Posted on by Jason Major

Do You Need Some Space?

Much to learn about Pluto's surface we have. (Screenshot)

Of course you do! (Who doesn’t?) And so here’s a wonderful tour of our Solar System to provide you with just the type of space you need.


A 3D animation project by Australian video artist Shane Gehlert, I Need Some Space takes us from low-Earth orbit to the Moon and Sun and then through the lineup of planets in the Solar System, using images and models from NASA to accurately depict their unique appearances. Along the way we’ll get some basic info on the planets, select moons, and a few of the various spacecraft that have visited (or are visiting) each world. Set to an intriguing string score by The Zephyr Quartet (of which Shane’s sister Belinda is a member) I Need Some Space is a mesmerizing 6-minute voyage for any space fan — myself very included.

I particularly like the “ghostly” look of Pluto, reminding us that we still have another year and a half before New Horizons reveals its true appearance to us.

Enjoy! (As with most videos, full-screening and HD-ing are strongly suggested.)

Video © Shane Gehlert/BlueDog Films. HT to FastCoCreate.

Posted on by Jason Major

Here’s the Latest Kepler Orrery Video: the Orbits of the Planets Go ‘Round and ‘Round

If you’ve ever wanted to know what 3,538 exoplanets look like spinning around their stars, here you go!

This is the third and latest installment of the mesmerizing Kepler Orrery videos by Daniel Fabrycky from the Kepler science team. It shows the relative sizes of the orbits and planets in the multi-transiting planetary systems discovered by Kepler up to November 2013 (according to the Kepler site, 3,538 candidates so far.) According to Daniel “the colors simply go by order from the star (the most colorful is the 7-planet system KOI-351). The terrestrial planets of the Solar System are shown in gray.”

Not that our Solar System is boring, of course, but well, ya know… there are an awful lot of planets out there.

Check out Daniel’s previous version here.

Posted on by Jason Major

How Can We Stop An Asteroid?

“It’s like looking for a charcoal briquette in the dark,” says Bill Nye the Science Guy in this new video from AsapSCIENCE… except he’s talking about briquettes hundreds of meters wide whizzing past our planet upwards of 8, 9, 10, even 20 kilometers per second — and much, much denser than charcoal.

Near-Earth asteroids are out there (and on occasion they even come in here) and, as the planet’s only technologically advanced spacefaring species, you could say the onus is on us to prevent a major asteroid impact from occurring, if at all possible — whether to avoid damage in a populated area or the next mass extinction event. But how can we even find all these sooty space rocks and, once we do, what can be done to stop any headed our way?

Watch the video (and then when you’re done, go visit the B612 Foundation’s Sentinel page to learn more about an upcoming mission to bag some of those space briquettes.)

Posted on by Jason Major

Waltz Around Saturn With This Beautiful Animation

Just one of the many images from Cassini used to make up "Around Saturn"

In honor of this today’s Wave at Saturn and The Day the Earth Smiled events, celebrating images to be taken of Earth from Saturn, here’s a wonderful movie showing highlights from Cassini’s exploration of the giant planet, its magnificent rings, and fascinating family of moons.

Assembled by Fabio Di Donato in memory of astrophysicist, author and activist Margherita Hack, who passed away June 29 at the age of 91, this video is an impressive tour of the Saturnian system — and a truly stunning tribute as well.

“She made me love the stars,” Fabio wrote.

This video shows a selection from more than 200,000 pictures taken by the Cassini spacecraft around Saturn’s rings in a period between 2005 and 2013. RAW images were processed to PNG thanks to the Vicar-to-PNG procedure provided by Jessica McKellar.

The music is Jazz Suite No.2: VI Waltz 2 by Shostakovich, performed by the Armonie Symphony Orchestra.

As always, you can see the latest images and news from the Cassini mission here, and find out how your photo is going to be taken from 900 million miles away (and also 60 million miles away from Mercury!) here.

Video: Fabio Di Donato. Original images: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI.

P.S.: Want to get a personalized certificate saying you “Waved at Saturn?” Click here.

Posted on by Jason Major

An “Elemental” Explanation of Dark Matter

Image from Dark Universe, showing the distribution of dark matter in the universe. Credit: AMNH

Atoms, string theory, dark matter, dark energy… there’s an awful lot about the Universe that might make sense on paper (to physicists, anyway) but is extremely difficult to detect and measure, at least with the technology available today. But at the core of science is observation, and what’s been observed of the Universe so far strongly indicates an overwhelming amount of… stuff… that cannot be observed. But just because it can’t be seen doesn’t mean it’s not there; on the contrary, it’s what we can’t see that actually makes up the majority of the Universe.

