Infrared Saturn Clouds : This false-color view from NASAs Cassini spacecraft shows clouds in Saturns northern hemisphere. The view was made using images taken by Cassinis wide-angle camera on July 20, 2016, using a combination of spectral filters sensitive to infrared light at 750, 727 and 619 nanometers.
No one expected this pharaoh to found Egypt’s most powerful dynasty
Egyptians hold in high esteem the two pharaohs who unified their country: the Old Kingdom pharaoh Narmer of around 3100 BC, and Ahmose I (unknown—1525 BC), who reunited a divided Egypt around 1550 BC. and ushered in the celebrated New Kingdom.
When young Ahmose I ascended the throne, Egypt was in tremendous turmoil. Intruders of Asiatic origin known as the Hyksos, meaning “rulers of foreign lands,” had taken control of the Nile Delta. They had savagely murdered Pharaoh Seqenenre Tao, Ahmose’s father, and decimated the army. They demanded tribute from the rulers of Upper Egypt in Thebes and took their princesses as wives. The barbarism of the Hyksos was memorialized by Egyptian historian Manetho. “[They] burned our cities ruthlessly, razed to the ground the temples of our gods, and treated all the natives with a cruel hostility.”
NGC 3344 is a glorious spiral galaxy around half the size of the Milky Way, which lies 25 million light-years distant. We are fortunate enough to see NGC 3344 face-on, allowing us to study its structure in detail.
The galaxy features an outer ring swirling around an inner ring with a subtle bar structure in the centre. The central regions of the galaxy are predominately populated by young stars, with the galactic fringes also featuring areas of active star formation.
Central bars are found in around two thirds of spiral galaxies. NGC 3344’s is clearly visible here, although it is not as dramatic as some (see for example heic1202).
Approximately 1,000 light years from Earth lies the Fine Ring planetary nebula. Planetary nebulae form when some dying stars, having expanded into a red giant phase, expel a shell of gas as they evolve into white dwarfs. Most planetary nebulae are either spherical or elliptical in shape, or bipolar but the Fine Ring looks like an almost perfect circular ring making it very unique.
Astronomers believe this particular shape as a result of the star being part of a binary system. The interaction between the primary star and its orbiting companion shapes the ejected material. Observations suggest that the binary pair is almost perfectly face-on from our vantage point, implying that the planetary nebula’s structure is aligned in the same way.
