A Close-up Of An Enhanced-color Image Of Jupiter’s Clouds Obtained By NASA’s Juno Spacecraft.

This is what a comet looks like, up close and personal.

PHOTOS FROM AN ALIEN WORLD.

I am so excited I can’t even. Source: ESA’s Flickr feed.

Aerospace Engineering Magazine  April 1962

Comet shapes and characteristics from a Chinese silk book (Boshu) written during the Han dynasty (206 BC-22 AD)

Last space shuttle External Tank arrives at California Science Center.

ET-94 paraded its way through the Los Angeles suburbs today, May 21, as it journeyed to its final home at the California Science Center.

The last surviving flight-worthy space shuttle external tank, ET-94 left the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans April 12, where it has been since it was fabricated in the early 2000′s. It traversed the Panama Canal April 25-27, and arrived at Marina Del Rey in Los Angeles last Wednesday, May 19, after a 36-day sea voyage.

Leaving Marina Del Rey at 12:01am PDT with a New Orleans jazz band, the tank encountered more obstacles than expected during its 15.5 mile trek through the city, arriving at the CSC at 7:13pm PDT.

Towed through the streets of Inglewood, the last time space hardware shut down traffic was in October 2012, when space shuttle Endeavour was towed from Los Angeles International Airport to the CSC.

P/c: LA Times, California Science Center.

don’t assume the gender of my HYDROGEN! ok

Cometary Globules

Two comets pass in the night bound for your telescope

Remember comets Lovejoy and C/2012 X1 LINEAR? We dropped in on them in late January. On Feb. 6 the two cruised within  2 degrees of each other as they tracked through Ophiuchus before dawn.  Were it not for bad weather, astrophotographer Damian Peach would have been out to record the cometary conjunction, but this unique photo, taken two mornings later, shows the two comets chasing each other across the sky. Of course they’re not really following one another, nor are they related,  but the illusion is wonderful.

Image credit & copyright: Damian Peach

On April 21, 2014, the Hubble telescope captured what looks like a black hole in Jupiter’s Great Red Spot — but really, it’s the shadow of the Jovian moon Ganymede. (Source)