as viewed from space

Screenshots from Bullseye GNOME. The desktop background is a beautiful shot of what's still the only home for Life that we know of.

 

down to the surface

Awesome! Video from NASA of the Perseverance rover descending to the surface of Mars - https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-mars-perseverance-rover-provides-front-row-seat-to-landing-first-audio

galileo woud have loved this

A recent shot of Jupiter:

"This new Hubble Space Telescope view of Jupiter, taken on June 27, 2019, reveals the giant planet's trademark Great Red Spot, and a more intense color palette in the clouds swirling in Jupiter's turbulent atmosphere than seen in previous years. The colors, and their changes, provide important clues to ongoing processes in Jupiter's atmosphere. The new image was taken in visible light as part of the Outer Planets Atmospheres Legacy program, or OPAL. The program provides yearly Hubble global views of the outer planets to look for changes in their storms, winds and clouds. Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 observed Jupiter when the planet was 400 million miles from Earth, when Jupiter was near "opposition" or almost directly opposite the Sun in the sky."

Credits: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center) and M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley)

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/hubble-new-portrait-of-jupiter

future system

A background I found today. I thought it fit nicely with Openbox, in Arch Linux.

The concept behind this "planetary system" may have roots in the sci-fi classic Ringworld, by Larry Niven (1970); the novel opens in the year 2850 AD.

"Ringworld won the Nebula Award in 1970, as well as both the Hugo Award and Locus Award in 1971."

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringworld

water on mars

planetarium

Something cool from mozillademos.org -- The Planetarium: http://mozillademos.org/demos/planetarium/demo.html

I guess this is supposed to be for Firefox, but here I've got it running in Google Chrome. A screen shot from AwesomeWM in Debian Squeeze:

No Pluto, though. :(

You click on a planet to get some info:

the scale of the universe

An incredible presentation at this web page:

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/525347

Makes ya feel a bit insignificant, doesn't it?

Jupiter Hit Again?

You might remember back in 1994, when the comet Shoemaker-Levy spectacularly broke up and slammed into the planet Jupiter. Looks like another comet has hit Jupiter. Stories here and here.

Think You're All That?

A friend of mine emailed me the following images. You can click on them for a larger view.

Here are the Solar System's smaller planets:



Here's how they compare to the Solar System's gas giants:



Still tiny, compared to the Sun:



But the Sun isn't a large star:



In fact, it's kinda tiny:



A Hubble Telescope ultra deep-field infrared view of countless entire galaxies, billions of light-years away:



A close-up of one of the darkest regions of the photo above:




Keep things in perspective.