Lanas-own-blog - My Personal Space.

me @ myself: get it together.....

also me @ myself: ur literally going through a lot rn? cut yourself some slack?

also also me @ myself: ...anyway....i hate my entire self

Is it too late to jump on the pumpkin-everything bandwagon?

Select pumpkin images from our Seed Catalogs collection

Incredible “EPIC” View Of The Moon Passing In Front Of The Earth

This is real, folks. It is not a computer-generated animation. NASA’s DSCOVR (Deep Space Climate Observatory) satellite took these incredible shots on July 16 using its Earth-facing EPIC camera from its vantage point between the Earth and the Sun, a million miles away!

DSCOVR sits at what’s known as the L1 Lagrangian point, where the gravitational pull of the Earth and Sun balance out in such a way that satellites positioned there can remain in stable orbit while using minimal energy:

Image: NASA/NOAA

This view of the far side of the Moon reminds us that it is anything but dark. The Moon is tidally locked, meaning that we see the same face all the time, but the sun regularly shines on the side that we don’t see (we’re just seeing a new or crescent moon when that happens). The far side also lacks the dark plains, or maria, that texture the Earth-facing side, made of basalt laid down by ancient lunar lava flows, reminding us that our lunar satellite has a complex geologic history:

What It's Like To Take Photos Of A Dying Man

Like millions of Chinese gold miners, He Quangui was stricken with the lung disease silicosis. At first he didn't want his story to be told, but over time he came to trust the photographer.

“I probably cried more for this story than any other stories I’ve done,“ says the photographer. “There were some film producers and editors that I wanted to work with. I showed them [my] footage and they were like, ‘Oh, this is unusable. There’s so much shaking and sobbing in background.’ That was just me. It was a very emotional experience.”

Our Flying Observatory Goes to New Zealand!

Our flying observatory, called SOFIA, carries a 100-inch telescope inside a Boeing 747SP aircraft. Scientists onboard study the life cycle of stars, planets (including Pluto’s atmosphere), the area around black holes and complex molecules in space. 

Heading South

Once each year our flying observatory, SOFIA, its team and instruments travel to the Southern Hemisphere to Christchurch, New Zealand. From there the team studies stars and other objects that cannot be seen while flying in the Northern Hemisphere.

What We Study

We often study star formation in our Milky Way Galaxy. But from the Southern Hemisphere we can also study the lifecycle of stars in two other galaxies called the Magellanic Clouds. The Magallenic Clouds have different materials in them, which changes how stars form in these galaxies. Scientists are studying these differences to better understand how the first stars in our universe formed.  

Home Away from Home

The observatory and its team use the National Science Foundation’s U.S. Antarctic Program facility at Christchurch International Airport. The Antarctic program’s off-season is June and July, so it’s an ideal time for us to use these facilities.

Another Blast of Winter

The Southern Hemisphere’s seasons are opposite from our own. When we are operating from Christchurch in June and July, it’s winter. This means that the nights are very long – ideal for our nighttime observing flights, which last approximately 10 hours.

Light Show

These observations often bring us so far south that the team onboard can see the Southern Lights, also called the Aurora Australis. This is the Southern Hemisphere equivalent of the Northern Lights, or Aurora Borealis, visible near the North Pole. Auroras are caused by particles from space hitting the atmosphere near Earth’s magnetic poles. Our scientists onboard SOFIA don’t study the aurora, but they do enjoy the view.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

NASA’s Message-In-A-Bottle: The Interstellar Constellation

The picture above represents one of the most beautiful things we’ve ever done.

Here’s a short thought experiment and story:

Somewhere one day a person, who may or may not be somewhat like you, might be looking through their telescope.

They might see something strange, approaching the planet.

They contact the authorities.

A mission is conceived to rendezvous with the object.

Astronauts carefully seal the mysterious asteroid in a large container and bring it back to the planet for scientists to study.

The whole world would be tense, waiting for news to break of what this strange thing is.

Its enigmatic shape gives it away as almost certainly not being natural.

Finally a nervous person approaches the media and crowds outside the lab.

With a shaking hand the person wipes sweat from their brow. They look up briefly before speaking, as if half expecting something to be there.

“The asteroid… is not from the solar system. It hurtled here at great speeds from a distant star.

It’s old. We’re not sure yet how old, but it’s clearly been a long time since it was home.

Inside the asteroid is a golden disc. We’ve managed to remove the disc. It has markings… and sounds etched into it.”

It was a little longer before the contents of the disc were deciphered. The scientists realized that the strange 14-branches of lines on the disc were binary. Yes or no. The simplest language in the universe, and a mathematical one.

A language that might be used to communicate with cosmic neighbors.

Across countless years and an unimaginable gulf of empty darkness, something was telling us, “Yes, yes, yes, no, no, yes, no, yes, no, yes, no, no, yes, yes, no, yes, yes, no…”

But yes to what? No to what?

The media exploded when an astronomer announced the binary series and the lengths of the branches corresponded exactly to the fingerprint-like beacons of 14 pulsars.

Around the world researchers mapped out where the center of the constellation should be, where the center of the 14 branches from their perspective night sky was.

They knew almost immediately but didn’t want to believe.

The star in the center of the constellation, the place where this message came from…

A news anchor looked into a camera, a somber look on their face:

“Astronomers have triangulated the location of the alien spacecraft. It came from a distant star which you can see in your telescopes. It’s the large red one.

It’s pretty to us but was a very different sort of star when this message was sent to us. Our space telescopes have confirmed that there’s a rocky planet in orbit around the star… there’s no atmosphere on it now as the star’s growth has boiled away any atmosphere there might have been.

Could those aliens still be alive somehow? Did they survive the incineration of their home?

As much as we ask these questions all we’ve got are the recordings they left on a sturdy golden record.

When played we hear strange sounds in an alien tongue. Deciphered, the recording reads,

“Hello, from the children of planet Earth…””

This story, believe it or not has already begun.

A few decades ago, NASA, working with Dr. Carl Sagan compiled a golden record to go aboard the Voyager spacecrafts. 

Voyager 1 launched from Earth in 1977. It left the solar system and entered interstellar space in 2013.

In 1 billion years, that golden record will still be readable and the sounds engraved thereon still readable.

NASA used the unique, lighthouse-like rhythms of specific pulsars to generate a map, a sort of interstellar constellation that, no matter where in the Milky Way you are, will always point to our Sun at the center.

It’s a beautiful message. For a billion years the sounds of children speaking across the universe will survive. For a billion years the sounds of a heartbeat of someone in love will be carried from star to star. 

That heartbeat, that love, will flow across the cosmos for a billion years.

For a billion years our interstellar message-in-a-bottle will drift among the current of starlight, perhaps until one day a person, who may or may not be somewhat like you, might look through their telescope and see a strange asteroid drifting towards their planet…

(Image credit: NASA)

NGC 6995.

Credit: Paul Andrew

The Atom: Part 5 of 5 (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4) Episode 6: Deeper, Deeper, Deeper Still, Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey

The launch of a space shuttle from high above.