox when the ring plane pointed directly at the Sun – that they cast notable shadows. via NASA
It makes me sad how no one ever seems to mention how wild the crocodilian-line archosaurs were. Dinosaurs get all the attention when there was equally crazy shit happening on the other branch of the archosaur tree.
There was a whole linage of bipedal crocodylomorphs during the Triassic that were basically identical to theropod dinosaurs, so much so that a lot of them were initially classified as dinosaurs!
Just fucking look at them!
And these weren’t just little lizard guys, there were some big lads running around.
Not to mention the long-legged ones that galloped around on all fours like some kind of terrifying reptilian dogs.
These crazy crocodiles aren’t just from the Triassic, either; there was a galloping, hoofed crocodilian that lived during the Eocene and likely hunted horses. (They were smaller and not quite as fast as modern horses, but still)
But don’t worry, they weren’t all meat-eaters! There were vegetarian and omnivore crocodylomorphs too! Just look at this guy!
He was an ankylosaur before ankylosaurs were cool (or even existed).
Sea of Stars, Vaadhoo Island, Maldives by Doug Perrine
so im watching the history channel on youtube (i could tell you so much on short nosed bears rn) but i just finished watching this thing called the mosasaur and its your pretty basic mega water dinosaur, 50 feet long, eel tail, sonar, doesn’t chew its food etc, but then it got dark
these shits were top predators, no competition whatsoever…..except from themselves. the narrator was saying that even though there was nothing to oppose them, they somehow continued to evolve into like fifty 50 different species of this mega predator. And its really cool because it started as a three foot lizard and in just 6 million years it became “the ultimate success story of evolution”.
they had these weird funky teeth too. not only were they really big and strong like you’d expect but they had teeth in the roof of them mouth cuz they’d slide their dinner down their mouth like a conveyer belt. and since their so big you’d think wow how did no one see them? apparently sea creatures are frickin blind or something bc this megabeasty would just lie on the frickin bottom of the ocean and wait for something to swim up. then it would propel its ass up with this snaky tail and just boosh i ated you
but mosasaurs kept evolving even though they were literally the top predator. why is that?? that doesn’t happen in nature. turns out they were causing themselves to evolve. turns out they’re one of the only species (including humans) that naturally commits murder aka kills their own kind. they’ll bite each others heads until they can get a good grip then one of them snaps the neck. and they didn’t even eat the other guy. they did it. for. fun. (apparently they thrive on violence????)
and im over here going like wtf. but then it got worse. these scary ass motherfuckers began to go anywhere they pleased. they evolved even more and then moved into fresh water. like swamps and rivers. thats terrifying. NOTHING On eARth could stop them.
Nothing on Earth ;) aka enter the extinction comet
BUT then I learned that even the bigass dino killing comet didn’t even kill the thing. They literally had to starve to death because all of their prey died out. NOPE not them. THey didn’t die out because they’re like dinosaur gods or some shit. EVERYTHING DIED BUT THEM
The night palatte
Erupcion Cordon Caulle, Region de Los Rios, Chile. by Francisco Negroni
A rendered view of the night sky from a planet in a globular cluster. Source: Reddit
Amateur astronomer, owns a telescope. This is a side blog to satiate my science-y cravings! I haven't yet mustered the courage to put up my personal astro-stuff here. Main blog : @an-abyss-called-life
212 posts