Space
Get flash to fully experience Pearltrees
Universe Today
SpaceX Dragon approaches the ISS on COTS 2 test flight slated for May 19 liftoff and docking on Day 4. Astronauts will grapple it with the robotic arm and berth it at the Earth facing port of the Harmony node. Illustration: NASA /SpaceX In less than 48 hours, SpaceX is primed to make history and launch the first ever commercial rocket and spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) early Saturday morning on May 19.
SpaceWeather
SOLAR STORM HEATS UP EARTH'S ATMOSPHERE: A flurry of solar activity in early March dumped enough heat in Earth's upper atmosphere to power every residence in New York City for two years. The heat has since dissipated, but there's more to come as the solar cycle intensifies. [ full story ] [ video ] MIDNIGHT ROCKET PLUMES--POSTPONED: Friday morning's launch of five rockets from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia has been postponed. New date: On Sunday, March 25th, between midnight and 3 am EDT, NASA plans a rapid-fire launch of five sounding rockets from Wallops.
Celestia
Unlike most planetarium software, Celestia doesn't confine you to the surface of the Earth. You can travel throughout the solar system, to any of over 100,000 stars, or even beyond the galaxy. All movement in Celestia is seamless; the exponential zoom feature lets you explore space across a huge range of scales, from galaxy clusters down to spacecraft only a few meters across. A 'point-and-goto' interface makes it simple to navigate through the universe to the object you want to visit. Celestia is expandable. Celestia comes with a large catalog of stars, galaxies, planets, moons, asteroids, comets, and spacecraft.• Most advanced and up-to-date Celestial Calculations by Jean Meeus - also used by NASA • Music by Travis Fitzsimmons • Spanish version by Ignacio Díez • Portuguese version by Rodrigo Ottero (special language characters are not supported) • Russian version by Sergey Leonov
Solar System Scope
HubbleSite
STScI-2012-08 6. Hubble Zooms in on a Magnified Galaxy A team of astronomers aimed Hubble at one of the most striking examples of gravitational lensing, a nearly 90-degree arc of light in the galaxy cluster RCS2 032727-132623. ( More ) STScI-2011-42 14. Distant Galaxy Bursts with Stars One of the most distant galaxies known, called GN-108036, dates back to 750 million years after the Big Bang that created our universe. The galaxy's light took 12.9 billion... ( More ) STScI-2011-38 16.
Stellarium 0.11.2 is a stable version that introduces some new features and closes 47 bug and wishlist reports. A lot of work has been done on making translatable text that wasn't localized before. This includes most of the text used by the default plug-ins, landscapes, countries, script names and descriptions. The Oculars plug-in now has an optional control panel with buttons for those affected by the "missing menu" bug, but it needs to be enabled in the Oculars configuration window. An feature for importing new satellites has been added to the Satellites plug-in, so be sure to reset its settings to get the new data sources.
Stellarium