129 posts
Latest Posts by marquicey - Page 3
Little Rock
Earth from Afar
“It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.” - Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11
This week we’re celebrating Earth Day 2018 with some of our favorite images of Earth from afar…
At 7.2 million Miles…and 4 Billion Miles
Voyager famously captured two unique views of our homeworld from afar. One image, taken in 1977 from a distance of 7.3 million miles (11.7 million kilometers) (above), showed the full Earth and full Moon in a single frame for the first time in history. The second (below), taken in 1990 as part of a “family portrait of our solar system from 4 billion miles (6.4 billion kilometers), shows Earth as a tiny blue speck in a ray of sunlight.” This is the famous “Pale Blue Dot” image immortalized by Carl Sagan.
“This was our willingness to see the Earth as a one-pixel object in a far greater cosmos,” Sagan’s widow, Ann Druyan said of the image. “It’s that humility that science gives us. That weans us from our childhood need to be the center of things. And Voyager gave us that image of the Earth that is so heart tugging because you can’t look at that image and not think of how fragile, how fragile our world is. How much we have in common with everyone with whom we share it; our relationship, our relatedness, to everyone on this tiny pixel.“
A Bright Flashlight in a Dark Sea of Stars
Our Kepler mission captured Earth’s image as it slipped past at a distance of 94 million miles (151 million kilometers). The reflection was so extraordinarily bright that it created a saber-like saturation bleed across the instrument’s sensors, obscuring the neighboring Moon.
Hello and Goodbye
This beautiful shot of Earth as a dot beneath Saturn’s rings was taken in 2013 as thousands of humans on Earth waved at the exact moment the spacecraft pointed its cameras at our home world. Then, in 2017, Cassini caught this final view of Earth between Saturn’s rings as the spacecraft spiraled in for its Grand Finale at Saturn.
‘Simply Stunning’
”The image is simply stunning. The image of the Earth evokes the famous ‘Blue Marble’ image taken by astronaut Harrison Schmitt during Apollo 17…which also showed Africa prominently in the picture.“ -Noah Petro, Deputy Project Scientist for our Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission.
Goodbye—for now—at 19,000 mph
As part of an engineering test, our OSIRIS-REx spacecraft captured this image of Earth and the Moon in January 2018 from a distance of 39.5 million miles (63.6 million kilometers). When the camera acquired the image, the spacecraft was moving away from our home planet at a speed of 19,000 miles per hour (8.5 kilometers per second). Earth is the largest, brightest spot in the center of the image, with the smaller, dimmer Moon appearing to the right. Several constellations are also visible in the surrounding space.
The View from Mars
A human observer with normal vision, standing on Mars, could easily see Earth and the Moon as two distinct, bright "evening stars.”
Moon Photobomb
“This image from the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite captured a unique view of the Moon as it moved in front of the sunlit side of Earth in 2015. It provides a view of the far side of the Moon, which is never directly visible to us here on Earth. “I found this perspective profoundly moving and only through our satellite views could this have been shared.” - Michael Freilich, Director of our Earth Science Division.
Eight Days Out
Eight days after its final encounter with Earth—the second of two gravitational assists from Earth that helped boost the spacecraft to Jupiter—the Galileo spacecraft looked back and captured this remarkable view of our planet and its Moon. The image was taken from a distance of about 3.9 million miles (6.2 million kilometers).
A Slice of Life
Earth from about 393,000 miles (633,000 kilometers) away, as seen by the European Space Agency’s comet-bound Rosetta spacecraft during its third and final swingby of our home planet in 2009.
So Long Earth
The Mercury-bound MESSENGER spacecraft captured several stunning images of Earth during a gravity assist swingby of our home planet on Aug. 2, 2005.
Earth Science: Taking a Closer Look
Our home planet is a beautiful, dynamic place. Our view from Earth orbit sees a planet at change. Check out more images of our beautiful Earth here.
Join Our Earth Day Celebration!
We pioneer and supports an amazing range of advanced technologies and tools to help scientists and environmental specialists better understand and protect our home planet - from space lasers to virtual reality, small satellites and smartphone apps.
To celebrate Earth Day 2018, April 22, we are highlighting many of these innovative technologies and the amazing applications behind them.
Learn more about our Earth Day plans HERE.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com
Lol Cathematicians. Good Stuff
Cats + Mathematics = the Furbonacci sequence
The Fibonacci sequence is found in many places in nature, including the branching of trees, leaves on a stem, the flowering of an artichoke, or an uncurling fern. But what if you applied this famous approximation of the golden spiral to our feline friends? Suddenly cats become even more awesome than we already thought they were.
