NASA Finds Hal Jordan’s Ring?

Posted on 06/15/11 at 12:56 PM in Articles by Mike Romo 10 Comments

 

 

The team at the JPL/NASA Spitzer Space Telescope mission have released the above photo of RCW 120, which looks suspiciously like  a certain power ring, just in time for the opening of Green Lantern.  

From the NASA release:

Known to astronomers as RCW 120, this region of hot gas and glowing dust can be found in the murky clouds encircled by the tail of the constellation Scorpius. The green ring of dust is actually glowing in infrared colors that our eyes cannot see, but show up brightly when viewed by Spitzer's infrared detectors. At the center of this ring are a couple of giant stars whose intense ultraviolet light carved out this bubble, though they blend in with the other stars when viewed in the infrared.

Rings like this are so common in Spitzer’s observations that astronomers have even enlisted the help of the public to help find and catalog them all. Anyone interested in joining the search as a citizen scientist can visit "The Milky Way Project," part of the "Zooniverse" of public astronomy projects, at http://www.milkywayproject.org/.

More information on the Spitzer Space Telescope can be found at http://spitzer.caltech.edu/ and http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer. 

 

Thanks to Whitney Clavin for the heads up!

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Comments

  1. TheNextChampion TheNextChampion says:
    June 15, 2011 at 1:10 pm

    If they look realy closey they can see Guardians sitting on a mountain.

    I always love looking at these things, I got so many sites bookmarked on chrome.

  2. SteenAR SteenAR says:
    June 15, 2011 at 1:16 pm

    I sat and marked these things on that Spitzer site for probably 2 hours straight the other day. Very fascinating. 

  3. Jikorijo Jikorijo says:
    June 15, 2011 at 1:44 pm

    Hal needs to stop hot dogging while on the job.

  4. ericmci ericmci says:
    June 15, 2011 at 1:44 pm

    looks more like someone farted through subspace

  5. WheelHands WheelHands says:
    June 15, 2011 at 2:36 pm

    Fascinating.

  6. clay clay says:
    June 15, 2011 at 3:26 pm
    It’s Mogo’s flatulant brother, the gas giant…
     
  7. r3v r3v says:
    June 15, 2011 at 5:29 pm

    Ok, viral marketing is getting out of hand now.

  8. NathanNicdao NathanNicdao says:
    June 15, 2011 at 7:41 pm

    There’s green, blue, red, and some yellow. ALAN MOORE IS A PROPHET!

  9. IroncladMerc says:
    June 17, 2011 at 10:18 am

    That so-called nebula is really the War of the Green Lanterns raging on right now up in space. Looks like the GL Corps has the Red Lantern corps surrounded right now.

  10. kryptonkid says:
    June 18, 2011 at 2:55 am

    I saw this  this morning in my inbox  when I opened my NASA daily digest and I’m using it it as my desktop background until I  find a suitable replacement image. Bear in mind these are formed by gas and dust particles, so maybe lay off the toilet humour

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