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[Lucky Forward]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24032236/

Probe snaps close-ups of Martian moon
NASA orbiter sends back views of Phobos in color and 3-D
updated 2:08 p.m. ET, Wed., April. 9, 2008

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured new imagery, in color and in 3-D, of a target that may be almost as much of a scientific hot spot as the Red Planet itself: Phobos, the larger of Mars' two tiny moons.

The pictures were taken on March 23 by the orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE, and released on Wednesday. Phobos is expected to be the focus of an ambitious Russian-Chinese space mission scheduled for launch next year.

By combining information from the camera's blue-green, red and near-infrared color filters, scientists confirmed that material around the rim of Phobos' largest surface feature, Stickney Crater, appears bluer than the rest of Phobos.

The impact that excavated the 5.5-mile-wide (9-kilometer-wide) Stickney Crater is thought to have almost shattered the moon.

"Based on analogy with material on our own moon, the bluer color could mean that the material is fresher, or hasn't been exposed to space as long as the rest of Phobos' surface has," Bridges said.

 

[Des0lar]

You know what's sad?

That Phobos and Deimos will both cease to exist. D:

One will crash into Mars and the other will leave the gravitation field.

 

[Walshicus]

That would be very strange. What if it turns out Gamma Ray Bursters are intelligent species testing Hadron Colliders for the first time?

Shit, I'm not going to be able to sleep now...

 

[Macam]

Scientists Now Expect to Find Gravitational Waves

A $205 million upgrade will allow a laser-wielding observatory to monitor tens of thousands of galaxies for mysterious gravitational waves.

Leading investigators are confident that the Advanced LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatories) Project will be able for the first time to detect gravitational waves from neutron stars and black holes, as predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity.

"With the limited LIGO range at time, it wasn't guaranteed detection," said Albert Lazzarini, deputy director of LIGO at the California Institute of Technology. "With Advanced LIGO, it'd be very surprising from a relativity perspective if we didn't observe anything."

Gravitational waves are ripples thought to occur in the fabric of space-time that result from interstellar collisions, explosions, or the dramatic movement of large and extremely dense objects such as neutron stars. Those ripples can then pass through the space-time that Earth occupies, causing a slight distortion which Advanced LIGO is meant to pick up on.

How it works

LIGO tries to detect gravitational waves using highly precise lasers to measure the time it takes light to travel between mirrors. Two sets of facing mirrors sit at a 90 degree angle, forming something like an "L" shape that meets at a corner. A laser beam is shot through an "L" shaped splitter at the corner, which splits the beam into two beams that strike each set of mirrors.

The laser interferometer measures how long the laser light bounces back and forth between the mirrors on the "L" legs before returning to a light detector at the "L" corner. They should theoretically return to the light detector at the same time because the mirror legs are identical distances – unless a passing gravitational wave distorts the local space-time fabric and changes the distance.

But the observatory, operational since 2002, has yet to detect the elusive, still-theoretical waves.

Scientists foresaw that advances in laser technology and mirrors would allow for even greater sensitivity when LIGO was first proposed, and so the Advanced LIGO Project became a natural upgrade for the observatory. The National Science Foundation recently approved the proposal to upgrade LIGO over the next seven years, starting with $32.75 million in 2008.

"The first several hours of observation with new instruments will equal almost the first year of observation with LIGO's current instruments," Lazzarini said. "We can probe something like several hundred galaxies out to the Virgo cluster [59 million light-years away] with LIGO, but increase that by a factor of one thousand and you go to the cosmological regime of measuring many tens of thousands of galaxies."

That thousand-fold increase in coverage comes from boosting LIGO's sensitivity 10 times over.

Larger mirrors made of better materials will reduce the background "noise" from the random motion of atoms at room temperature, and the laser power is being pumped from 10 watts to 180 watts. Advanced LIGO will also be better cushioned from any terrestrial vibrations coming through the ground, thanks to an active servo-controlled system that replaces an older, passive spring system.

"We achieved several milestones with the initial LIGO sensitivity," Lazzarini noted, pointing out that the two main LIGO facilities at Hanford, Washington and Livingston, Louisiana had just finished a two-year run to test the design's sensitivity. LIGO requires at least two widely separated detectors working simultaneously to rule out false signals and confirm when gravitational waves might pass through the Earth.

