pale blue dot
Launched on October 15, 1997, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft (see notes 1) went into orbit around Saturn on July 1, 2004. Since then, it has taken thousands of photos of Saturn, the second-largest planet in the Solar System, its prominent rings, and moons. And on September 15, 2017, Cassini plunged into Saturn’s atmosphere and disintegrated. Here are …
Continue reading “20 Best Photos of Cassini’s voyage around Saturn”
External cameras on the International Space Station captured views during its overhead passes of Hurricane Irma. The most intense Atlantic hurricane observed in over a decade, Hurricane Irma was an extremely powerful tropical cyclone, which became a Category 5 hurricane on September 5. It reached peak intensity with 185 mph (295 km/h) winds on September 6. Its …
Continue reading “International Space Station Passes Over Hurricane Irma (Video)”
On Monday, August 21, an estimated 2 million to 7.4 million Americans traveled to see the first total solar eclipse in 99 years to go coast to coast in the United States, which went from Lincoln Beach, Oregon, to Charleston, South Carolina. But, some of them were unlucky, as the weather was overcast in some places. But, …
Continue reading “Amazing Total Solar Eclipse 2017 Images From Space”
Antarctica is the southernmost continent and a virtually uninhabited, ice-covered landmass. It is actually the largest desert on Earth. Here are some interesting Antarctica facts.
An international team led by the Italian photographer Filippo Blengini created a 365-Gigapixel Panorama of Mont Blanc, Europe’s highest mountain, and the gigantic image becomes the World’s largest photo. The previous record-holder, published in 2013, was a 320-gigapixel shot of London, taken from atop the BT Tower. The huge image, published on the project’s site …
Continue reading “Mont Blanc: 365 Gigapixel Panorama [World’s Largest Photo!]”
We, humans, are changing our planet drastically that scientists say the world entered a completely new geological era called “Anthropocene“. But, it seems we are not shaping only the surface and the atmosphere of Earth, human activities are changing our near-space environment as well. The change is so big that NASA’s Van Allen probes have detected …
Continue reading “NASA Detects a Human-Made Barrier Surrounding Earth”
We see images and videos from the International Space Station (ISS) where astronauts float in space freely. That’s because they’re in space, so there is no gravitational force of Earth there, right? Wrong. The International Space Station is in Low Earth Orbit (see notes 1) with an altitude of between 330 and 435 km (205 …
Continue reading “Why do astronauts float in space? [Microgravity explained]”
A beautiful image published by NASA, taken by the uncrewed Cassini-Huygens spacecraft, shows the Earth between the rings of Saturn. The image was taken on April 12, 2017.
The first new global map of Earth from space at night since 2012 has been released by NASA scientists. The nighttime look of our planet is dubbed the “Black Marble”. But why? On December 7, 1972, the crew of Apollo 17 spacecraft en route to the Moon took a photo of Earth from space, at …
Continue reading “The Black Marble [Earth from Space at Night]”
On his most recent trip to the International Space Station (Expedition 48), recently-retired NASA astronaut Jeff Williams has recorded a great HD video of Earth (titled Jeff’s Earth) using an Ultra High Definition video camera. Here in the video titled “Jeff’s Earth” below, he shares some of those images and talks about the beauty of the …
Continue reading “Jeff’s Earth [Amazing HD Video from the ISS]”
