To see exactly where the spacecraft and the celestial bodies (planets and other astronomical objects) really are, right now, you can use NASA’s real-time, 3D solar system model.
Continue reading Where are the spacecraft and planets now? An amazing NASA animationCategory Archives: Astronomy
NASA has published the map of 4,000 exoplanets
Even as late as 1991, we had no hard evidence of planets existing outside our solar system, known as “exoplanets”. Today, over 4000 exoplanets are known to exist. NASA has published an amazing video-map showing them in the Milky Way galaxy on the Astronomy Picture of the Day website.
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How Earth Could Die – 9 Horrible Ways
Now we’re living on a warm, hospitable planet. As Carl Sagan has said “That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.” We, humans, are the unquestionable rulers of our little oasis in a hostile universe. But all things must pass. The life on Earth, even the planet itself, won’t last forever. What’s more, the humans may go extinct before our planet (and probably before the life on it) dies out. Here some possible (and horrible) ways how planet Earth (or, at least, life on Earth) could die.
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This is how a solar eclipse seen from the Moon
This amazing photo of the 2019 Solar Eclipse from the Moon’s orbit was taken on July 2, 2019, by the Chinese lunar satellite DSLWP-B (Longjiang-2).
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Solar System through the eyes of Hubble Space Telescope
Hubble Space Telescope was launched on April 24, 1990, and entered service on May 20, 1990. Since then, it has observed all the planets in our Solar System, apart from Earth and Mercury. Earth is far better studied by geologists on the ground and specialized probes in orbit. Hubble can’t observe Mercury as it is too close to the Sun, whose brightness would damage the telescope’s sensitive instruments.
Here are the best images of the planets (except Earth and Mercury) and some non-planets of our Solar System through the eye of Hubble Space Telescope.
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What if Ganymede was the Earth’s second moon?
Jupiter’s moon Ganymede is the largest and most massive of the Solar System’s moons. It has a mean radius of 2634.1±0.3 km (about 1636 miles, 0.413 Earths). For comparison, our Moon’s radius is 1,737.1 km (1079 mi). What if Ganymede was the Earth’s second moon? How would it look in the sky, if it was at the same distance as the Moon?
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This image of Antares is the best-ever photo of a star Beyond the Sun
On August 23, 2017, astronomers have unveiled a photo which is the most detailed ever image of a star other than our Sun. The image of the red “supergiant” Antares has been constructed using the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) on Cerro Paranal (a mountain in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile).
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Humans walking on two legs because of exploding stars, new study says
Walking on two legs is an evolutionary leap that led humans to conquer the world. But, why humans are walking on two legs? It’s still unclear. Now, according to a new study published on the University of Chicago’s Journal of Geology, the reason might be exploding stars a few million years ago.
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8 Things that make Life on Earth Possible
Earth, our blue planet is an oasis in the vast, cold, and dark space. It is the only planet we know of that can support life. The fossil record tells us that life on Earth has lasted at least 3.5 billion years (the Earth is about 4.54 billion years old), with the oldest physical traces of life dating back 3.7 billion years. And, if some kind of disaster doesn’t intervene, our planet should continue to host life for at least another 1.75 billion years. Here are the 8 things that make life on Earth possible.
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Watch: How far are the nearest stars?
Another “putting things into perspective” video which I liked, showing how big space is, and actually how far the nearest stars from us.
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