Author: M. Özgür Nevres

I am a software developer and a science enthusiast. I was graduated from the Istanbul Technical University (ITU), Computer Engineering. In the past, I worked at the Istanbul Technical University Science Center as a science instructor. I write about the planet Earth and science on this website, ourplnt.com. I am also an animal lover! I take care of stray cats & dogs. This website's all income goes directly to our furry friends. Please consider supporting me on Patreon, so I can help more animals!

Categories
Planet Earth Evolution Life on Earth Solar System

What if the Earth was tidally locked to the Sun?

Sunrise from space (NASA)
Image: NASA - ISS013-E-78960 (9 Sept. 2006) - A rising sun and Earth's horizon are featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 13 crew member on the International Space Station.

We only see one side of the moon, because it is tidally locked to the planet Earth (tidal locking the situation when an object’s orbital period matches its rotational period). What if the Earth was tidally locked to the Sun?

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Physics Space Exploration

Astronauts demonstrate Newton’s second and third laws of motion

Astronaut demonstrates Newton's third law of motion
NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei demonstrates Newton’s Third Law of Motion on the International Space Station by exhibiting an equal and opposite force pair. What are some examples of equal and opposite force pairs on earth and in space? The third law states that for every action (force) in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction. In other words, if object A exerts a force on object B, then object B also exerts an equal force on object A. Notice that the forces are exerted on different objects. The third law can be used to explain the generation of lift by a wing and the production of thrust by a jet engine.

A microgravity environment is a perfect place to demonstrate basic physics, i.e. Newton’s laws of motion. In the videos published by the NASA Johnson channel, astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) just do that.

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Categories
Space Exploration Astronomy Solar System

486958 Arrokoth image against a starry background

Ultima Thule (cropped image)
An Ultima Thule image in original context against a starry background (i.e., not zoomed in).

A beautiful 486958 Arrokoth image (initially nicknamed Ultima Thule) taken by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft in original context against a starry background (i.e., not zoomed in).

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Moon Landing Earth from Space Space Exploration

China Puts Chang’e 4 Lander on the Far-Side of the Moon!

The first photos from the Chang'e 4 lunar lander and rover
Chang'e-4 lands on the Moon and sends back first images. China's lunar mission (lander and rover) landed in the Von Kármán Crater, located in the Aitken Basin, in the South Pole region on the far side of the Moon, on 3 January 2019, at 02:26 UTC (10:26 Beijing time). The Chang'e-4 lunar mission was launched by a Long March-3B rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, Sichuan Province, southwest China, on 7 December 2018, at 18:23 UTC (8 December at 02:23 local time). Image Credit: China National Space Administration (CNSA)

Today, on January 3, 2019, China’s lunar lander and rover Chang’e 4 achieved the first soft landing on the far side of the Moon in the history of humanity’s space exploration. It’s a space feat no nation or space agency (including NASA) has accomplished until now.

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Space Exploration Moon Landing

For All Moonkind [Messages of Peace]

Buzz Aldrin on the Moon (cropped)
Moon Landing: Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, lunar module pilot, stands on the surface of the moon near the leg of the lunar module, Eagle, during the Apollo 11 moonwalk. Astronaut Neil Armstrong, mission commander, took this photograph with a 70mm lunar surface camera. While Armstrong and Aldrin descended in the lunar module to explore the Sea of Tranquility, astronaut Michael Collins, command module pilot, remained in lunar orbit with the Command and Service Module, Columbia.
This is the actual photograph as exposed on the moon by Armstrong. He held the camera slightly rotated so that the camera frame did not include the top of Aldrin's portable life support system ("backpack").
A communications antenna mounted on top of the backpack is also cut off in this picture. When the image was released to the public, it was rotated clockwise to restore the astronaut to vertical for a more harmonious composition, and a black area was added above his head to recreate the missing black lunar "sky" (Related: Why there are no stars in space photos?). The edited version is the one most commonly reproduced and known to the public, but the original version, above, is the authentic exposure. This image was cataloged by NASA Headquarters of the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) under Photo ID: AS11-40-5903. Image: Wikipedia

Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first people to walk on the moon. After more than ​21 1⁄2 hours on the lunar surface, in addition to the scientific instruments, they left behind an Apollo 1 mission patch (see notes 1) and a memorial bag containing a gold replica of an olive branch as a traditional symbol of peace and a silicon message disk.

