breathe Olympian air

the-star-stuff:

Sifting through Dust near Orion’s Belt
A new image of the region surrounding the reflection nebula Messier 78, just to the north of Orion’s Belt, shows clouds of cosmic dust threaded through the nebula like a string of pearls. The observations, made with the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope, use the heat glow of interstellar dust grains to show astronomers where new stars are being formed.

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the-star-stuff:

And Now, an Elephant on Mars
Ladies and gentlemen, meet the Elephant of Mars, as spotted by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
This is a good example of the phenomena “pareidolia,” where we see things (such as animals) that aren’t really there. Actually, this image covers the margin of a lava flow in Elysium Planitia, the youngest flood-lava province on Mars. Flood lavas cover extensive areas, and were once thought to be emplaced extremely rapidly, like a flood of water.
Via HiRISE

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the-star-stuff:

Jupiter and Io
This is a thermal-infrared image of Jupiter, obtained by the ISAAC multi-mode instrument at the 8.2-m VLT ANTU telescope on Paranal on November 14, 2000; the Universal Time (UT) of exposure is indicated. It is part of a series of images showing the dramatically different appearance of Jupiter”s disk and the aurorae when viewed through different thermal-IR imaging filters. Note also the motion of the moon Io (left). The contrast has been enhanced to better show the faint details in the aurorae.
Credit: ESO

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ikenbot:

Ω Omega Sunset

Image Copyright: Giuseppe Pappa

Inferior mirage of astronomical objects is the most common mirage. Inferior mirage occurs when the surface of the Earth or the oceans produces a layer of hot air of lower density, just at the surface.

There are two images, the inverted one and the erect one, in inferior mirage.They both are displaced from the geometric direction to the actual object. While the erect image is setting, the inverted image appears to be rising from the surface.

The shapes of inferior mirage sunsets and sunrises stay the same for all inferior mirage sunsets and sunrises. One well-known shape, the Etruscan vase, was named by Jules Verne.[1] As the sunset progresses the shape of Etruscan vase slowly changes; the stem of the vase gets shorter until the real and the miraged suns create a new shape – Greek letter omega Ω. The inferior mirage got its name because the inverted image appears below the erect one. —Wiki

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Wherever I go in the world people ask me “Do aliens exist?” It’s a good question because it cuts to the heart of how we see our place in the Universe. Are we alone in our small round blue ball? I think probably not, because of one fact: The Universe is BIG.. Really big. Our planet is just one of eight in orbit around our sun, which itself is hardly special being one of about 200 billion stars in a vast spiral, our galaxy the Milky Way. So big sometimes I find it hard to comprehend, but even the Milky Way is just a tiny drop in the cosmic ocean. Just one of 100 billion galaxies, formed into an enormous web stretching away in all directions. At this scale, each point of light is an entire galaxy, which not only puts our little world in perspective but also makes it difficult to believe we really are alone. So to my mathematical brain.. the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational.

— Stephen Hawking, Into the Universe (via distempered)

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ulaulaman:

Dione Has Her Faults (False Color)
This view highlights tectonic faults and craters on Dione, an icy world that has undoubtedly experienced geologic activity since its formation. To create the enhanced-color view, ultraviolet, green and infrared images were combined into a single black and white picture that isolates and maps regional color differences. This “color map” was then superposed over a clear-filter image. The origin of the color differences is not yet understood, but may be caused by subtle differences in the surface composition or the sizes of grains making up the icy soil. This view looks toward the leading hemisphere on Dione (1,126 kilometers, or 700 miles across). North is up and rotated 20 degrees to the right. See PIA07690 for a similar monochrome view. All images were acquired with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Dec. 24, 2005 at a distance of approximately 151,000 kilometers (94,000 miles) from Dione and at a Sun-Dione-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 99 degrees. Image scale is 896 meters (2,940 feet) per pixel. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science InstituteImage addition date: 2006-01-31 News: Cassini Detects Hint of Fresh Air at Dione | Dione’s image gallery

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the-star-stuff:

The many moods of Titan

Cassini images give scientists concrete evidence that Titan’s atmosphere changes with the seasons. By NASA/JPL — Published: February 24, 2012
This series of false-color images obtained by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft shows the dissolving cloud cover over the north pole of Saturn’s moon Titan.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona/CNRS/LPGNantes

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excroosemoose:

freakin Andromeda
always gets in
the way of
alone time
with the old Milky
we chained you up
for a good reason

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ikenbot:

Large Magellanic Cloud

Copyright: Rafael Defavari

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thenewenlightenmentage:

Kuiper’s Color Close-Up
The pale-orange coloration around the 39-mile (62-km) -wide Kuiper crater on Mercury is evident in this image, a color composition made from targeted images acquired by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft on September 2, 2011.
The color may be due to compositional differences in the material that was ejected during the impact that formed the crater.
[click to continue…]

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the-star-stuff:

The Tarantula Nebula
Located inside the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) – one of our closest galaxies – in what some describe as a frightening sight, the Tarantula nebula is worth looking at in detail. Also known as 30 Doradus or NGC 2070, the nebula owes its name to the arrangement of its bright patches that somewhat resemble the legs of a tarantula. Taking the name of one of the biggest spiders on Earth is very fitting in view of the gigantic proportions of this celestial nebula — it measures nearly 1,000 light years across ! Its proximity, the favourable inclination of the LMC, and the absence of intervening dust make this nebula one of the best laboratories to better understand the formation of massive stars. This spectacular nebula is energised by an exceptionally high concentration of massive stars, often referred to as super star clusters. This image is based on data acquired with the 1.5 m Danish telescope at the ESO La Silla Observatory in Chile, through three filters (B: 80 s, V: 60 s, R: 50 s).

Credit: ESO/IDA/Danish 1.5 m/R. Gendler, C. C. Thöne, C. Féron, and J.-E.

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the-star-stuff:

Mars ‘Super-Drought’ May Make Red Planet Too Dry for Alien Life

Imaged Above: A photo of Mars from NASA’s Viking spacecraft, which launched in 1975. CREDIT: The Viking Project/NASA

The surface of Mars may have been parched for too long for any life-forms to exist on the planet today, a new study suggests.
A team of researchers spent three years meticulously examining individual particles of Martian soil collected during NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander mission in 2008. According to their observations, the surface of Mars may have been arid and desolate for more than 600 million years, despite the presence of ice and despite previous studies that indicate the planet may have experienced a warmer and wetter past more than 3 billion years ago.
This could mean that the Martian surface is too hostile to support any life, the researchers said.
“We found that even though there is an abundance of ice, Mars has been experiencing a super-drought that may well have lasted hundreds of millions of years,” study leader author Tom Pike, from Imperial College London, said in a statement. “We think the Mars we know today contrasts sharply with its earlier history, which had warmer and wetter periods and which may have been more suited to life.”

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