Space images...

[darlets]

Cool! Thanks, Darlets.
And yes, it does look like a giant coffee scroll.

This was one of the last pictures the Mars Global Surveyor took before dying. It had been going 10 years

 

[sdalek]

Olympus Mons

 

[darlets]

Nice

 

[Zergling]

Mercury:

Mercury craters:

Shoemaker-Levy 9 impact (I'm guessing this is an infrared view):

 

[NoahFence]

My favorite. Here's their blurb on this one:

A rare and spectacular head-on collision between two galaxies appears in this Hubble telescope picture of the Cartwheel Galaxy, located 500 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Sculptor.

The striking ring-like feature is a direct result of a smaller intruder galaxy — possibly one of two objects to the right of the ring — that careened through the core [close-up image at lower left] of the host galaxy. Like a rock tossed into a lake, the collision sent a ripple of energy into space, plowing gas and dust in front of it. Expanding at 200,000 mph, this cosmic tsunami leaves in its wake a firestorm of new star creation. Hubble resolves bright blue knots that are gigantic clusters of newborn stars [close-up image at upper left] and immense loops and bubbles blown into space by exploding stars (called supernovae) going off like a string of firecrackers.

Bang.

 

[sdalek]

Cool! It's hard to wrap my head around the fact that the ring that resulted from this collision is made up of billions and billions of stars, some with planets.

 

[darlets]

Cool! It's hard to wrap my head around the fact that the ring that resulted from this collision is made up of billions and billions of stars, some with planets.

The human brains evolved to deal with the "middleworld". Extremely big things or small things freak it out. We've been trying to get quantum mechanics and relativity to fit together for quite some time now.

Try and visilize a 100 tennis balls, a 1000, 10,000, a billion or trillion eventually your brain just fails. We cope with 100 people in out tribe, our tribe caught100 fish today, everyone gets one fish.

Most of our understanding is actually built on the work of a brilliant few.

 

[sdalek]

The human brains evolved to deal with the "middleworld". Extremely big things or small things freak it out. We've been trying to get quantum mechanics and relativity to fit together for quite some time now.

Try and visilize a 100 tennis balls, a 1000, 10,000, a billion or trillion eventually your brain just fails. We cope with 100 people in out tribe, our tribe caught100 fish today, everyone gets one fish.

Most of our understanding is actually built on the work of a brilliant few.

And the innocence of a child, too. See the story of googolplex.

 

[htb]

Man bites dog, or equivalent.

 

[sdalek]

Man bites dog, or equivalent.

WOW! Nice! <envy>

 

[sdalek]

Noctilucent clouds

 

[Kyrielle]

Molecular Torus Surrounds Black Hole:

And, my favourite:

 

[runvardh]

Not a real picture, but a screen shot from a program called Celestia; it is of Ross 780 and the third planet that was found around it. This system is a little over 15 light years away from us.

 

[sdalek]

Not a real picture, but a screen shot from a program called Celestia; it is of Ross 780 and the third planet that was found around it. This system is a little over 15 light years away from us.

Celestia - for Mac or Windows?

 

[runvardh]

Celestia - for Mac or Windows?

I'm running it on windows, but it seems to work on every operating system. Their home page seems to be down right now, but you can get it off sourceforge.

 

[Zergling]

Solar Flare

Sunspots

Aurora

 

[sdalek]

I'm running it on windows, but it seems to work on every operating system. Their home page seems to be down right now, but you can get it off sourceforge.

Cool! Thanks, I'll have to check it out.

 

[runvardh]

Cool! Thanks, I'll have to check it out.

Don't get too over excited about it though, some of the planetary systems discovered are incomplete like the Gliese 581 system. The version I have only has planet b while the astronomers are already theorizing about a planet d. But yeah... I can spend a good hour taking simulated flights through our local neighborhood.

 

[htb]

 

[darlets]

wow. that pics cool

these are some pics from the latest space shuttle mission.

nasa pics