Astronomy Picture Of The Day

uuuuhhhhhh...

::drools::

I love astronomers with a sense of humour...

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/02/0209_050209_saturn.html

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060921.html

(click for much bigger image)

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061009.html

Look how we're mucking up Mars!

I love pictures of star trails:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060915.html

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0610/sweeps16_hst.jpg

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0610/marshorizon_opportunity.jpg

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/Images/PIA07997_lrg.jpg

oh roffles, i thought i was the only one who noticed that!

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0610/sh2136_kpno.jpg

Spacerock, indeed!

http://www.zero.co.nz/music/images/Spiritualized%20-%20Lazer%20Guided%20Melodies.jpg

Should be good.

?

Like the alien giving Mars the finger they've got on today.

Doesn't that get you excited?

Fuck yeah!

I love this Cassini picture of Saturn. Take away the rings and all the moons, and Saturn is still neat to look at.

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/raw/casJPGBrowseS25/N00068717.jpg

http://jmm45.free.fr/planetes/neptune/pia00058.jpg

WHOOOOOOOO BLOWED UP REAL GOOD

yyyeeeaaaaahhhhhh... APOD delivers. The first strike in an intergalactic war!!!

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0707/lasergalaxy_beletsky_big.jpg

(Not raelly.)

Anyone have pictures of The Hole yet?

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070823_huge_hole.html

except, well, this, but I mean a real pic

http://www.nrao.edu/pr/2007/coldspot/void_small.jpg

"photoshop this hat" competition?

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/raw/casJPGBrowseS33/N00091826.jpg

Yesterday's aurora + meteor was pretty mindblowing. Instant desktop picture.

Yeah, that green was eerie.

(link for future readers who are too lazy to go look up the date on the nasa site: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap071009.html )

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0710/aurora_kuenzli_big.jpg

Whoa.

http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/2007/36/images/a/formats/large_web.jpg

More here: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2007/36/

http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/images/2008/details/PSP_007338_2640.jpg

That dust cloud is from an avalanche on Mars, which was imaged as it was happening. Yaow. More: http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_007338_2640

wow

Now that is extraordinary...

We demand live webcamming from Mars!

the subimage on the website it cool, that huge long reef and the tiny little avalanche happening further down.

*is

HOLY CR*P (click the pic for even bigger & sharper - they've applied some fancy new sharpness filtering thing to a picture of a galaxy that's 28 million lightyears away)

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080308.html

M104 Hubble Remix

NOIZE

on the contrary - they removed all of it! :-)

Yeah, I turned today's pic into my new desktop image as soon as I saw it.

there's something about this that i like, surface of mars. looks so alien (perhaps unsurprisingly).

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080615.html

i really love astronomy picture of the day, but sometimes i get a bit 'woooaaah!-oh, oh, artists's impression. oh.'

http://www.theonion.com/content/files/images/hubble_article_large.article_large.jpg

<A href=http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080801.html>;The Moon is 19 inches across</a>

i liked the tiny moon. all it needs now is a stick.

today's eclipse picture is nice:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080807.html

am sure this is a repeat though, because i posted it here (somewhere?) the first time. international space station vs the sun:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080730.html

yes:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060921.html

Ha ha, Moon Games is great.

I have no idea where I found this Roger Blandfoard quote, and it's not a picture, but here seems as good a place as any to put it:

A neutron star is a solar–mass worth of mundane and exotic nuclei and fundamental particles trapped by gravity at supranuclear densities, exhibiting superfluidity and superconductivity. The star is encased within a solid crust, a liquid ocean, a gaseous atmosphere, and a relativistic plasma magnetosphere capable of inducing zettavolt electromotive forces and radiating intense, coherent emission. Neutron stars are used to test general relativity and to search for gravitational radiation. The neutron star in question is also a “magnetar,” which gives it one further remarkable feature. The magnetic field strength is around a petagauss, a billion times larger than can be sustained on Earth and well over the quantum electrodynamic critical field. A magnetar is a star designed by a committee of physicists, each trying to outdo the other. On this occasion, it appears that a stellar flare occurred, released 13 orders of magnitude more magnetic energy than the greatest solar flare, and created a burst of gamma rays intense enough to reach across the galaxy and rattle our atmosphere.

lol stars.

stellar flare!

worst astronomy picture of the day ever!

Agreed.

