Eerie, dramatic pictures from the Hubble telescope show newborn stars emerging from "eggs" — not the barnyard variety — but rather, dense, compact pockets of interstellar gas called evaporating gaseous globules (EGGs). Hubble found the "EGGs," appropriately enough, in the Eagle nebula, a nearby star-forming region 7,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Serpens.

These striking pictures resolve the EGGs at the tip of finger-like features protruding from monstrous columns of cold gas and
dust in the Eagle Nebula (also called M16). The columns — dubbed "elephant trunks" — protrude from the wall of a vast
cloud of molecular hydrogen, like stalagmites rising above the floor of a cavern. Inside the gaseous towers, which are
light-years long, the interstellar gas is dense enough to collapse under its own weight, forming young stars that continue to grow
as they accumulate more and more mass from their surroundings.

Credit: Jeff Hester and Paul Scowen (Arizona State University), and NASA

Here is the picture of Saturn taken by the Hubble telescope in ultraviolet light. The glowing, swirling material
at Saturn's poles is its auroral "curtains," rising more than a thousand miles above the cloud tops.

Saturn's auroral displays are caused by an energetic wind from the Sun that sweeps over the planet, much like Earth's aurora,
which is occasionally seen in the nighttime sky. The process that triggers these auroras is similar to the phenomenon that causes
fluorescent lamps to glow.

Credits: J.T. Trauger (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and NASA.
 

 Although it may look like this F-14A Tomcat is burning enough oil to fuel America's automotive enthusiasts for a decade, there's no need to call OPEC yet. In fact, this plane has just broken through the sound barrier and the "smoke" is actually water vapor created by shock waves.
The speed of sound is 758 miles per hour in air that is 68 degrees Fahrenheit. This speed varies according to atmospheric conditions because sound moves faster through liquids than it does through gases.

As an airplane approaches the speed of sound, it "pushes" the sound waves that are in front of it. Because sound cannot travel faster than itself, sound waves "pile up." These compressed waves of sound are called "shock waves." As shock waves move away from the airplane, they cause pressure to drop. This pressure drop causes water to vaporize and the human ear to perceive a loud "sonic boom."

Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier on Oct. 14, 1947. After this initial break-through (please excuse our pun), aircraft traveled faster and faster until, on Oct. 3, 1967, Air Force Captain Peter Knight piloted his X-15 to a new record: 4,690 miles per hour--nearly 7 times the speed of sound.

Photograph by PH2 Hensley. Courtesy Defense Visual Information Center
 
 

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10/17/03©Davis  Updated 10/17/03
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