NASA Just Released Thousands Of High-res Apollo Mission Photos

the sunset was violently sudden & spectacular tonight. these pictures were taken abt 2 minutes apart

The giant pink lady is going to beat the boy on the floor with the fat puffy thing while the clear pointy-nosed thing guards him with an umbrella.

Someone who hasn’t seen Steven universe yet try to explain this scenario

Solar System: Top 5 Things to Know This Week

It’s only Tuesday and this week is already filled with news about our solar system. Here are the top five things to know this week:

1) Mars!

With five spacecraft in orbit and two rovers exploring the ground, there’s always something new and interesting about the Red Planet. Yesterday things got even more exciting when we released the most compelling evidence yet that liquid water sometimes flows on Mars today.

2) HTV-5 Cargo Ship

On Monday, the HTV-5 cargo ship was released from the International Space Station to burn up as it reenters Earth’s atmosphere. The HTV-5 carried a variety of experiments and supplies to the space station, and was docked for five weeks.

3) Pluto Continues to Excite

If you haven’t been keeping up with the weekly releases of newly downloaded pictures from our New Horizons spacecraft, you are definitely missing out. But don’t worry, we have you covered. The latest updates can be found HERE, be sure to follow along as new information is released. More images are scheduled to be featured on Oct. 1.

4) Cassini Mission

This week on Sept. 30, our Cassini spacecraft will reach the closest point to Saturn in it’s latest orbit around the planet. Just to put things in perspective, that will be Cassini’s 222nd orbit around Saturn! Learn more about this mission HERE.

5) What Happened to Mars’ Atmosphere?

Believe it or not, the Martian atmosphere we see today used to be much more substantial many years ago. What happened? Our Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft has been in orbit around Mars for one Earth year, searching for the answers. Learn more HERE.

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May 1, 1979 – The prototype Space Shuttle Enterprise rolls out from the Vehicle Assembly Building at Cape Canaveral in Florida.

(NASA/Kennedy Space Center)

The planet closest to our Solar System might have just disappeared

Oops.

Alpha Centauri bb, an Earth-like planet orbiting our closest star, has just vanished. In fact, a new study suggests it never actually existed outside of a blip in the data.

The planet was discovered in 2012, and it was a pretty big deal at the time. According to researchers’ best estimates, Alpha Centauri bb appeared to have a mass similar to Earth and was orbiting its star at a distance similar to Mercury.

Best of all, it was only 4.3 light-years away – a whole lot closer than most other Earth-like exoplanets – and existed in a star system that had housed the science-fiction characters of Avatar and Transformers.

But a year after its discovery, a separate group of researchers called the discovery into question, when they found only weak evidence that the planet existed. And now a new study suggests that Alpha Centauri bb was never more than a ‘ghost’ in the data.

The research serves as a cautionary tale to astrophysicists hunting for evidence of planets orbiting distant stars, and reminds us of how hard it is to work out what’s going on using sporadic data taken from distant star systems.

Continue Reading.

Hiro:... Hey tadashi.

Tadashi: yeah?

Hiro: is that a mirror in your pants?

Tadashi: what?

Hiro: cause i can see me in 'em.

Tadashi:...

Tadashi:...

Hiro: well?

Tadashi:... Get out.

This is me

i dab every morning when i wake up

This Week in Chemistry: A liquid with holes in, why spider webs stay sticky, & more! http://goo.gl/vNI6rF

launched eighteen years ago, the cassini orbiter is set to crash in to saturn next september, ending its mission to collect data, including these true colour images, on saturn and it’s moons and rings. saturn’s main rings, composed mostly of ice, are thought to have formed only a few hundred million years ago, long after the planet, and the solar system itself, were birthed some four and half billion years ago. 

though a hundred and seventy million miles in diameter, the main rings are only half a mile thick, with the brighter bands showing areas of greater density, and the darker, less dense areas swept relatively clear by the gravity of saturns’ moons - clear enough, anyways, for the cassini orbiter to pass through one of the gaps basically unscathed.

there is no consensus on how the rings were created, but a medium sized moon, either shattered by a meteor or pulled apart by the planet’s gravity, would account for the entire mass of the rings. there is, however, more of a consensus that in about fifty million years, saturn’s gravity will have pulled in the rings and swallowed them up. (but at least mars should have a ring by then.) 

saturn has over forty moons, including one found within a ring gap. these photos show the distant rhea and titan - the latter of which is larger than mercury and has its own atmosphere and hydrocarbon lake - and the inner most mimas and enceladus - the latter being notable for its encompassing liquid ocean of water and geothermal activity.