Still love the Himalayan Sunrise though...

it is actually quite mind-boggling, a picture of one of saturn's moons. only the fractal nature of such images and the lack of scale means it just looks like a close-up of my back garden after it's rained.

http://i38.tinypic.com/16ke3r7.jpg

wait this one's better

http://i36.tinypic.com/r874lj.jpg

http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/2003/11/images/i/formats/full_jpg.jpghttp://www.j-m-w-turner.co.uk/images/The_fighting_Temeraire.jpg

Left: The Fighting Temeraire, tugged to her Last Berth to be broken up, 1838, 91 x 122 cm. Right: The mother-fucking Helix Nebula, a trillion mile long tunnel of glowing gas

More Helix nebula http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2003/11/image/

aren't all the hubble pictures artificially coloured anyway?

http://hubblesite.org/gallery/behind_the_pictures/meaning_of_color/

"The colors in Hubble images, which are assigned for various reasons, aren't always what we'd see if we were able to visit the imaged objects in a spacecraft. We often use color as a tool, whether it is to enhance an object's detail or to visualize what ordinarily could never be seen by the human eye."

Kinda. That image was taken with three different filters on two cameras, which allows them to make a pretty good colour version.

The most reliable images colourwise are the old school ones taken with photographic plates, e.g. http://www.aao.gov.au/images/general/emission.html

In space, no one can see you colour.

Does anyone here do DIY astronomy imaging? I've seen some stuff recently and you can take some amazing pictures with digital camera technology (multiple exposures, adding the light in layers, using filters, etc.).

Holy mother...
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

Thats the greatest!

fucking amazing.

is this the first time they've had a video up on apod?

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/10/enceladus_up_close.html

http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/enc_10_24/enc09_approach.gif

This sequence of 12 frames was taken over a span of about 45 minutes on March 12, 2008. In that brief time, Cassini covered almost 40,000 kilometers in its approach to a flyby encounter with Enceladus. The overexposure and smearing of the images gives a hint of the raw speed involved - 14.4 km/sec (or 32,211 mph). Shortly after this sequence, at its closest, Casini approached within 52 km (32.3 miles) of the surface of Enceladus. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

p.s. if you like astronomy pictures and hate cancer then you should all buy one of these:

http://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/skyphoto/images/double_frame.png

http://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/skyphoto/

This kid is five years old and has had leukemia for four of those years.

those are U.K. only for the time being, btw, but they're hopefully working on non-U.K. sales.

That'll make a neat Christmas present for my father. Thanks!

(It's his birthday tomorrow and one of his presents seems to be lost in the post, so if I had my chequebook I might even have tried wandering across town to see if they could produce one on the spot, but no chequebook, so I guess I'm spared being that annoying person...)

(Oh hey, Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell signature editions and everything!)

: )

(I just realised my post made it sound like those are pictures of cancer. Just to be clear, they are original photographic plates from the Palomar observatory.)

"Add an extra £5 and get your gift wrapped by real Astrophysicists from Oxford."

is this a good use of their time?

They're only grad students. It's not like they have work to oh shit.

http://cache.boston.com/universal/bigpicture/v838.gif

cosmic zit poppin'

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/12/hubble_space_telescope_advent.html

KA BOOOOOOM

Whoa. Way cool.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2008/12/02/no-dyson-spheres-found-yet/

(I hope no one objects to me hijacking this thread for liveblogging things I read over morning coffee. Happy to take this stuff elsewere.)

Awesome - and a mystery too! Awesome²!

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090112.html

lol at the (middle) finger nebula:
http://heritage.stsci.edu/2000/06/big.html

My APOD:

http://www.noao.edu/image_gallery/html/im0600.html
http://www.noao.edu/image_gallery/images/d5/sunx.jpg

today's would make a good science lesson, if not several:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090115.html

CH4 on Mars.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/4243321/Mars-methane-discovery-hints-at-presence-of-life.html

I, for one, welcome our new farting Martian overlords.

woah: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090128.html

BLACK HOLE JETS OMFG

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/images/2009/01/28/blackholejetshires.jpg

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/01/spectacular-new.html

lol cosmic sonic booms

Very nice lenticular cloud, today.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090203.html

Any Texans see the flaming mountain of space debris? I wish I had!

that video spooked me out, because it featured a ton of people running and shouting. before i realised they were also filming a marathon run at the time.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7891912.stm

Bad astronomy seems to suspect that it IS satellite bumpercar fallout.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/02/15/fireball-over-texas/

in this international year of astronomy, take your own APOD's with your retina and your mind grapes for $15 + shipping.

https://www.galileoscope.org/gs/

i played with one of these at a conference a while back. for the price, they are totally awesome.

http://www.sacbee.com/static/weblogs/photos/shuttsm/shutt06.jpg

oh hi we heard you like the hubble advanced camera for surveys so we're off to fix it. be done in 1 week.

