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Yes, it’s that time of the year when you can show your appreciation to the Wikipedia. Many of us using Wikipedia on daily basis as source of information on almost any subject in the World. WikiSky’s team is active contributor of Astronomy section in Wikipedia. Many astronomical object articles in Wikipedia are illustrated with images produced by WikiSky. So, if you like Wikipedia, if you find it as useful tool for your researches or simple curiosities, if you are in favour of collaborative knowledge base on Internet, please consider to make some donation to keep Wikipedia’s servers up and running.

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The spectacular new camera installed on NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope during Servicing Mission 4 in May has delivered the most detailed view of star birth in the graceful, curving arms of the nearby spiral galaxy M83.

Nicknamed the Southern Pinwheel, M83 is undergoing more rapid star formation than our own Milky Way galaxy, especially in its nucleus. The sharp “eye” of the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) has captured hundreds of young star clusters, ancient swarms of globular star clusters, and hundreds of thousands of individual stars, mostly blue supergiants and red supergiants.

The image, taken in August 2009, provides a close-up view of the myriad stars near the galaxy’s core, the bright whitish region at far right.

WFC3’s broad wavelength range, from ultraviolet to near-infrared, reveals stars at different stages of evolution, allowing astronomers to dissect the galaxy’s star-formation history.

M83, located in the Southern Hemisphere, is often compared to M51, dubbed the Whirlpool galaxy, in the Northern Hemisphere. Located 15 million light-years away in the constellation Hydra, M83 is two times closer to Earth than M51.

Source: Hubble Site

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<script type='text/javascript'
   src='http://wikisky.org/js/skywindow2'></script>
<div style='position:relative;left:0px;top:0px;width:450px;height:450px'>
<DIV id='mySkyWnd'
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  onmouseout='hideddrivetip();'></DIV></div>
<script type="text/javascript">
var options = {ra:12.4283, de:12.81, initZoom:6, zoom:6,
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new SkyWindow2(options).attach($('mySkyWnd'));
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One important detail: If you want to show object info labels while moving mouse over the map. You need to add simple proxy script on your server to redirect AJAX calls to WikiSky servers. The reason is that browser’s JavaScript security policy does not allow to make AJAX call to any server except the one current page loaded from.

Here’s an example of simple php code:

<?php
include("HttpClient.class.php");
$u=$_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"];
$client = new HttpClient("server1.sky-map.org");
if ($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] == 'POST') {
   $client->post('/'.$u, file_get_contents("php://input"));
} else {
   $client->get('/'.$u);
}
$contentType = $client->getHeader("Content-Type");
$pageContents = $client->getContent();
header('Content-type: '.$contentType);
echo $pageContents;
?>

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100 Hours of Astronomy is a global astronomy event from 2 to 5 April when you can discover the Universe with the rest of the world!  A project of the International Year of Astronomy, there are free public activities happening all around the world, and online right here.

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