Last summer I wrote about a LEGO scratch model of the Hubble Telescope, which could become an official production model by LEGO if it was popular enough. (See The Hubble observatory in LEGO.) LEGO allows LEGO modelers to post about their creations on the LEGO Ideas site. Visitors can vote on the models they like best. Those models that exceed 10,000 votes will be considered for commercial production.
Gabriel Russo posted his impressive Hubble Telescope model at the LEGO Ideas site last year:
LEGO on Wednesday (Feb. 4) revealed the outcome of its most recent review of fan-suggested model kits submitted through its LEGO Ideas website. The Danish toy company passed on making the Hubble telescope, selecting a Pixar animator’s WALL-E robot and a “Doctor Who” set instead.
“We reviewed eight amazing projects that reached 10,000 supporters between June and September,” Signe Lonholdt with the LEGO Ideas team said in a video announcing the results of the evaluation. “Reaching 10,000 supporters is a tremendous accomplishment, but the journey [for the sets] is far from over.”
A new image taken with ESO’s VISTA survey telescope reveals the famous Trifid Nebula in a new and ghostly light. By observing in infrared light, astronomers can see right through the dust-filled central parts of the Milky Way and spot many previously hidden objects. In just this tiny part of one of the VISTA surveys, astronomers have discovered two unknown and very distant Cepheid variable stars that lie almost directly behind the Trifid. They are the first such stars found that lie in the central plane of the Milky Way beyond its central bulge.
As one of its major surveys of the southern sky, the VISTA telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile is mapping the central regions of the Milky Way in infrared light to search for new and hidden objects. This VVV survey (standing for VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea) is also returning to the same parts of the sky again and again to spot objects that vary in brightness as time passes.
A tiny fraction of this huge VVV dataset has been used to create this striking new picture of a famous object, the star formation region Messier 20, usually called the Trifid Nebula, because of the ghostly dark lanes that divide it into three parts when seen through a telescope.
The familiar pictures of the Trifid show it in visible light, where it glows brightly in both the pink emission from ionised hydrogen and the blue haze of scattered light from hot young stars. Huge clouds of light-absorbing dust are also prominent. But the view in the VISTA infrared picture is very different. The nebula is just a ghost of its usual visible-light self. The dust clouds are far less prominent and the bright glow from the hydrogen clouds is barely visible at all. The three-part structure is almost invisible.
In the new image, as if to compensate for the fading of the nebula, a spectacular new panorama comes into view. The thick dust clouds in the disc of our galaxy that absorb visible light allow through most of the infrared light that VISTA can see. Rather than the view being blocked, VISTA can see far beyond the Trifid and detect objects on the other side of the galaxy that have never been seen before.
By chance this picture shows a perfect example of the surprises that can be revealed when imaging in the infrared. Apparently close to the Trifid in the sky, but in reality about seven times more distant [1], a newly discovered pair of variable stars has been found in the VISTA data. These are Cepheid variables, a type of bright star that is unstable and slowly brightens and then fades with time. This pair of stars, which the astronomers think are the brightest members of a cluster of stars, are the only Cepheid variables detected so far that are close to the central plane, but on the far side of the galaxy. They brighten and fade over a period of eleven days.
—
A video comparing views of the Trifid Nebula in visible and infrared light:
Press Release: February 3rd 2015: Enterprise In Space (EIS), a project of the National Space Society, is excited to announce the winners of the Enterprise in Space Orbiter Design Contest. The EIS project will take the Grand Prize winning design, which is a visualization of a science fiction concept, and make it science fact. EIS will do this by building the winning design and sending it into Earth orbit as the first real spacecraft bearing the name Enterprise. This mission is also unique in that it will carry more than 100 student experiments into space and back.
The Grand Prize winning entry was submitted by Stanley Von Medvey, a concept artist who grew up in Chicago and currently resides in California’s San Francisco Bay Area. Von Medvey draws inspiration from the fields of aerospace and science. When asked why he entered the contest, Von Medvey responded, “I have a deep love for space exploration. Participation in spaceflight experiments as a student was formative, so I’d love to contribute to another young person’s learning in a similar way.”
