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I mostly reblog awesome stuff.
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Science!
Space!
Music
Movies
Chemistry
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Sci Fi
Ukulele
Hip Hop
Latin
Hayao Miyazaki
And some other stuff.
Incredible Pictures from ISS by Astronaut Douglas H. Wheelock
On September 22, 2010, with the departure of the Expedition 23 crew, Colonel Douglas H. Wheelock assumed command of the International Space Station and the Expedition 25 crew.
(Source: the-star-stuff)
Uranus Auroras Glimpsed from Earth
For the first time, scientists have captured images of auroras above the gas giant Uranus. Unlike auroras on Earth, which can turn the sky greens and purples for hours, the newly detected auroras on Uranus are fainter and appeared to only last a couple minutes, detected twice on the dayside of Uranus.
The unfamiliar appearance of the auroras is due to Uranus’ rotational weirdness and peculiar traits of its magnetic axis, which is both offset from the center of the planet and lists at an angle of 60 degrees from the rotational axis. The magnetic field is thought to be generated by a salty ocean within the planet, resulting in the off-center magnetic axis.
Capturing the new images of Uranus’s auroras resulted from a combination of good luck and careful planning. In 2011, Earth, Jupiter and Uranus were lined up so that the solar wind could flow from the Sun, past Earth and Jupiter, and then toward Uranus. When the Sun produced several large bursts of charged particles in mid-September 2011, the researchers used Earth-orbiting satellites to monitor the solar wind’s local arrival two to three days later.
Two weeks after that, the solar wind sped past Jupiter at 500 kilometers per second (310 miles per second). Calculating that the charged particles would reach Uranus in mid-November, the team scrambled to scheduled time on the Hubble Space Telescope.
ATV-3 approaches the ISS
European Space Agency’s “Edoardo Amaldi” Automated Transfer Vehicle-3 (ATV-3) approaches the International Space Station. The unmanned cargo spacecraft docked to the space station at 6:31 p.m. (EDT) on March 28, 2012, delivering 220 pounds of oxygen, 628 pounds of water, 4.5 tons of propellant, and nearly 2.5 tons of dry cargo, including experiment hardware, spare parts, food and clothing.
Galaxy Collision
Two spiral galaxies undergo a protracted crash lasting two billion years, eventually merging into a single elliptical galaxy. Credit: NCSA/NASA/B. Robertson (Caltech) and L. Hernquist (Harvard Univ.)
Jupiter and its moons; Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.
The Atmosphere of Saturn’s Moon Titan
Titan (or Saturn VI) is the largest moon of Saturn. It is the only natural satellite known to have a fully developed dense atmosphere, and the only object other than Earth for which clear evidence of stable bodies of surface liquid has been found. The atmospheric composition in the stratosphere is 98.4% nitrogen—the only dense, nitrogen-rich atmosphere in the Solar System aside from the Earth’s—with the remaining 1.6% composed of mostly of methane (1.4%) and hydrogen (0.1–0.2%).
Above: True-color image of layers of haze in Titan’s atmosphere.
Below: A graph detailing temperature, pressure, and other aspects of Titan’s climate. The atmospheric haze lowers the temperature in the lower atmosphere, while methane raises the temperature at the surface. Cryovolcanoes erupt methane into the atmosphere, which then rains down onto the surface, forming lakes.
Amateurs Find Hidden Gems in Space
1. Orion Nebula. Image: ESO/Igor Chekalin.
2. Messier 78. Image: ESO/Igor Chekalin.
3. Antennae Galaxies. Image: ESO/Alberto Milani
4. Messier 74. Image: ESO/Manuel (Manu) Mejias
5. NGC 3169 and NGC3166. Image: ESO/Igor Chekalin
A study in ringlight
Cassini took this photo on June 7, 2006. Mimas is silhouetted against the rings. The planet is lit by reflected and scattered ringlight. Two stars are above the rings in the background. Red and green frames were processed into this approximately natural color image.
