Cassini Solstice Mission: Saturn’s Moons Meet Nine Inch Nails

in Astronomy, Video - Science | June 7th, 2011

If you haven’t been fol­low­ing the Cassi­ni space­craft’s sec­ond mis­sion to Sat­urn, here’s a video that will hook you in. It fea­tures incred­i­ble black-and-white images of Sat­urn and its moons, all cap­tured by Cassini’s “cam­era” — also known as the Cassi­ni-Huy­gens Imag­ing Sci­ence Sub­sys­tem — and designer/director Chris Abbas, who edit­ed togeth­er footage from Cassini’s archive and set it to a great Nine Inch Nails sound­track.

Accord­ing to NASA, the Cassi­ni will con­tin­ue orbit­ing Sat­urn until May 2017. It has already dis­cov­ered some amaz­ing things about Sat­urn’s largest moon, Titan, includ­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Titan’s cur­rent state, com­plete with its lakes, rivers, rain, snow, clouds, moun­tains and even vol­ca­noes, may tell us some­thing about what earth was like before life evolved. But Abbas’s short film would be beau­ti­ful to watch even with­out any knowl­edge of the sci­ence behind it.

via @kirstinbutler

Relat­ed Con­tent:

NASA:  The Fron­tier is Every­where

NASA Cap­tures Giant Solar Storm

The Best of NASA Space Shut­tle Videos (1981–2010)

NASA Lauch­es Pho­to Archive on Flickr

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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3D Map of Universe Captures 43,000 Galaxies

in Astronomy | May 31st, 2011

The 2MASS Red­shift Sur­vey (details here) took 10 years to com­plete, and it has now yield­ed the finest 3D map of the uni­verse ever made, cat­a­logu­ing more than 43,000 galax­ies with­in 380 mil­lion light-years from Earth. The new map was pre­sent­ed last week at the 218th meet­ing of the Amer­i­can Astro­nom­i­cal Soci­ety. You can view the map in a much big­ger for­mat here and, as one user sug­gests, you may want to “right click and save as desk­top back­ground.”

Space.com has more details on this incred­i­ble map­ping project. Thanks Robin for send­ing along.

Don’t miss us on Face­book and Twit­ter.

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Endeavour’s Launch Viewed from Booster Cameras

in Astronomy, Science, Video - Science | May 26th, 2011

Here’s the good stuff that nerdgasms are made of. NASA has released a video that lets you hitch a ride on the May 16th launch of the Space Shut­tle Endeav­our. The video runs 37 min­utes; it’s nar­rat­ed by a NASA offi­cial; and it loops around and lets you see the launch from sev­er­al dif­fer­ent van­tage points.

You start with liftoff, trav­el­ing at 1300 miles per hour. Then, about two min­utes lat­er, the rock­et boost­ers sep­a­rate from the shut­tle, and you then twist with them. The sec­ond loop starts around the 7:20 mark, and don’t miss the splen­did view at 9:40 …

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Best of NASA Space Shut­tle Videos (1981–2010)

NASA Cap­tures Giant Solar Storm

NASA Zooms into Spi­ral Galaxy

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Milky Way Panorama (with a Backstory)

in Astronomy, Science | May 16th, 2011


Nick Risinger, an ama­teur astronomer from Seat­tle, quit his day job last year, packed his bags and cam­eras, and began a 60,000 mile jour­ney, mov­ing across the Amer­i­can West and down to the west­ern Cape of South Africa (twice). His voy­age would end with a 5000-megapix­el pho­to­graph of the entire night sky, pro­duced from 37,440 sep­a­rate expo­sures, and it yields a stag­ger­ing 360-degree view of the Milky Way. Even bet­ter, the image now lives online in an inter­ac­tive for­mat, giv­ing you the abil­i­ty to wan­der through the cos­mos.

