The spiral is produced by a binary star about 3000 light years from earth and is 3 trillion kilometers in diameter. [...] older stars run out of available hydrogen. Eventually, they fuse helium into carbon. When this happens the star swells up and becomes a red giant [...] Red giants tend to blow a lot […]
Read Article »A cool video on YouTube showing the launch of a Saturn V model rocket. Scale 1:10 might sound small but it’s freaking huge for a model rocket!
Read Article »At space.com you can take a tour of our corner of the cosmos. Like the famous National Geographic poster it gives you a good sense of how small our solar system (and every other) really is. Truly fascinating.
Read Article »A collection of stunning pictures of Mars’ surface taken by HiRISE onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment website has high resolution versions of most images and also beautiful wallpapers. (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)
Read Article »Fantastic photos of Saturn and its rings and moons at equinox, when the Sun shines directly on the edge of the ten meter thin rings. Photo: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Read Article »NASA has released information on water molecules found on our moon and in unexpected places on Mars. Exciting news! I’m looking forward to see whether LCROSS — the Lunar CRater Observing and Sensing Satellite — finds larger quantities of water ice on the Moon. Its impact is on Oct. 9, 2009.
Read Article »Until recently I didn’t know of the Viking 1 and Venera 13 missions that took the first pictures on the surface of Mars and Venus. In 1976 NASA’s Viking 1 took the first photos as a lander on Mars. At the moment Spirit and Opportunity are still working and snapping pictures on Mars. In 1982 […]
Read Article »The widely accepted rule of even numbered Star Trek movies being great and odd ones being crap was disrupted after Nemesis and is officially reversed with the 11th iteration simply named Star Trek. A large portion of all Star Trek films and TV shows was about science and galactic phenomenons the viewer just had to […]
Read Article »Prepping a Space Shuttle for launch is a lot of work. “After looking at the pictures you will know why there’s a good period of time between shuttle launches.” (link)
Read Article »This is a follow-up to my previous post Even Our Sun is Tiny but this time a video (via digg) shows you how small we really are and which monstrously large objects are “floating” around in our galaxy. A size comparison1 of the Sun to VV Cephei A (the supergiant of the binary star system […]
Read Article »Pluto lost its status of being a planet after the definition of planet was changed by the International Astronomical Union. “Pluto was automatically disqualified because its oblong orbit overlaps with Neptune’s” the BBC reports. Now “the eight planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune,” said the IAU resolution which was passed […]
Read Article »A month ago I stumbled upon a site entitled The Size Of Our World. It has comparing images of our planet, the Sun and much larger stars like Betelgeuse and Antares (the largest two on those pictures). The brightest star of our nightly sky — Sirius — isn’t left out. I find it quite impressive […]
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