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Astronomy

100 Million Stars in the Andromeda Galaxy [amazing video!]

Andromeda Galaxy Hubble Image hs-2015-02-a
To better understand what stars compose the Andromeda galaxy, a group of researchers studied the nearby spiral by composing the largest image ever taken with the Hubble Space Telescope. The result, called the Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury (PHAT), involved thousands of observations, hundreds of fields, spanned about a third of the galaxy, and resolved over 100 million stars. In the featured composite image, the central part of the galaxy is seen on the far left, while a blue spiral arm is prominent on the right. The brightest stars, scattered over the frame, are actually Milky Way foreground stars. The PHAT data is being analyzed to better understand where and how stars have formed in M31 in contrast to our Milky Way Galaxy, and to identify and characterize Andromeda's stellar clusters and obscuring dust. Though the Andromeda galaxy is 2.5 million light-years from Earth, it is our galactic next-door neighbor on the universal scale. The Hubble Space Telescope is powerful enough to resolve individual stars in a 61,000-light-year-long stretch of the galaxy's pancake-shaped disk. It's like photographing a beach and resolving individual grains of sand. And there are lots of stars in this sweeping view - over 100 million, with some of them in thousands of star clusters seen embedded in the disk. Image Credits: NASA, ESA, J. Dalcanton, B.F. Williams, and L.C. Johnson (University of Washington), the PHAT team, and R. Gendler. This is a resized image. You can see the HD image on the NASA website

In January 2015, NASA released the largest image ever of the Andromeda galaxy, called the Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury (PHAT), taken by the Hubble telescope. This composite image involved thousands of observations, hundreds of fields, spanned about a third of the galaxy and resolved over 100 million stars.

Totaling 1.5 billion pixels and requiring 4.3 gigabytes of disk space, this photo provides a detailed glimpse at the sheer scale of our nearest galactic neighbor.

Using this gigantic image, filmmaker Dave Achtemichuk created an unforgettable interactive experience.

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Categories
Mars Space Exploration

Making music with actual Mars Sounds

InSight image acquired on November 27, 2018, Sol 1 (cropped)
NASA's InSight Mars lander acquired this image using its robotic arm-mounted, Instrument Deployment Camera (IDC). This image was acquired on November 27, 2018, Sol 1 where the local mean solar time for the image exposures was 13:32:45. Each IDC image has a field of view of 45 x 45 degrees. This is a cropped photo. You can see the raw image on NASA/JPL-Caltech webpage.

In December 2018, NASA’s Mars InSight Lander recorded the sounds of Mars for the first time ever. Musician Andrew Huang made music using the real Mars sounds.

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Categories
Life on Earth Animals Evolution Planet Earth Plants Prehistoric

What If Earth’s History Compressed Into One Year

Earth from the Geostationary Orbit
Earth image taken by Japanese weather satellite Himawari 8, which takes a photo of Earth every 10 minutes. Himawari 8 is the 8th of the Himawari geostationary weather satellites operated by the Japan Meteorological Agency. Himawari 8 entered operational service on 7 July 2015 and is the successor to MTSAT-2 (Himawari 7) which was launched in 2006.

What if the Earth’s history (our planet’s age is approximately 4.54 billion years), compressed into just one year? @YearOnEarth just did that. At midnight on the 31st of December, Chris Jennings started a little project for the incoming year: tweeting the entirety of the geological history of the Earth, compressed into one year.

The result is an amazing timeline of the Earth’s history.

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Categories
Solar System Astronomy Planet Earth

The sidereal days and axial tilts of the Planets

Solar System Planets' sidereal days and axial tilts
Solar System Planets' sidereal days and axial tilts

NASA Goddard Planetary Scientist James O’ Donoghue created a nice animation showing the sidereal days and axial tilts of the solar system planets.

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Moon Landing Space Exploration

Saturn V Rocket (Documentary)

Apollo 16 Liftoff (April 16, 1972)
Apollo 16 Liftoff (April 16, 1972). Even on the photo, you can have an idea of what a beast the Saturn V rocket was. This is a resized image, you can see the original image on NASA.gov.

Documentation about the Saturn V, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built (as of 2021, it still holds both titles). The three-stage liquid-fueled super heavy-lift launch vehicle was used by NASA between 1967 and 1973. Saturn V was developed to support the Apollo program for the Moon landing and was later used to launch Skylab.

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