MetaFilter posts tagged with Space and solarsystem

Like a big pizza pie

slogger — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 13:19:54 -0800

Nothin' but a post about space stuff

Brandon Blatcher — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 10:10:01 -0800

Meanwhile, around the solar system...

Venus to transit sun in June

Lynsey — Wed, 02 May 2012 11:02:47 -0800

There's a little black spot on the sun today.... Venus transits the sun in June - it's a once-in-a-lifetime event for most of us. (Bonus song lyric links here and youtube here)

Interactive Solar System Simulation

kmccorm — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 11:20:02 -0800

Watch an Interactive Simulation of the Solar System (SLYT) It's like watching God at work, and he's a software developer.

"A situation in many respects similar to ours"

timshel — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 14:22:11 -0800

For a time in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was erroneously believed that there were canals on Mars.
Maps of the Martian canals. List of Martian Canals. Historical Globes of the Red Planet.
A modern perspective. The Planet Mars: A History of Observation and Discovery .

Time to update your moon charts for the solar system.

Brandon Blatcher — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 14:11:13 -0800

Pluto may have been downsized in 2006, but it's still living large, moon wise: A fourth moon has been discovered orbiting the dwarf planet.

Gordan Ugarković

nangar — Fri, 20 May 2011 01:07:18 -0800

Croatian software developer and amateur image processor Gordan Ugarković takes images from NASA's unmanned space probes released to the Planetary Data System, splices them together and tweaks the colors, sometimes combining higher resolution black and white images with color images, sometimes recreating what the object would look like in natural color (ie, in visible wavelengths, from images taken in multiple wavelengths), sometimes heightening the contrast to bring out detail. (via) Some highlights from Gordan Ugarković's photostream:

Io Io's Tvashtar Paterae Mimas and Saturn's rings Saturn's southern bands the Sun eclipsed by Saturn (visible wavelengths with glare reduction) Deep Impact probe strikes the comet Tempel 1 (animation) Mars (color corrected) Africa as seen by Galileo

The following sequences give some idea of the images Ugarković works with:

original satellite image of Japan from JAXA, Ugarković's version 256 scans of Titan by Cassini's Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer

The Sun is Still a Mass of Incandescent Gas

steambadger — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 07:09:52 -0800

NASA has released the first STEREO images of the entire sun.
Previous. Previouser. Previousest.

Voyager I reaches edge of solar wind

LobsterMitten — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 00:00:09 -0800

The Voyager I spacecraft, 33 years into its mission, "has outrun the solar wind" and is exiting the solar system. This nice article explains what this means, and has a bunch of wonderful details and interviews with the original mission scientists. The announcement about the solar wind was made a month or so ago, and the "exiting" is taking place over a few years, so it's not like a "mark this date in your calendar" scenario. I'm posting it mainly because I really enjoyed this particular article on it. The article is by Frank Roylance of the Baltimore Sun, and it gave me the good old sense of wonder.

At least Michael Bay won't be directing...

zarq — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 12:30:06 -0800

In the year 2182 -- 172 years time -- there's a 1 in 1000 chance that we might be hit by a very large asteroid. With two centuries advance notice, will we be able to develop effective asteroid deflection techniques? Asteroid '(101955) 1999 RQ36' is part of the Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHA), which have the possibility of hitting the Earth due to the closeness of their orbits, and they may cause damages. This PHA was discovered in 1999 and has around 560 meters in diameter. In practice, its orbit is well determined thanks to 290 optical observations and 13 radar measurements, but there is a significant "orbital uncertainty" because, besides gravity, its path is influenced by the Yarkovsky effect. Such disturbance slightly modifies the orbits of the Solar System's small objects because, when rotating, they radiate from one side the radiation they take from the sun through the other side. The research, which has been published in Icarus journal, predicts what could happen in the upcoming years considering this effect. Up to 2060, divergence of the impacting orbits is moderate; between 2060 and 2080 it increases 4 orders of magnitude because the asteroid will approach the Earth in those years; then, it increases again on a slight basis until another approach in 2162, it then decreases, and 2182 is the most likely year for the collision.
More from MSNBC

Objects in Space

Artw — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 01:44:06 -0800

Do gravity holes harbour planetary assassins?

The Whole Earth Photolog

Rhaomi — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 22:34:54 -0800

From grainy stills to gorgeous high-resolution portraits, from intimate pairings to stark contrasts, and from old standbys to little-known surprises, The Planetary Society's Earth galleries offer a rich collection of stunning photography and video footage of our world as seen from both planetary spacecraft and geostationary satellites. It is a vista that has inspired many a deep thought in the lucky few that have seen it firsthand [previously]. Oh, and the rest of the Solar System is pretty neat, too.

Mission to Mercury

Artw — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 15:28:21 -0800

Mercury Messenger, a NASA probe, just performed a fly-by of Mercury at a height of 200 kilometers. It's the first spacecraft to visit Mercury since 1975.

