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[abstract alien]

That picture of Jupiter is real!? o_0

Maybe our Universe is one cell in a massive sentient being that is part of a solar system that is part of a galaxy that is part of a universe that is part of a massive sentient being that is part of....

The funny thing is that we can't even rule this out lol

 

[Stellactic]

Wow could you imagine living at the base of that sheer vertical wall of Olympus Mons?

You'd only have half a day once the sun is shadowed by the massive wall.

 

[Goodacre0081]

GLIESE 436 B – A Burning Ice Cube

Gliese 436 B is my new favourite planet. Not because of it’s catchy name, but because of one of the most unusual properties found anywhere in our solar system. Gliese 436 B is a Neptune sized ice world, yet orbits its star at a very toasty 4.3 million miles. That’s almost fifteen times closer to its star than Mercury is to the sun. And yet 436 B stays completely frozen. It is literally an ice cube on fire. The surface on Gliese 436 B stays at a constant temperature because it is so close to its star, and that temperature is a whopping 439 °C. Given that water boils at 100 °C, the presence of ice should be an impossibility. Except its not really ice, at least not in the classical sense. It’s a phenomenon knows as hot ice or ice-ten. It would look much like the ice we have here on Earth, but if you were to and pick some up, you would need a new hand.

 

[lilbaby Jesus]

Unbelievable....anything is possible.

 

[fierrotlepou]

GLIESE 436 B – A Burning Ice Cube

Awesome.

 

[Rhomega Beta]

Just how far away is Mars?

 

[Yes Boss!]

I'm sure most have listened to it before but I was listening again to Radiolab's episode on space as I was walking today. Such a great episode. Sagan, Glass, Ghandi...damn.

http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blogland/2012/aug/20/rebroadcast-space/

 

[Hootie]

so many galaxies...

 

[lilbaby Jesus]

so many galaxies...

HamunaHamunaHamunaHanuna..

 

[Insane Metal]

so many galaxies...

Is that... real? OMG so incredibly fantastic. Imagine how many billions of billions of stars are there in that image alone.

 

[fierrotlepou]

Is that... real? OMG so incredibly fantastic. Imagine how many billions of billions of stars are there in that image alone.

I thought it was fake as well but after doing some research:

http://mediagallery.usatoday.com/Hubble+Space+Telescope

Spiral galaxy NGC 4921 is estimated to be 320 million light years distant. This image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, is being used to identify key stellar distance markers known as Cepheid variable stars. The magnificent spiral NGC 4921 has been informally dubbed anemic because of its low rate of star formation and low surface brightness. Visible in the image are, from the center, a bright nucleus, a bright central bar, a prominent ring of dark dust, blue clusters of recently formed stars, several smaller companion galaxies, unrelated galaxies in the far distant universe, and unrelated stars in our Milky Way Galaxy.

Well, snap. Hubble, I love you.

 

[Insane Metal]

God damn, that is incredible. Thanks for the info.

 

[Goodacre0081]

.

 

[Lucky Forward]

Sen. Nelson: NASA To Lasso Asteroid, Bring It Closer

NASA is planning for a robotic spaceship to lasso a small asteroid and park it near the moon for astronauts to explore, a top senator revealed Friday.

The robotic ship would capture the 500-ton 25-foot asteroid in 2019. Then using an Orion space capsule, now being developed, a crew of about four astronauts would nuzzle up next to the rock in 2021 for spacewalking exploration, according to a government document obtained by The Associated Press.

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said the plan would speed up by four years the existing mission to land astronauts on an asteroid by bringing the space rock closer to Earth.

“It really is a clever concept,” Nelson said in a press conference in Orlando. “Go find your ideal candidate for an asteroid. Go get it robotically and bring it back.”

Yeomans said a 25-foot asteroid is no threat to Earth because it would burn up should it inadvertently enter Earth’s atmosphere. The mission as Nelson described is perfectly safe, he said.

Nelson said this would help NASA develop the capability to nudge away a dangerous asteroid if one headed to Earth in the future. It also would be training for a future mission to send astronauts to Mars in the 2030s, he said.

The government document said the mission, with no price tag at the moment, would inspire because it “will send humans farther than they have ever been before.”

 

[Thug Waffle]

Sen. Nelson: NASA To Lasso Asteroid, Bring It Closer

I expect asteroid mining stations a la the Homeworld franchise by the time I blink out of existence.

 

[Lucky Forward]

Blue Skies Smiling at…Mars?

This is awesome and weird and cool and actually useful: A mosaic of Mount Sharp—the five-kilometer (3-mile) high mountain in the center of Gale Crater—taken by the Mars Curiosity rover has had its white balance altered to make the lighting conditions look as they would on Earth.

Geologists train under the lighting conditions we have here on Earth, but the Sun is fainter on Mars, and the sky a different, butterscotch color. That can trick the brain, making it harder to spot subtle details or see features that would be obvious here on Earth. So sometimes scientists fiddle with the pictures a bit to make them easier to analyze.

