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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.

Amédée Guillemin, Les comètes (1875)

South Pole Telescope

This “Pyrite Sun” may look like a sand dollar, but it is actually a concretion that was found in Illinois. 

This artist’s rendering shows NASA’s Cassini spacecraft above Saturn’s northern hemisphere, heading toward its first dive between Saturn and its rings on April 26, 2017.

ham radio.

Thirty years ago today, at 11:38 a.m. EST, January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger lifts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Christa McAuliffe, teacher from New Hampshire, was to be the first ordinary U.S. civilian to travel into space. Challenger‘s launch countdown was repeatedly delayed because of weather and technical problems. Finally, on January 28, the shuttle lifted off.

73 seconds later, hundreds on the ground, including Christa’s family, stared in disbelief as the shuttle exploded in a forking plume of smoke and fire, killing all seven crew members. Millions more watched the heart-wrenching tragedy unfold on live television.

“The future doesn’t belong to the faint-hearted. It belongs to the brave.” President Reagan said. “The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we’ll continue to follow. Nothing ends here; our hopes and our journeys continue.”

Ted Chin

The rings of Saturn, observed by the Cassini space probe on May 3, 2017.

Comet McNaught.