We can turn Earth into a giant telescope. According to a recent study titled “The ‘Terrascope’: On the Possibility of Using the Earth as an Atmospheric Lens”, published by David Kipping of Columbia University, our planet offers an opportunity for pronounced lensing.
Continue reading Terrascope: Turning Earth into a giant telescopeTag Archives: Moon
How to build a moon base
Ian Whittaker, Nottingham Trent University and Gareth Dorrian, University of Birmingham
Half a century after humans first walked on the moon, a number of private companies and nations are planning to build permanent bases on the lunar surface. Despite the technological progress since the Apollo era, this will be extremely challenging. So how should you get started?
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Descending to the Moon: scientists reconstruct what Buzz Aldrin saw
“Tranquility Base here. The eagle has landed.” Neil Armstrong said so as the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle touched down on the lunar surface on Sunday, July 20, 1969, at 20:17 UTC.
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5 Moon-landing innovations that changed life on Earth
Jean Creighton, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Much of the technology common in daily life today originates from the drive to put a human being on the Moon. This effort reached its pinnacle when Neil Armstrong stepped off the Eagle landing module onto the lunar surface 50 years ago.
As a NASA airborne astronomy ambassador and director of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Manfred Olson Planetarium, I know that the technologies behind weather forecasting, GPS and even smartphones can trace their origins to the race to the Moon.
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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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Apollo 17 and its destination (Moon) in one photo
An amazing NASA archive photo showing Apollo 17 during the prelaunch, with the Moon (a full moon), the spacecraft’s destination is in the background.
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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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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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