ourania ex machina

cassini - bard of caffeine - #wanque i've gone to dw y not unfollow

[symmetryinstars]

Galilean Moons

The Galilean moons are the four largest moons of Jupiter, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. They were first seen by Galileo Galilei in January 1610, and recognized by him as satellites of Jupiter in March 1610. They were the first objects found to orbit another planet. Their names derive from the lovers of Zeus. They are among the largest objects in the Solar System with the exception of the Sun and the eight planets, with a radius larger than any of the dwarf planets. Ganymede is the largest moon in the Solar System, and is even bigger than the planet Mercury, though only around half as massive.

Edited in Mirror Lab on March 9, 2019

[some-teeth-in-a-trench-coat]

It is a comfort to know that there are, at the very least, three goblins that say trans rights

Oh, I think there are many more!

Reblog if you are a goblin and you say trans rights!

[scidotnews]

Spectacular Galaxy Collision Captured by Hubble

http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/galaxy-collision-hubble-ngc-6052-06957.html

[catastrophepins]

Reminder that my kickstarter is now funding stretch goals! We have 18 days left of the campaign, so we’re almost halfway through. There are still 3 early bird slots left for the 3 tier reward, I hope we can get them filled and get these pins fully funded. :) If you know anyone that might be interested please let them know!

Kickstarter Here!

[wonders-of-the-cosmos]

M43: Orion Falls 

Image Credit: Zhuoqun Wu, Chilescope Telescope 2

[apod]

2019 February 20

Doomed Star Eta Carinae Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble; Processing & License: Judy Schmidt

Explanation: Eta Carinae may be about to explode. But no one knows when - it may be next year, it may be one million years from now. Eta Carinae’s mass - about 100 times greater than our Sun - makes it an excellent candidate for a full blown supernova. Historical records do show that about 170 years ago Eta Carinae underwent an unusual outburst that made it one of the brightest stars in the southern sky. Eta Carinae, in the Keyhole Nebula, is the only star currently thought to emit natural LASER light. This featured image brings out details in the unusual nebula that surrounds this rogue star. Diffraction spikes, caused by the telescope, are visible as bright multi-colored streaks emanating from Eta Carinae’s center. Two distinct lobes of the Homunculus Nebula encompass the hot central region, while some strange radial streaks are visible in red extending toward the image right. The lobes are filled with lanes of gas and dust which absorb the blue and ultraviolet light emitted near the center. The streaks, however, remain unexplained.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap190220.html

[anotheruserwithnoname]

After 15 years, the Mars Opportunity rover's mission has ended

It's time to say goodbye to Opportunity. The Mars rover's team made its last attempt to contact Opportunity on Tuesday night, and it went unanswered. On Wednesday, NASA confirmed that the mission is over.

R.I.P. Opportunity. This was truly an amazing mission. It was supposed to last only 90 days. But the little rover kept, well, roving - for 15 years - and it probably would have kept going if not for a worldwide dust storm that pretty much shut it down last year (but they only gave up trying to contact it yesterday).

How much you want to bet if we ever get to Mars and if they travel out to where Opportunity is parked, the moment they brush grit off the solar panels the thing will spring back to life?

[roguetelemetry]

Fuck Mars colonization.  We’re going to get Oppy. 

[the-telescope-times]

After making history, NASA’s tiny deep-space satellites go silent

An artistic rendering of the MarCO satellites traveling through deep space. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The first two tiny satellites to ever go interplanetary have fallen silent in deep space for some unknown reason, and it’s likely we may never hear from them again.

But for NASA, which launched the probes last year, this loss of communication isn’t considered a failure. Before the pair went quiet, these vehicles demonstrated that tiny satellites could become critical tools for exploring other worlds deep within our Solar System.

The silent satellites are the two MarCO probes — nicknamed EVE and WALL-E from Pixar’s sci-fi movie — which flew to Mars along with NASA’s InSight lander last year. Both MarCOs are modified CubeSats, a type of standardized small satellite about the size of a cereal box used for space research. Before the InSight mission, CubeSats had only ever orbited around Earth, but NASA wanted to know if these types of satellites could be useful on deep-space missions, too.

One of the twin MarCO satellites before launch. Credit: NASA   

The MarCO satellites demonstrated just that and more, exceeding everyone’s expectations. They launched along with the InSight lander on May 5th, and flew in formation with the spacecraft all the way to the Red Planet. Once InSight got to Mars and started its descent to the surface on November 26th, the MarCO satellites observed the landing sequence from overhead and sent real-time status updates back to Earth. That way, NASA knew how each step of the landing process went just minutes after it happened. “We got the data much earlier than we would have — in near real-time as the landing was happening — adding to the excitement of the event,” Joel Krajewski, the project manager of the MarCO spacecraft at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, tells The Verge.

