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In June of 2009, a rare total solar eclipse blanketed certain portions of the planet in total darkness. Czech photographer Miloslav Druckmüller traveled to the middle of the Pacific ocean to the Marshall Islands to capture the incredible event.
To create the photos above, he compiled over 40 images shot from two different cameras.
Total Solar Eclipse Captured From the Middle of the Ocean
via Notcot
(via fireworks-at-six)
wickedlovelyperfectlyimperfect:
This is a picture from the Curiosity Rover on Mars showing Earth from the Perspective of Mars. You are literally looking at your home from the Perspective of another planet. Epic times indeed
(via fireworks-at-six)
Col. Chris Hadfield: “Safely home - back on Earth, happily readapting to the heavy pull of gravity. Wonderful to smell and feel Spring.”
Read about Canadian Space Agency astronaut Chris Hadfield’s return to Earth following historic five-month mission here: http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/media/news_releases/2013/0513.asp
Photo credits: Mikhail Metzel/AFP/Getty Images/Guardian/space-pics/NASA
(via spaceplasma)
Hubble has spotted an ancient galaxy that shouldn’t exist
This galaxy is so large, so fully-formed, astronomers say it shouldn’t exist at all. It’s called a “grand-design” spiral galaxy, and unlike most galaxies of its kind, this one is old. Like, really, really old. According to a new study conducted by researchers using NASA’s Hubble Telescope, it dates back roughly 10.7-billion years — and that makes it the most ancient spiral galaxy we’ve ever discovered.“The vast majority of old galaxies look like train wrecks,” said UCLA astrophysicist Alice Shapley in a press release. “Our first thought was, why is this one so different, and so beautiful?”
Read more: here
“It’s called a “grand-design” spiral galaxy, and unlike most galaxies of its kind, this one is old. Like, really, really old.”
Old as BALLS.
(via krazykitsune)
Cosmonaut wristwatch, certified for the thermal vacuum of a spacewalk.
Black hole consumes a star
If you aren’t fascinated by astronomy you’re wrong.
(via ohdamn-cody)
Reflection and Emission Nebulas
— Rho Ophiuchi Cloud ComplexCredit: Gerald Rhemann // Astrostudio
The sun erupted with an X1.7-class solar flare on May 12, 2013. The flare appears as the bright point on the left of the sun in this full disk view NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. It is a blend of two images of the sun recorded at different wavelengths of light.
UPDATE: The sun has fired off a second X-class solar flare.
Credit: NASA/SDO/AIA/SPACE.com
With deference to the genius of David Bowie, here’s Space Oddity, recorded on Station. A last glimpse of the World.
Huge thanks in the making of the video to the talented trio of Emm Gryner, Joe Corcoran and Andrew Tidby, plus Evan Hadfield and all at the CSA.
(via spaceplasma)
Possible fragments from Tunguska meteorite may solve 100-year-old mystery
It wiped out 2,150 square kilometers of forest, has left meteorologists stumped for more than a century and been the subject of a role playing mystery on Nintendo’s Wii and DS. Now, 105 years after the Tunguska Event in Siberia, Andrei Zlobin of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Vernadsky State Geological Museum claims to have found the first and only clue to what caused the impact. And as it turns out, it’s been sitting in his lab, unnoticed, for the past two decades.
According to his paper on the find, published at arXiv.org, Zlobin picked up stone samples from the bottom of Khushmo River on his way back from an unsuccessful field research trip to the Suslov depression in 1988, an area where much of the damage at Tunguska is visible. He had dug a series of holes in the permafrost, looking for potential meteorite or comet fragments at depths of 1908 soil levels, but to no avail. On his way back he collected around 100 stones from the riverbed, but failed to examine them until 2008.
When he finally studied them, Zlobin found that three of those stones exhibited signs of melting (one has a particularly glass-like surface with bubbles). They also feature regmalypts on their surface — fractures that occur when meteorites soar at great speeds towards Earth, causing fragments to vaporise off as atmospheric gases rip around them. Although the impact of the hit is estimated to have been 1,000 times more powerful that the Hiroshima bomb, the heat of the impact is not thought to have been hot enough to melt any rocks on Earth’s surface (according to samples taken from trees affected in the area). Hence, Zlobin is claiming the rocks exhibit all the markers of being meteorite fragments. He does, however also assert that the density of whatever hit Tunguska (about 0.6g per cubic centimetre) matches up with density measurements of Halley’s comet’s nucleus, so a comet has not been ruled out.
Although Zlobin admits there is plenty more work to be done — chemical and isotopic analysis is needed to find out what’s going on inside the three rocks — it’s an interesting find. Tunguska has left the scientific community stumped for over a century for several reasons. Although it’s presumed the impact was the work of a comet or meteorite (some argue an alien being…), the blast occurred in an incredibly remote area of Siberia that was uninhabited and not explored until 1927, when meteorologist Leonid Kulik ventured into the field. He did not unearth any evidence (there were accounts of him finding a similarly glassy stone, but it was lost), and more importantly he was unable to find any evidence of a crater, as has no one since.
Zlobin’s find will certainly reignite interest in the mystery, but he’s created one of his own in the process. Why would someone who has dedicated much of their career to investigating Tunguska wait more than two decades to study stones retrieved from the area?
