.

Tag: space

I think we can all agree that nebulas are just pretty

nebula

That is: “A nebula (from Latin: “cloud”; pl. nebulae or nebulæ, with ligature or nebulas) is an interstellar cloud of dust, hydrogen, helium and other ionized gases.” (from Wikipedia)

Images compiled by Antony McAulay, via ScienceAlert

If you have some time to kill, you can even read up on a few of them…

Eagle Nebula, Carina Nebula, Cat’s Eye Nebula, Horsehead NebulaCrab Nebula, Butterfly Nebula (NGC 6302), Eskimo Nebula, Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635), Cat’s Eye Nebula, Dumbbell Nebula, Helix Nebula, Hourglass Nebula, Medusa Nebula, Orion Nebula, Rosette Nebula, Tarantula Nebula, Trifid Nebula

Digitally manipulated stellar scapes by Chris Keegan. #whoa

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By Chris Keegan

What if the moon was one of the other planets in the solar system? What would it look like?

Pretty freaking cool actually…

moon1

The moon

mercury2

Mercury

venus0

Venus

mrs3

Mars

jupiter7

Jupiter

saturn6

Saturn

uranus5

Uranus

neptune4

Neptune

By Ron Miller, via My Modern Met.

A vintage look at life in our solar system

Awesome… and from 1939 by  Frank R. Paul,

Frank-R.-Paul-life-on-venus-600x809

8-Frank-R.-Paul-life-on-uranus-600x803

7-Frank-R.-Paul-life-on-saturn-600x802

6-Frank-R.-Paul-life-on-pluto-600x808

5-Frank-R.-Paul-life-on-neptun-600x809

4-Frank-R.-Paul-life-on-mercury-600x808

2-Frank-R.-Paul-life-on-moon-of-jupiter-600x808

1-Frank-R.-Paul-life_on_jupiter-600x810

3-Frank-R.-Paul-life-on-mars-600x801

Via Visual News

Some words of advice from @Cmdr_Hadfield drawn by @zenpencils

2013-03-05-hadfield

Quote by Chris Hadfield, art by Gavin Aung Than.

Asteroids are nature’s way of asking: How’s that space program coming along?

Phew! That was close…

asteroids

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Top graphic source unknown (but via Fresh Photons). Bottom graphic via NASA (great link explaining the recent flyby).

Finally a reason to mount a blaster on Hubble: Hubble finds a Space Invader.

Do you see it?

spaceinvaderhubble

There it is…

hst_abell68_spaceinvader_568.jpg.CROP.original-original

From N. Rose (NASA & ESA.), via Bad Astronomy.

Way cool astronaut bedsheets

astronautbedsheets01

astronautbedsheets02

From Snurk, via Thinx

The sun: it’s pretty and vaguely reminds me of SEM pictures of cellular things

Am I right?

sun-1

sun-2

By Alan Friedman, via Colossal

This counts as one of the most riveting videos I’ve ever seen #curiosity #watchitnow via @BenLillie

I bet those 7 minutes must have been terrifying. Oh, and science FTW!!!

Via @BenLillie

This is freaking brilliant. Jupiter Red Spot Embroidery.

jupiterembroidery

By pardalote, via Thinx

I love this. A true story about a corn beef sandwich in space…

600px-Astronaut_John_Young_gemini_3

“Astronaut John Young smuggled a corned beef sandwich into space. As Gemini 3 was circling Earth in March 1965, Young pulled the sandwich out of his pocket and offered it to Gus Grissom:”

What follows next is described in detail in a post over at Futility Closet: it’s lovely, and I’d copy it here, except it wouldn’t work without taking all of the text (which would hardly be fair would it?)

Still, I wanted to make sure I tag this on my site (under “space” and “science history”), so now that I have your attention, do head over to futility closet to read the rest.

One of the earliest Mars images was a digitally reconstructed paint-by-numbers.

data_firstmars_01

“A “real-time data translator” machine converted a Mariner 4 digital image data into numbers printed on strips of paper. Too anxious to wait for the official processed image, employees from the Telecommunications Section at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, attached these strips side by side to a display panel and hand colored the numbers like a paint-by-numbers picture. The completed image was framed and presented to JPL director, William H. Pickering. Mariner 4 was launched on November 28, 1964 and journeyed for 228 days to the Red Planet, providing the first close-range images of Mars.”

data_firstmars_02

Close up (Dan Goods)

tvmars_key

Color Key (Spencer Mishlen)

tvmars_combined

Side by side comparison of drawn image and actaul image (JPL/Caltech)

Text and images from NASA/JPL/Dan Goods, via Wired.

Vintage National Geographic Images

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Charles Bittinger, Eclipse of the Sun by the Earth, 1930s

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Vittorio Sella, A Cascade of Weathered Ice Spills From the 14 Square Mile Glacier, Karagour Glacier, Caucasus Mountains, Russia, 1910s

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Pierre Mion, Habitat in Space, 1970s

 

On display at the Steven Kasher Gallery until February 16th, 2013

Astronaut specific problems: Ending it all.

enditall

By Poorly Drawn Lines. Via IFLS.

Sciencegeek Advent Calendar Extravaganza! – Day 10

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SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS
You can watch the movie in its entirety at Youtube.

