We are Children of the Stars

[coconutsandcuttlefish]

The Valley of the Moon, near San Pedro de Atacama in northern Chile.

[a-bstracto]

[mariajosevikernes]

[invisiblesnapshots-deactivated2]

[bubview]

trongsa, bhutan

[simone-cobley]

9/22

Phobjikha Valley Nature Hike

[merlinkafka]

[dictionaryofobscuresorrows]

waldosia

n. [Brit. wallesia] a condition characterized by scanning faces in a crowd looking for a specific person who would have no reason to be there, which is your brain’s way of checking to see whether they’re still in your life, subconsciously patting its emotional pockets before it leaves for the day.

[dictionaryofobscuresorrows]

antematter

n. the dream versions of things in your life, which appear totally foreign but are still somehow yours—your anteschool, your antefriends, your antehome—all part of a parallel world whose gravitational pull raises your life’s emotional stakes, increasing the chances you’ll end up betting everything you have.

[dictionaryofobscuresorrows]

antematter

n. the dream versions of things in your life, which appear totally foreign but are still somehow yours—your anteschool, your antefriends, your antehome—all part of a parallel world whose gravitational pull raises your life’s emotional stakes, increasing the chances you’ll end up betting everything you have.

[dictionaryofobscuresorrows]

xeno

n. the smallest measurable unit of human connection, typically exchanged between passing strangers—a flirtatious glance, a sympathetic nod, a shared laugh about some odd coincidence—moments that are fleeting and random but still contain powerful emotional nutrients that can alleviate the symptoms of feeling alone.

[dictionaryofobscuresorrows]

anchorage

n. the desire to hold on to time as it passes, like trying to keep your grip on a rock in the middle of a river, feeling the weight of the current against your chest while your elders float on downstream, calling over the roar of the rapids, “Just let go—it’s okay—let go.”

[dictionaryofobscuresorrows]

Mauerbauertraurigkeit

n. the inexplicable urge to push people away, even close friends who you really like—as if all your social tastebuds suddenly went numb, leaving you unable to distinguish cheap politeness from the taste of genuine affection, unable to recognize its rich and ambiguous flavors, its long and delicate maturation, or the simple fact that each tasting is double-blind.

[dictionaryofobscuresorrows]

fata organa

n. a flash of real emotion glimpsed in someone sitting across the room, idly locked in the middle of some group conversation, their eyes glinting with vulnerability or quiet anticipation or cosmic boredom—as if you could see backstage through a gap in the curtains, watching stagehands holding their ropes at the ready, actors in costume mouthing their lines, fragments of bizarre sets waiting for some other production.

[entertainmentnerdly]

White Pocket Lollipop, AZ, USA [3000x2000] [OC] via /r/EarthPorn http://ift.tt/25WAf84

[data-and-vision]

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

NASA Mars Rover Descends Plateau, Turns Toward Mountain

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has analyzed its 12th drilled sample of Mars. This sample came from mudstone bedrock, which the rover resumed climbing in late May after six months studying other features.

Since the previous time Curiosity drilled into this “Murray formation” layer of lower Mount Sharp, the mission has examined active sand dunes along the rover’s route, then crossed a remnant plateau of fractured sandstone that once more extensively covered the Murray formation.

While on the “Naukluft Plateau,” the rover examined its 10th and 11th drill targets to repeat an experiment comparing material within and away from pale zones around fractures. From there, Curiosity also took the latest in a series of self-portraits.

“Now that we’ve skirted our way around the dunes and crossed the plateau, we’ve turned south to climb the mountain head-on,” said Curiosity Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. “Since landing, we’ve been aiming for this gap in the terrain and this left turn. It’s a great moment for the mission.”

Curiosity landed near Mount Sharp in 2012. It reached the base of the mountain in 2014 after successfully finding evidence on the surrounding plains that ancient Martian lakes offered conditions that would have been favorable for microbes if Mars has ever hosted life. Rock layers forming the base of Mount Sharp accumulated as sediment within ancient lakes billions of years ago.

The Murray formation is about one-eighth of a mile (200 meters) thick. So far, Curiosity has examined about one-fifth of its vertical extent.

“The story that the Murray formation is revealing about the habitability of ancient Mars is one of the mission’s surprises,” Vasavada said. “It wasn’t obvious from pre-mission data that it formed in long-lived lakes and that its diverse composition would tell us about the chemistry of those lakes and later groundwater.”

The latest sample-collection target, “Oudam,” was drilled on June 4. On the Naukluft Plateau, Curiosity drilled “Lubango,” within a halo of brighter sandstone near a fracture, and “Okoruso,” away from a fracture-related halo, for comparison. The mission conducted a similar experiment last year, with two sample targets drilled at another exposure of the fractured sandstone.

This sandstone unit, called the Stimson formation, is interpreted to have resulted from wind that draped a band of sand dunes over lower Mount Sharp. That would have been after the main stack of the mountain’s lower layers had formed and partially eroded. Water later moved through fractures in the sandstone. Investigation of the fracture-related halos aims to determine how fluid moved through the fractures and altered surrounding rock.

