116 replies to this topic

[Deft]

That's a cool timelapse video. I got to climb Mauna Kea one time and go inside the large telescopes there. Did a bit of stargazing as well.

[Monokeros]

wimp.com has a sick video of stars as the earth rotates

http://www.wimp.com/earthrotates/

[Orz]

Explanation: On June 1, the shadow of the New Moon was cast across a land of the midnight Sun in this year's second partial solar eclipse. This picture of the geocentric celestial event above the Arctic Circle was taken near midnight from northern Finland's Kaunispää Hill in Lapland. Of course the region's reindeer were able to watch as both Moon and Sun hugged the northern horizon just above a cloud bank. Also visible from parts of Alaska and Canada, the eclipse began at sunrise in Siberia and northern China at 19:25 UT, ending about 3.5 hours later north of Newfoundland in the Atlantic Ocean. Remarkably, just one lunation later, on July 1 the New Moon's shadow will again reach out and touch the Earth in a partial solar eclipse, limited in visibility to a relatively small area in the Antarctic Ocean. July's eclipse will be followed by the fourth and final partial solar eclipse of 2011 on November 25. That eclipse will be seen from a southern land of the midnight Sun.

[teraldent]

[Deft]

Amazing pictures. That reminds me of in mass effect, I always go looking for the biggest stars I can find, sometimes you find ones that take up almost the whole system. Also reminds me of vendetta online, flying around just looking at all of the stars.

[Orz]

Its pictures like that which continue to make me believe there has to be intelligence outside of us, just outside of our reach, or watching and waiting for us to find them.

[Deft]

Hopefully beings that intelligent have figured out a way to stop killing eachother.

[Orz]

Hopefully beings that intelligent have figured out a way to stop killing eachother.

Highly doubt it, even on a galactic scale, galaxies collide and destroy each other with epic violence:

[Avius]

If you like art and you like our solar system, I'd recommend going to http://www.experiencetheplanets.com/ and check those pics out. I like em very much. I didn't think it'll warrant its own thread, so sorry for shitting up this beautiful thread with those amazing pictures.

[actellim]

Highly doubt it, even on a galactic scale, galaxies collide and destroy each other with epic violence:

Or they may have never adapted a reptillian brain; but speaking from a purely evolutionary standpoint, they would've had to. You can't develop technology capable of wiping out your civilization and still have war, as eventually you will wipe out your civilization using that technology; and the same technology required to get to the stars can be used to wipe out a species.

tl;dr: self destruction assures any civ we run into in deep space will most likely be peaceful/diplomatic. humans are actually on the verge of not making it to space b/c we're dumb and under-evolved.

[Orz]

Or they may have never adapted a reptillian brain; but speaking from a purely evolutionary standpoint, they would've had to. You can't develop technology capable of wiping out your civilization and still have war, as eventually you will wipe out your civilization using that technology; and the same technology required to get to the stars can be used to wipe out a species.

tl;dr: self destruction assures any civ we run into in deep space will most likely be peaceful/diplomatic. humans are actually on the verge of not making it to space b/c we're dumb and under-evolved.

I think we've gone enough from the path of APOD pictures so.....lets cleanse the thread and back on topic so that we don't go into a philosophical debate that I seem to have unintentionally started.

[Orz]

May 16, 2011: NASA has released a unique satellite image tracing the damage of a monster EF-4 tornado that tore through Tuscaloosa, Alabama, on April 27th. It combines visible and infrared data to reveal damage unseen in conventional photographs.

In the picture, captured just days after the storm, pink represents vegetation and aqua is the absence of vegetation. The tornado ripped up everything in its path, scouring the Earth's surface with its terrible force. The "tearing up" of vegetation makes the tornado's track stand out as a wide swath of aqua.

"This image and others like it are helping us study the torn landscape to determine just how huge and powerful these twisters were and to assess the damage they inflicted," says Jedlovec.

ASTER, short for Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer, orbits Earth onboard NASA's Terra spacecraft. Its data products include digital elevation maps from stereo images; surface temperatures; vegetation maps; cloud and sea ice data; and more. Last spring the instrument helped track the movement of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

[Deft]

If you like art and you like our solar system, I'd recommend going to http://www.experiencetheplanets.com/ and check those pics out. I like em very much. I didn't think it'll warrant its own thread, so sorry for shitting up this beautiful thread with those amazing pictures.

That's some very beautiful artwork there. Nice.

[Orz]

Explanation: If you travel several kilometers off a main highway through Wyoming, you may see an unusual sight. In particular, near Buford, Wyoming, USA, you could run across the geometric Ames Monument, visible on the right, built to commemorate the financiers of a historic transcontinental railroad across North America. The above spectacular wide field mosaic, however, has also captured other geometric designs, many of them far in the distance. On the far left, for example, is a lunar halo surrounding by a lunar corona surrounding the setting Moon. On the right, however, is the arch of the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy surrounding the pyramidal structure. Illuminating the horizon to the right of the monument are the city lights of Cheyenne. The menagerie of images used to create this 360-degree composite were all taken during a single night last month. Still, the digital stitching of images taken over such a long period of time has led to a few unnatural land and sky justapositions.

[Deft]

Wyoming is absolutely amazing for stargazing. There's so few people, you feel like you're on a different planet or something.

[Armstrong]

I really like this one:

This luminous night view of the space shuttle orbiter Endeavour, docked with the International Space Station for a final time, was captured on May 28. Orbiting 350 kilometers above planet Earth, Endeavour's payload bay is lit up as it hurtles through Earth's shadow at 17,000 miles per hour. At the top of the frame, the jointed appendages of the station's robotic manipulator arm Dextre appear in silhouette. Motion during the long exposure produced streaks in the starry background and the city lights on the darkened planet below. Completing a 16 day mission, Endeavour made a final landing at Kennedy Space Center in the dark, early morning hours of June 1.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110602.html

[Armstrong]

A neat twist on the traditional timelapse:

Why is the Earth moving in the above video? Most time lapse videos of the night sky show the stars and sky moving above a steady Earth. Here, however, the frames have been digitally rotated so that it is the stars that stay (approximately) steady, and the Earth that moves beneath them. The video dramatically shows the actual rotation of the Earth, called diurnal motion, in a clear and moving way, as if the camera were floating free in space. The telescopes featured in the video are the Very Large Telescopes (VLT) in Chile, a group of four of the largest optical telescopes deployed anywhere in the world. A discerning observer of the above time lapse movie may also note the use of laser guide stars, zodiacal light, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, and fast-moving, sunlight-reflecting, Earth-orbiting satellites. The original video, on which the above sequences are based, can be found here.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110601.html