Read more ~ theverge.com

[bob-artist]

Whenever Tux manages to slip into a forbidden room, he does the most obnoxious victory dance. XD

[pixels-after-dark-deactivated20]

yeah so this video brought me to tears in like 8 seconds

[cassinicultist]

@dragonfly-izzy do u know what im thinking of

[the-telescope-times]

Supernova Remnant E0102-72.3

This supernova remnant was produced by a massive star that exploded in a nearby galaxy called the Small Magellanic Cloud. X-rays from Chandra (blue and purple) have helped astronomers confirm that most of the oxygen in the universe is synthesized in massive stars. The amount of oxygen in the E0102-72.3 ring shown here is enough for thousands of solar systems. This image also contains optical data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the Very Large Telescope in Chile (red and green).

Image credit: X-ray (NASA/CXC/ESO/F.Vogt et al); Optical (ESO/VLT/MUSE), Optical (NASA/STScI)

[sometransgal]

I have big top energy and by that i mean i’m a fucking clown. 

[tsotea-deactivated20210727]

tutorial

[cassinicultist]

last night while childminding my 9yo nephew asked me if i have an iphone

i said yes

he called me 'a disgrace'

[starwalkapp]

White Dwarfs Observed Turning into Crystals⠀ ⠀ Astronomers using ESA’s galaxy-mapping spacecraft Gaia have discovered the first direct evidence that white dwarfs form crystal cores of metallic oxygen and carbon.⠀ ⠀ White dwarfs are the remains of medium-sized stars similar to our Sun. Once these stars have burnt all the nuclear fuel in their core, they shed their outer layers, leaving behind a hot core that starts cooling down.⠀ ⠀ These ultra-dense remnants still emit thermal radiation as they cool, and are visible to astronomers as rather faint objects.⠀ ⠀ It is estimated that up to 97% of stars in our Milky Way Galaxy will eventually turn into white dwarfs, while the most massive of stars will end up as neutron stars or black holes.⠀ ⠀ The cooling of white dwarfs lasts billions of years. Once they reach a certain temperature, the originally hot matter inside the star’s core starts crystallizing, becoming solid.⠀ ⠀ A research team led by University of Warwick astronomer Pier-Emmanuel Tremblay selected 15,000 white dwarf candidates within around 300 light-years of Earth from observations made by Gaia and analyzed data on the stars’ luminosities and colors.⠀ ⠀ They identified a pile-up, an excess in the number of stars at specific colors and luminosities that do not correspond to any single mass or age.⠀ ⠀ The heat released during this crystallization process, which lasts several billion years, seemingly slows down the evolution of the white dwarfs: the stars stop dimming and, as a result, appear up to two billion years younger than they actually are.⠀ ⠀ Not all white dwarfs crystallize at the same pace. More massive stars cool down more rapidly and will reach the temperature at which crystallization happens in about one billion years.⠀ ⠀ The Sun still has about five billion years before it becomes a white dwarf, and the astronomers estimate that it will take another five billion years after that to eventually cool down to a crystal sphere.⠀ ⠀ Read more at sci-news.com⠀ ⠀ Image Credit: Mark Garlick / University of Warwick via Instagram http://bit.ly/2VRoDkG

[the-telescope-times]

Twinkle, twinkle, little star  (white dwarfs are the size of Earth) How I wonder what you are (stars like the sun that no longer fuse atoms) Up above the world so high (many light-years high) Like a diamond in the sky (carbon, crystallized)

Twinkle, twinkle little star (Earth’s atmosphere causes the twinkle) How I wonder what you are (formerly a magnificent ball of plasma)

[badjokesbyjeff]

Bilbo was surprised to wake up one morning and find a Tescos had been built next to his house.

It was an unexpected item in the Baggins area

[janiedean]

@feanoriel

[turing-tested]

i keep thinking about equius and nepeta at a restaurant and hes like “what will you be having” and her looking up from her menu and going ‘i cant read’

[trollrider1111]

Idk who these people are but that doesn’t take away from this joke

[verdantwinter]

Guess who’s here to start 2019 with some remixed art!  Since I started the Disciplines in 2013 (2013!) my drawing abilities on the computer have vastly changed, and the prints themselves have gotten more streamlined. This meant that the original disciplines didn’t match most of the new ones.  I also have always intended to add borders and I have finally settled on something (for now) so a total reformat seemed like the best way to go.  So here we have the original 5 Disciplines, total redone and ready for a new year. (This excludes Chemistry who was, for some reason, pretty much fine… for now).  Stay tuned for the next rerelease.  The Discipline Directory (Tumblr Version)

Website Instagram