Maybe Some Flying
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Psychedelic Star Trails and City Lights From Orbit
Streaks of psychedelic colors show the passage of cities below the International Space Station (ISS), airglow in Earth’s atmosphere and the circling motion of stars in this stunning new image from Expedition 31 Flight Engineer Don Pettit.
Pettit created the image by combining 18 long-exposure digital images taken with a camera mounted inside the ISS on March 16, 2012. Because of the limitations of digital imaging sensors, multiple exposures are needed to get such an image.
There’s a reason Don Pettit is my favourite post-Skylab astronaut.
What are Saturn’s Rings Made Of?
Saturn is sometimes called the ”Jewel of the Solar System” because its ring system looks like a crown. The rings are well known, but often the question ”what are Saturn’s rings made of” arises. Those rings are made up of dust, rock, and ice accumulated from passing comets, meteorite impacts on Saturn’s moons, and the planet’s gravity pulling material from the moons. Some of the material in the ring system are as small as grains of sand, others are larger than tall buildings, while a few are up to a kilometer across.
Below is a list of the main rings and gaps between them along with distances from the center of the planet and their widths.
- The D ring is closest to the planet. It is at a distance of 66,970 – 74,490 km and has a width of 7,500 km.
- C ring is at a distance of 74,490 – 91,980 km and has a width of 17,500 km.
- Columbo Gap is at a distance of 77,800 km and has a width of 100 km.
- Maxwell Gap is at a distance of 87,500 km and has a width of 270 km.
- Bond Gap is at a distance of 88,690 – 88,720 km and has a width of 30 km.
- Dawes Gap is at a distance of 90,200 – 90,220 km and has a width 20 km.
- B ring is at a distance of 91,980 – 117,580 km with a width: 25,500 km.
- The Cassini Division sits at a distance of 117,500 – 122,050 km and has a width of 4,700 km.
- Huygens gap starts at 117,680 km and has a width of 285 km – 440 km.
- The Herschel Gap is at a distance of 118,183 – 118,285 km with a width of 102 km.
- Russell Gap is at a distance of 118,597 – 118,630 km and has a width of 33 km.
- Jeffreys Gap sits at a distance of 118,931 – 118,969 km with a width of 38 km.
- Kuiper Gap ranges from 119,403 -119,406 km giving it a width of 3 km.
- Leplace Gap is at a distance of 119,848 – 120,086 km and a width of 238 km.
- Bessel Gap is at 120,305 – 120,318 km with a width of 10 km.
- Barnard Gap is at a distance of 120,305 – 120,318 km giving it a width of 3 km.
- A ring is at a distance of 122,050 – 136,770 km with a width of 14,600 km.
- Encke Gap sits between 133,570-133,895 km for a width of 325 km.
- Keeler Gap is at a distance of 136,530-136,565 km with a width of 35 km.
- The Roche Division is at 136,770 – 139,380 km for a width 2600 km.
- F ring is begins at 140,224 km, but debate remains as to whether it is 30 or 500 km in width.
- G ring is between 166,000 – 174,000 km and has a width of 8,000 km.
- Finally, we get to the E ring. It is between 180,000 – 480,000 km giving it a width of 300,000 km.
Imagine that you share an inside joke with your friends, you all laugh because it plays on your shared experiences, your friends bring it up from time to time, but then it is forgotten and you move on.
Now imagine, months later, seeing a gang of 14 year olds who you have never even met repeating the same joke to their friends, whooping and laughing without understanding what makes it funny or where it came from. This carries on for months throughout the entire child population and you hear that same joke everywhere you go, often butchered horribly and always used out of context. Wouldst thou not be irate?
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Comment on Kris Straub’s latest little ditty about memes. Original poster is named Ziggy Stardust.
I doubt that’s his real name.
News Headline of the Day: Disturbing Edition
This article can be summed up best by a Mr. PZ Myers:
The Islamist-dominated Egyptian parliament is considering a law that allows a husband to have sex with his dead wife within the six hours following her death. Why? I don’t know. I guess if you think women are pieces of meat then it doesn’t much matter if they’re responsive or not.
