Lyra

Lyra was above me when summer brought its heat to Texas, but she's hovering near the horizon now. And trees all around doesn't help much...

NGC 2264, One Busy Body

NGC 2264 is the designation number of the New General Catalogue that identifies two astronomical objects as a single object: -the Cone Nebula, -the Christmas Tree Cluster, Two other objects are within this designation but not officially included: -Snowflake Cluster, -the Fox Fur Nebula. All of the objects are located in the Monoceros constellation and are located about 800 parsecs or 2600 light-years from Earth. NGC 2264 is sometimes referred to as the Christmas Tree Cluster and the Cone Nebula. However, the designation of NGC 2264 in the New General Catalogue refers to both objects and not the cluster alone. 

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Google Doodle Honors Ada Lovelace

Google is celebrating the 197th birthday of Ada Lovelace - considered to be the world's first computer programmer - with a homepage doodle that honors her contributions to computer science.

The doodle features Lovelace at her desk, hard at work on an equation, the paper spilling onto the floor and forming the Google logo. Bubbles atop the logo show the evolution of the computer, from Lovelace's equations to bulky mainframes to today's portable laptops and tablets.

Lovelace was not the only math whiz in her family. Though her father was well-known poet Lord Byron, her mother - Annabella Milbanke Byron - reportedly did not want Ada to follow in his "volatile, poetic" footsteps, and therefore had Ada focus on science and math. It worked, and Ada became a mathematician and worked with Charles Babbage, who was developing his Analytical Engine. Since some of her programming notes for the machine survived, Lovelace earned the distinction of being the first documented programmer in the world.

Since 2009, Lovelace fans have honored her contributions with an official Ada Lovelace Day. This year, it took place on Oct. 16 and the 2013 celebration is scheduled for Tuesday, Oct. 15.

"Ada Lovelace Day is about sharing stories of women — whether engineers, scientists, technologists or mathematicians — who have inspired you to become who you are today," according to the organization's website. "The aim is to create new role models for girls and women in these male-dominated fields by raising the profile of other women in STEM."

Enthusiasts are encouraged to add their own stories to the findingada.com website.

More: Google Doodle Honors Ada Lovelace, World's First Programmer | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

PIA14885, the Dragonfish Nebula

This infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the nebula nicknamed "the Dragonfish." This turbulent region, jam-packed with stars, is home to some of the most luminous massive stars in our Milky Way galaxy. It is located approximately 30,000 light-years away in the Crux constellation. The massive stars have blown a bubble in the gas and dust, carving out a shell of more than 100 light-years across (seen in lower, central part of image). This shell forms the "toothy mouth" of the Dragonfish, and the two bright spots make it up its beady eyes. The infrared light in this region is coming from the gas and dust that are being heated up by the unseen central cluster of massive stars. The bright spots along the shell, including the "eyes," are possible smaller regions of newly formed stars, triggered by the compression of the gas and dust by winds from the central, massive stars.  

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Supernova Remnant W44

The aftershock of a stellar explosion rippling through space is captured in this new view of the supernova remnant called W44. The image combines longer-wavelength infrared and X-ray light captured by the European Space Agency's Herschel and XMM-Newton space observatories. 

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International Standards

I often hear complaints in the US about the date formats, similar to the resistance to moving to the metric system. Americans typically use the numerical date format 12/5/2012 for today, while much of the rest of the world has adopted the ISO 8601 international standard of YYYY MM DD. If you think of the scale of specificity and it makes sense. If a company or group were only operating in the US, it might be acceptable to revert to non-standard or legacy formats. Since we now have a global economy, it's probably better to just learn the standard rather than to hold on to outdated formats (pardon the pun). Time to join the modern age, America.

International standard date and time notation

Eagle Nebula

The Eagle Nebula (catalogued as Messier 16 or M16, and as NGC 6611) is a young open cluster of stars in the constellation Serpens, discovered by Jean-Philippe de Cheseaux in 1745-46. 

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