Categories
Astronomy

What other stars would look like in the place of the Sun?

The Sun is the primary source of energy for Earth’s climate system, and life on Earth. With a diameter of about 1.39 million kilometers (864,337 miles, i.e. 109 times that of Earth), and a mass of about 1.9885×1030 kg (330,000 times that of Earth, accounting for about 99.86% of the total mass of the Solar System), it may be the biggest thing in this neighborhood, but it is actually just a medium-sized star among the hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

In the video published by the CAMENGAT creative astronomy below, you can see some dwarf stars and other giants compared to the Sun at the edge of its sphere: at 150 million kilometers (1 AU, see notes 1) with a 50 mm objective. The stars are the Sun, Alpha Centauri A, Sirius, Vega, Pollux, Arcturus, Aldebaran, Rigel, Antares, and Betelgeuse. The scenario: Astronomical Observatory of Paranal, Chile.

Categories
Moon Landing Space Exploration

I was on the Moon!

On July 20, 2018 (on the 49th anniversary of the moon landing), Linn LeBlanc, Chief Operating Officer at Buzz Aldrin Ventures, LLC asked on Twitter that: “Where were you 49 years today when @TheRealBuzz and Neil Armstrong made those historic first steps onto the Moon. Congratulations to the #Apollo11 crew and to the thousands that made those steps possible!” And Buzz Aldrin’s answer to that question was brilliant: “I was on the Moon!”

Categories
Earth from Space Space Exploration

Amazing Time-Lapse Video Showing Earth from the ISS

European Space Agency has published an amazing time-lapse video showing the Earth from the International Space Station (ISS). The space agency wrote “Join ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst for a quick flight from the USA to Africa aboard the International Space Station in this time-lapse filmed 12.5 times faster than actual speed.” You can watch that breathtaking video below:

Categories
Solar System Astronomy Space Exploration

Song of Saturn and Its Moon Enceladus

NASA has published an amazing video titled “Sounds of Saturn: Hear Radio Emissions of the Planet and Its Moon Enceladus”. The analysis of the data from the Cassini Spacecraft’s Grand Finale orbits showed a surprisingly powerful interaction of plasma waves moving from Saturn to its icy moon Enceladus. Researchers converted the recording of plasma waves into a “whooshing” audio file that we can hear, in the same way a radio translates electromagnetic waves into music.

Categories
Geography Climate Earth from Space Global Warming

18 Largest Islands on Earth

An island or isle is any piece of sub-continental land that is surrounded by water. It is believed that there are over 100,000 islands in the world. It’s difficult to put a figure to the exact number as there are different kinds of them in various water bodies including oceans, seas, lakes, and rivers. There is even an island within a lake that is situated on an island located in a lake on an island. Only 322 of them are larger than 1000 km2 (386 sq mi). Here are the top 18 largest islands on Earth. Why 18? Because this is the number of islands that have a land area of greater than 100,000 square kilometers (38,610 square miles).

Categories
Space Exploration

Russian spacecraft arrives at the ISS in just 3 hours and 40 minutes

Russia’s Progress 70 resupply spacecraft set a milestone for International Space Station operations when it arrived in a record time: just three hours and 40 minutes, or only two Earth orbits (of the ISS). The uncrewed spacecraft delivered the cargo which includes 530 kg of propellant, 52 kg of oxygen gas, 420 kg of water, and 1,565 kg of “dry” cargo such as food and other equipment to the space station.

The spacecraft launched at 5:51 p.m. EDT (3:51 a.m. July 10 in Baikonur) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Less than 10 minutes after the launch, the resupply ship reached preliminary orbit and deployed its solar arrays and navigational antennas as planned. The spacecraft then made two orbits of Earth before docking at 9:31 p.m. EDT to the Pirs Docking Compartment of the International Space Station.

Categories
Astronomy Space Exploration

ESA Has Published Complete Rosetta Image Archive

European Space Agency (ESA) has published the complete Rosetta image archive under a Creative Commons license, which means the complete archive is freely available: you can copy, share, and tweak the content.

Categories
Climate

Coldest place on Earth: New satellite data reveals lowest temperature recorded in Antarctica

According to a new study published this week in the AGU (American Geophysical Union) journal Geophysical Research Letters, several spots on the East Antarctic Plateau reach temperatures of nearly -100 °C (-148 °F) during the Antarctic winter. Researchers re-examined the data from several Earth-observing satellites and found that Antarctica, the coldest place on Earth is even colder than previously thought.

Categories
Solar System Astronomy

The Moons of the Solar System in Perspective

To put things into a perspective, here are some of the largest moons of our Solar System (including our moon) and their sizes compared to Earth.

Categories
Planet Earth

The Timeline Of Earth

We’ve evolved here on Earth, and for tens of thousands of years, we just thought the Earth is also the universe, or at least the most important and the biggest part of it. Our brains have been adapted to the basic survival needs.

So we can deal with the moderately sized objects which have moderate velocity, and we can conceptualize small numbers like 1, 2, 50. But when the numbers get bigger than that, the problem begins: our puny brains cannot conceptualize them anymore.

The larger a number grows, the harder it becomes to deal with.

Take the age of the Earth, which is almost 4.6 billion years. We don’t have an intuitive sense of what this number means. But, visualization can help: we can better understand things if we visualize them. Author Andy Bergmann just did that. He created a Timeline of Earth to get a better sense of how key events relate in time over our planet’s 4.6 billion year history. It’s hard to get a sense of how vast it is until you can see it laid out visually.