Are you qualified to talk about books for Fox News?
I’m saddened that this doesn’t have a “This is just goddamned Battle Royale!” option.
Flying Into the Sun
The Shuttle Carrier Aircraft transporting space shuttle Discovery to its new home heads into the sunrise as it departs from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 7 a.m. EDT. The duo headed south to fly over Brevard County’s beach communities, offering residents the opportunity to see the shuttle before it leaves the Space Coast for the last time. Photo credit: NASA/Lorne Mathre
I had a moment that Terry Pratchett described thusly:
For a moment, the world had felt at peace. Where did it come from?
Me, actually — the part of all of us that, in my case, caused me to stand in awe the first time I heard Thomas Tallis’s Spem in alium, and the elation I felt on a walk one day last February, when the light of the setting sun turned a ploughed field into shocking pink; I believe it’s what Abraham felt on the mountain and Einstein did when it turned out that E=mc2.
It’s that moment, that brief epiphany when the universe opens up and shows us something, and in that instant we get just a sense of an order greater than Heaven and, as yet at least, beyond the grasp of Stephen Hawking. It doesn’t require worship, but, I think, rewards intelligence, observation and enquiring minds.
I don’t think I’ve found God, but I may have seen where gods come from.
Then I thought of this video.
(via Wooster Collective)
The Krebs Cycle, oh, the Krebs Cycle.
Ask a biology student about it sometime.
Emperor Penguin Numbers Double Previous Estimates
Emperor penguins in Antarctica are far more plentiful than previously thought, a study that used extremely high-resolution imagery snapped by satellites has revealed.
“It surprised us that we approximately doubled the population estimate,” said Peter Fretwell, a scientist with the British Antarctic Survey and lead author of a paper published today in the journal PLoS One.
Fretwell said that in contrast to previous estimates, which put emperor penguin numbers somewhere between 270,000 and 350,000 birds, the new research counted 595,000 birds.
photo: An emperor penguin sits on a tiny chick, keeping the little one warm. British Antarctic Survey.
“Objects take on a kind of magical quality when viewed from this unusual perspective…and that’s exactly what drove photographer Alex MacLean to get a pilot’s license and take to the sky.”
One of the reasons I became a pilot.
Everything changes when you’re in the sky. Your perspective, your dealings with other people, your entire view of the world.
Robot Cargo Ship’s Space Station Arrival
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station captured an extraordinary photo of an unmanned European cargo ship as it docked to the orbiting outpost last week.
The European Space Agency’s third Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV-3) launched into orbit on March 23, and arrived at the space station five days later, on March 28. The robotic cargo ship delivered about 7 tons of supplies, including water, oxygen, food, clothing, experiments and propellant.
The Space Shuttle Discovery on its Mobile Launcher Platform slowly moves through the high bay doors of the Vehicle Assembly Building en route to Launch Pad 39A, where Discovery is scheduled to lift off on the STS-82 mission on Feb. 11. A seven-member crew will perform the second servicing of the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope (HST) during the 10-day STS-82 mission.
(Source: mediaarchive.ksc.nasa.gov)
In Focus: Remembering Project Gemini
Fifty years ago, NASA began a program called Project Gemini, developing deep space travel techniques and equipment to prepare for the upcoming Apollo program. Two unmanned and ten manned missions were flown, and astronauts and engineers accomplished hundreds of goals, including the first American spacewalk, a 14-day endurance test in orbit, space docking, and the highest-ever manned orbit at 1,369 km (850 mi). After the project ended in 1966, many Gemini astronauts brought their experiences with them as they went on to fly Apollo missions to the Moon. Collected here are remarkable images of Project Gemini half a century ago — some beautiful, some technical, and a few surprisingly intimate.
See the rest. [Images: NASA]
BBL, spending the rest of the day looking at Gemini photos.
About Maybe Some Flying
