It's Full of Stars

shuttleisland:

Scene at North Island Air Station near San Diego on May 7, 1972. Technicians with Rockwell International were working with the Apollo 16 Command Module when a defueling unit exploded. The accident hospitalized 46 workers.

cwnl:

Tethys Behind Titan

(Source: ikenbot)

n-a-s-a:

M74: The Perfect Spiral

Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage (STScI / AURA)- ESA / Hubble Collaboration Acknowledgment: R. Chandar (Univ. Toledo) and J. Miller (Univ. Michigan)

sniffyjenkins:

Astronaut Don Pettit, playing with his food

“But how does one clean out the whiskers in weightlessness? On Earth, you simply open the head and shake them out. Doing that up here would be a disaster. So once a week, when vacuuming the accumulation of lint, dust, and detritus against the air inlet filters, I vacuum my razor. I hold the vacuum cleaner hose between my legs, and use both hands to carefully open the shaving head in front of the suction. A cloud of whiskers jumps out, appearing like a miniature asteroid field, then quickly disappears into a black hole, with no chance of escape.”

One of my new favourite things is Letters To Earth, the NASA blog of astronaut Don Pettit, who is currently aboard the International Space Station. He writes most days, often about the mundane, day-to-day things of living in zero gravity: where chopsticks go when you lose them (not down), how to clean your electric shaver, toilet facilities on the Soyuz spacecraft, that sort of thing. He is a lovely writer, thoughtful and emotional and funny, philosophical about the little things, awe-struck by the beauty of our planet and everything in the sky around him. His musings on humanity and our perception of ourselves are quite beautiful and he takes some jaw-dropping photos as the ISS orbits (see Grand Canyon and the Eye of Issyk Kul).

Also he invented a zero-g coffee cup. Cool.

I have various astronomy apps on my iPhone that track the ISS and sometimes I look up at the sky and try to imagine that craft so high above me and Don up there, floating around in the capsule eating his space food or doing science or snoozing in his strapped-down sleeping bag or just doing general spaceman stuff and I look forward to hearing about what he’s been up to again.

cwnl:

Solargraph Calar Alto Observatory

Image Copyright: Diego López Calvín

Also: What is Solargraphy?

Credit: PetaPixel

Solargraphy is a technique in which a fixed pinhole camera is used to expose photographic paper for an absurdly long amount of time (sometimes half a year). Practitioner Ollipekka Kangas says,

“Basically solarigraphic camera is a pinhole camera, very slow one. These pinhole photographs taken with a lensless pinhole camera with a extra long exposure. I use black&white paper which is 5-10 ASA. Exposure time can be very long, in some photos up to six months. Usually average camera is hidden in city for one to two months.

The picture will appear without developing photographic paper with any kind of chemicals. Exposured paper is scanned in darkness and developed in Photoshop. All the cameras are very low tech, cheap boxes, canisters or film cans. This method in is antidope for digital photographic madness. I can take only like 5 pictures in month.

Sun draws many interesting traces in photos, you can really see the time passing by. Some times camera is tilted by passerby or tape just goes loose. Double exposures or traces of humidity can be seen in photos.

Include a How-to DIY

(Source: ikenbot)

scinerds:

Sun in H-Alpha by Andrea Tamanti

unknownskywalker:

Kepler announces 11 planetary systems hosting 26 planets

The planets orbit close to their host stars and range in size from 1.5 times the radius of Earth to larger than Jupiter. Fifteen of them are between Earth and Neptune in size, and further observations will be required to determine which are rocky like Earth and which have thick gaseous atmospheres like Neptune. The planets orbit their host star once every six to 143 days. All are closer to their host star than Venus is to our sun.

Each of the new confirmed planetary systems contains two to five closely spaced transiting planets. The system with the most planets among these discoveries is Kepler-33, a star that is older and more massive than our sun. Kepler-33 hosts five planets, ranging in size from 1.5 to 5 times that of Earth and all located closer to their star than any planet is to the sun.

Prior to the Kepler mission, we knew of perhaps 500 exoplanets across the whole sky. Now, in just two years staring at a patch of sky not much bigger than your fist, Kepler has discovered more than 60 planets and more than 2,300 planet candidates. This tells us that our galaxy is positively loaded with planets of all sizes and orbits.

Above: Out of hundreds of candidate planetary systems, scientists had previously verified six systems with multiple transiting planets (denoted here in red). Now, Kepler observations have verified planets in 11 new planetary systems (shown here in green). Many of these systems contain additional planet candidates that are yet to be verified (shown here in dark purple). For reference, the eight planets of the solar system are shown in blue. View full-size image (7292×2668 px) →

High Resolution Image of Earth by NASA’s New Suomi NPP Satellite

[laughingsquid]

n-a-s-a:

Saturn: Light, Dark, and Strange

Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, ISS, JPL, ESA, NASA 

uraniaproject:

Mars_22_01_2012_1015ut-IrRGB-EMr (by Jaicoa)

Via Flickr
Mars this week (January 22nd) showing a pronounce region Auroroe Sinus (finger like) lower left and the chrise region at center and at the Polar Cap region Mare Acidolium.

unknownskywalker:

European Panorama at Night

With hardware from the Earth-orbiting International Space Station appearing in the near foreground, a night time European panorama reveals city lights from Belgium and the Netherlands at bottom center, the British Isles partially obscured by solar array panels at left, the North Sea at left center, and Scandinavia at right center beneath the end effector of the Space Station Remote Manipulator System or Canadarm2.