More planned

Advanced LIGO may eventually become part of a greater global network of gravitational wave detectors, thanks to strong international collaboration.

German and British contributors are providing the laser and mirror suspension systems respectively for the upgraded observatory, and Advanced LIGO has grown its cooperation with Europe's Virgo detector located near Pisa, Italy. Japan has also begun working towards building a gravitational wave detector.

"The gravitational wave community supports very strongly indeed the upgrade to LIGO – this upgrade was in fact planned from the very start of the LIGO project and has always been an integral part of the planned evolution of the detector performance," said Jim Hough, University of Glasgow physicist

 

[Windu]

I guess its time to bring this thread back from the dead.

Gallery: Galaxies Collide in New Images Released for Hubble's 18th Birthday

Nasa on Youtube

This interstellar beast is formed of cosmic dust and gas interacting with the energetic light and winds from hot young stars. The shape, visual texture, and color, combine to give the region the popular name Fox Fur Nebula. The characteristic blue glow on the left is dust reflecting light from the bright star S Mon, just beyond the left edge of the image. Mottled pink and brown areas are a combination of the cosmic dust and reddish emission from ionized hydrogen gas. S Mon is part of a young open cluster of stars, NGC 2264, located about 2,500 light years away toward the constellation of Monoceros, just north of the Cone Nebula.

Click For Bigger Image

Billions of years from now, only one of these two galaxies will remain. Until then, spiral galaxies NGC 2207 and IC 2163 will slowly pull each other apart, creating tides of matter, sheets of shocked gas, lanes of dark dust, bursts of star formation, and streams of cast-away stars. Astronomers predict that NGC 2207, the larger galaxy on the left, will eventually incorporate IC 2163, the smaller galaxy on the right. In the most recent encounter that peaked 40 million years ago, the smaller galaxy is swinging around counter-clockwise, and is now slightly behind the larger galaxy. The space between stars is so vast that when galaxies collide, the stars in them usually do not collide.

Click For Bigger Image

A bright spiral galaxy of the northern sky, Messier 63 is about 25 million light-years distant in the loyal constellation Canes Venatici. Also cataloged as NGC 5055, the majestic island universe is nearly 100,000 light-years across, about the size of our own Milky Way. Known by the popular moniker, The Sunflower Galaxy, M63 sports a bright yellowish core and sweeping blue spiral arms, streaked with cosmic dust lanes and dotted with pink star forming regions. But this deep exposure also shows remarkable faint loops and extensions of the galaxy's spiral arms. A dominant member of a known galaxy group, M63's faint extended features could be the result of gravitational interactions with nearby galaxies. M63 also shines across the electromagnetic spectrum and is thought to have undergone bursts of intense star formation.

Click For Bigger Image

This moon is doomed. Mars, the red planet named for the Roman god of war, has two tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos, whose names are derived from the Greek for Fear and Panic. These martian moons may well be captured asteroids originating in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter or perhaps from even more distant reaches of the Solar System. The larger moon, Phobos, is indeed seen to be a cratered, asteroid-like object in this stunning color image from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, recorded at a resolution of about seven meters per pixel. But Phobos orbits so close to Mars - about 5,800 kilometers above the surface compared to 400,000 kilometers for our Moon - that gravitational tidal forces are dragging it down. In 100 million years or so Phobos will likely be shattered by stress caused by the relentless tidal forces, the debris forming a decaying ring around Mars.

 

[RiZ III]

Luna pwns the martian moons.

 

[jett]

Ubergalaxy does not approve of GAF.

 

[Like the hat?]

sorry for the bump but this was too awesome not to share

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080506-st-light-echo.html

 

[EmCeeGramr]

It saddens me we are all dead in a few million years when the sun will evaporate all our water. There doesnt seem to be any hope of interstellar space travel besides hypothetical wormholes that are mathmatically possible but never observed.

 

[Sapiens]

It saddens me we are all dead in a few million years when the sun will evaporate all our water. There doesnt seem to be any hope of interstellar space travel besides hypothetical wormholes that are mathmatically possible but never observed.

A few million? More like a few billion.


Anyways, even a few million is enough to get us out into space, to jump from planet to planet within our own galaxy, and then to build a fleet large enough to sustain the travel around the galaxy.


It's our destiny.

 

[Desperado]

Andromeda will* collide with the Milky Way before the sun becomes a red giant.

*possibly

 

[EmCeeGramr]

A few million? More like a few billion.


