PAT · The free, open source, portable atlas. Blue Marble Navigator - Night Lights 2012. NASA Satellites Capture Earth As You've Never Seen It. Icelandic Tiger | The Earth as Art: Satellite Images of Our Planet from Orbit. ICELAND - This stretch of Iceland's northern coast resembles a tiger's head complete with stripes of orange, black, and white. The tiger's mouth is the Eyjafjorour fjord that juts into the mainland between steep mountains. The name means "island fjord," derived from the tiny, tear-shaped Hrisey Island near its mouth The lidless eyes of the satellites circle the Earth, looking down upon the surface.
The images that satellites like the U.S. Geological Survey’s Landsat 7 become instant feedback about our effect on the planet, how the Earth is shaped by processes both human and natural. But as this collection of photos from an exhibition at the Library of Congress in Washington shows, satellite image can be made into art as well. Earth's Highest Mountain Photographed From Space Station. The world's highest mountain doesn't look quite so high from space. Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko recently snapped a shot of Mount Everest from his perch 230 miles (370 kilometers) above Earth on the International Space Station. The photo shows the peak of Everest nestled among other crags in the Himalayas, with snow lightly dusting the tops. Such a famous mountain, one of the world's most iconic climbing goals, is an often-sought photographic target for astronauts in orbit. But it's harder than you might think to catch a good snapshot of the mountain, or any specific landmark on Earth, astronauts say, because their schedules are so packed tight, and photos of Earth locations must be timed carefully.
Twin spacecraft map the mass of the man in the moon. Flora Graham, deputy editor, newscientist.com (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MIT/GSFC) Twin spacecraft orbiting the moon have created an incredibly detailed map of our companion. In this image, the moon's normally sober appearance has been enhanced with colours to represent variations in its structure - red indicates more massive areas and blue corresponds to less mass. The two satellites that made the map are called Ebb and Flow, and together they're known as GRAIL (Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory). Precise microwave measurements between Ebb and Flow allowed NASA to build the map from data acquired from March to May this year. Because the moon lacks an atmosphere, the mapping satellites can orbit very close to the surface, allowing them to create the most detailed gravity map of any body in the solar system.
As seen in the video below, the far side of the moon appears far more pockmarked because it has more small craters. Nasa gravity satellites slam into Moon. Doomed Spacecraft Captures Awesome Close-Up Video of Moon | Wired Science. Three days before the moon-orbiting Ebb spacecraft collided with a lunar mountain, its on-board cameras captured some striking images of the pockmarked moon’s northern hemisphere — from just six miles up. On Jan. 10, NASA released what look like scenes from a science fiction movie: two probe’s-eye views of the lunar farside, made from Ebb’s stitched-together images. The clips are played six times faster than the spacecraft’s flyover actually occurred. The first was shot by the forward-facing MoonKAM, and the second was taken by a rear-facing camera.
Ebb was one of the twin GRAIL spacecraft tasked with mapping the moon’s gravity field — a successful mission that came to an end in December. The images used to create this flyover video were shot on Dec. 14 as the washing machine-size probes began final preparations for the mission’s planned end. Video: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MIT/SRS Homepage Photo: Nasa. Art vs. Science, Part Four: Gas giants scare the crap out of me – bioephemera. Okay, I knew that planets are big, intellectually, but a well-done graphic is worth a thousand words, and a pretty HD video is even better. Brad Goodspeed made this video to suggest what other planets would look like, if they orbited Earth at the same distance as the Moon does.
I’ve embedded it, but you should seriously watch it in HD, full-screen for maximum effect. Scale from Brad Goodspeed on Vimeo. I have nightmares like that. Seriously. But is the video accurate? In addition to being full-on creepy, Brad’s video produced a fascinating discussion in the comments and on various sites linking to his blog. Brad explained that what he was actually trying to capture was a sector of the night sky – what we tend to “see” in our field of view when we look at the moon: Had I represented my moon as being only half a degree on the screen, it would have appeared as a tiny circle of light, which is not how the moon ‘feels’ to us when we look at it. I’m no Astronomer. (I added the emphases). Nasalta ennennäkemättömän tarkka värikuva Merkuriuksesta.
Astronauts on the International Space Station send messages of peace. The helical model - our solar system is a vortex. Voyager | Voyager, 11 Billion Miles Later: Photos from the Depths of Our Solar System. SSPL / Getty Images A technician checks a test model of a Voyager spacecraft at the SAEF-1 facility at the Kennedy Space Centre, Cape Canaveral, Fla. Two Voyager spacecraft were launched in 1977 to explore the planets in the outer Solar System and both were successful, returning many high quality pictures as well as scientific data. For 33 years, America’s Voyager spacecraft have been flying toward the edges of our solar system. TIME surveys the most notable interstellar scenes captured by the Voyager’s cameras along the way. PHOTOS: Window on Infinity: Pictures from Space MORE: Voyager 1 at the Threshold of Forever.