(note: all the good APOD pictures are taken with the ACS, but it broke in summer 2007)

http://i.gizmodo.com/05173385/shuttle%20riding-bat-dies-the-most-glorious-death-imaginable

Not astronomy, but wow anyway:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/7952344.stm

Oh. it's everywhere.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1163121/Pictured-The-spectacular-eruption-underwater-volcano-South-Pacific.html

I can't help but think of the movie 'Lifeforce' (or in book form or UK movie title 'the space vampires) with that bat clinging to the shuttle. That little dude was just getting a lift home.

Oh. it's everywhere.

yep just linked to it on the guardian site too

yaow

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/04/cassinis_continued_mission.html

Cheers, caek, that's a superb link. The selection of images and accompanying descriptions are truly mesmeric.

Wow. Just wow.

"The outer edge of the B ring is anchored and sculpted by a powerful gravitational resonance with the moon, Mimas"

Wow. My mind is boggling away here like mad.

Wow, wallpaper heaven!

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/05/cassini_nears_fouryear_mark.html

FUCK

I acidentally read some of the comments and now I want to go burn down a fucking church full of idiots

184. ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE.
Posted by Dave June 18, 08 04:53 PM

ok, not that one :-)

great pictures though

224.
frikin' sweet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by Bob July 3, 08 11:44 PM

best post ever

http://erstories.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/09-nail-biter.jpg

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/10/AR2009051001513.html

5 hours to go.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/servicing/SM4/main/index.html

watch here: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

Grunsfeld will also have to replace four circuit cards, all of which will be around a corner and out of sight.

Given the swearing and shouting that accompanies me tackling any plumbing jobs at home even when I can see the pipes and reach them freely, I have nothing but admiration for someone who can carry out delicate electronic repairs in space, at 17,000mph, wearing bloody great gloves and an EVA suit.

Grunsfeld will also have to replace four circuit cards, all of which will be around a corner and out of sight, man.

Telescopes getting a big boost all round these days

2 new ESA space telescopes getting launched soon, James Webb in 2014, terrestrial scopes benefiting from new mirror technology adaptive optics and improved data links and image processing.

Bring on the Exo Planets

planck is launching on thursday too.

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMVW10YDUF_index_0.html

no problems with weather or hardware so far if you guys feel like watching in 40 mins or so.

here comes the fun cooker

lol those birds are going to die

Planck/Herschel launch tomorrow: http://planckmission.wordpress.com/

meanwhile...

http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001939/

The Spirit rover on Mars is currently stuck in a patch of loose material. After a few attempts to get free, the team has wisely decided to do further experiments on Earth instead of on Mars. They will now recreate the conditions in our sandbox at JPL and test out different sequences until one works reliably here, then try it on Mars.

http://www.planetary.org/image/DSC_0037_PIA07986-A476R1_br2.jpg

I love this stuff, awesome.

LOL @ camouflage all around so it would feel at home

http://www.videocorner.tv/videocorner2/live_flv/index.php?langue=en

textbook launch of herschel and planck

http://www.esa.int/images/ImageVMC_L.gif

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Operations/SEM4SJZVNUF_0.html

Stunning images taken from Earth and space show Herschel and Planck in flight on 14 May 2009. The first, taken from Herschel, show the Planck-Sylda composite just after Herschel's separation, about 1150 km above Africa. A second set taken from ESA's Optical Ground Station, shows Herschel, Planck, Sylda and the launcher’s upper stage long after separation, travelling together at an altitude of about 100 000 km.

http://media.sacbee.com/static/weblogs/photos/images/may09/atlantis15_sm/atlantis15_15.jpg

Solar transit photos: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/05/15/check-this-out-amazing-photo-of-the-sun/

Sun + Shuttle
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nasahqphoto/3531410425/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nasahqphoto/3531410377/

Sun + Shuttle + Hubble
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nasahqphoto/3531350583/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nasahqphoto/3532145692/

(from 2006) Sun + Shuttle + ISS
http://www.sbig.com/award/legault/iss_shuttle.jpg

I love this thread.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2453/3531410425_f94db338c2.jpg

oh wait - this is one of the photos Stan linked to. Ho hum...worth seeing twice imo.