Anyways, even a few million is enough to get us out into space, to jump from planet to planet within our own galaxy, and then to build a fleet large enough to sustain the travel around the galaxy.


It's our destiny.

The sun will die in a few billion years. In the meantime its still warming up gradually. Our expiration date has been advanced. We now have precious millions before its too hot to live here. How do you propose we planet hop when no other body in our system has the conditions necessary to survive. FACE IT, were all dead.
I sad.

 

[Sapiens]

The sun will die in a few billion years. In the meantime its still warming up gradually. Our expiration date has been advanced. We now have precious millions before its too hot to live here. How do you propose we planet hop when no other body in our system has the conditions necessary to survive. FACE IT, were all dead.
I sad.

I'm not worried. Well I'm more concerned with people taking sides based on fairy tales and killing each other over some drawing of false prophets than I am of the sun warming up in a few million years.

 

[EmCeeGramr]

I'm not worried. Well I'm more concerned with people taking sides based on fairy tales and killing each other over some drawing of false prophets than I am of the sun warming up in a few million years.

Dont bring that up.
Gee how feasible is terraforming?
We need reproducing robots that can colonize and terraform planets. Robotics is our future!

 

[Christoff Yurievich]

It saddens me we are all dead in a few million years when the sun will evaporate all our water. There doesnt seem to be any hope of interstellar space travel besides hypothetical wormholes that are mathmatically possible but never observed.

sure that's horrible and all but I'm not going to live to see even .01% of those years so I don't exactly care a whole lot. *shrug*

sucks for my kids kids kids...kids...well, you get the point.

 

[AndersTheSwede]

It saddens me we are all dead in a few million years when the sun will evaporate all our water. There doesnt seem to be any hope of interstellar space travel besides hypothetical wormholes that are mathmatically possible but never observed.

No, there are ~1000 star systems around us that can be reached in a human lifetime (~80 years) under conventional propulsion (Nuclear, that can sustain long periods of acceleration.) It would be exceptionally challenging, but doable. If pressed with extinction we can survive.

 

[The Librarian]

Thread needs a revivin'.

 

[Hootie]

If it has taken humans only ~10,000 years to go from tribal hunter-gatherers to people who can travel to the moon, just think of how far we'll be technologically speaking, in 1 million years. As long as we are not wiped out/destroyed by either ourselves or something else, we will be extremely hyper-advanced by the time we need to get away from the Sun.

Or at least I hope. :lol

 

[AndersTheSwede]

Click For Bigger Image

The Spitzer Space Telescope's encompasing infrared view of the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy is hard to appreciate in just one picture. In fact, more than 800,000 frames of data from Spitzer's cameras have now been pieced together in an enormous mosaic of the galactic plane - the most detailed infrared picture of our galaxy ever made. The small portion seen here spans nearly 8 degrees, roughly the apparent width of your fist held at arms length, across the galaxy's center. The full mosaic is 120 degrees wide. Highlighted in the false-color presentation are curving green filaments of light from complex molecules - polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) - that on Earth are the common, sooty products of incomplete combustion. The PAHs are found in star forming regions, along with reddish emission from graphite dust particles. Blue specks throughout the picture are individual Milky Way stars.

For those who missed it in the Phoenix thread:

In this sweeping view, the 10 kilometer-wide crater Heimdall lies on the north polar plains of Mars. But the bright spot highlighted in the inset is the Phoenix lander parachuting toward the surface. The amazing picture was captured on May 25th by the HiRISE camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Though the lander looks like it might be dropping straight into Heimdall, it is really descending about 20 kilometers in front of the crater, in the foreground of the scene. The orbiter was 760 kilometers away from Phoenix when picture was taken, at an altitude of 310 kilometers. Subsequently the orbiter's camera was also able to image the lander on the surface. The parachute attached to the backshell and the heat shield were identified in the image, scattered nearby. Of course, the Phoenix lander itself is now returning much closer views of its landing site as it prepares to dig into the Martian surface.