Musiikkia avaruusolioille -Voyager kuljettaa ehkä ihmiskunnan viimeistä tervehdystä | Yle Tiede. Prisma Studion aikakapselin kokoamisen yhteydessä kerrottiin myös Voyager -luotainten mukana lähetetystä ihmiskunnan tervehdyksestä vieraille siviilisaatioille. Tämä on jutun käsikirjoitus hieman muokattuna. Kuva: NASA/JPL-Caltech Aurinkokunnan ulkorajalla kiitää tällä hetkellä ihmisen toistaiseksi pisimmälle lähettämä laite. Voyager 1 -luotain matkaa kohti kaukaisia tähtiä. Se on Nasan luotain, joka ammuttiin avaruuteen vuonna 1977, siis 35 vuotta sitten. Vasta pari kuukautta sitten se vihdoin pääsi ulos aurinkokunnasta. Kun tämä 800-kiloinen kapistus joskus tömähtää jonkun avaruusolennon takapihalle, mitä hän löytää sen sisältä? Tähtitieteilijä Carl Saganin kokoaman levyn kuunteluun tarvitaan vinyylisoitin.
Mitä levyllä sitten on? Ensimmäisenä kuuluu, kun presidentti Jimmy Carter tervehtii avaruuden asukkeja. Ääneen pääsee myös YK:n pääsihteeri Kurt Waldheim. Seuraavana mukana on tervehdys 55 maan kielellä, muinaisesta sumerinkielestä nykykiinaan. Photos from NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 Probes | NASA Voyager Missions | Solar System & Planet Exploration.
What Space Data Looked Like in 1962 - Megan Garber. Fifty years ago, we recorded the learnings of our space explorers with paper scrolls. Throughout most of human history, humans knew Venus as "the brightest star in the sky. " Fifty years ago, however -- December 14, 1962 -- humanity got to know our neighbor planet in a wonderfully new way: up close and personal. On that day, NASA's Mariner 2 spacecraft sailed by Venus, at a range of 21,600 miles, scanning its atmosphere and surface for a full 42 minutes. It was the first time any spacecraft had ever successfully made a close-up study of another planet. The result, here on Earth, was data. So what did all that information look like, actually? Nasa marks 50 years of space photography - in pictures | Science | The Observer.
Nefertiti, the Spidernaut, Spent 100 Days in Space. Tammikuun tähtitaivas piirtää Saturnuksen renkaat. Rengasplaneetta Saturnus näkyy kuun vieressä tammikuun 7. päivänä. Lahden Ursan tiedottaja Marko Kämäräinen kertoo, että silloin Saturnuksen voi nähdä kuun vieressä. Se on hieno paljain silmin katsottuna tai pienellä kaukoputkella, jolloin renkaatkin näkyvät. Tammikuun ensimmäisellä viikolla tähtitaivas tarjoaa myös meteorisateen. Kämäräinen vinkkaa tutkailemaan pohjoista taivasta alkuiltaisin. Kvadrantidien meteorisade on nyt parhaillaan. Enimmillään voi nähdä sata meteoria tunnissa. Halo on erikoinen valo Taivaalla näkyvät haloilmiöt ovat esimerkiksi sateenkaaria yleisempiä, Ursan Marko Kämäräinen tietää. Haloja on vuosittain sadasta kahteen sataan kertaa.
"Human's May be One of the Early Intelligent Species in the Universe" (Weekend Feature) Arthur C Clarke once wrote that a trillion years from now an advanced civilization will look back at us with envy and say "They knew the Universe when it was young. " We may soon discover that intelligent life, indeed, may be in it's "very young" stage in the observable Universe. Its 200 billion galaxies show a clear potential to continue on as we see them today for hundreds of billions of years, if not much longer. Because planets and life are so young in our Universe, says Harvard's Dimitar Sasselov, perhaps "the human species are not late comers to the party. We may be among the early ones. " That may explain why we see no evidence of "them" and may go a long way to explaining the famous Fermi Paradox, which asks if there's advanced intelligent life in the Universe, where are they?
Why haven't we discovered any evidence of their existence There are 200 billion stars in the Milky Way and 90% are small enough and old enough to have planets in orbit. As Arthur C. ?ref=http%3A%2F%2Ft. Sri Lankan-born British mathematician, Chandra Wickramasinghe, discovered that a two-inch wide meteorite that crash landed in a fireball in central Sri Lanka in December was pitted with tiny fossils of algae, similar to the kind found in seaweed. Wickramasinghe, currently Director of the 'Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology', was a student and collaborator of Fred Hoyle.