It's on today's Times frontpage as well

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00557/saturday-front_557241a.jpg

how do we get early floyd references on the covers of u.s. newspapers?

(isn't timesonline.co.uk from the UK ?)

exactly

Oh! You mean you want to get early Floyd ... sorry, didn't get that.

Put on some pink floyd and check this out! (multiple videos in a row, cameras on the rocket boosters from launch to splashdown)

Downward-facing camera that starts at around 12:20 is amazing, but the two forward-facing ones are great when the shuttle separates, it's like "C U later doodz!" ZOOOOM!

Kinda frightening that 120 seconds is all it takes to get from the ground to black skies and being able to see the entire curve of the Earth. I can't even get to an RTA station from where I'm sitting that quickly.

it's only 90,000 feet at that stage, which is like three times higher than a plane goes. that atmosphere is some thin shit.

I know it's not the safest way of going up there and that's why the Shuttle program is being shut down, but seeing these videos, I don't know, I'm overcome with the beauty and elegance of this thing and I'm going to miss Space Shuttles :-/

I've now watched that whole thing four times today. Shadow of the smoke plume during liftoff! Smoke plume in the distance during tumble down! Sound! Chutes! Just the concept of mounting cameras on these things at all! *childishly enthusiastic, as usual* :-)

Companion video...

Someone needs to sync this shit up in a 4 way split screen

Like this one from 1996? http://www.nasa.gov/mov/mov/151917main_sts-121_srb_separation_composite.mov

lol:

http://arxiv.org/abs/0906.1577
http://arxiv.org/abs/0906.1578

On 23 April light from the explosion of a star was detected. the star blew up 600 million years after the big bang, which is over 13 billion years ago.

I.e. six weeks ago some people saw the oldest object anyone has ever seen. Boom.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/38000/38985/ISS020-E-09048.jpg

Volcano from the ISS

more here

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=38985

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/38000/38985/ISS020-E-09048_lrg.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2437/3656910551_8377ddf36c_o.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2460/3656910999_63dd468fc3_o.jpg

if you put some eyes on that white plume, it would look like waldorf of "statler and" fame.

eat your heart out jeff minter...
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090728.html

another good one today
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090805.html

betelgeuse pops up in this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEheh1BH34Q

(no it doesn't)

ah, ok, it's about the same size as Antares A

meteor shower tonight kids.

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f325/caek/patrick-moore-full.jpg

good grief, the new hubble imager fitted a few months ago is good

http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2009-25-a-large_web.jpg

i mean honestly

good lord

those are photographs or real things, guys!

http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2009-25-e-large_web.jpg

DEAR EARTH,

FUCK YOU

LOVE SPACE

:)

caek do u ever use that celestia program i linked in the space is dope thread

http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2009-25-x-large_web.jpg

CHECK ME OUT I AM SPACE

i saw that, yuh. never used it, but it is on my weekend bookmarks, so will check it out : )

I MEAN HONESTLY

(ok, not literally on the APOD page, but)

HOLY CRAP: a 200 Mb jpg!?

http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/entire/pr2007016a/warn/hires/true/

whole gallery: http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/entire/hires/true/

http://stsciopo.cachefly.net/hu/db/images/hs-2007-16-a-xlarge_web.jpg

MIND FUCK

ONCE YOU SEE IT BRICKS WILL BE SHAT

God's skull! Nietzsche was right, he IS dead! :-)

Oh, you mean that vagina. Nevermind.

nice! http://hubblesite.org/gallery/wall_murals/

false colour is so pretty.

can i just...

http://www.phrenopolis.com/perspective/solarsystem/

orion

http://www.eso.org/public/archives/images/screen/eso1006a.jpg

orly

a splooging came across the sky

zz top

is there a thread about politics/economics/future of space travel/nasa/china/the moon, etc.?

is there a thread about politics/economics/future of space travel/nasa/china/the moon, etc.?

