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As many have said, 8 billion humans live there. But let’s not forget, we’ve identified less than 2 million other species of the estimated many millions to billions of species we share the planet with. We are only 1 species of the life on this tiny blue dot. #Earth #Orion
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The Pillars of Creation are set off in a kaleidoscope of color in NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s near-infrared-light view.
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We’re expecting in excess of 40,000 satellites in the next few years. Soon one out of every five objects you see in the night sky could be a satellite…
Fireball over Scotland was likely ‘space junk’ from SpaceX satellite | The Guardian
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A small experiment on a NASA rover is tinkering with the alien atmosphere.
Millions of miles away on Mars, in a barren crater just north of the equator, a rover is wandering around, carrying a gold-coated gadget the size of a toaster. The machine inhales the Martian air and strips away contaminants. It splits the atmospheric gas into constituent parts, takes what it needs, and then reassembles that blend to create something that is in very short supply on Mars: oxygen. Real, breathable oxygen, the kind you took in as you read these sentences.
After a bit of analysis, the machine puffs out the oxygen, harmlessly releasing the molecules into the Martian environment. The act makes this very sophisticated toaster, situated in the belly of NASA’s Perseverance rover, the closest thing to a small tree on Mars.
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A young woman of color engineer is living her dream at NASA!
An excellent interview with Tiera Fletcher over on Apple’s Developer website. I didn’t quite catch how it relates to Apple, WWDC or the developer website specifically but it’s inspiring nonetheless! She has been helping design components of NASA’s Space Launch System as a part of the Artemis Program.
Artemis-1 is set to launch in November 2021 and will be an un-crewed 25 day mission to test and certify the Orion spacecraft.
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50 Years after landing on the moon: Thoughts on a the potential of humanity
I turned 50 years old on June 5 so I was alive for the moon landing but just 6 weeks old. But in thinking about that accomplishment and the 50 years that have passed, my lifetime thus far, I am struck by two things. First, humans can do amazing things when they work together. Second, humans are often not very good at working together.
It’s often said as common knowledge that humans went to the moon primarily as a result of the Cold War between the U.
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We’re visiting a distant world on January 1, 2019
On January 1, 2019 humans will pass and make the most distant observation of a world in our solar system. On this date just days away the New Horizons will pass Object 2014 MU69 in the Kuiper Belt. See the tweet thread by Alex Parker is fantastic as it illustrates a bit about how this observation has been made possible.
Alex Parker:
In just a few hours I will depart for Maryland for New Horizons' New Years flyby of the Kuiper Belt Object (486958) 2014 MU69.
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I just watched the International Space Station fly overhead. Soundtrack: “ISS - Is Somebody Singing” by Chris Hadfield. 🤓🛰😍 Visit NASA’s spot the station to sign up for alerts.
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Celebrating 40 years of Voyager
It's often easy to become discouraged by the state of human affairs. Or maybe that's just me? The sad truth is that our various human systems, such as our political and economic systems, are not only failing us but our planet. As constantly evolving, increasingly complex systems of relationships from the families to cities to regions to nations and between nations mediated by technology which is itself increasingly powerful and complex, we seem to slip-slide at a breakneck pace.
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Back to the night sky
I started observing the night sky in late 2012 and kept up a pretty steady pace until about 12 months ago when my observing time shrank drastically. Partly due to weather, also due to a lack of effort on my part. I’m hoping to turn that around. I doubt I’ll be logging the 6 hour observing sessions I was doing in the first couple of years but I’d at least like to get in a couple hours when the skies are clear.
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Voyager at 40
A great thread by @justinhendrix over on Twitter:
The solar eclipse Monday is set to overshadow another significant event for space nerds like me. Tomorrow, August 20th, is a special day. August 20th is the 40th anniversary of the 1977 launch of @NSFVoyager2, the first of two Voyager probes to explore the outer planets.
Its sister probe, Voyager 1, was launched 16 days later. These two probes represent one of humanity’s most extraordinary achievements.
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Revisiting Space Exploration with Affinity Photo for iPad
In June of 2015 Affinity Designer for Mac caused a splash when it was released. I’d never heard of it but was anxious to try something that might allow me to replace Illustrator. I spent a couple weeks with the trial and decided pretty quickly that I would be purchasing it. During that time I created a series of space-themed posters and shared them is a couple of blog posts: post one and post two.
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iPad Journal: Painting astronomical objects with iPad and Procreate
Just to be clear from the start, aside from grade school, I've never painted anything other than room walls and home exteriors. I'm not a "painter" and only occasionally had a passing interest in trying it out. I've sketched a few times but there too, very minimal. A few months back the iPad app Procreate popped up on my RSS or twitter feed. I had recently bought some supplies to begin an attempt at sketching astronomical objects while observing at the telescope.
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Painting the Horsehead Nebula
This is one I have attempted to view through the telescope but which is fairly difficult to view. Through the telescope and in any image taken in the visual spectrum the Horsehead nebula is a dark patch of dust and gas against the glowing background nebula. This painting is based on an image taken by Hubble in the infrared, a wavelength in which the gas of the nebula can be observed.
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Eternity
I stretch forward
Pushing through time.
Eternity.
A solar system long gone.
A sun burned dim.
Humans long now just a memory.
In space.
Lives once deemed important.
Faded.
Moments now echoes in time.
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Painting the Lagoon Neblua
My first effort at using the iPad and Procreate to paint was the Eagle Nebula. To be honest I started that first project assuming I would not get very far. I’d never painted and expected it would be a huge mess. But it wasn’t half bad and I enjoyed the process far more than I expected I would. In fact I enjoyed it so much that when I finished I decided to try another, the Orion Nebula.
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Precarious
As is my usual routine I took my dog Cosmo out for our walk to the mailbox yesterday. Along the way I had a thought about the precariousness of our existence on Earth. We live in this sort of illusion as our daily life is wrapped in an assumption of stability. For the most part our human brains encounter the same environment everyday. Most of us wake up in the morning and are active during the day.
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Barack Obama: America will take the giant leap to Mars
One of my earliest memories is sitting on my grandfather's shoulders, waving a flag as our astronauts returned to Hawaii. This was years before we'd set foot on the moon. Decades before we'd land a rover on Mars. A generation before photos from the International Space Station would show up in our social media feeds I’m not a huge fan of Barack Obama (Democrats, Republicans or the two party system in general).
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Finishing the Herschel I program
In the fall of 2012 I bought my first telescope since having one as a kid. I wasn’t sure how much use I’d get out of it but I wanted to give it a go. I suspected I’d not regret the purchase. Within the first couple of weeks I’d become obsessed. I went out each clear night and sometimes stayed up till I started dozing at the scope which was often in the wee hours of the morning.
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NASA's Juno Completes Jupiter Flyby
This is very exciting. I love that we are exploring our solar system (and the larger Universe) with new rovers and orbital instruments sent up on a regular basis. Humans are at their best when they are seeking to understand the Universe.
NASA's Juno mission successfully executed its first of 36 orbital flybys of Jupiter today. The time of closest approach with the gas-giant world was 6:44 a.m. PDT (9:44 a.