final frontier

seashelllz: mcgarrsworld: Earth, Jupiter and Venus from the...

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 13:05:05 -0400

mcgarrsworld:

Earth, Jupiter and Venus from the skyline of Mars!

incredible.

onemoretimewithfeeling: lecochonbleu: toroctopus: midnight-nai...

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 20:00:41 -0400

lecochonbleu:

toroctopus:

midnight-naiad:

vaguelybritishme:

this-is-pants:

grundle-mcballsonface:

ktbunke:

bittergrapes:

mumfordandbutts:

johnnyis:

BRB DYING

OH

MY

GOD

IF YOU DON’T GET THIS JOKE

DIE.

alkejwoaejriejrlawkejralwejrawpeirjuawoierhoiawshfioawpejrpoa

I am so tempted to write this on my keyboard.

OPENLY WEEPING

I am writing this on a sticker and it’s going on the keyboard. Immediately.

QUALITY

amazing.

im in love.

If only my keyboard weren’t black so I could write on it :(

This is happening.

lickystickypickyme: Space Shuttle Discovery. Photo credit:...

Sun, 20 Mar 2011 19:25:22 -0400

lickystickypickyme:

Space Shuttle Discovery.
Photo credit: Larry Tanner, USA

I don’t know what other life exists out there in space.I just find it amazing that we managed to build machines that brought us to the moon and beyond.

Always makes me wonder if from outer space they could not have done the same and visited us. I mean are we REALLY the only creatures in the whole infinity of this (or other) universe(s)?

Super Full Moon - NASA

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 21:11:38 -0400

Super Full Moon - NASA:

boston:

On March 19th, a full Moon of rare size and beauty will rise in the east at sunset. It’s a super “perigee moon”—the biggest in almost 20 years.

sagansapien: Discovery launches for one final mission. Credit:...

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 09:25:42 -0500

sagansapien:

Discovery launches for one final mission. Credit: Alan Walters (awaltersphoto.com) for Universe Today.

Solar System Visualiser

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 09:13:54 -0500

Solar System Visualiser:

fuckyeahspace:

You can watch the planets, moons and asteroids of our solar system move in proportional time with this awesome visualiser. Set the date and speed, as well as the model (Copernican or the pre-Renaissance Tychonian/geocentric model) and watch the physics happen. Unfortunately, it doesn’t depict the degradation of orbits over time, nor does the sun explode when set a few billion years in the future. Still cool, though!

life: On the morning of January 31, 1961, a 5-year-old...

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 17:47:56 -0500

life:

On the morning of January 31, 1961, a 5-year-old chimpanzee named “Ham” ate a breakfast of baby cereal, condensed milk, vitamins, and half an egg. Then the playful 37-pound primate went out into the Cape Canaveral light and made aeronautic history: Aboard a NASA space capsule — and traveling almost 160 miles above the Earth — he became the first chimp in space. The launch’s success helped ratchet up even further the already-frantic contest for scientific supremacy between the U.S. and the Soviet Union — and briefly made Ham something of a star. Here, on the 50th anniversary of that momentous, 16-minute “headlong trip through outer space’s underbelly” (as Time magazine called the flight), LIFE.com presents rare and previous unpublished photographs taken before, during, and after Ham’s wild ride.

Above: A previously unpublished picture by LIFE photographer Ralph Morse of Ham and a handler, January 1961.

In Praise of Ham the Astrochimp

boston: The Big Picture - Challenger disaster: remembered On...

Fri, 28 Jan 2011 16:15:43 -0500

boston:

The Big Picture - Challenger disaster: remembered

On January 28, 1986, at 11:38 a.m., EST, the space shuttle Challenger lifted off Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The entire crew of seven was lost in the explosion 73 seconds into the launch. Today, on the 25th anniversary of this national tragedy, we honor in memory the brave crew who gave their lives for the exploration of space. Sharon Christa McAuliffe, a New Hampshire social studies teacher, was NASA’s choice for the first teacher in space. Because McAuliffe was our local astronaut, she is featured heavily in this post, but we honor all seven on the anniversary of a nation’s great loss. — Paula Nelson (34 photos total)

findlilyhere: When you live in a city, it’s easy to forget that...

Fri, 08 Oct 2010 19:04:36 -0400

findlilyhere:

When you live in a city, it’s easy to forget that we are surrounded by the greatest show in the Universe: The Universe itself. This sky comparison chart is the sad proof of that.

