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Tag: planetary science

I can’t even… So beautiful… So makes me wish I could go to space…

Wow (click on the image for a larger image).

PIA18432

This is:

a near-infrared, color mosaic from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft shows the sun glinting off of Titan’s north polar seas. While Cassini has captured, separately, views of the polar seas and the sun glinting off of them in the past, this is the first time both have been seen together in the same view.

The sunglint, also called a specular reflection, is the bright area near the 11 o’clock position at upper left. This mirror-like reflection, known as the specular point, is in the south of Titan’s largest sea, Kraken Mare, just north of an island archipelago separating two separate parts of the sea.

For a better look, please go to this link.

From NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab

Clouds and their shadows (epic when viewed from space) #gorgeous

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clouds-5

clouds-1

By Alexander Gerst, via Colossal

Ocean landscapes artistically depicted with glass sheets.

RoughWaters

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Beacon_detail

By Ben Young, via Colossal

HEADLINE: Martians Build Two Immense Canals on Mars in Two Years!

From the The New York Times, August 27, 1911.

martians

Read the full story here. Via Futility Closet.

Planet Earth during hurricane Sandy, as depicted with a globe made from thousands of matchsticks.

That would be a literal description…

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By Andy Yoder, via Visual News.

In which Jupiter wonders what the storm fuss is all about…

stormwhining

Via zipmeme

Feeling full of yourself right now? Watch this and you’ll be sorted. #wearepuny #NASA

Wow.



“When NASA’s Juno spacecraft flew past Earth on Oct. 9, 2013, it received a boost in speed of more than 8,800 mph (about 7.3 kilometer per second), which set it on course for a July 4, 2016, rendezvous with Jupiter.

One of Juno’s sensors, a special kind of camera optimized to track faint stars, also had a unique view of the Earth-moon system. The result was an intriguing, low-resolution glimpse of what our world would look like to a visitor from afar.

The cameras that took the images for the movie are located near the pointed tip of one of the spacecraft’s three solar-array arms. They are part of Juno’s Magnetic Field Investigation (MAG) and are normally used to determine the orientation of the magnetic sensors. These cameras look away from the sunlit side of the solar array, so as the spacecraft approached, the system’s four cameras pointed toward Earth. Earth and the moon came into view when Juno was about 600,000 miles (966,000 kilometers) away — about three times the Earth-moon separation.

During the flyby, timing was everything. Juno was traveling about twice as fast as a typical satellite, and the spacecraft itself was spinning at 2 rpm. To assemble a movie that wouldn’t make viewers dizzy, the star tracker had to capture a frame each time the camera was facing Earth at exactly the right instant. The frames were sent to Earth, where they were processed into video format. ”

Video and text via NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Continental Drift: The Fart Hypothesis #funny

PBF260-The_Drift

By The Perry Bible Fellowship. Via Fresh Photons.

Looks quite pleasant, no? Mars: 4 billion years ago.

By NASA Goddard, via @christina_ochoa

Saturn is awesome. That is all.

Breathtaking…

beautifulsaturn

Data from Cassini. Image processing by Gordan Ugarkovic. Via Bad Astronomy.

What I learned today: apparently volcanoes can puff smoke rings

volcanosmokering

These were “puffed” by Mount Etna in 2000. Apparently, she recently did it again.

By Stromboli online

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

Pretty freaking cool actually…

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The moon

mercury2

Mercury

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Venus

mrs3

Mars

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Jupiter

saturn6

Saturn

uranus5

Uranus

neptune4

Neptune

By Ron Miller, via My Modern Met.

Posters showing the layers of the atmosphere, the ocean, and our planet Earth. #pretty

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earth_illustration

ocean_illustration

From Brainstorm, via @darwinsbulldog

This has to be the coolest memo pad I’ve ever seen: Topographically accurate too.

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uminonaka

“A memo pad that looks as if it has been cut directly out of the earth’s crust. The earth’s surface seems to be whittled away as the pages of the pad are used, and the pattern of the geographical features and the coastal lines changes. A memo pad that lets you enjoy the same kind of sensation you get from diving down into the ocean.”

Available from geografia. Via Stacy Thinx.

Pillow cases for sciencegeeks.

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sciencepillow02

sciencepillow01

From Dirtsa Studio. Via Stacey Thinx

Sun Power – lovely illustrations by Don Madden

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By Don Madden, via myvintagebookcollectioninblogform.blogspot.ca, via Stacy Thinx.

Sciencegeek Advent Calendar Extravaganza! – Day 4

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SANTA AND THE MOON
Peter Barthel, Communicating Astronomy to the Public, May 2012, (12) p13 – 15.

Link to journallink to arxiv abstract | link to pdf

santagoodmoon

Rare example of Christmas media showing an astronomically correct moon.

“We have established that illustrators and designers draw moons ad libitum, according to their taste, but often physically incorrect. The most common mistake is the early morning waning moon shown in an evening scene. Our research focussed on Sinterklaas, Santa Claus, and Christmas scenes, with a short side trip to Sint Maarten and Halloween. The apparent lack of knowledge concerning the physics of the moon phases is most likely widespread and not just limited to the countries examined here. Further investigations are however outside the scope of the present research.”

Santaandthemoon

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

Best Moon Related YouTube Comment Ever…

Hilarious.

Source Unknown.

This here: a solar system necklace

Solar System Necklace, Solar System Bracelet, Earth Necklace and Moon Phase Choker by nappyhappy in Swindon, UK (via Stacy Thinx)

That’s right! It’s time for volcano patchwork stitching!

By Ankie Vytopil