 

[opticalmace]

Any students in physics/astronomy here? Just curious.

 

[Goodacre0081]

Hubble telescope spots death of a white dwarf 10 billion years ago

 

[lilbaby Jesus]

Hubble telescope spots death of a white dwarf 10 billion years ago

😳Wow the fact that when we are looking at the stars, we are in fact looking back in time, never ceases to astonish my fucking hair line back!

 

[Dice]

Just how far away is Mars?

If anyone does end up going. I would, by whatever means I can, travel to see them off with a salute. It's so brave and for a purely noble cause and so few people really appreciate what an undertaking it is.

so many galaxies...

This is like a spiritual experience, except it is natural and based on an accurate perspective of life in knowledge of what things that actually exist. It is also my greatest family pride, as this guy is my cousin.

 

[iidesuyo]

It is also my greatest family pride, as this guy is my cousin.

That's awesome. I would love to have a signed autograph ;-)

 

[jerry113]

52 years ago on this day, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to enter space!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vostok_1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Gagarin

Time to celebrate by playing some kerbel space program

 

[Log4Girlz]

so many galaxies...

Each with hundreds of billions of stars and hundreds of billions of planets.

 

[Goodacre0081]

Lost Soviet Mars Lander Found?

 

[Maklershed]

Oh wow how cool would it be if they could get a rover to go to that location and take pictures of it?

 

[Goodacre0081]

Oh wow how cool would it be if they could get a rover to go to that location and take pictures of it?

cool, but probably impossible. my guess is that Curiosity is on the other side of the planet.

 

[fallout]

Lost Soviet Mars Lander Found?

http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/files/2013/04/mars3-parachute-lrg-590x513.jpg

I love that these guys were able to find this when all conspiracy theorists can do is spend 5 seconds looking at an image to see ancient alien artifacts.

 

[Ovid]

Blue Skies Smiling at…Mars?

"Blue sky on Mars? That's a new one."

 

[derFeef]

That's an awesome shot:
http://500px.com/photo/18431385

NO PHOTOSHOP or so-called "manipulation" is involved here, this is all in one shot and just a bit of basic raw-processing was applied.

The situation was just perfect for this shot: the mist just ended above my head with beautiful clear sky on top of it. Therefore one could see the stars as well as the light ray of the headlamp. The golden light arises from a street light which is working by the discharge in sodium vapor and therefore shines yellow.

 

[Partial Gamification]

NASA has recently started an "image-detective" mob-sourcing project to match space-photos of the Earth with the actual locations pictured. There is an incentive-based badge system, and more, but you can check it out at:
http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/sseop/ImageDetective/tutorial/TutorialWrapper.htm

To earn your badge, pick and successfully locate an astronaut image, along with adding cloud cover percent and ground features in the "Feature(s)" field. You may try more than once. After successfully earning your badge, you will create detective credentials to use and start accruing points to get on the Top Scores board!

 

[fierrotlepou]

How NASA plans to capture an asteroid - Video.

Amazing video.

 

[WeAreStarStuff]

so many galaxies...

I swear when I zoom in on the bottom right I can see the Sombrero Galaxy.

 

[Goodacre0081]

Astronomers anticipate 100 billion Earth-like planets

“Kepler finds Earth-sized planets that are quite close to parent stars, and it estimates that there are 17 billion such planets in the Milky Way. These planets are generally hotter than Earth, although some could be of a similar temperature (and therefore habitable) if they're orbiting a cool star called a red dwarf.”

 

[Melchiah]

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/31may_andromeda/

Astronomers Predict Titanic Collision: Milky Way vs. Andromeda

May 31, 2012: NASA astronomers say they can now predict with certainty the next major cosmic event to affect our galaxy, sun, and solar system: the titanic collision of our Milky Way galaxy with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy.

The Milky Way is destined to get a major makeover during the encounter, which is predicted to happen four billion years from now. It is likely the sun will be flung into a new region of our galaxy, but our Earth and solar system are in no danger of being destroyed.

"After nearly a century of speculation about the future destiny of Andromeda and our Milky Way, we at last have a clear picture of how events will unfold over the coming billions of years," says Sangmo Tony Sohn of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore.

...

Previously, it was unknown whether the far-future encounter will be a miss, glancing blow, or head-on smashup. This depends on M31’s tangential motion. Until now, astronomers had not been able to measure M31's sideways motion in the sky, despite attempts dating back more than a century. The Hubble Space Telescope team, led by van der Marel, conducted extraordinarily precise observations of the sideways motion of M31 that remove any doubt that it is destined to collide and merge with the Milky Way.

"This was accomplished by repeatedly observing select regions of the galaxy over a five- to seven-year period," says Jay Anderson of STScI.

