Former Miss Universe Miss Venezuela dies of cancer at age 28

Ms. Venezuela - Eva Ekvall

This photo was taken on May 11, 2001. In this photo, Miss Venezuela Eva Ekvall stands with other contestants, unseen, as they wait for the announcement of the winner of Miss Universe in Bayamon, Puerto Rico.

According to the news, Ekvall died on Saturday Dec. 17, 2011 due to breast cancer in Houston at age 28. The venezuelan television channel Globovision reports that Ekvall died on Saturday in a Houston hospital after a long struggle with breast cancer. At age 18, Ekvall was third runner-up in the Miss Universe pageant in Puerto Rico. She was a model, actress and television news anchor.

Ekvall was crowned Miss Venezuela at age 17 in 2000, and the following year she was third runner-up in the Miss Universe pageant in Puerto Rico.

She also authored a book, "Fuera de Foco" ("Out of Focus"), which was about her struggle with cancer.

Before she died, she told the newspaper El Nacional in an interview last year after the book was published that "I needed to send the message of the need for cancer prevention."

On the cover was a portrait in which she appeared with makeup and her head shaved. The book also included images of her while going through chemotherapy.

"I hate to see photos in which I come out ugly," Ekvall told El Nacional. "But you know what? Nobody ever said cancer is pretty or that I should look like Miss Venezuela when I have cancer."

At that time, she was hopeful of overcoming cancer and wanted to write more.

She was married to radio producer John Fabio Bermudez and had a 2-year-old daughter.

In her book, Ekvall had described her joy at the birth of her daughter saying "that happiness, although (the daughter) may not know it or understand it, keeps me alive today."

The book included emails that she wrote to friends providing updates on her treatment and thanking them for their support, as well as short essays by relatives and friends reflecting on her ordeal.

When she died, Ekvall's husband posted a photo on Twitter showing a close-up of his hand holding hers, resting on a bed, with the words "Always together ... I love you wife."

A Galaxy Cluster Gets Sloshed

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Like wine in a glass, vast clouds of hot gas are sloshing back and forth in Abell 2052, a galaxy cluster located about 480 million light years from Earth. By the way, for those who don't know what light year is, this is the distance covered by light after a year, as we know, light travels at an estimated speed of 186,000 miles/second. So when we say light year, that would be (186,000 miles x 60 sec. x 60 minutes x 24 hrs. x 365days). That's how far a single light year is.

Now, according to NASA, X-ray data (blue) from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory shows the hot gas in this dynamic system, and optical data (gold) from the Very Large Telescope shows the galaxies. The hot, X-ray bright gas has an average temperature of about 30 million degrees, and we know that's too hot.

A huge spiral structure in the hot gas - spanning almost a million light years - is seen around the outside of the image, surrounding a giant elliptical galaxy at the center. This spiral was created when a small cluster of galaxies smashed into a larger one that surrounds the central elliptical galaxy.

The smaller cluster passed the cluster core, the direction of motion of the cluster gas reversed and it traveled back towards the cluster center. The cluster gas moved through the center again and "sloshed" back and forth, similar to wine sloshing in a glass that was jerked sideways. The sloshing gas ended up in a spiral pattern because the collision between the two clusters was off-center.

The Chandra data show clear bubbles evacuated by material blasted away from the black hole, which are surrounded by dense, bright, cool rims. As with the sloshing, this activity helps prevent cooling of the gas in the cluster's core, setting limits on the growth of the giant elliptical galaxy and its supermassive black hole.

~Source: NASA.gov

A Memorable Aurora Over Norway

This picture, which is copyright of and credited to Ole Christian Salomonsen, became NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day for December 5, 2011 (Dec. 6 in PH time).

According to NASA, it was one of the most memorable auroras of the season. There was green light, red light, and sometimes a mixture of the two. There were multiple rays, distinct curtains, and even an auroral corona. It took up so much of the sky. In the background were stars too numerous to count, in the foreground a friend trying to image the same sight. The scene was captured with a fisheye lens around and above Tromsø, Norway, last month. With the Sun becoming more active, next year might bring even more spectacular aurora.