1.    16588

     

    reblogged: galacticnucleus

    sagansense: What Makes Up the MoonIn 1992, the Jupiter-bound Galileo spacecraft made a pass by our planet’s closest companion, the moon. This mosaic of 53 images shows the different composition of rocks on the moon’s surface. Blue and orange colors represent lava flows, bright pink areas are highlands, and light blue colors indicate recent impact material with the youngest craters showing blue rays extending away from them. Image: NASA/JPL I’m a sucker for psychedelic moon photos…

    sagansense:

    What Makes Up the Moon
    In 1992, the Jupiter-bound Galileo spacecraft made a pass by our planet’s closest companion, the moon. This mosaic of 53 images shows the different composition of rocks on the moon’s surface. Blue and orange colors represent lava flows, bright pink areas are highlands, and light blue colors indicate recent impact material with the youngest craters showing blue rays extending away from them.

    Image: NASA/JPL

    I’m a sucker for psychedelic moon photos…

     
    2. Jan 24th, 2013     scienceastronomymoonphotographyis astrogeology a thing?
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  2.    4

     

    Our moon looks pretty festive in this image. That’s because it’s actually a map of the moon’s gravity, based on data gathered by NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory mission, or GRAIL. And by showing us how the moon’s gravity changes, it also shows the orb’s mass and density, revealing impact marks and the thickness of the crust. But how did the mission’s twin probes measure the moon’s gravity field in the first place? “The map was created by the spacecraft transmitting radio signals to define precisely the distance between them as they orbit the moon in formation. As they fly over areas of greater and lesser gravity caused by visible features, such as mountains and craters, and masses hidden beneath the lunar surface, the distance between the two spacecraft will change slightly.” You can read more about the map and the GRAIL mission at NASA’s website. Image courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/MIT/GSFC

    Our moon looks pretty festive in this image. That’s because it’s actually a map of the moon’s gravity, based on data gathered by NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory mission, or GRAIL. And by showing us how the moon’s gravity changes, it also shows the orb’s mass and density, revealing impact marks and the thickness of the crust.

    But how did the mission’s twin probes measure the moon’s gravity field in the first place?

    “The map was created by the spacecraft transmitting radio signals to define precisely the distance between them as they orbit the moon in formation. As they fly over areas of greater and lesser gravity caused by visible features, such as mountains and craters, and masses hidden beneath the lunar surface, the distance between the two spacecraft will change slightly.”

    You can read more about the map and the GRAIL mission at NASA’s website.

    Image courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/MIT/GSFC

     
    3. Dec 10th, 2012     scienceastronomymoongravitymassphysics
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  3.    2

     

    Solar eclipses are more fun when you can see them in person. But the most recent one, on November 14, was impossible for Americans to see. Our friends Down Under, however, got to see a partial or total eclipse—depending on which part of Australia they inhabit. In Melbourne, Brayden McLean snapped this image. Pretty awesome! Via Geeks Are Sexy Edit: Check out more photos at LiveScience and a video via NPR.

    Solar eclipses are more fun when you can see them in person. But the most recent one, on November 14, was impossible for Americans to see. Our friends Down Under, however, got to see a partial or total eclipse—depending on which part of Australia they inhabit. In Melbourne, Brayden McLean snapped this image. Pretty awesome!

    Via Geeks Are Sexy

    Edit: Check out more photos at LiveScience and a video via NPR.

     
    4. Nov 14th, 2012     scienceastronomysolar eclipsesunmoon
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  4.    127

     

    reblogged: jtotheizzoe

    jtotheizzoe:

    theatlanticvideo:

    On Its 50th Anniversary, Watch JFK’s ‘We Choose to Go to the Moon’ Speech

    On September 12, 1962, President Kennedy made an inspiring case for space exploration and putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Speaking at Rice University, where he was an honorary visiting professor, Kennedy explained, “I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the Presidency. ” Indeed, the U.S. tripled the budget for space exploration between 1961 and 1962, and on July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 made history.

    What else might we choose to do not because it is easy, but because it is hard?

    ce expl

     
    5. Sep 12th, 2012     moonspace explorationscienceastronomynasa
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  5.    52

     

    reblogged:

    fyeahcarlsagan: When I was little and obsessively reading all the children’s astronomy books at the library, Jupiter had sixteen moons. I feel old. Wow, Jupiter and Saturn have huge families!

    fyeahcarlsagan:

    When I was little and obsessively reading all the children’s astronomy books at the library, Jupiter had sixteen moons.

    I feel old.

    Wow, Jupiter and Saturn have huge families!

     
    6. Jul 24th, 2012     moonplanetsspacesolar system
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  6.    91

     

    reblogged: scinerds

    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. Read More… I love that SciNerds put my article on Tumblr before I could. Does that make me guilty of negligent blogging? Um…probably yes.

    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.