We were sorta talking about it here: NASA: "We're going back to the moon!"

ta.

today's pic of saturn is mindboggling. the thinness of the rings. and those shadows.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100215.html

Umm... WOW

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/1002/shuttleapproaching_nasa.jpg

I know this isn't APOD, but is anyone else following the tweeting astronaut?

http://twitter.com/Astro_Soichi

Every day he posts a couple of pictures of random cities on earth that the space station has flown over. It's beautiful and amazing, and well worth following.

The cities at night are beautiful, but my favourites are always the natural land formations. It's kind of like APOD meets Google Earth...

http://twitpic.com/14zd4k

that's one long lens...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/8547114.stm

right, someone help me out here. Am i seeing things or are parts of the clouds over the oceans quite clearly PShopped/cloned ?

oh it's probably because the images are pieced together from smaller ones, still i can't stop looking at those parts now and its ruining the image for me

I was gonna go "what you talking about?" then I saw it. Hrmmm. I don't know. Clouds can be pretty fractally self similar but I don't think they're *that* self similar. But then again, would a moving weather formation really hold its shape so perfectly if it was pieced together from smaller pictures at a time delay?

it looks weird - but i'm 99% sure it's not shopped.

the shapes are similar but no parts looks exactly the same as any other bits - which it probably would if anyone had cloned anything.

No, there are two bits in the lower left hand corner of the second picture that are just *too* exact not to have been manipulated in some way or other.

i didn't even see the second image - you're totally right!

oh it's probably because the images are pieced together from smaller ones

ding ding ding - someone completed incomplete patterns since they could just as well have made a completely cloudless picture (why didn't they?) and the Clone Tool is how you do that if you're not an artist.

There's more detail on Goddard's Flickr page for the photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/4392965590

The tip-off to me was the odd looking sun reflection over Baja in picture #2

And yeah, @Astro_Soichi is a must-follow.

yeah the most prominent one is bottom left on the second pic, but there's quite a lot if you really look on both pics.

Of interest to the people who like APOD: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/pluto/mail-01a.html

Angry letters from 3rd-graders about Pluto not being considered a planet.

Devo!

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100312.html

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article7074839.ece

this guy is amazing - floated a camera up using a weather balloon to get some amazing pix

neeeeeeeeerrrrrrdddddddd

3D map of Dark Matter in the universe
http://news.discovery.com/space/2010/03/26/hubble-dark-energy-825x804.jpg
http://news.discovery.com/space/hubble-3d-map-universe-dark-matter.html

http://blogs.discovery.com/.a/6a00d8341bf67c53ef0120a7c734e8970b-320wi

Does Your Halo Ever Give You A Headache?

They figured out that in order to fit the entire orbit of Sagittarius into one model at the same time, it was necessary to allow the the dark matter halo to have different axis lengths in all three dimensions -- in other words, the halo must be triaxial, from which the team inferred that its shape looks for all the world like a beach ball squashed from the side.

That, too, was a bit of a surprise, the three astronomers reported at the meeting. It means that the halo of dark matter and the stars in our galaxy are perpendicular to each other -- an exciting result because it answers one question only to raise a new one, namely, "how our galaxy formed in its present orientation."

http://news.discovery.com/space/does-your-halo-ever-give-you-a-headache.html

^^^ one nano-subfield away from what my phd is about btw.

The perpendicular thing kind of made me think of Hypercubes for some reason. Is it possible that normal matter the 3d manifestation of 4d dark matter?

they mean perpendicular like the galaxy is a rugby ball lying on its side and the dark halo is a rugby ball on its end.

there are a lot of theories about the nature of dark matter, but they are all pretty prosaic and call for regular particles we just haven't detected yet. dark energy is another matter, and they hide all sorts of nonsense in other dimensions to explain that iirc.

worst photoshopping ever.

I LOLled.

fucking adaptive optics

http://www.astro.caltech.edu/palomar/images/blog/LCROSS.gif

wow dudes dig astronomy picture from today
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B0Kd9vk11Y&feature=player_embedded

HOLY MARY MOTHER OF GOD!

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2010/7/5/1278341858795/Planck-composite-image-007.jpg

"We are opening the door to an El Dorado where scientists can seek the nuggets that will lead to deeper understanding of how our universe came to be and how it works now. The image itself and its remarkable quality is a tribute to the engineers who built and have operated Planck," said David Southwood, director of science and robotic exploration at the European Space Agency (Esa).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/jul/05/planck-telescope-postcard-universe

Next Flaming Lips album cover plz.