Sadly, missing the awe-inspiring show of all those planets, stars, and galaxies dancing around us is the price humans had to pay for having observed it in the first place:

“When our prehistoric ancestors studied the sky after sunset, they observed that some of the stars were not fixed with respect to the constant pattern of the constellations. Instead, five of them moved, slowly forward across the sky, then backward for a few months, then forward again, as if they couldn’t quite make up their minds. We call them planets, the Greek word for “wanderers.” These planets presented a profound mystery. The earliest explanation was that they were living beings. How else to explain their strange looping behavior. Later they were thought to be gods, and then disembodied astrological influences. But the real solution to this mystery is that the planets are worlds, that the Earth is one of them, and that they all go around the sun according to precise mathematical laws. This discovery has led directly to our modern global civilization.” A Personal Voyage — Harmony of the World, by Carl Sagan

Why Living In Cities Sucks

sagansapien: thetreacheryofwords: Keep Looking Up Beautiful,...

Fri, 08 Oct 2010 11:41:17 -0400

sagansapien:

thetreacheryofwords:

Keep Looking Up

Beautiful, aren’t they? Like illustrations in a book. Only these are real. No one drew them. These exist. And there are at least 200 billion of them. The nine images above are just a few of our galactic neighbors, millions of light years away. They may seem obvious to us now, but not even a hundred years ago their existence was in doubt.

Under the only magnifications possible until the 20th century, most notably until the 100-inch telescope on Mount Wilson in California was built, these fuzzy objects were considered outlying parts of our own galaxy - clouds of gas, perhaps. Other nebulae (“planetary nebulae”, or supernova remnants) had been proven to exist within the Milky Way, and the assumption was that “spiral nebulae” were similarly on the edge of our galaxy, which might just be the edge of the universe.

A great debate about the make up of the universe went on well into the 1920s, when Edwin Hubble, charting Cepheid variable stars in the Andromeda “nebula” with the Mount Wilson scope, showed that their distance from us was something near a million light years - much too far to be part of our own Milky Way. Finally proven to be immense conglomerations of stars millions of light years away, they were termed what Immanuel Kant had first called in 1755 the idea of separate Milky Ways: island universes.

Although that term eventually fell out of favor, I’ve always preferred it to galaxy, which sounds like a car model. Galaxy actually comes from the Greek galaktos, literally “milk” (the shared root of our words lactate, lactation, lactic). The myth is that Zeus, desiring his mortal-born son Heracles to have godlike powers, allowed him to suckle on his divine wife Hera’s breast, which, when discovered, caused her to push the baby away, and the resulting spurt of milk created the Milky Way. I think island universe, in addition to separating itself from this mythological nonsense, better communicates the immense solitude of galaxies, surrounded as they are by the vast emptiness of intergalactic space. It also makes me feel like there’s an implied sense of life in those galaxies.

Pause one of those images up there. Imagine that’s our galaxy: dusty disc, spiral arms, supermassive blackhole in the center. Zoom in and pick out one of the tiny pinpricks of light in that whirling disc. It’ll be hard to choose; there are billions. Got it? Now imagine that’s our Sun. And around that sun, visualize our planetary system, a whirling disc too. Along that elliptical plane, on a tiny blue planet circling a tiny yellow star, is, as Carl Sagan wrote, “everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was.”

A humbling thought, to say the least. Humankind is nothing. NOTHING to the Universe. We’re a flicker on a speck on a mote. We’ve been lucky enough, thanks to several cosmic coincidences, to not only arise as life, but evolve to intelligence (relatively speaking), and remain protected from the myriad catastrophes surrounding us. Our relatively stable star; our location in the “Goldilocks Zone” of the Solar System (not too hot, not too cold); the axial tilt of the Earth causing seasons; the tidal forces of an overly-large satellite (the result of an unlikely collision between a Mars-sized planetoid and the proto-Earth) creating the right conditions for life; Earth’s strong magnetic field protecting us from radiation; Jupiter, playing gravitational center field, catching our would-be asteroid strikes; the Moon, playing goalie, planting its far side firmly in the face of incoming shots: if it weren’t for these, and a billion other random events, no one would be here at all.

It seems incredibly unlikely that all of the dominoes would fall just so, but they have. And in fact, that’s why we’re here. It’s not a coincidence if these are the prerequisites for intelligent life arising. But as unlikely as it seems, when you’re faced with images like these, how can you not imagine that this has happened countless times, not just in our galaxy, but in the nearly infinite number of other galaxies out there? How can you not believe that right now a vast multitude of individuals across the universe are contemplating images just like these, images that may even include our galaxy, and are attempting to understand their place in the universe - no different than us?

