Lowell Observatory Astronomer Phil Massey And His Graduate Student Research Assistant Kathryn Neugent

First, a bit of background - I have lived with a girl for 4 years after putting an ad out online. She pays her bills and is never there at the weekends, while I’m rarely there during the week. However - she is unbelievably lazy, selfish and messy (imagine those shock images of student houses and you’re not far off).

I’ve spent 4 years getting petty revenge on my flat mate in the most passive aggressive ways possible. My objective is for her to never realise I’m responsible. Here is story number 1:

The Offence: Christmas 2014. I have bought 6 bottles of wine for my Nan at a cost of around £30/bottle. Before I can gift them, I return home one night to find she and her boyfriend have helped themselves to one of the bottles…

HER: “Oh I had one of your bottles of wine. I hope you don’t mind. I’ll replace it.

ME: "Errr… Ok. Right.”

Bottle is replaced with Sainsbury’s Basics Red Table Wine at approximately £3 in value. Was given the replacement the night before I was due to travel to my Nan’s leaving me with half a present and a disappointed grandmother.

Petty Revenge: For over 2 years now, I have been sealing all of her bottles and jars with gorilla glue before she opens them for the first time. Tomato ketchup? Gorilla glue. Laundry detergent? Gorilla glue. All those bottles of nail polish just left lying around on the hallway floor? Gorilla glue. I’m a regular maestro when it comes to gorilla gluing things without leaving any evidence.

I gorilla glued her light bulb in to its socket so when it blew, she needed to replace the whole lamp. I gorilla glued the windscreen washer fluid cap on to her car. I gorilla glued the caps on to all the pens she bought when she got in to that adult colouring-in phase.

So far she’s invested in 3 automatic jar openers to no avail and thrown away dozens of items. It’s never been mentioned to me and I assume she thinks she’s just weak and this is normal.

“Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.” – Stephen Hawking

Stunning capture by Jordan McInally of @undersoulphotography

Elephants Trunk Nebula IC1396

Thursday was the first clear night in ages so I took Friday off and stayed up most of the night imaging this beauty. Taken using a Canon 700D and a Canon 200mm lens

Just so you know, you can always watch the Earth live from the ISS. Its really relaxing to me (the music they play is soothing too)

Beneath the Milky Way

Deep in the Chilean Desert, astronomers staying at ESO’s La Residencia, the VLT Observatory’s hotel, witness a skyscape like few others on Earth.

In this photograph, the plane of the Milky Way can be seen above La Residencia, as passing staff members take a moment to admire the spectacular sight.

Credit: ESO/Luis Calçada/Herbert Zodet

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.” ― Marcus Aurelius Aurora over Kirkjufell, Iceland captured by the always awe-inspiring Sean Parker.

White Ibis (Eudocimus albus) at Sunset

Lido Key Beach, FL

Three Bands of Light

The faint light extending up from the horizon just below centre of this photo is known as zodiacal light, caused by sunlight scattering from cosmic dust in the plane of our Earth’s orbit. A second band of light can be seen at the horizon on the lower left. This red light is airglow, produced by the Earth’s atmosphere. Airglow is caused by processes taking place in the upper atmosphere, including cosmic rays, recombining photoionized atoms, and various chemical reactions between oxygen, nitrogen, hydroxyl, sodium, and lithium atoms. The third and final band is the Milky Way, our home galaxy, high in the sky. This band consists of billions of stars of all kinds. Many of them are hidden to the human eye behind large layers of interstellar dust, giving the Milky Way its characteristically mottled look.

Credit: ESO/Y. Beletsky

What is so special about Saturn’s moon Titan?

Titan is Saturn’s largest moon and the only natural satellite in our solar system known to have a dense atmosphere. But there is something much more amazing about the Saturnian orbiter.

Titan has a vast system of oceans, lakes, and huge mountain ranges. How, though, could a body whose average temperature is -290°F (-179°C) contain liquid water on its surface? It doesn’t.

The oceans and lakes on Titan are made of liquid methane (CH₄) and ethane (C₂H₆). The mountains are made of water ice. That’s right. The “waters” of titan are made of not water, but hydrocarbons, and its mountain ranges are made of not minerals like calcium, iron, and cobalt, but ice.

Could, then, there be not water-based, but hydrocarbon-based life on Titan? Astrobiologists (scientists who study possible extraterrestrial life forms) are hoping to send rovers there one day to sample the oceans and answer that question.

If it turned out that there is life somewhere else in the solar system, it would be so much more than just a cool scientific discovery. For two hundred thousand years, we humans have thought that we were alone in the universe. We thought that only our blue and green home harbored life. If life turned up elsewhere, we would know that we were wrong all along.

(pictured: Titan; source: NASA, Cassini spacecraft, 2006)

The Galactic Core over Sharkfin Cove, CA.

js