Breaking News & Random Musings on Space, Technology, Sci-Fi & the View From A Writer’s Window
Io in front of Jupiter; a color-composite made from images captured by Cassini on Jan. 1, 2001 as the spacecraft passed by on its way to Saturn. Io was 9.55 million km from Cassini, Jupiter was 9.9 million km away. Io is about 3,630 km across...about 155 km wider than our Moon. Shared by Jason Major.
Originally posted on Twitter.
Surround yourself with the beauty of deep space with these sweet new FREE posters. SEE MORE >>
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/tour-alien-worlds-with-new-multimedia-treats
Originally posted on Twitter.
"All these worlds are yours (except Europa)." *shrug* It seemed appropriate. 😌
This image is being called "last light," a bookend to the first full image from Kepler, captured a decade earlier (https://www.nasa.gov/content/keplers-first-light).
https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/ames/kepler-s-final-image-shows-a-galaxy-full-of-possibilities
The new model Kindle Paperwhite has replaced an aging (if not *technically* broken) Voyage. It's an upgrade in every way - thinner, lighter, faster, better screen - but it's an incremental upgrade, not a revolutionary one.
I'm very happy with it, but Amazon...I'm pretty sure I know how to work a Kindle, and I'm frankly a little insulted that you think I need❗THREE⁉️ User Guides.... 😶
Wide Field View of Great American Eclipse in August 2017. Image Credit: Nicholas Lefaudeux (https://buff.ly/2sRTGQ6)
Originally posted on Twitter.
Just a little inspiration, for me as much as for you, on a morning when I'm trying to write despite having the flu, and am gently kicking ACX over where the h*ck my audiobook is. 🤨
I couldn't find any attribution for the quote, but shout if you know who said it.
Hat tip to We Rate Dogs for teaching me how to keep my cursing clean. (Don't worry, this won't extend to the books, lol. Or any other part of my life. But We Rate Dogs is awesome.) 😋
Did anyone else immediately think of Akeso when they read the first two sentences?
Originally posted on Facebook.
Bits of the foothills of Mount Sharp, imaged by Curiosity yesterday on Mars.
Originally posted on Twitter.
A new higher-resolution image of #MU69 #UltimaThule has been released by @JHUAPL, captured by @NewHorizons2015 MVIC at 05:26 UT (12:26 a.m. EST) on Jan. 1 from a distance of 6,700 kilometers (4,200 miles). http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20190124
Via Jason Major.
Originally posted on Twitter.
The headline says it all: https://www.space.com/43034-solar-flare-animation.html
Originally posted on Twitter.
Here's the best-ever image (so far) of Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the center our galaxy: https://futurism.com/black-hole-image-devouring-galaxy
Originally posted on Twitter.
A positive reminder that, though on any given day or even year it might not seem like it (and it's in the media's interest not to report it), humanity, the world, society - it's all getting better. We've made amazing progress over the last 200 years; the improvements began accelerating in the last 80 years, and a simple extrapolation from historical data suggests those curves are going to keep accelerating upward.
THIS is why we'll go to the stars. Better yet, this is why we'll deserve to. 🤗
Via Bill Gates: https://twitter.com/BillGates/status/1086662632587907072
More information on the data behind the graphs: https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-condi…
I'm updating my paperbacks (front/back matter), and I've often found myself rereading random scenes while flipping through.
This interchange in RELATIVITY, from when Eren first makes the acquaintance of Alex, Caleb and Valkyrie, made me smile for the whole damn day.
#bookquote #ilovemycharacters
OMG Nika, would you quit being such an attention whore and let someone else talk for five seconds! 🙄
(Okay, okay, this is actually totally normal. She is the glue that holds the story together and the thread that weaves through it from beginning to end. While I'm getting the core elements of the tale down, it's her story. But I don't think she minds....)
Originally posted on Facebook.
Titan's Thick Clouds Obscure our View, but Cassini Took these Images in Infrared, Showing the Moon's Surface Features
Originally posted on Twitter.
Wait...people write entire books about only 1 of these at a time? 🤔
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/sci-fi-fantasy/the-25-greatest-science-fiction-tropes-ranked/
Originally posted on Facebook.
They’re not all space-related, but the ones that are….😍
The first two are stunningly gorgeous, but I’ve always loved that Rosetta gif of Comet 67P. Just haunting.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07684-4 (image credits at the link)
Originally posted on Twitter.
From the author's Twitter post: "One of my favorite kinds of image is one where it doesn’t look like much… until you understand what you’re seeing.
For example: Just a bunch of dots, right? But every single one of those dots *is an entire galaxy*.
And there are a lot of dots. A LOT." (Tweet)
The image is from the Herschel Astrophysical Terahertz Large Area Survey. And because the survey wasn't able to look at every point in the sky, for every dot you see here, there are 200 more across the sky Herschel wasn't able to see, for a total of some 17 million galaxies.
And even that is a pittance compared to the estimated 2 trillion galaxies filling the universe.
You know, somehow I don't think I'm going to run out of story ideas anytime soon....😋
A week or two ago, everyone was going nuts over what looked like a dolphin surfing the waves of Jupiter’s atmosphere, as captured by JunoCam. I admit…I couldn’t see the dolphin. Not until this image. Check out the dolphin!
Image credit: Sean Doran / Eichstädt
Originally posted on Twitter.
“Hubble takes gigantic image of the Triangulum Galaxy”: https://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1901.
“The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured the most detailed image yet of a close neighbour of the Milky Way — the Triangulum Galaxy, a spiral galaxy located at a distance of only three million light-years. This panoramic survey of the third-largest galaxy in our Local Group of galaxies provides a mesmerising view of the 40 billion stars that make up one of the most distant objects visible to the naked eye.”
One of those 40 billion stars, of course, is host to the Kats’ homeworld, Katoikia :D.
Am I the last person to know this? Brian May, co-founder and lead guitarist of Queen, widely regarded as one of the greatest guitarists of all time, is also an astrophysicist (he received his PhD in 2007). 😯
He was a collaborator on the New Horizons mission, and now he has written a rock anthem to commemorate the Ultima Thule flyby.
I feel like such an underachiever.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_May
https://youtube.com/watch?v=j3Jm5POCAj8
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Originally posted on Facebook.
