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For Americans at home, a holiday weekend is coming up. Time for picnics and games and fireworks.

But what links the USA's Independence Day holiday, the Crab Nebula and NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft? What links the American War of Independence with the planet Uranus? And what is the Fireworks Galaxy? Find out in Cosmic 4th of July.


Last edited by Mona - Astronomy; 06/29/16 05:49 AM.

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Here is some cosmic red, white and blue. NGC 2367 lies about 7000 light years away in the constellation Canis Major (the Bigger Dog).

It's a star cluster that was discovered over two hundred years ago by German-English astronomer William Herschel. Herschel certainly couldn't see this nebula and star cluster in the glory captured in this image from the European Southern Observatory's La Silla Observatory. (Image credit: ESO/G. Beccari)

The red is the glow of energized hydrogen gas. The blue is from hot young stars which release much more heat than white-hot stars.


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In 1901 GK Persei was the brightest object in the night sky. It's over 1500 light years away in the constellation Perseus, and the light show was caused by a thermonuclear blast on the surface of a white dwarf. This is called a nova.

This image of GK Persei is a composite of data from three telescopes, each using a different wavelength. Blue shows X-rays from Chandra, the optical data from Hubble is in yellow, and the pink is data from the Very Large Array, a ground-based radio telescope.

(Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/RIKEN/D.Takei et al; Optical: NASA/STScI; Radio: NRAO/VLA)


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Here is the Fireworks Galaxy (NGC 6946). This beautiful spiral - looking rather like a Catherine wheel - has had nine supernovae observed in it during the last century.

(Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/MSSL/R.Soria et al, Optical: AURA/Gemini OBs)


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GK Persei is pretty cool.

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If you like lights in the sky, but don't like the bangs of fireworks, aurorae light up the sky and they are very quiet. However for North America you aren't likely to see the aurora borealis on July 4th because the sky is too light.

However it's a great time for the aurora australis and the above pictures were taken in June of last year in Antarctica. (Image Credit & Copyright: Robert Schwarz (South Pole Station)) They were taken during a geomagnetic storm. The camera needed to be put in a heated box because of the extreme cold. The fisheye photos show south pole astronomical observatories around the horizon, and if you look closely at the aurora, you can see the stars of the southern Milky Way.


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You've probably seen this iconic Hubble mosaic of the Crab Nebula (M1). On July 4, 1054 the death of a massive star took place in a stupendous explosion. The Crab Nebula is the remnant. There are records from Japanese and Chinese astronomers, and it was almost certainly witnessed by Native Americans. I hope there are no fireworks to equal this on Independence Day, unless they're also a very long way off. M1 is around 6500 light years away in the constellation Taurus.


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Wow Mona that Nebula picture is so amazing!

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That is spectacular. If it were a stone, it would make a beautiful ring or pendant!

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These aren't stones, but here is a selection of pendants. (I don't know anything about the quality of the products or the sellers, but the pictures show some pretty things.)


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