Their joint work on the infrared spectra of interstellar grains led to developing the hypothesis of panspermia that proposes that cosmic dust in the interstellar medium and in comets is partly organic, and that life on Earth was 'seeded' from space. Wickramasinghe believes the discovery proves we are not alone in the universe: “These finds are crushing evidence that human life started outside Earth.” The rock was one of several fragments of a meteorite which crash landed in a spectacular fireball and were still smoking when villagers living near the city of Polonnaruwa picked them up.
What we learn just by being here. “Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others.” -Timothy Leary Here we are, on planet Earth, the product of generations of civilization-building, maybe four-billion years of evolution on our world, around 13.7 billion years into the existence of our observable Universe. Image credit: Paranal Observatory, ESO / Babak Tafreshi. The Universe, quite possibly, didn’t have to be exactly the way it is.
And yet, you may wonder if there’s some significance to these constants of nature having the values they do, and whether they have those values out of some necessity. Image credit: NASA, ESA, G. When you think about the Universe, there are some plain, indisputable scientific truths that stare you right in the face. Image credit: NASA, ESA, R. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / T. Image credit: Randy Russell. Image credit: BBC Universe, of Fred Hoyle in 1963. Documentary about Journey To The Edge Of The Universe. Planck reveals an almost perfect Universe / Planck / Space Science. Cosmic microwave background seen by Planck Planck reveals an almost perfect Universe 21 March 2013 Acquired by ESA’s Planck space telescope, the most detailed map ever created of the cosmic microwave background – the relic radiation from the Big Bang – was released today revealing the existence of features that challenge the foundations of our current understanding of the Universe.
The image is based on the initial 15.5 months of data from Planck and is the mission’s first all-sky picture of the oldest light in our Universe, imprinted on the sky when it was just 380 000 years old. At that time, the young Universe was filled with a hot dense soup of interacting protons, electrons and photons at about 2700ºC. When the protons and electrons joined to form hydrogen atoms, the light was set free. Planck was designed to map these fluctuations across the whole sky with greater resolution and sensitivity than ever before. Planck’s anomalous sky Continue reading below Asymmetry and cold spot. Suomalaiskeksintö selventää maailmankaikkeuden ikää.
Maailmankaikkeus lienee 80 miljoonaa vuotta vanhempi kuin aiemmin on arvioitu. Euroopan avaruusjärjestö ESA:n Planck-avaruusteleskoopin havaintojen perusteella maailmankaikkeuden iäksi arvioidaan 13,82 miljardia vuotta. Teleskoopissa on Teknologian tutkimuskeskus VTT:n ja muiden suomalaistutkijoiden kehittämä radiovastaanotin. Sillä on saatu nyt uutta tietoa maailmankaikkeudesta. Laitteen kehittämiseen meni yli vuosikymmen. - Se on maailman herkin radiovastaanotin ja se on toiminut jo kaksi kertaa pitempään kuin aluksi arvioitiin, kertoo VTT:n t&k-toiminnan kehittämisen johtaja Jussi Tuovinen.
Se on maailman herkin radiovastaanotin ja se on toiminut jo kaksi kertaa pitempään kuin aluksi arvioitiin Planck-avaruusteleskoopin mittauksista koottu kartta kosmisesta taustasäteilystä eli kuva alkuräjähdyksestä julkaistiin tänään torstaina. Kartta on kosolti tarkempi kuin aiemmat taustasäteilykartat. Pimeää ainetta on enemmän kuin uskottiin Planck-luotain lähti matkaan vuonna 2009. Researchers Find Evidence of Other Universes Lurking in the Cosmic Background. Just when the search for exoplanets looked like the undisputed fashionable field of study for 2010, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is stepping to the forefront of astronomy and cosmology.
Last month, it was Oxford's Roger Penrose claiming that he'd found evidence of a cyclical universe in patterns of concentric circles in the CMB, suggesting our universe is just one of many that have come before it (and will come after it). Now, another group of researchers are claiming the CMB contains evidence of other universes that exist concurrently (and outside of) our own.
The new evidence, put forth by a group of researchers at University College London, is based upon the model of "eternal inflation," which is predicated on the idea that our universe is part of a larger and ever-expanding multiverse. But that's a big "if. " For the cosmically curious, check out the University College, et al. paper here (PDF). [Technology Review]
Top 5 Reasons We Might Live in a Multiverse | Hidden Universes. Timeline of the far future. Higgsin bosoni ennustaa maailmankaikkeuden loppua. Powers of Ten™ (1977) Simpsons couch gag on the the high school classic "Powers of 10". Symphony of Science - 'We Are All Connected' (ft. Sagan, Feynman, deGrasse Tyson & Bill Nye)