There was a fear in 1910 as Halley’s Comet passed that it would turn Earth’s atmosphere into nitrous oxide - laughing gas - and we’d all die laughing.
(Source: nickbottom, via madamezucker)
Incredible Images of Dead and Dying Stars
Looking up into a starry sky, it seems as if the universe is endless — but that’s not the case. A star has a natural life span, but how and when it dies depends on its mass. Gigantic stars burst into supernovas, which “can briefly outshine entire galaxies and radiate more energy than our sun will in its entire lifetime.” On the other hand, when a super massive star dies, its remnant core can be so dense that it creates a black hole. Others go a little more quietly. Because our sun isn’t as massive as some other stars, it is expected to swell up into a red giant in a couple billions years (likely enclosing the Earth) before it cools into a white dwarf. Ultimately, what seems to be true for most stars is that they die spectacularly brilliant deaths. Thanks to projects such as NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, we’re able to see them as never before.
How do you organise a space party?
You planet..
(via scinerds)
Saturn’s moon Phoebe could have been a planet
When it comes to Saturn’s moons, Phoebe tends to be overshadowed by its siblings. Titan’s size earns her the title of Saturn’s biggest moon (and the second-biggest moon in our solar system), while Enceladus boasts those attention-getting fountains of water and ice pouring from its south pole. But new data from the Cassini mission shows that Phoebe might be more interesting than we thought, with a different origin and more planet-like qualities than Saturn’s other moons.
(Source: scinerds)
blimeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey!
(Source: gdfx, via shelbiedimond)
“The world’s longest exposure;
Six months of Bristol’s Clifton Suspension Bridge captured by Justin Quinnell on a pin-hole camera made from an empty drinks can with a 0.25mm aperture and a single sheet of photographic paper strapped to a telephone pole overlooking the Gorge, where it was left between December 19, 2007 and June 21, 2008—the Winter and Summer solstices. (That’s a 15,552,000 second exposure.)
Quinnell says the photograph took on a personal resonance after his father passed away on April 13th halfway through the exposure. He says the picture allows him to pinpoint the exact location of the sun in the sky at the moment of his father passing”
I have had this on my wall since I was six and I post it whenever I feel hysterical
“a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam”- Carl Sagan
An illustration from Jules Verne’s novel “Around the Moon” drawn by Émile-Antoine Bayard and Alphonse de Neuville.
(via twylarose)
The Sweden Solar System is the world’s largest scale model of the solar system. The sun is represented by the Ericsson Globe in Stockholm, the largest hemispherical building in the world. The inner planets can also be found in Stockholm but the outer planets are situated northward in other cities along the Baltic Sea.
reason #254367897654324567890876543256789 to visit Sweden soon
Close-Shave Asteroid Caught on Camera
When asteroid 2010 RX30 zipped past Earth early Wednesday, observers at the Remanzacco Observatory in Italy were ready. At 12:45 a.m. Mountain time, amateur astronomers remotely controlled a 0.25-meter telescope in Mayhill, New Mexico, through the Global Remote Astronomy Telescope Network. They got four separate exposures of 30 seconds each and stitched them together to make this animation.
At its closest approach, 2010 RX30 was about 154,100 miles from Earth, or 60 percent the distance between the Earth and the moon. Another asteroid, 2010 RF12, swung past Earth at a distance of 49,000 miles (20 percent the Earth-moon distance) at 5:12 p.m. EDT (0012 UT Thursday).
(Source: unknownskywalker, via madamezucker)