For more on this, be sure to vis­it Pho­topic Sky Sur­vey. Here Risinger gives you the per­son­al and tech­ni­cal back­sto­ry on his project, and also gives you the chance to pur­chase pho­tos, or even lend finan­cial sup­port to the sky sur­vey.

via The Mail Online

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The Soundtrack of the Universe

in Astronomy, Music, Science, Video - Science | April 25th, 2011

We think of space as a silent movie, some­thing we see but nev­er hear. Yet space cre­ates a sound­track of sorts (even if sound waves can’t real­ly trav­el through the cos­mos), and now sci­en­tists and musi­cians want to play that sound­track for you.

Ear­li­er this year, Jan­na Levin, Pro­fes­sor of Physics and Astron­o­my at Barnard College/Columbia Uni­ver­si­ty, described how we can math­e­mat­i­cal­ly mod­el the sounds made by black holes. Fast for­ward to the 10:27 mark of her TED Talk above, and you will hear what it sounds like when a lighter black hole falls into a heav­ier black hole. The lit­tle guy bangs against space, kind of like a drumb play­ing faster and faster … which brings us to Mick­ey Hart, a for­mer drum­mer for The Grate­ful Dead.

In 2010, Hart teamed up with George Smoot, a Nobel Prize-win­ning physi­cist at the Lawrence Berke­ley Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry, to repro­duce the sound of The Big Bang and super­novas. (Berke­ley Labs post­ed this super­no­va clip above.) You can read more about the unlike­ly pair­ing and the “Rhythms of the Uni­verse” project here, then expe­ri­ence more celes­tial sounds recre­at­ed by Hart here.

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Awe-Inspiring Interactive 3D Model of the Solar System

in Astronomy, Science | April 7th, 2011

We turned off the lights and switched to the biggest mon­i­tor in the house, to get the full plan­e­tar­i­um effect of this won­der­ful web­site. It’s called the Solar Sys­tem Scope, and gives you a chance to observe space from with­in it, rather than duti­ful­ly study­ing it in a text­book or on a screen.

Click­ing on the tele­scope icon to the left lets you tog­gle between three dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives:  The helio­cen­tric view, with the plan­ets and stars spin­ning around you; the panoram­ic view, which repli­cates the feel­ing of watch­ing the skies from the Green­wich obser­va­to­ry; and, since after all we are the cen­ter of the uni­verse, the geo­cen­tric view, which puts the rest of the cos­mos firm­ly in their place, orbit­ing the earth.

In a sec­tion called “What’s Next” the site’s cre­ators (who are you, mys­tery design­ers?) tell us that they are work­ing on a kid-friend­ly ver­sion of the site as well, but  we’re not sure that’s even nec­es­sary.  When we let a curi­ous 8‑year-old try it out ear­li­er today, it took us about an hour to get our com­put­er back.

via Metafil­ter

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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NASA Captures Giant Solar Storm

in Astronomy, Science, Video - Science | March 2nd, 2011

Last Thurs­day, the sun deliv­ered the goods, unleash­ing a beau­ti­ful solar flare. The erup­tions last­ed some­where around 90 min­utes, and the plas­ma flares were all cap­tured in high def by NASA’s Solar Dynam­ics Obser­va­to­ry, a project ded­i­cat­ed to study­ing the sun and its impact on space weath­er. This footage comes soon after anoth­er ground­break­ing NASA video – the First 360 Degree View of the Sun.

via Pop­u­lar Sci­ence

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NASA Zooms into Spiral Galaxy

in Astronomy, Science, Video - Science | February 17th, 2011

Cour­tesy of NASA’s Hub­ble Space Tele­scope, we’re zoom­ing into a “majes­tic disk of stars and dust lanes” and get­ting a stun­ning view of the spi­ral galaxy NGC 2841, which lies 46 mil­lion light-years away in the con­stel­la­tion of Ursa Major (The Great Bear). But wait, it gets even bet­ter. This high res­o­lu­tion still pho­to shows the spi­ral galaxy in all its beau­ty and splen­dor…

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