SantaClausConquers

Here is the plot as described on Wikipedia. Note that there is no mention of Curiosity or of NASA generally. Presumably, the sequel will rectify this…

“The story involves the people of Mars, including Momar (“Mom Martian”) and Kimar (“King Martian”). They’re worried that their children Girmar (“Girl Martian”) and Bomar (“Boy Martian”) are watching too much Earth television, most notably station KID-TV’s interview with Santa Claus in his workshop at the North Pole. Consulting the ancient 800-year-old Martian sage Chochem (a Yiddish word meaning “genius”), they are advised that the children of Mars are growing distracted due to the society’s overly rigid structure; from infancy, all their education is fed into their brains through machines and they are not allowed individuality or freedom of thought.

Chochem notes that he had seen this coming “for centuries”, and says the only way to help the children is to allow them their freedom and be allowed to have fun. To do this, they need a Santa Claus figure, like on Earth. Leaving the Chochem’s cave, the Martian leaders decide to abduct Santa Claus from Earth and bring him to Mars. As the Martians could not distinguish between all the fakes Santas, they kidnapped two children to find the real one. Once this is accomplished, one Martian, Voldar, who strongly disagrees with the idea, repeatedly tries to kill Santa Claus along with two kidnapped Earth children. He believes that Santa is corrupting the children of Mars and turning them away from the race’s original glory.

When they arrive on Mars, Santa and the children build a factory to make toys for the children. However, Voldar and his assistants, Stobo and Shim, sabotage the factory and change the programming so that it makes the toys incorrectly. Meanwhile, Dropo, Kimar’s assistant, has taken a great liking to Santa Claus and Christmas, puts on one of Santa’s spare suits and starts acting like Santa Claus. He goes to the toy factory to make toys, but Voldar mistakes him for Santa and kidnaps him.

When Santa and the children come back to the factory to make more toys, they discover the machines have been tampered with. Voldar and Stobo come back to the factory to make a deal with Kimar, but when they see the real Santa Claus they realize that their plan has been foiled. Dropo, held hostage in a cave, tricks his guard Shim and escapes. Kimar then arrests Voldar, Stobo and Shim. Santa notices Dropo acts like him, and says that Dropo would make a good Martian Santa. Kimar agrees to let Dropo be the Martian Santa Claus and sends Santa and the children back to Earth.”

(see more of Popperfont’s Sciencegeek Advent Calendar Extravanganza here)

Some stats if you’re thinking of towing the Space Shuttle with your truck

Click image to see full size.

“Endeavour will be towed 12 miles from Los Angeles International Airport to the museum on October 13, and the Tundra will hitch up to the shuttle for the last quarter mile of the trip. The towing rig was made specifically for this event, allowing the full-size Toyota Tundra to pull almost 30 times its regular towing capacity. Toyota says that the truck used to tow Endeavour will be a stock V8 Tundra with no enhancements or modifications.”

From AutoBlog.

Conceptual space colony art from the 1970s: Kinda want to live there.

Address: Toroidal Colonies (in the vicinity of Earth’s orbit)

“NASA commissioned much conceptual work focused on moving people to space, both for habitation and travel. The artwork featured here come from three summer studies by NASA Ames, conducted in California during the 70s. They feature beautifully fantastic landscapes inside massive structures… a vision of a utopian life inside an artificial atmosphere.”

From NASA Ames Research Center, via Visual News (text by Benjamin Starr)

Hello again, Halley’s Comet… #strangelymoving

Via Reddit (original source unknown)

When a Crocodile Hunter Becomes a Planet Hunter

By DAVID NG

Cor Crikey! And g’day mate! Right now we’re walking up to Hawaii’s Gemini Observatory on the summit of Mauna Kea. It’s got a beaut of a telescope inside, and we’re hoping to find a new planet today.

(Whispering) Here we are at the front door. But we should first give it a bit of space. Patience is important when dealing with telescopes. And we’ve got to be careful with that door. It’s locked! Looks like the observatory doesn’t open for another 20 minutes.

(20 minutes later) Alright mate! Let’s go! (running) Quickly mate! We’re already inside, but we’ve got to move fast! If you look around, you might see that there are other humans around here that will also want to use the telescope, but if you get there first, you’re in there mate. You can use one hand for the controls, and the other to fend the others off.

(Reaching the console) We’re the first here! And it looks like we’ll get to have it to ourselves too. Ripper! Looks pretty complicated, but I’ve been around telescopes all my life and this is definitely an “on” button. But before I press it, let’s first camouflage ourselves behind this adjustable office chair, just in case! I’m going to turn it on now.

(Apparatus makes a noise). Watch out mate! We’ve got to stay extra alert now. Remember – never do this without the supervision of an expert like myself around.
It’s on. And don’t forget to be on the look-out for other humans. We can scare them off by making ourselves look as big as possible – spread your arms wide and look like you’re real pissed. That’s right, like that. Beauty mate! Alright, now let’s go find us some planets…

(7 hours) Did you see that?

(12 days) Did you see that?

(4 week) Did you see that?

(6 weeks) Did you see that?

(7 weeks) Crikey! Did you see that?

(3 months and 1 week) Did you see that?

(4 months) Did you see that?

(5 months and 3 weeks) Did you see that?

(6 months later and looking weary) Well mates, that’s all we have time for in this show. It’s a shame we didn’t find a new planet but that’s sometime how it is in these observatories. See you next time!

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