This is what our moon would look like if it were as close to us as Phobos is to Mars.
(My DVD drive works, for now, so I’m watching The Universe at school while I take notes out of my Spanish book.)
I think it's great that there are still things this huge being discovered.
reblogged from brighteryellow
I’m hopeful that tomorrow, I’ll get a sunrise like we had this morning and Monday, because I could see Venus when I was driving to campus. I got up too late for that today, though, so all you get is the moon. So sad for you.
Hubble Goes Deep, Finds Farthest Galaxies Yet | Wired Science | Wired.com
If you read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, you might remember the bit in which Zaphod lands on Frogstar World B and steps into the Total Perspective Vortex, which is supposed to blow his mind, except he is in an alternate dimension in which he is the most important thing in the universe, so he doesn’t know what the big deal is.
Here is your perspective:
The galaxies in this photograph are 12 to 13 billion light-years away. That means that this isn’t how they look now. This is how they look 12 to 13 billion years ago. We won’t see what they look like “now” until 12 to 13 billion years from now, at which point many of them will not even exist, which we won’t know for another 12 to 13 billion years. And if you haven’t heard, this planet is scheduled to be a smoldering ember in 4 billion years.
12 billion light-years is somewhere in the range of tens of quintillions of miles. You can’t count that high even if you have your whole life to do it.
Brain hurt yet?
An image of Saturn from Cassini, via Bad Astronomy.
This is another in the series of beautiful equinox images from Cassini, as the Sun shines straight along the rings. While the icy moon Enceladus is not in the picture itself, you can see its shadow just below the shadow of the rings on Saturn’s cloudtops. The moon you can see in the image, just below the rings, is Mimas.
So, take a deep breath… remember that reality is real… and that we can investigate it, examine it, learn from it, and drink deeply of its beauty.
Ahhhhhhhh. That’s better.
How Quantum Effects Could Create Black Stars, Not Holes: Scientific American
More astronomy. I got the current issue of SciAm today and this is the article I gravitated (pun fully intended) toward.
Seems timely. The episode of The Universe about violent phenomena in space was on yesterday afternoon, and they spent half of it on black holes — far too much, given the fact that black holes are in roughly every other episode of the series, and the magnetar and blazar segments were way more fascinating. (Of course, I think the whole series should be about exoplanets and extraterrestrial weather and geology, because those are my favorite things, so I’m biased.) In any case, yes, that is what they talked about in this episode I watched yesterday. And here they are again today.
This is stunning. And people wonder why I love astronomy. (via Wired)
