pale blue dot
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 …
Continue reading “What other stars would look like in the place of the Sun?”
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 …
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.
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.
The moon illusion: if you go out on a clear night when it’s a full moon, you may notice how gigantic the Earth’s satellite looks when it’s near the horizon. But, in fact, that moon is the exact same size as every other time you’ve ever seen it in the sky. You can test this …
Continue reading “Moon Illusion: here’s why the Moon looks larger when it’s near the horizon”
The average distance from Earth to Moon is 384,400 km (238,855 miles). But, most people think the Moon is much closer to Earth than it actually is. In the video below, titled “How Far Away Is The Moon?”, Physicist Nick Lucid, also known as “The Science Asylum” talks about the distance between the Earth and …
Continue reading “Distance from Earth to Moon: How far is the Moon from Earth?”
Hint: they are all space rocks. But, there are some differences. The biggest difference between an asteroid and a comet, for example, is what they are made of.
Where is the coldest known place in the Universe? It may sound strange, but today, it is here on Earth: in 1995, in a laboratory in M.I.T. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), the German physicist Wolfgang Ketterle and his colleagues have cooled a sodium gas to the lowest temperature ever recorded, only half-a-billionth of a degree …
Continue reading “Soon, the ISS Will Be the Coldest Known Place in the Universe”
ESA’s (European Space Agency) Gaia spacecraft has created the most accurate and detailed map of the Milky Way galaxy (and beyond) to date. The map includes high-precision measurements of nearly 1.7 billion stars and reveals previously unseen details of our home Galaxy. It is the second iteration of the map and published by ESA on …
Continue reading “ESA’s Gaia has Created the Most Detailed Map of the Milky Way”
What would it be like to stand on the surface of another planet? “We The Curious” channel has teamed up with a group of astrophysicists to create a scientifically accurate virtual reality tour of six real exoplanets discovered outside our solar system. The fruit of this collaboration is the video below, in 4K Ultra-HD and …
Continue reading “Virtual Reality Tour of 6 Real Exoplanets [4K Ultra-HD, 360°]”
