♡

I C O N I C

this is a real deleted scene from revenge of the sith

If the Moon were replaced with some of our planets (at night)

Image credit: yeti dynamics

I knew it 😃

Could Planets Like Those Imagined in Star Wars Be Real??

Look at what we’ve found so far. 

Is your favorite Star Wars planet a desert world or an ice planet or a jungle moon?

It’s possible that your favorite planet exists right here in our galaxy. Astronomers have found over 3,400 planets around other stars, called “exoplanets.”

Some of these alien worlds could be very similar to arid Tatooine, watery Scarif and even frozen Hoth, according to NASA scientists.

Find out if your planet exists in a galaxy far, far away or all around you.

Planets With Two Suns

Were you going to the Tosche station to pick up some power converters? Hold on a minute and learn about Kepler-16b, 200 light-years from Earth. It’s the first honest-to-goodness planet ever found where you could watch two suns set like Luke. George Lucas himself even blessed its nickname ‘Tatooine.’ It’s not a perfect comparison: Kepler-16b is a cold gas giant roughly the size of Saturn. But don’t worry, kid.

The best part is that Tatooine aka Kepler-16b was just the first. It has family. A LOT of family. Half the stars in our galaxy are pairs, rather than single stars like our sun. If every star has at least one planet, that’s billions of worlds with two suns. Billions! Maybe waiting for life to be found on them.

Desert Worlds

If you’re like Finn and want to know why everyone wants to go back to Jakku desert planets, get this: Star Wars may be reflecting the real universe. Desert worlds are not only a very real possibility, but we think they are probably very common. They can be hot, like the fictional Tatooine and Jakku, or cold, like Jedha in “Rogue One” or our real planet Mars.

Perhaps it’s not so weird that both Luke and Rey grew up on planets that look suspiciously like each other. If you’re scouring the universe for a place to settle, you have a good chance of finding a desert planet.

Ice Planets

There is a Hoth in our galaxy! Though not the same Hoth from “The Empire Strikes Back” (no invading Imperials, for one). The icy super-Earth reminded scientists so much of the frozen Rebel base they nicknamed it “Hoth.” The planet’s real name is OGLE 2005-BLG-390L.

Our galaxy’s Hoth is too cold to support life as we know it. But life may evolve under the ice of a different world, or a moon in our solar system.

We’re currently designing a mission to look for life under the crust of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa. We’re pretty sure ity won’t look like tauntauns, if it exists.

Forest worlds

Both the forest moon of Endor and Takodana, the home of Han Solo’s favorite cantina in “Force Awakens,” are green like our home planet. But astrobiologists think that plant life on other worlds could be red, black, or even rainbow-colored!

In August 2016, astronomers from the European Southern Observatory announced the discovery of Proxima Centauri b, a planet only four light-years away from Earth, which orbits a tiny red star.

The light from a red star, also known as an M dwarf, is dim and mostly in the infrared spectrum (as opposed to the visible spectrum we see with our sun). And that could mean plants with wildly different colors than what we’re used to seeing on Earth. Or, animals that see in the near-infrared.

And Beyond

The next few years will see the launch of a new generation of spacecraft to search for planets around other stars. TESS and the James Webb Telescope will go into space in 2018, and WFIRST in the mid-2020s. That’s one step closer to finding life.

You don’t need to visit a galaxy far, far away to find wondrous worlds. Just visit this one … there’s plenty to see.

Discover more about exoplanets here: https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

L Lawliet ☆

50th Anniversary of the Lunar Landing - July 20th, 1969

Apollo 11 was launched on a Saturn V rocket from the Kennedy Space Center on July 16th, 1969 carrying Commander Neil Armstrong, lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin, and command module pilot Michael Collins. Armstrong and Aldrin became the first humans to land on the surface of the moon when the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle landed in the Sea of Tranquility on July 20, 1969, at 20:17 UTC. Nearly a day later the men rejoined Collins in the command module Columbia, held in lunar orbit, and set a trajectory back to Earth. After over eight days in space Apollo 11 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on July 24th.

The black and white images of the first lunar landing were received and broadcast live to at least 600 million people on Earth, around a fifth of the total population, a viewership record at the time. Within the USA, 94% of American televisions tuned in to the broadcast.

Reasons Why G-Dragon is cooler than you

Not only can he moonwalk like a boss,

He can do it at your favorite theme park,

On the great wall of China

At Buckingham Palace

In your favorite movies,

While defying the laws of science,

This boy even has swagger on the moon.

Darth Vader and Padme Amidala