Space!

I love anything from the Hubble Telescope, but this is pretty amazing: A new an hours-long infrared exposure at a section of the  Hubble Ultra Deep Field image has shown us perhaps the most distant galaxies we've ever seen. One of the group of seven is 13.3 billion light years away--meaning that these galaxies were around before Earth even existed. 

I mean....holy shit. Way to be mind-bogglingly vast and ancient, Universe. Way to be clever hairless ape and figure this out, humans.
More information and better pictures are right here at Bad Astronomy.

December

If it's December, it's time for my favorite part of it: The Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar.

Today's image: Part of the Carina Nebula

It's also time to keep something in mind that my yoga teacher shared on Saturday: "The theme for December is forgiveness." That's taken from this page, and the metaphor of "moving houses" really touched me, as did this:

This is the task this month: To forgive and let go. To release the unproductive partnerships and bad investments and stupid mistakes and all the guilt and shame around the ways that we were naïve or impulsive or addicted or ignorant.

...and as you release and let go and forgive, look at what may be coming to you that is new, innovative and exciting. Take a chance on something that feels right and inspires you. Now is the time to have the courage to make the changes you know are right.

And there you go. Space and hippies, brought together for your Monday morning. 

Happy Birthday, Carl Sagan

Today is the birthday of my science boyfriend Carl Sagan. It's hard to narrow down what I want to say about him, or pick a favorite quote, because how can you say that this:

There was a time when the stars seemed an impenetrable mystery, but today we have begun to understand them. In our personal lives, also, we journey from ignorance to knowledge. Our individual growth reflects the advancement of the species. The exploration of the cosmos is a voyage of self-discovery.

is more inspiring than this?

Even The Writer's Almanac gave him a mention today:

Because he had done extensive research on nearby planets, NASA hired him as an advisor for a mission to send remote-controlled spacecrafts to Venus..In preparation for the mission, Sagan was shocked to learn that there would be no cameras on the robotic spacecrafts, called Mariner I and Mariner II. The other scientists thought cameras would be a waste of valuable space and equipment...Sagan couldn't believe they would give up the chance to see an alien planet up close[...]

Sagan lost the argument that time, but he won over NASA eventually. The Mariners were the last exploratory spacecraft ever launched by NASA without cameras. He contributed to the Viking, Voyager, and Galileo planetary exploration missions, and his insistence on the use of cameras helped us get the first close-up photographs of the outer planets and their moons.

I think that this latest image from Curiosity--on THE SURFACE OF MARS, fer crissake--reflects his legacy.  

Space News

Did you hear that astronomers at the European Southern Observatory have found a plant orbiting Alpha Centauri B, the closest star system to our own? 

It's not remotely Earth-like (small and really hot), but this is a really cool discovery because 1) we figured out it was there in a pretty sophisticated process after looking for a planet in the system for decades and not finding anything, and 2) as Phil Plait says in the same link above: 

This is Alpha Centauri! Famed and fabled in a thousand science fiction stories. It’s where the Robinson family was supposed to go in "Lost in Space". It’s where Zefram Cochrane lived in "Star Trek". It’s where the Fithp came from in Footfall...So I, and a lot of people like me, grew up hoping against hope we’d find a planet around one of these stars someday. And here we are.

And it's just a matter of time until we find planets that are actually Earth-like, I bet. Go humans!

Oh Hai

You may have seen this, but it's great: We have that robot we sent to Mars taking pictures of itself now:

I love that it looks like WALL-E. (More info at Bad Astronomy, of course.) 

Friday Bradbury Information

1. I didn't want to steal my dad's thunder, but Wednesday also would have been Ray Bradbury's 92nd birthday. In honor of that, did you see that the Curiosity rover named its landing site after him? 

2. The video in the post linked to above is really, really great--Ray talking to a roomful of JPL and Caltech engineers in 1971 on the eve of Mariner 9 going into orbit around Mars and then reading one of his poems.

So don't let the politicians of the world get you down. There's engineers and the next Ray out there too.

More Mars Stuff

Here are a couple more odds and ends from the Mars Curiosity landing, found via Bad Astronomy and my friend Jason's blog:

Here's a map of where all the parts ended up, taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter:

See what research tools Curiosity have on board and what they do right here. (Best artist rendering EVER, by the way.)

And that famous first image I posted Monday has already been turned into a meme. What was really there? Monoliths. 

Made It!

The Curiosity rover has landed on Mars, intact, on schedule, and is sending back images! 

I think this might be the moon landing of my generation. I mean, we accurately sent a robot through space for eight months, pretty much lowered it onto a different planet via a sky crane, and now we can see what it sees? My god. Good job, humans. Good job.

(Didn't stay up to watch the landing? Check out the NASA JPL site for all the details. Curiosity's Twitter stream is pretty cute, too.)

Friday Unrelated Information

1. I've always been someone who skips ahead in books and likes to know the plots of movies I'm going to see, so I thought this study was interesting:

Two researchers in the psychology department of the University of California at San Diego recently decided to test whether we really hate spoilers, or just like to say we do. What they found surprised them: The majority of people apparently like having a story spoiled for them. In fact, we may enjoy spoiled stories even more than the unspoiled versions.

2. The Mars Curiosity rover is scheduled to make its crazy complicated descent Sunday night at 11:30 MST. Here's a good roundup of coverage of the landing. Come on, Curiosity!

