Cometary Globules

Map of Jupiter’s South

This map of Jupiter is the most detailed global color map of the planet ever produced. The round map is a polar stereographic projection that shows the south pole in the center of the map and the equator at the edge. It was constructed from images taken by Cassini on Dec. 11 and 12, 2000, as the spacecraft neared Jupiter during a flyby on its way to Saturn. The map shows a variety of colorful cloud features, including parallel reddish-brown and white bands, the Great Red Spot, multi-lobed chaotic regions, white ovals and many small vortices. Many clouds appear in streaks and waves due to continual stretching and folding by Jupiter’s winds and turbulence. The bluish-gray features along the north edge of the central bright band are equatorial “hot spots,” meteorological systems such as the one entered by NASA’s Galileo probe. Small bright spots within the orange band north of the equator are lightning-bearing thunderstorms. The polar region shown here is less clearly visible because Cassini viewed it at an angle and through thicker atmospheric haze. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

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)

November 3 1957, The Soviet Union launches the first animal into space—a dog name Laika—aboard the Sputnik 2 spacecraft. Laika, lived as a stray on the Moscow streets before being enlisted into the Soviet space program. Laika survived for several days as a passenger in the USSR’s second artificial Earth satellite, kept alive by a sophisticated life-support system. Electrodes attached to her body provided scientists on the ground with important information about the biological effects of space travel. She died after the batteries of her life-support system ran down.

Cameras, cameras, and more cameras. Cameras!

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Blackmagic URSA 4K Digital Cinema Camera

And now that one special, prestigious piece of gear has finally arrived to round off the years of camera development and take you to the vertiginous peaks of unbelievable footage quality and extreme equipment versatility: the recently released Blackmagic URSA 4K Digital Cinema Camera is the ultimate camera for professional film crews and keen solo cameramen looking to revolutionize their filming sessions.

Lots of stuff like this at www.astrotidbits.com with explanations.

Is Time Travel Possible, According To Science?

“You can witness the evolution and destruction of humanity; the end of the Earth and Sun; the dissociation of our galaxy; the heat death of the Universe itself. So long as you have enough power in your space ship, you can travel as far into the future as you like.”

Have you ever wondered about time travel? Perhaps you have your destination in the far future, and want to see how it all turns out? Maybe you want to return to the past, and alter the future or present by your actions there? Or maybe you want to freeze time altogether? If you want to know whether it’s possible, the physics of relativity holds the answer. Special relativity allows us to control our motion through time by manipulating our motion through space. The more we move through space, the less we move through time, allowing us to travel as far as we want into the future, limited only by our energy available for space travel. But going to the past requires some specific solutions to general relativity, which may (or may not) describe our physical Universe.

What’s the status of traveling through time? Come get the scientific story (with a brand new podcast) today!

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.