Keep Looking Up @keeplookingupastronomy - Tumblr Blog

Our passionate preoccupation with the sky, the stars, and a God somewhere in outer space is a homing impulse. We are drawn back to where we came from.

Eric Hoffer

(via scienceisbeauty)

astronomicalwonders

The Earth from Russia’s Elektro-L satellite

This image compilation, comprised of images taken by the Russian Elektro-L weather satellite, was taken from a geostationary orbit at a distance of 36,000 km. It shows the changing illumination of Earth as it rotated on the autumnal equinox and illustrate the concept of a geostationary orbit. At this height, the satellite is orbiting at fast as the earth is spinning and stays in the same location relative to the surface of earth.

Credit: Vitaliy Egorov

apod-on

Rings and Seasons of Saturn

keeplookingupastronomy

On Saturn, the rings tell you the season. On Earth, today marks a solstice, the time when the Earth's spin axis tilts directly toward the Sun. On Earth's northern hemisphere, today is the Summer Solstice, the day of maximum daylight. Since Saturn's grand rings orbit along the planet's equator, these rings appear most prominent -- from the direction of the Sun -- when the Saturn's spin axis points toward the Sun. Conversely, when Saturn's spin axis points to the side, an equinox occurs and the edge-on rings are hard to see. In the featured montage, images of Saturn over the past 11 years have been superposed to show the giant planet passing from southern summer toward northern summer. Although Saturn will only reach its northern summer solstice in 2017 May, the image of Saturn most analogous to today's Earth solstice is the bottommost one.

apod-on

2015 July 8

keeplookingupastronomy

That is not our Moon. It's Dione, and it’s a moon of Saturn. The robotic Cassini spacecraft took the featured image during a flyby of Saturn's cratered Moon last month. Perhaps what makes this image so interesting, though, is the background. First, the large orb looming behind Dione is Saturn itself, faintly lit by sunlight first reflected from the rings. Next, the thin lines running diagonally across the image are the rings of Saturn themselves. The millions of icy rocks that compose Saturn's spectacular rings all orbit Saturn in the same plane, and so appear surprisingly thin when seen nearly edge-on. Front and center, Dione appears in crescent phase, partially lit by the Sun that is off to the lower left. A careful inspection of the ring plane should also locate the moon Enceladus on the upper right.

cosmicvastness

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day 2015 July 11

Geology on Pluto

Pluto is coming into focus. As the robotic New Horizons spacecraft bears down on this unexplored world of the distant Solar System, new features on its surface are becoming evident. In the displayed image taken last Thursday and released yesterday, an unusual polygonal structure roughly 200 kilometers wide is visible on the left, while just below it relatively complex terrain runs diagonally across the dwarf planet. New Horizon’s images and data on these structures will likely be studied for years to come in an effort to better understand the geologic history of Pluto and our Solar System. After suffering a troublesome glitch last week, New Horizons will make its historic flyby of Pluto and its moons on Tuesday.

a-fucking-velociraptor

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frickin-weirdo

Why is this tiny dinosaur comic making me cry?

Wow! 5 years of SDO observations of the sun. Better than any movie special effect.

thetreacheryofwords

The sky calls to us…

http://www.symphonyofscience.com/

http://store.thirdmanrecords.com/carlsagan.aspx

spaceinperspective

I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking. The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there’s little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.

Carl Sagan (November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996)

#carl sagan

thetreacheryofwords

"A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called "leaves") imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic."

#carl sagan #books