What dark forms lurk in the mists of the Carina Nebula? These ominous figures are actually molecular clouds, knots of molecular gas and dust so thick they have become opaque. In comparison, however, these clouds are typically much less dense than Earth's atmosphere. Pictured above is part of the most detailed image of the Carina Nebula ever taken, a part where dark molecular clouds are particularly prominent. The entire Carina Nebula spans over 300 light years and lies about 7,500 light-years away in the constellation of Carina. NGC 3372, known as the Great Nebula in Carina, is home to massive stars and changing nebula. Eta Carinae, the most energetic star in the nebula, was one of the brightest stars in the sky in the 1830s, but then faded dramatically. Wide-field annotated and zoomable versions of the larger image composite are also available.

 

[Windu]

Click for bigger image:

What do Saturn's rings look like from the other side? From Earth, we usually see Saturn's rings from the same side of the ring plane that the Sun illuminates them. Geometrically, in the above picture taken in April by the robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn, the Sun is behind the camera but on the other side of the ring plane. This vantage point, specifically 17 degrees above the ring plane, gives a breathtaking views of the most splendid ring system in the Solar System. Strangely, the rings have similarities to a photographic negative of a front view. The ring brightness as recorded from different angles indicates ring thickness and particle density of ring particles. Elsewhere, ring shadows can be seen on the sunlit face of Saturn, shown sporting numerous cloud structures in nearly true color.

For those who missed it in the Phoenix thread:

....thats a big hole.

 

[Sibylus]

 

[AndersTheSwede]

Click For Bigger

 

[Dahellisdat]

Did anyone watch that When We Left Earth program on discovery channel on sunday?

 

[Zyzyxxz]

nope dont have tv service, waiting for the bluray.

 

[Dahellisdat]

nope dont have tv service, waiting for the bluray.

I'll probably be pickin that up too once all of the episodes are out.

 

[Lost Fragment]

http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2008/06/10/slip-into-the-coma/

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/06/the_sky_from_above.html

 

[Cdammen]

http://i29.tinypic.com/op2pp2.jpg

That's one big strap-on.

 

[Akira]

The pictures of Mars taken by the Phoenix rover doesn't match with the picture of its landing. If it landed in a huge 10-mile crater, the pictures taken by the Phoenix should not have been of a flat, plain landscape all the way to the horizon. Conspiracy?

 

[Verdre]

The pictures of Mars taken by the Phoenix rover doesn't match with the picture of its landing. If it landed in a huge 10-mile crater, the pictures taken by the Phoenix should not have been of a flat, plain landscape all the way to the horizon. Conspiracy?

It didn't land in a crater

Though the lander looks like it might be dropping straight into Heimdall, it is really descending about 20 kilometers in front of the crater

 

[Hootie]

Those cloud pictures are absolutely astounding...some of them even look like mushroom clouds from nuclear bombs.

 

[The Librarian]

God I love Space.

 

[Haly]

what exactly are these pillars of creation?

They're nebulae, gaseous remnants of a dead star. The supernova destroyed these, one of the most well known nebulae.

 

[fallout]

what exactly are these pillars of creation?

To add to what Halycon said, these nebulae are also referred to as "stellar nurseries". So, basically, the death of stars results in the eventual formation of new stars!

 

[Guy Legend]

Pluto Now Called a Plutoid

The International Astronomical Union has decided on the term "plutoid" as a name for dwarf planets like Pluto.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080611/sc_space/plutonowcalledaplutoid

 

[fallout]

BEST THREAD EVER...

by the way why is it called the milky way?

If you're out in dark sky and look at it, it looks like someone splattered milk all over the sky.

Interesting Milky Way factoid: It's bright enough to cast a shadow in the darkest places on Earth.

Pluto Now Called a Plutoid

Huzzah. More filing.

 

[GrayFoxPL]

If you're out in dark sky and look at it, it looks like someone splattered milk all over the sky.

"Milk", right... It's just not everyone was for: "The Jizz Way" or "The Facial Way", apart of one enthusiastic astronomer who said: "Yes, yes! All over my planet!"

 

[Metroid Killer]

Today it's 25 years ago since Pioneer 10, was the first spacecraft to leave our solarsystem(by some definitions).

Its objectives were to study the interplanetary and planetary magnetic fields(such as solar wind parameters, cosmic rays, neutral hydrogen abundance, etc.), and take photographs of Jupiter and its satellites.

Although Pioneer's mission ended in 1997, the last signal from Pioneer 10 was received on January 23, 2003, when it was 7.5 billion miles (12 billion kilometres) from Earth. Later attempts to make contacts have failed.

It's currently headed towards the star Aldebaran. If Aldebaran had zero relative velocity, it would take Pioneer 10 about 2 million years to reach it.