The First Prize winner is Steven Pestana, a college senior at California State Polytechnic University-Pomona studying geology and physics with plans to pursue a career in planetary and space science research and exploration. Pestana was motivated to entered the contest in order to “support science education through the EIS project.”
The Second Prize winner is John Cortes, a first-year graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania pursuing a PhD in mechanical engineering. Originally from Colombia, Cortes migrated to the United States at the age of ten. On entering the contest, Cortes told EIS that “I am a firm believer in educating our youth on the potential benefits of space exploration. So much of our current technology has come from the space programs around the world, it’s only right that we continue on this path. I entered a design because I really enjoy designing spacecraft and this was a perfect opportunity to fulfill a dream of seeing one of my designs come to life.”
“The Enterprise in Space team and I want to thank all the people who sent in their wonderful and imaginative science fiction inspired ship designs from all over the world,” said EIS Founder Shawn Case. “It was nice to see entries from so many artistic and engineering perspectives.”
This contest constitutes the first phase of the Enterprise In Space project, whose mission is to design, build, launch, orbit, re-enter, and tour a satellite that will carry more than 100 competitively-selected student experiments into space and back. It was an open international contest seeking science fiction inspired spacecraft designs. This was followed by a public vote to identify the most popular designs submitted to the contest. The final step of the selection process was an evaluation of each design by a panel of expert judges.
Judging the contest were EIS Contest Manager Jim Plaxco, EIS Chief Engineer Fred Becker, Terminal Velocity Aerospace CEO Dominic DePasquale, SNG Studio owner Steve Neill, Consulting Senior Illustrator Andrew Probert, International Association of Astronomical Artists President Jon Ramer, and The Light Works CEO Tobias Richter.
With respect to the judging process, Jim Plaxco stated that “the judges evaluated the design submissions based on their engineering practicality, originality, and design aesthetics. We debated the merits of the various designs and in the end it took us two rounds of voting to arrive at a consensus.” The winning designs can be seen at www.enterpriseinspace.org/winner/
The next phase of the design process is to have an aerospace engineering firm create the necessary engineering drawings and specifications from the winning entry. Follow the progress of the historic EIS project – from winning entry to engineering design to construction and flight – at www.enterpriseinspace.org.
###
About Enterprise In Space (EIS): Enterprise In Space is a first-of-its-kind publicly funded grassroots space project. The project will fly an orbiter with 100+ student experiments into space and then have it return to Earth. It is an educational project of the National Space Society, a non-profit organization. All contributions are tax-free and its wesite is www.enterpirseinspace.org
About National Space Society (NSS): NSS is an independent non-profit educational membership organization dedicated to the creation of a spacefaring civilization. NSS is widely acknowledged as the preeminent citizen’s voice on space, with over 50 chapters in the United States and around the world. The Society publishes Ad Astra magazine, an award-winning periodical chronicling the most important developments in space. Its website is www.nss.org
===
Here is a video overview of the Enterprise in Space program:
![B9AlzJ4IgAEnaWO[1]](https://i0.wp.com/hobbyspace.com/Blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/B9AlzJ4IgAEnaWO1.jpg)
![Enterprise_In_Space5-1024x635[1]](https://i0.wp.com/hobbyspace.com/Blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Enterprise_In_Space5-1024x6351-1024x635.png?resize=520%2C322)
Grand Prize Winner![EIS_sPestana2[1]](https://i0.wp.com/hobbyspace.com/Blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/EIS_sPestana21.png?resize=520%2C520)
![NSSJohnCortesISO4.JPG-1024x576[1]](https://i0.wp.com/hobbyspace.com/Blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/NSSJohnCortesISO4.JPG-1024x5761-1024x576.jpg?resize=520%2C293)
Second Prize Winner