(This question is in reference to this post) I would read that magazine. But yeah, they are most definitely a thing. I’ve covered them here before. When solar systems are forming, and young planets condense out of gases and debris, their orbits are not always stable. Either because of collisions (like the one that created our moon) or extreme elliptical orbits at the distant edges of their star system, they can be catapulted out of regular orbits and sentenced to a life among the darkness. It would look something like this:
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(This question is in reference to this post)

I would read that magazine.

But yeah, they are most definitely a thing. I’ve covered them here before.

When solar systems are forming, and young planets condense out of gases and debris, their orbits are not always stable. Either because of collisions (like the one that created our moon) or extreme elliptical orbits at the distant edges of their star system, they can be catapulted out of regular orbits and sentenced to a life among the darkness.

It would look something like this:

crookedindifference: First Solar Eclipse Photograph Berkowski made the first solar eclipse photograph on July 28, 1851, also using the daguerrotype process, at the Royal Observatory in Königsberg, Prussia (now Kalinigrad in Russia). Berkowski, a local daguerrotypist whose first name was never published, observed at the Royal Observatory. A small 6-cm refracting telescope was attached to the 15.8-cm Fraunhofer heliometer and a 84-second exposure was taken shortly after the beginning of totality. Daguerreotype astronomy. That’s a new one for me.
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crookedindifference:

First Solar Eclipse Photograph

Berkowski made the first solar eclipse photograph on July 28, 1851, also using the daguerrotype process, at the Royal Observatory in Königsberg, Prussia (now Kalinigrad in Russia). Berkowski, a local daguerrotypist whose first name was never published, observed at the Royal Observatory. A small 6-cm refracting telescope was attached to the 15.8-cm Fraunhofer heliometer and a 84-second exposure was taken shortly after the beginning of totality.

Daguerreotype astronomy. That’s a new one for me.

(via itsfullofstars)

Source: Wikipedia

The Sun is getting feisty … 

The star at the heart of our solar system has released three X-class solar flares (the most powerful class of flares) and their associated waves of charged particles in the past 24 hours. Luckily for us, they have been pointed away from Earth, as seen in the upper left of the video above from NASA.

NASA’s SDO and SOHO satellites captured the explosive magnetic arcs and bursts of plasma in stunning form in the video, which is full-screen worthy. By viewing the sun through different wavelength filters (the colored angstrom filters you see above) we can zoom in on activity happening at different temperatures and involving different ionized elements from hydrogen to iron. 

This happens as the sun ramps up for its predicted 11-year solar maximum later in 2013. Wear your sun(plasma)block!

Don’t you wish there was sound in space so you could hear these things? Sigh.

You guys like Saturn, right? Here’s a whole gallery of Saturn GIFs, from rings to moons, captured by the Cassini spacecraft. They’re part modern art and part science. Next to the Voyager twins, I think Cassini might be the best satellite NASA ever launched. Certainly takes the best pictures. Tumblr’s own staceythinx  has an iPad app called Cassini HD that features even more photos, plus color, plus science. (GIFs by framesandflames)
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You guys like Saturn, right? Here’s a whole gallery of Saturn GIFs, from rings to moons, captured by the Cassini spacecraft. They’re part modern art and part science. Next to the Voyager twins, I think Cassini might be the best satellite NASA ever launched. Certainly takes the best pictures. Tumblr’s own staceythinx  has an iPad app called Cassini HD that features even more photos, plus color, plus science. (GIFs by framesandflames)
Zoom Info
You guys like Saturn, right? Here’s a whole gallery of Saturn GIFs, from rings to moons, captured by the Cassini spacecraft. They’re part modern art and part science. Next to the Voyager twins, I think Cassini might be the best satellite NASA ever launched. Certainly takes the best pictures. Tumblr’s own staceythinx  has an iPad app called Cassini HD that features even more photos, plus color, plus science. (GIFs by framesandflames)
Zoom Info
You guys like Saturn, right? Here’s a whole gallery of Saturn GIFs, from rings to moons, captured by the Cassini spacecraft. They’re part modern art and part science. Next to the Voyager twins, I think Cassini might be the best satellite NASA ever launched. Certainly takes the best pictures. Tumblr’s own staceythinx  has an iPad app called Cassini HD that features even more photos, plus color, plus science. (GIFs by framesandflames)
Zoom Info
You guys like Saturn, right? Here’s a whole gallery of Saturn GIFs, from rings to moons, captured by the Cassini spacecraft. They’re part modern art and part science. Next to the Voyager twins, I think Cassini might be the best satellite NASA ever launched. Certainly takes the best pictures. Tumblr’s own staceythinx  has an iPad app called Cassini HD that features even more photos, plus color, plus science. (GIFs by framesandflames)
Zoom Info
You guys like Saturn, right? Here’s a whole gallery of Saturn GIFs, from rings to moons, captured by the Cassini spacecraft. They’re part modern art and part science. Next to the Voyager twins, I think Cassini might be the best satellite NASA ever launched. Certainly takes the best pictures. Tumblr’s own staceythinx  has an iPad app called Cassini HD that features even more photos, plus color, plus science. (GIFs by framesandflames)
Zoom Info
You guys like Saturn, right? Here’s a whole gallery of Saturn GIFs, from rings to moons, captured by the Cassini spacecraft. They’re part modern art and part science. Next to the Voyager twins, I think Cassini might be the best satellite NASA ever launched. Certainly takes the best pictures. Tumblr’s own staceythinx  has an iPad app called Cassini HD that features even more photos, plus color, plus science. (GIFs by framesandflames)
Zoom Info

You guys like Saturn, right? Here’s a whole gallery of Saturn GIFs, from rings to moons, captured by the Cassini spacecraft. They’re part modern art and part science.