“We were about to drive off the Naukluft Plateau and leave the Stimson formation forever as we go up Mount Sharp,” said Curiosity science-team member Albert Yen of JPL. “A few of us were concerned. The fracture-associated haloes were becoming more prevalent, and we had only one data point. With just one data point, you never know whether it is representative.”

As with the similar previous experiment, comparison of Lubango and Okoruso found higher silica and sulfate levels in the sample nearer to the fracture. Multiple episodes of groundwater flow with different chemistry at different times may have both delivered silica and sulfate from elsewhere and leached other ingredients away.

“The big-picture story is that this may be one of the youngest fluid events we’re likely to study with Curiosity,” Yen said. “You had to lay down the Murray, then cement it, then lay down the Stimson and cement that, then fracture the Stimson, then have fluids moving through the fractures.”

On Mount Sharp, Curiosity is investigating how and when the habitable ancient conditions known from the mission’s earlier findings evolved into conditions drier and less favorable for life. For more information about Curiosity, visit:

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl

TOP IMAGE….This self-portrait of NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover shows the vehicle at a drilled sample site called “Okoruso,” on the “Naukluft Plateau” of lower Mount Sharp. The scene combines multiple images taken with the rover’s Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on May 11, 2016, during the 1,338th Martian day, or sol, of the rover’s work on Mars.

In front of the rover is the hole, surrounded by grayish drill cuttings, created by using Curiosity’s drill to collect sample rock powder at Okoruo, plus a patch of powder dumped onto the ground after delivery of a portion to the rover’s internal Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) laboratory instrument.

The rover team compared the rock powder from drilling at Okoruso to material from the nearby “Lubango” drilling site, which is visible behind the rover, just to the left of the mast. The Lubango site was selected within a pale zone, or “halo,” beside a fracture in the area’s sandstone bedrock. Okoruso is in less-altered bedrock farther from any fractures. Note that the Okoruso drill cuttings appear darker than the Lubango drill cuttings. The Lubango sample was found to be enriched in silica and sulfates, relative to Okoruso.

To the left of the rover, in this scene, several broken rocks reveal grayish interiors. Here, Curiosity was driven over the rocks in a fracture-associated halo, so that freshly exposed surfaces could be examined with MAHLI, Mast Camera (Mastcam) and Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instruments.

An upper portion of Mount Sharp is prominent on the horizon. A map at PIA20748 shows locations of Okoruso and Lubango relative to other drilling sites along Curiosity’s route.

The MAHLI camera is mounted at the end of the rover’s robotic arm. The rover self-portrait view from stitching together multiple images does not include the rover’s arm. Wrist motions and turret rotations on the arm allowed MAHLI to acquire the mosaic’s component images. The arm was positioned out of the shot in the images, or portions of images, that were used in this mosaic. This process was used previously in acquiring and assembling Curiosity self-portraits taken at sample-collection sites, including “Bagnold Dune Field” (PIA20317), “Rocknest” (PIA16468), “Windjana” (PIA18390) and “Buckskin” (PIA19807).

For scale, the rover’s wheels are 20 inches (50 centimeters) in diameter and about 16 inches (40 centimeters) wide.

Another version (PIA20603) of this self-portrait at Okoruso poses the top of the mast with the cameras on the mast facing away from MAHLI. The animated version blinks back and forth between the two views.

MAHLI was built by Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed and built the project’s Curiosity rover.

LOWER IMAGE….This graphic maps locations of the first 14 sites where NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover collected rock or soil samples for analysis by laboratory instruments inside the vehicle. It also presents images of the drilled holes where 12 rock-powder samples were acquired. At the other two sites – Rocknest and Gobabeb – Curiosity scooped soil samples.

The diameter of each drill hole is about 0.6 inch (1.6 centimeters), slightly smaller than a U.S. dime. The images used here are raw color, as recorded by the rover’s Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera. Notice the differences in color of the material at different drilling sites.

The latest sample site included is “Oudam,” where Curiosity drilled into mudstone of the “Murray formation” on June 4, during the 1,361th Martian day, or sol, of the mission.

Curiosity landed in August 2012 on the plain (named Aeolis Palus) near Mount Sharp (or Aeolis Mons).

Dates when the first 11 drilled-rock samples were collected are: “John Klein” on Feb. 8, 2013 (Sol 182); “Cumberland” on May 19, 2013 (Sol 279); “Windjana” on May 5, 2014 (Sol 621); “Confidence Hills” on Sept. 24, 2014 (Sol 759); “Mojave” on Jan. 29, 2015 (Sol 882); “Telegraph Peak” on Feb. 24, 2015 (Sol 908); “Buckskin” on July 30, 2015 (Sol 1060); “Big Sky” on Sept. 29, 2015 (Sol 1119); “Greenhorn” on Oct. 18, 2015 (Sol 1137); “Lubango” on April 23, 2016 (Sol 1320); and “Okoruso” on May 5, 2016 (Sol 1332).