    Read More…

    I love that SciNerds put my article on Tumblr before I could. Does that make me guilty of negligent blogging? Um…probably yes.

     
    7. Apr 29th, 2012     spaceastronomynasacassinisaturnphoebemoonplanetplanetisimalsolar systemscience
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  7.    542

     

    reblogged: jtotheizzoe

    jtotheizzoe: I Shall Call Him Mini-Moon Our planet’s proper-noun Moon, the one we call Luna, has been hanging out around Earth for about 4 billion years. A new simulation says that at any moment, Luna is not alone. University of Helsinki researchers used a massive supercomputer to simulate 10 million tiny asteroids, just a few feet across, passing Earth. Between the gravitational pull of the Sun, Moon and Earth, tens of thousand were captured. As a result of these calculations, which would have taken your home computer six years, they estimate that at any moment Earth is joined by at least one “mini-moon”.  These tiny asteroids can orbit for years, undetected, before being pulled back into a path around the Sun. If we could capture one, imagine what we could discover about the early Solar System! (via NASA Lunar Science Institute)

    jtotheizzoe:

    I Shall Call Him Mini-Moon

    Our planet’s proper-noun Moon, the one we call Luna, has been hanging out around Earth for about 4 billion years. A new simulation says that at any moment, Luna is not alone.

    University of Helsinki researchers used a massive supercomputer to simulate 10 million tiny asteroids, just a few feet across, passing Earth. Between the gravitational pull of the Sun, Moon and Earth, tens of thousand were captured. As a result of these calculations, which would have taken your home computer six years, they estimate that at any moment Earth is joined by at least one “mini-moon”. 

    These tiny asteroids can orbit for years, undetected, before being pulled back into a path around the Sun. If we could capture one, imagine what we could discover about the early Solar System!

    (via NASA Lunar Science Institute)

     
    8. Apr 4th, 2012     astronomyastrophysicsearthmoonlunaasteroidminimoon
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  8.    202

     

    reblogged: ikenbot

    ikenbot: See How Earth’s Moon Evolved in New NASA Videos Image: This illustration shows the still-molten moon just after its formation about 4.5 billion years ago. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Two new NASA videos use the latest close-up imagery of the moon from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to reveal Earth’s natural satellite in a whole new light. One video zooms over the moon to reveal its most prominent features. Imagery from the spacecraft shows these lunar highlights in high-resolution detail, revealing deep craters, towering mountains, and even leftover equipment at the sites of NASA’s Apollo moon missions. This narrated “best-of” tour of the moon includes photos of Orientale Basin, Shackleton crater, South Pole-Aitken Basin, Tycho crater, Aristarchus Plateau, Mare Serenitatis, Compton-Belkovich volcano, Jackson crater and Tsiolkovsky crater. The second video uses Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter photos to animate the history of the moon from its formation around 4.5 billion years ago through today.

    ikenbot:

    See How Earth’s Moon Evolved in New NASA Videos

    Image: This illustration shows the still-molten moon just after its formation about 4.5 billion years ago. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

    Two new NASA videos use the latest close-up imagery of the moon from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to reveal Earth’s natural satellite in a whole new light.

    One video zooms over the moon to reveal its most prominent features. Imagery from the spacecraft shows these lunar highlights in high-resolution detail, revealing deep craters, towering mountains, and even leftover equipment at the sites of NASA’s Apollo moon missions.

    This narrated “best-of” tour of the moon includes photos of Orientale Basin, Shackleton crater, South Pole-Aitken Basin, Tycho crater, Aristarchus Plateau, Mare Serenitatis, Compton-Belkovich volcano, Jackson crater and Tsiolkovsky crater.

    The second video uses Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter photos to animate the history of the moon from its formation around 4.5 billion years ago through today.

     
    9. Mar 16th, 2012     sciencespaceastronomymoonuniversehistory of the universe
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  9.    57

     

    reblogged: instituteofphysics

    instituteofphysics: NASA practising the MoonWalk, 1963-1968

    instituteofphysics:

    NASA practising the MoonWalk, 1963-1968

     
    10. Feb 22nd, 2012     nasaspacemoonmoonwalkscienceastronaut
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  10.    113

     

    reblogged: project-argus

    Huygens’ comparison of Saturn’s size with that of Earth (Tellus) and the Moon (Luna).

    Also, an alphabet primer for people who don’t care about the proper alphabetical order. Or about missing half the letters.

    Huygens, by the way, is Christiaan Huygens, a Dutch mathematician and astronomer, and the first theoretical physicist. Among other things, he thought light was a wave and that we would find life on Earth-like planets. And while only one of those ideas has been vindicated so far, what’s certain is that he could rock a lace-and-wig combo.

    (Source: lookatthesefuckinstars)

     
    11. Feb 17th, 2012     spaceold-timeysaturnearthmoonhuygenschristiaan huygens
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