Pioneer 10 close to completion

Launch

Pioneer image of Jupiter

 

[fallout]

Can we start asking questions?, I've got quite a few.

I'm always up for answering questions.

1.-Why do we always see the same side of the moon?

It's due to an effect known as tidal locking that forces the moon to have the same rotational period and orbital period. More simply said, one "day" on the Moon is equal to one "year" on the Moon. It's basically the gravity of both objects working together to create this relationship. It's common for all the major natural satellites with the exception of Saturn's moon Hyperion (which gets pulled around by another large moon called Titan).

Keep in mind as well that there is no "dark side of the moon". When you see a half-moon, half of the moon you can see is lit, but so is the half of the moon that you can't see.

2- What's the gravity in mars?

Mars has an equatorial surface gravity of 0.376 g, so it's about 38% of that of Earth (I weigh about 190 lbs/86 kg, so on Mars, I would weigh about 72 lbs/33 kg). Also, if we settled on Mars, our offspring would be considerably taller than us.

3.-being jupiter a Gas planet, and iff we were to step onit, would we sink all the way to the other side?

Well, first off, you would be entirely crushed by the immense pressure. This is what happened to a probe that was sent in by the Galileo spacecraft:

An atmospheric probe was released from the spacecraft in July 1995, entering the planet's atmosphere on December 7. It parachuted through 150 km of the atmosphere, collecting data for 57.6 minutes, before being crushed by the pressure to which it was subjected by that time (about 22 times Earth normal, at a temperature of 153 °C).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter#Galileo_mission

For reference, 150 km is about 0.1% of the diameter of Jupiter. Now, if we were to have some kind of magical spacecraft that could withstand the pressure and other conditions, then shot straight for the center of the planet, we would eventually reach the planet's internal core. We know that it does have one, but we're not entirely sure of what it's made of.

4.-besides mars and venus, is there any other planet where our spacecrafts have landed?

Saturn's moon Titan is the only other body that I can think of (not technically a planet, but it's got a very thick atmosphere and lakes of methane). And outside of other moons, there's really only Mercury and Pluto left to land on. Asteroids and comets as well, I guess.

5.-why haven't we gone to the moon again?

A few reasons:

1. High cost. Going to the Moon was stupidly expensive. Everything had to be built and designed from the ground up.
2. Lack of scientific merit. Not till the last couple Apollo missions was any real science done. Granted, it could have continued, but when you factor in the cost, it becomes a little difficult to justify.
3. Lack of public interest. By the launch of Apollo 13, people had stopped caring entirely. I think even Apollo 12 was met with general disinterest.

6.- if we planted any kind of plant in mars, would it survive for loooooooooong time?

Not even in the nicest areas, I don't think. The planet would need to be warmed first and you would need to water the plant by artificial means. That said, once you had that much, the plants would work to remove some of the CO2, assuming photosynthesis would work.

 

[fallout]

These questions are great! I used to work at an observatory and I sort of miss doing this kind of stuff.

*grabs a coffee*

1.-is the milky only constituted by our solar system?

The "Milky Way" is our galaxy, so let's establish a few things.

This is our solar system and we are located on the planet Earth which orbits the star that we call the Sun:

This is a representation of our galaxy (we can't take these kinds of pictures of it because we're inside of it), the Milky Way. Our solar system is orbiting this galaxy (goes round every 200-250 million years or so) along with many other solar systems, which may or may not have planets.

And then beyond that, our galaxy is in a cluster of galaxies known as the Local Group:

And then beyond that, our cluster of galaxies is part of a supercluster known as the Virgo Supercluster:

Space is big.

2.-Can a planet get "lost" in the universe? I mean can it dettach from its orbit?

Um, there are orbits that change (for instance, the Moon is every so slowly moving away from us). A collision could also produce this as well. Comets are probably the best example of this happening, where they orbit on incredibly long, elliptical orbits around our Sun (as seen here), though I don't think you could define that as "lost". Still, it shows the incredible gravitational strength of the Sun.

So, I guess the answer would be "yes", but it would be highly unlikely, especially with the likelihood of some other force attracting the body.

3.-has there ever been a moment where another planet has been easily seen in the sky?

