Pillars of Creation Remastered

     April 24th, 1990. The day the famous Hubble Space Telescope was launched into Earth's orbit to take high quality images and help advance our understanding of the universe. Just 5 short years after its launch, the iconic "Pillars of Creation" photo was taken. Even up to this day, it is the most popular and most recognized picture taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The image would make its way onto shirts, mugs, stamps, pillow, and many movies.

     In 2014, almost 20 years after the initial imaging of the Pillars, NASA decided to pay a tribute to their iconic image and re-photograph it, but this time with the Wide Field Camera 3 that was installed in 2009. This new image has double the resolution and shows an incredible increase in detail when compared to the original one, taken with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. Below is an image of the original with its 2014 counterpart. After looking at the two images, you can see how far we have come in terms of progress for space exploration and imaging.

Image courtesy of NASA//Pillars of Creation (1995) on the left and (2014) on the right

     The Pillars of Creation are located in the Eagle Nebula (M16). They are three large columns of gas contained within scorching UV light from a cluster of young stars. In order to put the size of these pillars into perspective, the longest pillar is 4 light-years long. Yup, 4 light-years which is completely unexpected. At first sight, one may think that these are relatively small, but when the actual length is revealed, it is quite impressive. However, those pillars aren't the entire nebula but instead just a tiny, tiny portion of it. Below is a picture showing a larger portion of the nebula.

Image courtesy of NASA//Full image of the Eagle Nebula

     As a bonus to add to the retaken image, NASA also decided that it would be cool to take a picture of it in an infrared wavelength. In the infrared version, the pillars look nearly transparent and ghostly like something out of a horror movie. In the picture below, the infrared version is shown. There are many more stars visible in the background because infrared light can penetrate much of the dust and gas easier, just not the really dense parts of the pillars though, however.

Image courtesy of NASA//Infrared picture of the Pillars of Creation

     Throughout the 20 year interval, the new picture does have some slight differences as there are some new jets of gas spewing out of some areas. These have been identified as protostar systems, the early stages of a solar system forming. This will give us a lot of information on how our solar system has formed in the early stages as we continue to observe it for the next thousands of years.

     The Pillars of Creation are speculated to be destroyed by clouds of hot dust, as predicted by images taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope. The estimated time was said to be 6,000 years, but considering that the Pillars are 7,000 light-years away, the Pillars have probably already been destroyed and the results will reach the Earth in many years.

     From the beginning of the Hubble Space Telescope's lifetime all the way till now, 25 years later, it has been the pinnacle of space-based telescopes and has set the standards pretty high for what it has done. It has been used to expand our understanding of the universe so much and it's sad to see that it will be coming down within several years. Unfortunately, not all things last forever but there is good news out of this. The James Webb Space Telescope is set to be launched soon and this is a telescope with far more advanced technology than the Hubble and it will be exciting to see what it can discover. Who knows what we'll find there among the infinite depths of space, large stars and galaxies, black holes and evidence of dark matter, or maybe even signals of life?

To read the full articles on this topic, click the following links:
http://www.astronomy.com/news/2015/01/hubble-goes-high-def-to-revisit-the-iconic-pillars-of-creation
http://www.imveurope.com/news/news_story.php?news_id=1614
http://www.space.com/28175-pillars-of-creation-hubble-photos-2015.html

Tectonic Plates on Mars?

Tectonic plates on Earth are large pieces of the crust which make up the lithosphere. They float on top the asthenosphere (upper mantle) of the Earth and are responsible for making mountains, faults, trenches, earthquakes, volcanoes and probably some other things too.

So I asked, do other planets in our solar system have tectonic plates too?

After doing some research, I was both satisfied and disappointed with what I found.

I came upon 2 articles, both say that Mars has tectonic plates, but one says that Mars is in the early stages of plates while the other argues that Mars no longer appears geologically active.

I found this really interesting as it's always fun to have multiple opinions on things such as this. Proof of Mars' tectonic plates is mostly directed at the Valles Marinaris. This is a very, very, very long canyon system, that stretches a distance equivalent of New York to Los Angeles and is over 5 times the depth of the Grand Canyon. After many photos of the canyon, a scientist has discovered remarkable resemblance to the faults in the Himalayas. Tibet, and California which could suggest that it could have formed from plates.

Canyon on Mars captured by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

Mars is also home to the highest mountain in the solar system, Olympus Mons which is a pretty sick name. It's roughly 3 times the height of Mt. Everest and covers a surface area of about... the state of Arizona

Image Courtesy of NASA, image of Olympus Mons as compared to Arizona

It is believed that Mars has 2 plates, in which the canyon lies right in between them. When the canyon is is examined, scientists and astronomers have found matching sides that are seperated by 150 km which is why Mars is said to have 2 plates only.

Now, one article says that "Mars is at a primitive stage of plate tectonics. It gives us a glimpse of how the early Earth may have looked."(An Yin). What is being said here is that Mars is only at the beginning of it's geological processing age as the plates are only developing, as the early Earth did as well. However, Sophie Allan from the National Space Center says that Mars no longer appears to be geologically active, meaning that the plates were possibly once in a more "healthy" state with more action and movement but has now slowed down, and stopped. I personally agree with the second article (halt to tectonic plate formation) as it wouldn't make too much sense that Mars is only now showing signs of plate movement. Mars is further away from the sun than the Earth so it makes sense that Mars' core and inner layers could have cooled faster than the Earth's which led to the gradual stop of the tectonic plates. Also, the size of Mars is quite smaller than Earth's as well.

Image Courtesy of NASA, the Valles Marineris as compared to the USA

So my question to you guys is, what do you think is the story behind Mars' tectonic plates?

You can read the full articles here:
http://news.discovery.com/space/shift-happens-mars-may-have-plate-tectonics-120820.htm
http://www.spaceanswers.com/solar-system/does-mars-have-tectonic-plates/

Spacecraft from India has past the halfway point to Mars!

So I found an article on a spacecraft that was aiming towards landing on Mars here: http://phys.org/news/2014-09-india-spacecraft-mars.html

I thought that this was very neat because Mars has sparked up a lot of interest recently with the many discoveries from the Curiosity rover and now we have more spacecrafts going to research on the red planet and hopefully discover traces of ancient life

The particular thing about this article was that it was a spacecraft from India. This is the first I've heard that a country not as developed as our North American and European counterparts have had a very successful inter-planetary journey.

This mission is also very low cost, only approximately 70 million USD as compared to the one launched from NASA at a substantially larger cost of 671 million USD

This shows that poorer, struggling countries can also manage to create cheaper, efficient products that can achieve close to the same caliber as more expensive and high tech ones from NASA.

Below is an image of the Indian spacecraft that was launched in November of 2013