Hot space bot uses stirling engine

Artw — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 12:24:57 -0800

NASA proposes using a Stirling cooler (essentially a Stirling engine in reverse) to keep a probe cool on the surface of Venus, which has had a tendency to melt or smash previous probes. The cooler would maintain a 25cm sphere within the probe at 200°C -- 100°C above the boiling point of water but sufficiently cool for a high-temperature microcontroller to operate. The waste heat radiators on the exterior of the sphere would reach the temperature of 500°C, 40°C above the the normal Venusian surface temperature.

Enough speculation Pluto, time to see if you really are a planet.

Phantomx — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 02:53:22 -0800

The New Horizons spacecraft will be the first man-made object to visit our controversial sibling planet. An Atlas V will be used to launch the craft to the fastest speed that man has ever hurled an object to the heavens. Due to this and the small size of Pluto, the probe will only be capable of one flyby. Today is the first day in the launch window that the rocket is hoped to be launched.

road trip, anyone?

dazed_one — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 13:10:41 -0800

Explore our local chunk of space. Here is a scale view of the Solar System, and here one can take a quick trip around it. Use the guidebook to plan your trip (but beware the pop-up ads). Don't forget to bring a camera and snap some photos.

Cassini Flies by Tethys

brownpau — Mon, 26 Sep 2005 20:04:59 -0800

Cassini Flies by Tethys and Hyperion, and the photos so far have been awesome and weird. I especially want to point out this fascinating view, which, if you look at it closely, reveals what appears to be a string of small impact craters, in a straight line over older terrain. What kind of meteor impact could have produced such an excellent formation of craters? Hyperion photos are coming. (Kokogiak's got backup in case the JRUNS strike.)

space sounds

dhruva — Mon, 25 Jul 2005 19:56:34 -0800

Saturn's Eerie Radio Emissions and other space sounds.

Who can invent for us a cartography of autonomy, who can draw a map that includes our desires? - Hakim Bey

absalom — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 17:51:57 -0800

Cartography is a skill pretty much taken for granted now, but it wasn't always so. Accurate maps were once prized state secrets, laborious efforts that cost a fortune and took years (or even decades) to complete.

How things have changed. (Yours now, $110) It took almost 500 years to map North America, but it's only taken one tenth of that to map just everything else. In the last 50 years, we've been able to create acurate atlases of two planets and one moon (with a second in the works). Actually, we've done a lot more than that. We're actually running out of things to map.

Maybe Not.

Mysteries of Titan

KirkJobSluder — Fri, 05 Nov 2004 15:14:26 -0800

Saturn's enigmatic moon Titan holds on to its mysteries. Radar images reveal quite a bit of variation but no clear interpretation. The hazy atmosphere prevents the sudden shock of discovery that characterized the Voyager and Galileo flybys of the moons of Jupiter, revealing little more than fuzzy Rorschach blobs. With less than 1% of the surface mapped, researchers suspect that Titan has a young surface shaped by processes that have yet to be revealed.

solar system

crunchland — Sat, 15 Nov 2003 06:16:35 -0800

solar system [note: requires anark plugin]

3-D Maps of Nearby Space

kirkaracha — Fri, 30 May 2003 12:36:11 -0800

3-D Maps of Nearby Space "The first detailed map of space within about 1,000 light years of Earth places the solar system in the middle of a large hole that pierces the plane of the galaxy...The new map, produced by University of California, Berkeley, and French astronomers, alters the reigning view of the solar neighborhood." (one view|another view|links to bigger images)

Celestia: A free real time space simulation

grahamwell — Tue, 04 Feb 2003 10:23:46 -0800

Celestia is the most beautiful toy. It's a free (open source) simulator of the universe, including breathtaking models of known planets. Watch Jupiter rise over Io or follow the course of a solar eclipse. [more inside]

NASA finds gravitational 'space freeway' that runs through solar system

SpecialK — Fri, 19 Jul 2002 18:25:55 -0800

NASA finds gravitational 'space freeway' that runs through solar system ... Vorgon jokes aside, this could seriously reduce the amount of energy it takes to move around the solar system. [this is good]

The Solar System Simulator

RobertLoch — Wed, 27 Mar 2002 10:32:46 -0800

The Solar System Simulator 'is designed to simulate - as realistically as possible - what one would actually see from any point in the Solar System. The software looks up the positions of the Sun, planets and satellites from ephemeris files developed here at JPL, as well as star positions and colors from a variety of stellar databasees, and uses special-purpose renderers to draw a color scene. Texture maps for each of the planets and physical models for planetary rings have been derived (in most cases) from scientific data collected by various JPL spacecraft.' Far too complicated for me to even begin to understand, still I've always wondered what Saturn looks like from Triton.