Well, the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus are all visible to the naked eye. Uranus is pretty dim, though and you would often mistake it for just a star, even with magnification. Which is probably why it wasn't discovered until 1781. All the other planets have been known of since the early days of astronomy (like, a few thousand BC ... I'm not really all that up on any historical astronomy pre-1600).

Anyway, most planets look really nice through a telescope, even a low power one. Saturn is a marvelous sight through just about anything, providing the rings are in a good orientation. I find Mars to be particularly bland. Jupiter's nice and Venus always has this nice effect to it and is especially cool when it's in phase (like the Moon). Mercury I've only seen once in my life and I guess it's neat to say that you've done it. Uranus and Neptune are like little greenish/bluish fuzzballs.

4.-when will we go to the moon again?

NASA has a mission planned for 2018:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Constellation

5.-why are planet round?

That's gravity at work. If a body is large enough, the center of gravity will attract everything towards it, which forms a fairly spherical shape.

and why do they seem flat?

This is mostly due to resolution. For instance, if you look at pen ink with your eye, all you see are fairly straight lines. Take a microscope to it and it will look completely different, with jagged edges and holes everywhere. It's the same basic idea. If I showed you the moon through a telescope (or hell, binoculars), you would see craters and mountains on the edge, but without the telescope, you can't see that at all.

6.-If we put some cockroaches in mars with food and water would they survive? also plants (yes...again)

Cockroaches don't deal well with cold. As far as I know (i.e. just looked up), they can occasionally survive freezing temperatures and the warmest it gets on Mars is somewhere around -5 degrees Celsius (23 degrees Fahrenheit).

 

[Youta Mottenai]

to Machado: Although fallout answered your questions I´d also recommend Phil Plait´s (Bad Astronomy channel) on youtube or his blog.

 

[East Lake]

Anyone have suggestions on good books to read that are about space or science in general? Have a few in mind but thought I'd ask here as well.

 

[Quazar]

These questions are great! I used to work at an observatory and I sort of miss doing this kind of stuff.

Since when did you stop working there?

 

[The Librarian]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-tF4sF8eq4

One of my favorite youtube videos: The Millennium Simulation

 

[Windu]

Images of a Shuttle launch from the ISS.

 

[Amir0x]

Images of a Shuttle launch from the ISS.

*images*

That shit is so fucking cool looking goddamn

 

[Windu]

bigger image:

 

[Amir0x]

Windu has science explained why everything is so awesome.

The forces of the universe have clearly conspired to slack my jaw every fucking day

 

[Windu]

Click for Bigger Image

S123-E-009210 (24 March 2008) --- Backdropped by Earth's horizon and the blackness of space, the International Space Station appears very small from the point of view of the Space Shuttle Endeavour as the two spacecraft carry out their relative separation. Endeavour's vertical stabilizer, orbital maneuvering system (OMS) pods and payload bay are seen in this image photographed by an STS-123 crewmember onboard the shuttle. Earlier the STS-123 and Expedition 16 crews concluded 12 days of cooperative work onboard the shuttle and station. Undocking of the two spacecraft occurred at 7:25 p.m. (CDT) on March 24, 2008.

Click for Bigger Image


Click for Bigger Image

S123-E-009188 (24 March 2008) --- Backdropped by the blackness of space, the International Space Station is seen from Space Shuttle Endeavour as the two spacecraft begin their relative separation. Earlier the STS-123 and Expedition 16 crews concluded 12 days of cooperative work onboard the shuttle and station. Undocking of the two spacecraft occurred at 7:25 p.m. (CDT) on March 24, 2008.

Click for Bigger Image

STS123-E-008018 (21 March 2008) --- While docked and onboard the International Space Station, a STS-123 Endeavour crewmember captured the glowing green beauty of the Aurora Borealis. Looking northward across the Gulf of Alaska, over a low pressure area (cloud vortex), the aurora brightens the night sky. This image was taken on March 21, 2008 at 09:08:46 (GMT) with a 28 mm lens from the nadir point of 47.9 degrees north latitude and 146.8 degreees west longitude.

Windu has science explained why everything is so awesome.

Awsomeness needs no explaination.

 

[dabig2]

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/06/the_sky_from_above.html

Damn, 2 awesome earth pics right there. It's like earth herself is saying, "hey guys, I know you guys are enjoying those new, wild girls out there and everything, but don't forget I'm still beautiful too! I can provide!"

 

[Sibylus]

Those clouds blow my mind.

Spoiler

Pun.