COSMOS

The Most Important Image Captured By Hubble

In 1996, scientists took a huge risk when they pointed the Hubble telescope to an inky field that they believed to be void of stars and planets. As images from Hubble are in constant demand, the worry was that devoting so much time to a black space would prove futile. Once the photons finally registered, though, that leap of faith proved fruitful: light from over three thousand galaxies illuminated the image. A few years and missions later, Hubble’s glimpse into what is known as the deep field has revealed that we are just one tiny part of a vast system comprising 100 billion galaxies. And if you enjoyed this video, be sure to see our articles on the Hubble Telescopes’ most fascinating photographs and the six most interesting facts about space!

Cassini Images Bizarre Hexagon on Saturn Pasadena, Calif. -- An odd, six-sided, honeycomb-shaped feature circling the entire north pole of Saturn has captured the interest of scientists with NASA's Cassini mission. NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft imaged the feature over two decades ago. The fact that it has appeared in Cassini images indicates that it is a long-lived feature. A second hexagon, significantly darker than the brighter historical feature, is also visible in the Cassini pictures.

Cassini Images Bizarre Hexagon on Saturn

Garrett Lisi: A theory of everything

Some Strange Things Are Happening To Astronauts Returning To Earth

NASA Hack Space | SpaceRef NASA Has Made Contact with Firefly Cubesat A NASA team made first contact with the National Science Foundation-funded Firefly spacecraft at 7:33 p.m. EST on Jan. 6, 2014. Abigaille, The Wall-crawler Robot

On Being Round

Apart from crystals and broken rocks, not much else in the cosmos naturally comes with sharp angles. While many objects have peculiar shapes, the list of round things is practically endless and ranges from simple soap bubbles to the entire observable universe. Spheres tend to take shape from the action of simple physical laws. So prevalent is this tendency that often we assume something is spherical in a mental experiment just to glean basic insight even when we know that an object is decidedly non-spherical.

Mystery Of The Age Of The Giza Pyramids

Space - Google+ Guardian of the Galaxy Whenever I talk about the planets of the solar system, someone usually asks “what about Pluto?” Many people have an emotional attachment to the planet, and feel somewhat offended that the mean astronomers have declared the tiny world to be not a planet.

Astronomy picture of the day

Spectacular Nebula Photos Captured By Space Telescope's X-Ray Vision

Amazing glowing nebulas resembling cosmic candy take center stage in a group of new photos unveiled today (Oct 10) by the science team behind NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The pictures are part of a survey the Chandra space telescope is making of nearby planetary nebulas, which are formed when dying stars push off their outer gaseous layers. The first stage of this survey, which includes Chandra observations of 21 of these nebulas, has now been released. Chandra also released a video of the surveyed nebulas. Chandra observes the universe in short-wavelength X-ray light. This data, shown in pink, was combined with optical imagery from the Hubble Space Telescope, shown in red, green and blue.

ASTEROIDS

Barbara Hand Clow, on the first exact Uranus/Pluto square: June 24, 2012 | Exopermaculture I’m so glad to see that Barbara Hand Clow is again actively sharing her wisdom on astrological transits after discontinuing her monthly lunar updates late last year. The seven articles she speaks of here will, I imagine, reflect the seven exact conjunctions of Uranus and Pluto over the next three years. I will read this essay later, but wanted to post it now, as I know it will be a great read. This Uranus/Pluto square is and has been for the past year or two, a deep background dissonant, clanking, explosive drone note, echoing the late ’60s, when the seeds of revolutionary fervor sparking now were planted by these planets’ first conjunction since the Civil War. I have discussed or mentioned this crucial astrological signature over and over again, ever since I began this blog, in early 2011, and now it is finally clicking into exactness. Barbara Hand Clow, on the first exact Uranus/Pluto square: June 24, 2012 | Exopermaculture

Touch here to purchase on Amazon. "An exciting new theory of sacred art, sacred architecture, and the music and magic of the earth ... a fascinating journey into the mysteries of human consciousness and the lost wisdom of the ancients." - Graham Hancock, Author, Fingerprints of the Gods Touch here to read an article about the book. The Venus Blueprint makes the startling case that the orbital resonance pattern of Venus as seen from Earth was central to the development of early science, religion and government. Throughout recorded history, the pentagonal cycle of Venus has been repeatedly associated with the feminine aspect of God from Babylonian Ishtar and Indian Shukra to the Saxon goddess Eastre and Greek Aphrodite. New evidence now suggests that the orbital geometry of Venus, tracing out a rose pentacle between the Sun and Earth, was used as a sacred fertility symbol to design the world’s greatest temples. The Venus Blueprint

Solar Eclipses

Space(outer)

Neil Armstrong Quote - Apollo 11 Quote from Neil Armstrong When Neil H. Armstrong, a blond, blue-eyed, thirty-eight-year-old civilian astronaut from Wapakoneta, Ohio, steps out of the lunar landing module this summer and plants his size eleven space bot on the surface of the moon, the event will eclipse in historic importance the landing of Christopher Columbus in the New World. Commander Armstrong's step will not immediately affect the nature of the quality of life on earth, of course (neither did Columbus'), but it will mark the departure point of a fantastic new adventure in the saga of man. For that step onto the moon will signal a readiness to travel throughout the solar system, even the universe — in flights that will lead not merely to new worlds, new substances, new conceptions about the nature of matter and of life itself, but, it can scarcely be doubted, to contact with new beings as well.

InterGalactic Info

The Scale of the Universe 2

Project Icarus: Laying the Plans for Interstellar Travel - Atlantic Mobile Andreas Tziolas is drafting a blueprint for a mission to a nearby star. Here, he discusses how we'll get there -- and why we try. We humans have known for a very long time that going to the stars will be difficult, if not impossible. The motto of NASA, Per Aspera Ad Astra, a latin phrase meaning "through hardship to the stars," comes down to us all the way from Seneca the Younger, a contemporary of Nero. Even today, when our metaphors of exertion and ambition are many --"swing for the fences," "go for gold" -- when we strain to capture the difficulty of a task, or the enormity of an achievement, "reach for the stars" is the first and most natural phrase that comes to mind. Our hierarchy of the ultimate human accomplishments is in this sense remarkably stable at the top. Project Icarus: Laying the Plans for Interstellar Travel - Atlantic Mobile

Space(outer)

Posted by Dave Orr, Google Research Product Manager Not everything that can be counted counts. Not everything that counts can be counted. 50,000 relations from Wikipedia. 100,000 feature vectors from YouTube videos. 1.8 million historical infoboxes. 40 million entities derived from webpages. 11 billion Freebase entities in 800 million web documents. 350 billion words’ worth from books analyzed for syntax. Open-sourcing Sky Map and collaborating with Carnegie Mellon University | Research Blog

Vast Web of Dark Matter Mapped — By analyzing the light from 10 million galaxies, astronomers have built the largest dark matter map ever created. — The map visualizes an intricate cosmic web of dark matter and galaxies one billion light-years across. — Understanding the structure of dark matter will help us understand the evolution of the Universe. Astronomers have created a vast cosmic map revealing an intricate web of dark matter and galaxies spanning a distance of one billion light-years.

Vast Web of Dark Matter Mapped

Hubble: The Collection

Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer

Download the Digital Universe

Our Cosmic Horizon on Vimeo

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Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2011 September 4 In the Shadow of Saturn Image Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA Explanation: In the shadow of Saturn, unexpected wonders appear.