Category: Space

Fascinating idea: Breakthrough Starshot’s spacecrafts, which they call “nanocrafts,” will be gram-scale computer chips that will include “cameras, photon thrusters, power supply, navigation and communication equipment,” Avi Loeb, a Harvard scientist involved in the operation, told reporters. A rocket would deliver a “mother ship” carrying a thousand or so of the nanocrafts into space. Once […]

A darkened and mysterious north polar region informally known as Mordor Macula caps this premier high-resolution portrait of Charon, Pluto’s largest moon. Captured by New Horizons near its closest approach on July 14, the image data was transmitted to Earth on September 21. Always wondered what Pluto and Charon looked like, incredible to actually see […]

Wow: The latest images from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft have scientists stunned – not only for their breathtaking views of Pluto’s majestic icy mountains, streams of frozen nitrogen and haunting low-lying hazes, but also for their strangely familiar, arctic look. Source: Pluto ‘Wows’ in Spectacular New Backlit Panorama | NASA

This is very interesting: Our solar system is weird. First of all, it doesn’t look much like other ones we’ve been finding. A lot of those have Jupiter-size giant planets orbiting very close in to their parents stars (“hot Jupiters”), closer even than Mercury orbits the Sun. By contrast, our Jupiter orbits the Sun much […]

I can’t stop looking at this photograph. These kilometre high cliffs are part of the nucleus of the comet 67P/Churyumov Gerasimenko, as observed by the Rosetta spacecraft. I think it’s because I didn’t expect to see such details on a comet – plains, cliffs, boulders… it’s like earth, but very alien. There’s something awe-inspiring about […]

A gravity map of the earth, revealing some interesting high and low gravity areas that give it the look of a spud. Hence, The Potsdam Gravity Potato, via APOD.

Wow. Wanderers – a short film by Erik Wernquist on Vimeo.