"In the worst-case-scenario simulation, M31 slams into the Milky Way head-on and the stars are all scattered into different orbits," adds Gurtina Besla of Columbia University in New York, N.Y. "The stellar populations of both galaxies are jostled, and the Milky Way loses its flattened pancake shape with most of the stars on nearly circular orbits. The galaxies' cores merge, and the stars settle into randomized orbits to create an elliptical-shaped galaxy."

The Milky Way and Andromeda are moving toward each other under the inexorable pull of gravity. Also shown is a smaller galaxy, Triangulum, which may be part of the smashup.
(Credit: NASA; ESA; A. Feild and R. van der Marel, STScI)

This series of photo illustrations shows the predicted merger between the Milky Way and Andromeda as seen from Earth. The first frame is the present day; the last frame is 7 billion years from now.

 

[derFeef]

The Kamioka Observatory (Cosmic Ray Observatory).

This photo shows the Super-Kamiokande neutrino observatory, located 3,300 feet underground in a Japanese mine. What are you see are two scientists paddling inside a massive tank filled with tens of thousands of tons of water and photomultiplier tubes:

More pictures here.
http://www-sk.icrr.u-tokyo.ac.jp/sk/gallery/index-e.html



Also: The construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope has been approved
http://www.tmt.org/

 

[RiZ III]

Not sure if this has been posted already but pretty neat:

Sound of the Big Bang:
http://news.discovery.com/space/astronomy/big-bang-sound-simulation-130417.htm

And here's the actual link to the sound:
http://faculty.washington.edu/jcramer/BigBang/WMAP_2003/BBSnd100.wav

 

[Melchiah]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/s...most-earth-like-yet-scientists-say.html?_r=1&

Two Promising Places to Live, 1,200 Light-Years From Earth

Astronomers said Thursday that they had found the most Earth-like worlds yet known in the outer cosmos, a pair of planets that appear capable of supporting life and that orbit a star 1,200 light-years from here, in the northern constellation Lyra.

They are the two outermost of five worlds circling a yellowish star slightly smaller and dimmer than our Sun, heretofore anonymous and now destined to be known in the cosmic history books as Kepler 62, after NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, which discovered them. These planets are roughly half again as large as Earth and are presumably balls of rock, perhaps covered by oceans with humid, cloudy skies, although that is at best a highly educated guess.

Nobody will probably ever know if anything lives on these planets, and the odds are that humans will travel there only in their faster-than-light dreams, but the news has sent astronomers into heavenly raptures. William Borucki of NASA’s Ames Research Center, head of the Kepler project, described one of the new worlds as the best site for Life Out There yet found in Kepler’s four-years-and-counting search for other Earths. He treated his team to pizza and beer on his own dime to celebrate the find (this being the age of sequestration). “It’s a big deal,” he said.

...

 

[i-Lo]

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/31may_andromeda/

Unfortunately our sun will burn out in the next 5 billions making me wonder if the earth will left alone, its surface burnt to ash or would be swallowed by the expanding sun. If it's the former then perhaps some future life form capable of surviving the surface burn with little to no atmosphere can enjoy that view.

What magnificent (and scary) views those are.

 

[Nokterian]

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/31may_andromeda/

It's gonna be marvelous if in 4 billion years earth still is there and a the human race will see this happening.

 

[derFeef]

Far far into the future, when space travel is daily routine and humankind faces probems like that... man that must be an exciting, dangerous, and frightening time to live in.

 

[Melchiah]

A collection of nebulas by Antony McAulay.

QFS

Source: https://www.facebook.com/ScienceAlert

 

[SniperHunter]

Not sure if this has been posted already but pretty neat:

Sound of the Big Bang:
http://news.discovery.com/space/astronomy/big-bang-sound-simulation-130417.htm

And here's the actual link to the sound:
http://faculty.washington.edu/jcramer/BigBang/WMAP_2003/BBSnd100.wav

nice

 

[FStop7]

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162...-stunning-new-nebula-photo-for-23rd-birthday/

Jaw dropping image.

I see a figure with broad shoulders reaching out to the stars.

 

[Melchiah]

I see a figure with broad shoulders reaching out to the stars.

I see a gigantic pink penis thrusting upwards.

 

[Partial Gamification]

I see a gigantic pink penis thrusting upwards.

Astral Cookie Monster projectile-vomiting itself into the heavens.

 

[FStop7]

Astral Cookie Monster projectile-vomiting itself into the heavens.

OK now this is what I see, too.

 

[Melchiah]

Astral Cookie Monster projectile-vomiting itself into the heavens.

Haha!

 

[RedBaron17]

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162...-stunning-new-nebula-photo-for-23rd-birthday/

Jaw dropping image.

I see a figure with broad shoulders reaching out to the stars.

I see a T-shaped palm tree.

 

[The Librarian]

Reading about the theory that our universe could be inside a black hole of another universe: http://www.insidescience.org/content/every-black-hole-contains-new-universe/566

 

[bggrthnjsus]

Astral Cookie Monster projectile-vomiting itself into the heavens.

oh man cannot unsee