Also this, first direct picture of extrasolar planet (at top left):
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/1007/exoplanet_gemini.jpg

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100704.html

Yeah, that Planck survey pic is my new desktop. <3 <3 <3

Not apod, technically, but wow nevertheless: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/09/around_the_solar_system.html

Love these images, nice one!

Yeah, stunning stuff - thanks for linking.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11776703

perspective madness, when did Italy become so big?

http://parriswakefield.com/uploads/page/546/a3b24254f83e8bff94493902d5a75058-small.png

http://parriswakefield.com/page/portfolio/music/joy_division/-

THE SUN IS ANGRY

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2010/12/SDO-giant-filament.jpg

giant ring of black holes

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/516469main_image_1864_946-710.jpg

fucking hell!

Chap combines multiple NASA images to make gorgeous huge pictures of solar system objects: http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/galleries/beyond_the_known/

Incredible, esp. like Saturn, Mimas and Tethys.

http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmvoveChr51qzt4vjo1_r1_500.gif

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1108/mycn18_hst_1280.jpg

apologies if that's huge, i keep images off.

more crucially, though, aaaaaaaah

Whoa, the abyss staring back... What is it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_1987A i think

so fake

that's not 1987a.

~awkward~

MyCn18 nebula
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110807.html i mean

also aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahh

its a shop i can tell by the pixels

But... but I want to believe... ;_:

Also: aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh

it is a philip k dick novel waiting to be written

idk these pix are like real in some sense but theyre totally dressed up and technocolored to insite wonderment in the masses

its sort of cynical imho!

if you're just talking about the colours yeah they're false but it doesn't matter, it still looks like a freakin' eye!

http://i55.tinypic.com/ipxr0k.jpg

it's terrifying

and awesome

its not just the colors

make space stop staring at me

it's freaking me the fuck out

its cool space is not staring at you any more than any thing that vaguely looks like an eye can be made to look more like an eye using computers, prob less in this case as a lot of the info in that pic was prob originally observed in a spectrum unseeable by human eyes

ice cr?m why do you hate magic

Today's pic is great.

haha very chillwave

is it a neutrino?

followed the link to the youtube video, do not want to read the comments of the 4 people who found it in themselves to 'dislike' it

youtube...? Are we looking at the same pic? (pileus iridescent cloud)

yeah that's what i was looking at

Seen a few iridescent clouds over London, but not as pretty as that one!

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110824.html

the one before isn't too shabby either.

Whoa no kidding!

YOU ARE HERE ->

http://news.discovery.com/space/juno-looks-back-snaps-earth-moon-system-110830.html

via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot

dont try to tell me where i am fuckin science

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110927.html

So pretty:

http://youtu.be/74mhQyuyELQ?hd=1

You need to watch the HD version

It is good to see the human-made lights so numerous. One glorious day there will be no natural lights left. We look forward to that time.

banaka!!

amazing

time-lapse photography from ISS - sdtk by Jan Jellinek

everybody should watch this!

loved it.

In writing that long post on the Mad Men thread about the first color photo from space, I ended up thinking about it a bit more and <a href="http://www.quartzcity.net/2012/05/11/it-didnt-bother-you-to-see-the-world-tiny-and-unprotected-surrounded-by-darkness/";>wrote a lot more over here</a> (I posted it to MetaFilter too, but found some horrid typos and missing words).

Anyway, in the middle of all the writing and link checking I ran across this video that took 24 hours of the DISH Earth channel, time-compressed it down to 3:18 and soundtracked it with a banging mid-70s disco funk track from Brass Connection. It's been a shit couple of days and this completely snapped me out of it. Hooray for the Internet! This is the best thing I've seen in days:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-REzr7HB9E

fuck! Switching between HTML and BBCode STILL kills me!

(and yes, that's the moon crawling along there at the end)

Great post. Shame the photo didn't stop people killing each other.

Yes that's beautiful, thanks for posting.