Friday Unrelated Information

1. Summer, where are you going? I realized Labor Day is six weeks away. Sigh. 

2. APOD posted a picture of the Tulip Nebula this week. Space is pretty.

Two Videos

Here is a video "trailer" for the Mars Curiosity rover landing on August 5, found via Bad Astronomy. It is worth the five minutes to watch it because in five minutes you can have your mind blown and your faith in humanity reaffirmed:

I usually dislike taglines but "Dare mighty things" at the end kind of made me tear up a little.

And here is a video created by the European Commission as part of the “Science: It’s a Girl Thing!” campaign to encourage girls to study science (it's now been pulled from the campaign).  This also blows the mind and brings you close to tears--but not in a good way:

To quote Elwood Blues, "Jesus H. Tap Dancing Christ." To quote the article in The Atlantic where I found this, "...science sells itself. It needs no polish or varnish or manufactured appeal to be attractive to women. To imply otherwise is an insult. To science and to women."

Two Things To Make You Happy Today

1. Space always does the trick for me. I'm sure you've heard by now that Voyager 1, launched in 1977 with the famous golden record of Earth sounds, is nearing the very edge of our solar system. I think the Daily Mail put this fact in context really well:

With absolutely no attempt at hyperbole at all, it is fair to say that this is one of--if not the--biggest achievement of the human race. For, as we speak, an object conceived in the human mind, and built by our tools, and launched from our planet, is sailing out of the further depths of our solar system--and will be the first object made by man to sail out into interstellar space."

2. And in further news of humans living up to the name, here's something that's been making the rounds: 21 Pictures That Will Restore Your Faith In Humanity. I just had to think of the end of the second Lord of the Rings movie and Sam saying, "There's still some good in this world, Mr. Frodo."

Friday Unrelated Information

1. It's a long weekend, hooray!

2. Have you been following the launch of the Dragon capsule from SpaceX? Something American-made is back in space, and it's been successfully captured by the ISS! I've been getting my news from Bad Astronomy. 

3. From the creator of last week's hit, "Lazy Harp Seal," I give you "Cat Licking a Hamster."

Colonies in space!

Worthy Of Dr. Sagan

You guys. Phil Plait at the Bad Astronomy blog has outdone himself. He's describing a massive, massive infrared survey of the sky--over 150 billion pixels, showing a billion stars--and he does it really, really well (click through to see how he gives an idea of scale). But it's at the end of the post that he gets really Sagan-esque:

Think on this: there are a billion stars in that image alone, but that’s less than 1% of the total number of stars in our galaxy! As deep and broad as this amazing picture is, it’s a tiny slice of our local Universe.

And once again, we’ve reached the point where I’m out of words. Our puny brains, evolved to count the number of our fingers and toes, to grasp only what’s within reach, to picture only what we can immediately see — balk at these images.

But… we took them. Human beings looked up and wondered, looked around and observed, looked out and discovered. In our quest to seek ever more knowledge, we built the tools needed to make these pictures: the telescopes, the detectors, the computers. And all along, the power behind that magnificent work was our squishy pink brains.

A billion stars in one shot, thanks to a fleshy mass of collected neurons weighing a kilogram or so. The Universe is amazing, but so are we.

Space News

Another new supernova has been found as of March 16. This one in barred spiral galaxy M95, which is roughly the size of our own Milky Way galaxy and about 37 million light years away. Supernova SN 2012aw is the really bright point at the end of the spiral arm that goes down and to the right--see it?
Oh, space. You provide such good perspective.

(Picture from APOD; you can read more about the supernova on Bad Astronomy.)

The Universe Loves You

The little space within the heart is as great as the vast universe. The heavens and the earth are there, and the sun and the moon and the stars. Fire and lightning and winds are there, and all that now is and all that is not. --The Upanishads

(Image from the Heart and Soul nebulae via Bad Astronomy; quote via my inner hippie. )

Friday Unrelated Information

1. A dear friend suffered a terrible loss this week, so putting up funny links or MST3K quotes doesn't feel right today. Instead, I will tell you to travel safely and hug your loved ones and try to make your part of the world more full of light.

2. I'll also give you a space picture, since that's how I cope:
(Click the image to see it bigger--every speck of light you see is a galaxy.)

This was the last image featured on The Atlantic's space Advent calendar. As the caption there said:
This Hubble image is one of several, including the Ultra Deep Field, which peer into seemingly empty space, leaving the camera shutter open for hours, and reveal that billions of galaxies made up of billions of stars fill our skies in every direction as far as we can possibly see, separated by almost unimaginable distance and time, yet still reachable, visible as an image of their long-ago selves.

I Think Of Space

I realize it's only been a week, but just Tuesday I was thinking, "Being kind and non-judgmental and happy is going so well!"

Then, of course, yesterday happened. So today I am re-grouping and thinking about space. This is Dr. Neil Tyson telling us we're all connected, much more eloquently than I did:



"We're all connected--to each other, biologically; to the earth, chemically; and to the rest of the universe, atomically...It's not that we're better than the universe; we're a part of the universe. We're in the universe and the universe is within us."

Let that thought get you through the rest of the week.

Space Jokes

For your Thursday, I give you two funny space things, as found on It's Full of Stars:

1. First, the Unimpressed Astronaut meme. It's fantastic. Go see all of them.



2. Second, as you (should) know, the Kepler observatory has found its first planet in the habitable zone of a star like the Sun. But did you know that the planet has a Twitter account? The first tweet is brilliant.

Big Day

Some big historical events happening today, courtesy of The Writer's Almanac:

1. The 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
2. Willa Cather's birthday.
3. The anniversary of the first fully clear photograph of the Earth from space, taken by the Apollo 17 crew in 1972, and known as "The Blue Marble."