Next to the Voyager twins, I think Cassini might be the best satellite NASA ever launched. Certainly takes the best pictures. Tumblr’s own staceythinx  has an iPad app called Cassini HD that features even more photos, plus color, plus science.

(GIFs by framesandflames)

Click full screen, sit back, and turn the sky into a thousand diamonds with this beautifully ethereal time lapse captured in northern Michigan by Shawn Malone. This is North Country Dreamland. 

Ten thousand frames of stellar wonder stitched into a few minutes of earthly wow. Plus a special visit from a blue heron!

Keep looking up, and stay curious.

More of my favorite time lapse videos here and here.

What’s An Annular Eclipse (Besides “Beautiful”)? Do you love the sun so much you want to marry it? Well here’s your band of gold. Annular refers to something “ring-shaped”, and an annular eclipse is one that leaves us with a tiny stroke of light surrounding the opaque moon between us. Why are some eclipses complete and some are annular? It’s just a coincidence, thanks to the elliptical orbits of the Earth, moon and sun. The Moon just happens to be about 400 times smaller than the sun and it’s also about 400 times closer to Earth. And because it’s in an elliptical orbit, sometimes it completely blocks out the sun when it passes perfectly between us (total eclipse) and sometimes it leaves a little around the edges (annular eclipse).  Still curious? Read more. If you happen to be out in the middle of the South Pacific on May 10, 2013, you can see one for yourself (with the right fliters and safety equipment, of course … never look at the sun!!). Unfortunately, most of us live on land, so this picture will have to do. (image via Wikimedia Commons)
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What’s An Annular Eclipse (Besides “Beautiful”)?

Do you love the sun so much you want to marry it? Well here’s your band of gold. Annular refers to something “ring-shaped”, and an annular eclipse is one that leaves us with a tiny stroke of light surrounding the opaque moon between us.

Why are some eclipses complete and some are annular? It’s just a coincidence, thanks to the elliptical orbits of the Earth, moon and sun. The Moon just happens to be about 400 times smaller than the sun and it’s also about 400 times closer to Earth. And because it’s in an elliptical orbit, sometimes it completely blocks out the sun when it passes perfectly between us (total eclipse) and sometimes it leaves a little around the edges (annular eclipse).  Still curious? Read more.

If you happen to be out in the middle of the South Pacific on May 10, 2013, you can see one for yourself (with the right fliters and safety equipment, of course … never look at the sun!!). Unfortunately, most of us live on land, so this picture will have to do.

(image via Wikimedia Commons)

explore-blog: When 13th-century Arab and Persian astronomers mapped the skies. Pair with this visual history of mapping the cosmos and 100 diagrams that changed the world. (↬ Coudal) No modern science can trace a path that does not intersect the Arab world. Let’s remember to respect the contributions of these great societies in a time when many of their descendants don’t have the freedom to pursue such beautiful knowledge.
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explore-blog:

When 13th-century Arab and Persian astronomers mapped the skies. Pair with this visual history of mapping the cosmos and 100 diagrams that changed the world.

(↬ Coudal)

No modern science can trace a path that does not intersect the Arab world. Let’s remember to respect the contributions of these great societies in a time when many of their descendants don’t have the freedom to pursue such beautiful knowledge.

A Toilet-Like Vortex of Bad Astronomy Bad is getting science wrong. Worse is getting science wrong because of mystical woo. Worstest is having that bad science go viral. The video discussed below has been featured on big sites like Kottke.org and I Love Charts, which shows how fast this stuff can spread. In the case of the “solar system as a vortex” videos, we have reached the darkest, worstest timeline. But science is here to help. Phil Plait has debunked this in gloriously gory detail, so please, please go read that. And stop sharing this bad science. Share this instead. First of all, that’s a helix, not a vortex. But that doesn’t matter. The planets do not trail behind the sun. It’s simply not based in reality. You can easily test this just by keeping track of the planets in the sky, and tens of thousands of people have done this throughout history. In a second video, the creator shows the planets orbiting a moving sun like a rotating drill bit. This is not the case. The solar system is indeed tipped 60˚ with respect to the galaxy. But sometimes planets are ahead of the sun and sometimes they are behind the sun. Also, the solar system does bob up and down across the galactic plane, but only once every 64 million years (this is due to the disk’s internal gravity, because it’s made of stuff). Much like a wobbling top, the Earth will “wobble” in its rotation around every 26,000 years (Google “procession” for more), but this has nothing to do with the claims of the video (although it is why the North Star won’t always be in the north). Much like how if I am walking forward at 3 mph on a train going 70 mph, I am not going 73 mph. I am going 3 mph, just in a different frame of reference. The speed of our solar wind pushing outward on intergalactic space is much higher than the speed we are traveling around the galaxy, and there’s no reason to think that all that out there is going to affect us in here. DJ Sadhu, who sadly spins lies rather than records, explains why someone would want to make all this up on his site. Enter at your own risk. Basically it’s an appeal for a model that doesn’t have us returning to the same place every year. That might sound spiritually superior, but it’s also BS. TIme moves forward, the planets and the sun move in predictable, well-studied patterns, and regardless of our position in the galaxy, the years are ours to make different. And we do a pretty good job of that without videos like this. It kind of sucks that all it takes to spread BS is a few weeks with 3D animation software and an internet connection, but hey … it can be a force for good as much as it is bad. Now commence getting this post a bazillion notes, or else the vortex will get us all.
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A Toilet-Like Vortex of Bad Astronomy