It's not on APOD YET - http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2013/12

http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2013-12-a-web.jpg

Unlike other celestial objects there is no question how the Horsehead Nebula got its name. This iconic silhouette of a horse's head and neck pokes up mysteriously from what look like whitecaps of interstellar foam. The nebula has graced astronomy books ever since its discovery over a century ago. But Hubble's infrared vision shows the horse in a new light. The nebula, shadowy in optical light, appears transparent and ethereal when seen at infrared wavelengths. This pillar of tenuous hydrogen gas laced with dust is resisting being eroded away by the radiation from a nearby star. The nebula is a small part of a vast star-forming complex in the constellation Orion. The Horsehead will disintegrate in about 5 million years.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/05/07/the_sun_picture_of_a_small_sunspot_bigger_than_earth.html

fuck yeah

http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/05/07/sdo_171_sunmay62013.jpg.CROP.original-original.jpg

http://38.media.tumblr.com/72149346d6e161163b09595dec3da3e6/tumblr_najkod50mC1qbo6leo1_1280.jpg

Fishing boats off of Bangkok

Really rather beautiful short film here: http://vimeo.com/108650530

Worth checking out the stills gallery, too, full of interesting stuff on the physics and the original imagery, etc: http://www.erikwernquist.com/wanderers/gallery.html

http://www.erikwernquist.com/wanderers/images/gallery/WANDERERS_europa_view_01.jpg

Great Lakes area from the ISS.

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/lcvqwf5xt6agrsjusavr.jpg

Two-Kilometer Crater within Pasteur Crater on Mars. From http://beautifulmars.tumblr.com (which everyone in this thread should be following)

http://41.media.tumblr.com/c6a19038504e4435447f259faf37af4f/tumblr_nge4roGJRV1rlz4gso1_1280.jpg

Gah! Molecular Cloud Barnard 68: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap141214.html

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1412/barnard68v2_vlt_960.jpg

Volcano on Io.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/Tvashtarvideo.gif

awesome

it's not just other planets

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-04/01/typhoon-from-space

Presenting Charon!

https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpt1/v/t1.0-9/12043169_10153579258846772_8883593727963723006_n.jpg?oh=685e18ad896c38ea727ec83bf4e5e6b3&oe=56A3C850

fuck

In September, the first confirmed extrasolar object visited our solar system. ʻOumuamua is a 230 m × 35 m × 35 m asteroid on a highly inclined hyperbolic orbit which arrived in the Solar System from the direction of Vega with 26.3 km/s relative velocity, accelerated to 87.7 km/s at perihelion inside Mercury's orbit on September 9, 2017, and has departed towards Pegasus, never to return.

Wikipedia: ʻOumuamua

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_vAcv7JGhQ

taken by one of the two 18 cm small bots on Ryugu:

This is a picture from MINERVA-II1. The color photo was captured by Rover-1A on September 21 around 13:08 JST, immediately after separation from the spacecraft. Hayabusa2 is top and Ryugu's surface is below. The image is blurred because the rover is spinning. #asteroidlanding pic.twitter.com/CeeI5ZjgmM

— HAYABUSA2@JAXA (@haya2e_jaxa) September 22, 2018

(pic 2 & 3 are way better, click on this one ^ )

what are some good astronomy pic accounts on twitter

I love that those rovers are moving around the asteroid by jumping

Titan dust storm (artist's conception)

http://pasadenanow.com/main/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/PIA22482_hires.jpg

I'd also recommend the unmannedspaceflight.com forum
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DnszMxtUUAAS_cD.jpg

these all look like me after a few pints

hey check out this fuckin' black hole

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D3y2S46XkAAwIRl.jpg:large

pretty cool imo

Hands up who thinks they have this album somewhere.

Seriously cool

This album, FYI:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superunknown

Check the simulation

There's a brief write-up at @PhysicsWorld here: https://t.co/dqI3RoCjuL with more images. Here's the image seen (left) compared with a simulation (middle) and the simulation blurred to the expected resolution of the telescope (right). (Image via Akiyama et al & ApJL) pic.twitter.com/UqAVdUtndK

— Katie Mack (@AstroKatie) April 10, 2019

livestream here of Jupiter-Saturn conjunction...this last happened (w/ this visibilty) 800 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0799Kmke-k

would wear on a t-shirt. (would make a perfect autechre cover also)

https://eventhorizontelescope.org/blog/astronomers-image-magnetic-fields-edge-m87s-black-hole

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

^ oh, that's the main page, which will be different tomorrow. this is today's

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap191023.html

which is the 30th anniversary.

(and that second one is wrong too, a link to a previous entry.

but this one is correct https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap250616.html )

awesome, though i'd like a 64 gigapixel zoomable version.