Lets be friends, K?

findlilyhere: This is how a sunspot really looks, in the most...

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:57:00 -0400

findlilyhere:

This is how a sunspot really looks, in the most detailed picture of the surface of the sun yet. Hola, Señor Sauron! The photo, which was taken on July 2 by New Jersey Institute of Technology’s Professor Philip R. Good and the Big Bear Solar Observatory team, shows a sun spot at about 3600ºC, surrounded by a mosaic of hell burning at 5800ºC. The BBSO is 5.25-feet in diameter and will be able to resolve sun details as small as 45 kilometers in optimal conditions. The image itself shows details measuring 0.09 arcseconds, which is about 65 kilometers (about 40 miles).

This Is What a Sunspot Really Looks Like

photojojo: Apollo 11 launch, 1969 We love NASA’s Flickr set...

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:54:14 -0400

photojojo:

Apollo 11 launch, 1969

We love NASA’s Flickr set solely dedicated to shuttle launches. It’s full of wondrous shots!

NASA Shuttle Launches Flickr Set

Homemade Insurance for the Apollo AstronautsNo life insurance...

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 06:21:09 -0400

Homemade Insurance for the Apollo AstronautsNo life insurance company would touch the first astronauts. But the Apollo crews knew that they needed to do something that would leave their families in good shape were the mission to go badly.

The answer was provided by NASA in the form of ‘Insurance Covers’, as seen here, a number of which were given to every crew member and subsequently signed by every astronaut involved, as close to launch as possible. Its value would instantly be high, but would no doubt sky-rocket (no pun intended) should the astronauts never return; the deceased’s surviving family then at least safe in the knowledge that in future they could cash-in their makeshift insurance policy if required.

These covers continued through Apollo 16. Then, the government started providing insurance for astronauts: any astronaut who was part of the military was eligible for insurance cover through the military.

Discussion here suggests that the Apollo 15 crew sold off a whole lot of unauthorized insurance covers. (via:emilyposts:crookedindifference)

A spectacular new photo from the Hubble Space Telescope has...

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 08:35:43 -0400

A spectacular new photo from the Hubble Space Telescope has revealed a stunning space bubble filled with baby stars.

The new space bubble image highlights an area called N11 – a complex network of gas clouds and star clusters within our neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud.

This energetic star-forming region is the second largest known to date, and one of the most active in our galactic neighbor. [Space.com via NASA/ESA]

This is Atlantis, launching for the last time from Cape...

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 17:53:00 -0400

This is Atlantis, launching for the last time from Cape Canaveral, as two F-15E Strike Eagles watch from the distance. One of the most beautiful photos I’ve seen of a space shuttle launch. [Discover via Ruthless via Jalopnik]

life: On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American in...

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 19:38:36 -0400

life:

On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American in space with the launch of the “Freedom 7” capsule at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

“Please, dear God, don’t let me f—- up,” is known among aviators as Shepard’s Prayer — although Shepard himself has said that he was misquoted, and all he really said was, “Don’t f—k up, Shepard.”

Alan Shepard: 1st American in Space

life: After 34-year-old astronaut Ed White became the first...

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 19:19:36 -0400

life:

After 34-year-old astronaut Ed White became the first American to walk in space on June 3,1965, both White and his Gemini IV crew mate, Command Pilot James McDivitt, shared the story of the mission with LIFE magazine. LIFE then ran, as the cover above proudly declares, “16 Pages of Fantastic Color” from White’s “marvelous romp” in space.

Above: “120 miles up, Astronaut White floats over Lower California.”

America’s First Space Walk

via Amazing picture of the International Space Station passing...

Sun, 30 May 2010 16:06:51 -0400

via

Amazing picture of the International Space Station passing Jupiter in broad daylight.

via NASA Watch The movie is a little long, but this...

Sun, 30 May 2010 03:50:30 -0400

via NASA Watch

The movie is a little long, but this the first-ever up close, high-definition video of Kennedy Space Center’s Final Inspection Team walkdown in the final hours before a space shuttle launch. The footage was shot on May 14 at Kennedy’s Launch Pad 39A during the countdown for shuttle Atlantis’ STS-132 mission.

lickystickypickyme: Martian sunset.

Thu, 27 May 2010 07:22:48 -0400

lickystickypickyme: Martian sunset.