If this doesn’t make sense, that’s okay — they’re all pretty complex concepts. So in order to help non-scientists (which, like dark energy, most of the population is comprised of) get a better grasp as to what all this “dark” stuff is about, CERN scientist and spokesperson James Gillies has teamed up with TED-Ed animators to visually explain some of the Universe’s darkest secrets. Check it out above (and see more space science lessons from TED-Ed here.)

Because everything’s easier to understand with animation!

Lesson by James Gillies, animation by TED-Ed.

Posted on by Jason Major

Feeling Small in the Universe?

Well, you shouldn’t be. Yes, you’re just one person out of over 7 billion on Earth. Yes, your lifetime — even if you live to be well over 100 — is just a fraction of a flicker of a blink of a tardigrade’s eye (do tardigrades blink?) compared to the 4.6 billion years of the age of the planet. And yes, Earth is only about a third the age of the Universe… which is filled with billions of other galaxies each with stars and planets of their own. Space is just so awfully darn…big.

But, as astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson reminds us in the video above, so are you. So is everyone, in fact. And why? Because we are all a part of it. We’re a part of the Universe… each one of us an inexorably inseparable part of the big picture, a connection between past, present, and future in the most elemental sense possible. As Tyson famously stated once before, “we are in the Universe, the Universe is in us.” And it’s true.

So if you have an admittedly large and heavy ego, put it down for a moment and check out the video. You may come to realize it was weighing you down a bit.

“Those who see the cosmic perspective as a depressing outlook, they really need to reassess how they think about the world.”

– Neil deGrasse Tyson

Video: Big Think

Posted on by Jason Major

First-Ever Video of an ATV Vehicle Into Orbit!

Separation of an Ariane booster (Screenshot)

Yesterday, June 5, the European Space Agency launched their ATV-4 Albert Einstein cargo vessel from their spaceport in French Guiana. Liftoff occurred at 5:52 p.m. EDT (2152 GMT), and in addition to over 7 tons of supplies for the ISS a special payload was also included: the DLR-developed STEREX experiment, which has four cameras attached to the Ariane 5ES rocket providing a continuous 3D view of the mission, from liftoff to separation to orbit and, eventually, docking to the Station on June 15.

The dramatic video above is the first-ever of an ATV vehicle going into free-flight orbit — check it out!

“The highlight of the STEREX deployment will be observing the settling of ATV-4 in orbit. STEREX for this event will include three-dimensional video sequences to study the dynamic behavior of the spacecraft during the separation phase. This opens up for the ATV project engineers an entirely new way to monitor the success of their work and also to gain important new experiences for the future.” – DLR blog (translated)

If you look along the horizon at around 5:20, you can make out the plume from the launch.

At 20,190 kg (44, 511 lbs) ATV Albert Einstein is the heaviest spacecraft ever launched by Ariane. Read more here.

(HT to Daniel Scuka at ESA.)

Posted on by Jason Major

Bottoms Up! It’s a Year of Lunar Libration From Down Under

Full moon, south up (NASA/GSFC)


Do you live in the southern hemisphere? Are you tired of all those views of the Moon that favor celestial north as up? Well here’s a video just for you from the good folks at the GSFC Scientific Visualization Center — it shows the full 2013 year of lunar phases and libration as seen from Earth’s southern half using data gathered by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. (Because what’s so great about north, anyway?)

Each frame represents one hour. Side graphs indicate the Moon’s orbit position, sub-Earth and subsolar points, and distance from the Earth at true scale. Awesome! Um, I mean… bonzer!

And what’s up with all that wobbling around? Find out more below:

The Moon always keeps the same face to us, but not exactly the same face. Because of the tilt and shape of its orbit, we see the Moon from slightly different angles over the course of a month. When a month is compressed into 24 seconds, as it is in this animation, our changing view of the Moon makes it look like it’s wobbling. This wobble is called libration.

The word comes from the Latin for “balance scale” and refers to the way such a scale tips up and down on alternating sides.

The Moon is subject to other motions as well. It appears to roll back and forth around the sub-Earth point (the location on the Moon’s surface where the Earth appears directly overhead, at the zenith.) The roll angle is given by the position angle of the axis, which is the angle of the Moon’s north pole relative to celestial north. The Moon also approaches and recedes from us, appearing to grow and shrink. The two extremes, called perigee (near) and apogee (far), differ by more than 10%.

Read more and see the current phase of the Moon (bottom up) on the GSFC Dial-a-Moon page here.

Source: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio