purevariableuniverse

Be humble for you are made of Earth. Be noble for you are made of stars.

[purevariableuniverse]

Man ever talks, and Man ever dreams Of better days that are yet to be, After glittering goal, that distant gleams, Running and racing untiringly. The worldly may grow old and young as it will, But the Hope of man is Improvement still. Hope bears him into life in her arms, She flutters around the boy’s young bloom, The soul of youth with her magic warms, Nor rests with age in the silent tomb; For ends man his weary course at the grave, There plants he Hope o'er his ashes to wave.

FRIEDRICH SCHILLER, "Hope"

[just--space]

Meteorite Shower Over McCloud Falls, California

js

[laure-dw]

[spaceplasma]

Lunar Eclipses

Lunar eclipses occur when the Moon passes through the Earth’s shadow, however, for a total lunar eclipse to occur the Moon and Earth have to be on the same orbital plane with the Sun – this is known as a syzygy. During a total lunar eclipse the Moon travels completely into the Earth’s shadow (umbra). Even though the Moon is immersed in the Earth’s shadow, indirect sunlight will still reach the Moon. As sunlight passes through Earth’s atmosphere it gets absorbed and then radiated out (scattered). The atmosphere filters out most of the blue-colored light. What’s left over is the orange- and red-colored light. From the Moon’s perspective the Earth’s edge appears to glow bright orange or red. This red-colored light passes through our atmosphere without getting scattered, projecting indirect, reddish light onto the Moon.

Credit: NASA/SVS

[spaceplasma]

A total lunar eclipse will take place on September 27-28, 2015. It also happens to be the closest supermoon of 2015.

[emerggency-blog]

[basdos]

ISS | NASA

[jaespot]

I'm flawed like a mf but my heart is pure and the love I give is real

[ohstarstuff]

“Those who see the cosmic perspective as a depressing outlook, they really need to reassess how they think about the world. Because when I look up in the universe, I know I’m small but I’m also big. I’m big because I’m connected to the universe, and the universe is connected to me.”   – Neil deGrasse Tyson (Image credit: ‘The Mirrored Night Sky’ by Xiaohua Zhao taken at the world’s largest salt flat in Bolivia)

[bitchontheprairie]

because what else do us humans know how to do better?

[colorel11]

© daniele_b

[sitoutside]

by Jasna Matz

[nicolemichelle81]

[furiousfurious]

Only 112 years after the Wright Brothers were barely able to get their airplane off the ground, a machine from Earth has crossed the solar system to a small, icy world three billion miles away

Pluto’s Portrait from New Horizons

This write up of Pluto fly-by is fantastic, let me quote you my favorite parts

“A new image of Charon, Pluto’s largest moon. The moon has a dark patch, informally called Mordor, at its north pole.”

“Pluto until a few weeks ago was a blurry dot. Within the past couple of days, it has been transformed into a dynamic world with varied geography, discoveries that point to the possibility of ice volcanoes and churning tectonics.”

“William Grundy, an investigator working to analyze the surface composition of Pluto, chimed in: “This is what we came for.”“This exceeds what we came for,” added Catherine Olkin, the deputy project scientist.”

“That can only mean Hydra’s surface is composed primarily of water ice,” Dr. Weaver said. “It’s the only way to get it that bright. That’s cool.”

That’s cool. That’s cool. We sent a probe billions of miles away and got some amazing science. That’s cool, you guys.

[amnhnyc]

At 7:49 ET on the morning of July 14, the NASA probe New Horizons made history, passing within about 8,000 miles of Pluto and capturing the most detailed images ever of the dwarf planet at the edge of our solar system.

While it did, the American Museum of Natural History helped viewers around the world follow the mission live with scientific visualizations and running commentary from project scientists. Watch the full Google Hangout:

While it will take additional time for the data from this flyby to reach Earth—the images were captured about 3 billion miles away, after all—the mission seems to have gone just as planned. NASA scientists have already begun receiving images of Pluto though the full data set may take up to 16 months to be transmitted back to Earth.  

Read the full story on the Museum blog. 

Image of Pluto via NASA

[kqedscience]

See how our views of Pluto have changed through the years! More at: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/index.html

[phloa]

[astrowhat-deactivated20190316]

“Titan glows with a 360-degree sunset as light scatters through its very extended atmosphere.”

[st4rb3ing-deactivated20150825]

SHIT