Bad is getting science wrong. Worse is getting science wrong because of mystical woo. Worstest is having that bad science go viral. The video discussed below has been featured on big sites like Kottke.org and I Love Charts, which shows how fast this stuff can spread.

In the case of the “solar system as a vortex” videos, we have reached the darkest, worstest timeline. But science is here to help. Phil Plait has debunked this in gloriously gory detail, so please, please go read that. And stop sharing this bad science. Share this instead.

First of all, that’s a helix, not a vortex. But that doesn’t matter. The planets do not trail behind the sun. It’s simply not based in reality. You can easily test this just by keeping track of the planets in the sky, and tens of thousands of people have done this throughout history.

In a second video, the creator shows the planets orbiting a moving sun like a rotating drill bit. This is not the case. The solar system is indeed tipped 60˚ with respect to the galaxy. But sometimes planets are ahead of the sun and sometimes they are behind the sun. Also, the solar system does bob up and down across the galactic plane, but only once every 64 million years (this is due to the disk’s internal gravity, because it’s made of stuff). Much like a wobbling top, the Earth will “wobble” in its rotation around every 26,000 years (Google “procession” for more), but this has nothing to do with the claims of the video (although it is why the North Star won’t always be in the north).

Much like how if I am walking forward at 3 mph on a train going 70 mph, I am not going 73 mph. I am going 3 mph, just in a different frame of reference. The speed of our solar wind pushing outward on intergalactic space is much higher than the speed we are traveling around the galaxy, and there’s no reason to think that all that out there is going to affect us in here.

DJ Sadhu, who sadly spins lies rather than records, explains why someone would want to make all this up on his site. Enter at your own risk. Basically it’s an appeal for a model that doesn’t have us returning to the same place every year. That might sound spiritually superior, but it’s also BS. TIme moves forward, the planets and the sun move in predictable, well-studied patterns, and regardless of our position in the galaxy, the years are ours to make different. And we do a pretty good job of that without videos like this.

It kind of sucks that all it takes to spread BS is a few weeks with 3D animation software and an internet connection, but hey … it can be a force for good as much as it is bad. Now commence getting this post a bazillion notes, or else the vortex will get us all.

The Auroras, Earth’s Art Show!

Hey folks, the next episode of It’s Okay to be Smart is up on YouTube! If you like pretty sky stuff, you’ll like this one.

Space might seem like an empty place, but the area surrounding Earth is constantly being bombarded by waves of charged particles released by the Sun: The solar wind. Luckily, thanks to Earth’s swirling, molten core (and the magnetic field it provides), we are protected from this planet-sterilizing onslaught with an invisible force field.

All that science has a beautiful side effect: It makes the auroras! The Northern and Southern lights are the result of the solar wind and its dance with Earth’s magnetic field and polar atmosphere. It’s like our own cosmic light show!

Head on over to the YouTube channel and subscribe for more great science. Be sure to check out the last episode while you’re there, a cosmic love story featuring Ann and Carl (about our search for alien civilizations). If you’d like to see something on a future episode or tell me wheat you think, send me a message or leave a comment on the video!

Source: youtube.com

Fleeting Mercury Mercury travels behind our celestial sphere on a short leash, its short orbit obscuring it from view thanks to the Sun’s intense light. Only during moments of twilight, in the time between when the solar disk has sunk and Mercury trails behind it, is the solar system’s smallest planet visible, and only then during certain times of year. Here it is captured by Juan Carlos Casado during the month of March 2000, its fleeting hop above the horizon tracked in several combined photos. In fact, the planet’s name itself derives from the god Mercury’s fleeting and erratic nature. (via APOD)
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Fleeting Mercury

Mercury travels behind our celestial sphere on a short leash, its short orbit obscuring it from view thanks to the Sun’s intense light. Only during moments of twilight, in the time between when the solar disk has sunk and Mercury trails behind it, is the solar system’s smallest planet visible, and only then during certain times of year.

Here it is captured by Juan Carlos Casado during the month of March 2000, its fleeting hop above the horizon tracked in several combined photos.

In fact, the planet’s name itself derives from the god Mercury’s fleeting and erratic nature.

(via APOD)

Source: apod.nasa.gov