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Hydra 3K Medium Mech da Marco Marozzi

Image of Saturn taken by the Cassini spacecraft in 2013

Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech 

don’t assume the gender of my HYDROGEN! ok

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft shows Earth and its moon from between Saturn’s rings

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which orbits Saturn, took a picture of Earth from between Saturn’s rings — with Earth’s moon at its side.

Captured at 1:41 a.m. Eastern on April 12, 2017, the spacecraft was 870 million miles away from its home planet when it took the image.

Earth is seen as a tiny bright speck in the center of the picture. Upon cropping and zooming in, its moon can be seen to the left as an even smaller dot. The photograph, captured by the Imaging Science Subsystem, doesn’t clearly show which part of Earth is facing the ringed planet at the time the picture was taken, but NASA has revealed it is the southern Atlantic Ocean. Read more (4/21/17)

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Cometary Globules

How the sun abducted dwarf planets from an alien solar system : porkchop_d_clown || ourspaceisbeautiful.tumblr.com

Did you see what is on www.astrotidbits.com?  Loads of astronomy related stuff, including lots of pictures.

Comet lander Philae wakes up: How it happened and what’s next

By Lauren Raab

Philae, the first spacecraft to land on a comet, surprised and delighted scientists this weekend by waking up and reestablishing contact with Earth, seven months after running out of power. It “spoke” for more than a minute, according to the European Space Agency, and it’s expected to be able to continue gathering information and sending it home.

Here’s a look at what the lander has done so far and what will happen next.

Continue Reading.

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.”

http://player.vimeo.com/video/62255585

Comet Panstarrs captured in gorgeous time-lapse above the skies of Boulder, CO by Patrick Cullis. Lovely stuff.

Comets are mysterious frozen chunks of stellar and planetary debris, these dirty snowballs that wander in darkness until their tails are blown bright and wide by solar winds. Some follow paths so random and eccentric that they may pass a star only once, or perhaps not at all, instead floating through interstellar space, never to be known. But for those fleeting moments, like Panstarrs’ current passage, they are like icy candles lit for our enjoyment by the breath of the sun.

A song of ice and fire, indeed.