Bored Panda is building a large collection of cute kitties demonstrating their mathematical prowess, nearly 40 as of the writing of this post. Click here to view them all.
Photos by thecheat42, Akimasa Harada, songbardbird, jacquiep, naux, and Beverley Goodwin respectively.
[via Bored Panda]
Cool stuff
These giant mesh nets provide drinking water in the driest desert on Earth.
What if life as we know it is like listening to the alien’s message playing on repeat and we have to decode their message sent from the extra dimensions?
What if aliens don’t exist and we are alone in the Universe …….
Music’s kiss
Falling up the stairs 🙃🤦🏼♀️
🇬️🇮️🇫️😂 😲💫💥
You deserve to be more than medicine for someone’s loneliness.
maxwelldpoetry, writing prompt #65: write a ten-word-story (via wnq-astrology)
Thank your lucky stars, I needed someone to cheer up ☺️ Marquice
Satiric Drawings by Pawel Kuczynski
Some of the new works by Polish cartoonist Pawel Kuczynski (featured previously) who has been rewarded with more than 100 prizes and distinctions creating thought-provoking illustrations that comment on social, economic, and political issues through satire.
Let’s make #CrossConnect the most popular hashtag on Twitter!
posted by Margaret
That looks so pretty
Ok so I just discovered that this exsists! (HoleRoll blackout curtains)
Reblog this if you are literally suprised when people find you attractive.
What side would you hold?
Dependence By Mehran
I mentioned this guy when talking to my gf about not getting out enough 😏
“If I have ventured wrongly, very well, life then helps me with its penalty. But if I haven’t ventured at all, who helps me then?” – Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death
Bleak
In fact, it contains most of the world’s megacities, which have at least 10 million people each. Learn more in our NEW VIDEO: youtu.be/DZAMKuXJOcg
ily computer
Neuroscience
Brain Opioids Help Us to Relate with Others
Recent results obtained by researchers from Turku PET Centre and Aalto University have revealed how the human brain’s opioid system modulates responses to other people’s pain.
Seeing others experiencing pain activated brain circuits that are known to support actual first-hand experience of pain. The less opioid receptors the participants had in their brain, the stronger were their emotion and pain circuits’ response to seeing others in distress. Similar association was not found for the dopamine system despite its known importance in pain management.
– Capacity for vicarious experiences is a fundamental aspect of human social behaviour. Our results demonstrate the importance of the endogenous opioid system in helping us to relate with others’ feelings. Interindividual differences in the opioid system could explain why some individuals react more strongly than others to someone else’s distress, says Researcher Tomi Karjalainen from Turku PET Centre.
– The results show that first-hand and vicarious pain experiences are supported by the same neurotransmitter system. This finding could explain why seeing others in pain often feels unpleasant. High opioid-receptor availability may, however, protect against excessive distress resulting from negative social signals, such as other people’s distress. Our findings thus suggest that the brain’s opioid system could constitute an important social resiliency factor, tells Professor Lauri Nummenmaa from Turku PET Centre and Department of Psychology at the University of Turku.
The study was conducted by using positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The participants were injected with radioactive compounds that bind to their brain’s opioid and dopamine receptors. Radioactivity in the brain was measured twice with the PET camera to map the distribution of opioid and dopamine receptors. Subsequently, the participants’ brain activity was measured with fMRI while they viewed videos depicting humans in various painful and painless situations.
When a series is long and your books don’t match. Also, if you haven’t checked out this series yet, you’re going to want to. Just read that cover blurb.
✨☺️
I want to meet someone neutral, sick of life, crazy about sex, naturally crazy with her deep thoughts.
My Thoughts (via subconscious-thoughts)
En este mundo hay personas de todo tipo, desde las que tienen corazones tan puros que nunca deberían ser todos hasta quienes merecen que les rompan no solo el corazón sino la cara, personas adictas a lo que no los llena, millones de seres humanos que viven vidas que no les pertenecen, que viven por complacer, por estar “a la moda”, una gran cantidad de soñadores en silencio, miles de pensadores que no han sido descubiertos, estrellas que se ocultan por miedo, amantes que temen a amar, personas que satanizan sus vidas, pero sobre todo esa cantidad de formas, de cualidades, sobre todo eso, cada una sigue siendo un ser humano, como tú y como yo.
LØUIS BLUE
Invite someone over, then tell them to go, come again
When you love someone, you share their energy. You are connected.
This soothes my eyes
Timelapse view of lava moving on the plains near Pu’u O’o, Hawaii. The hill in the distance is called the “Pali”, it is the mark of a large normal fault created by part of the island sliding out towards the sea. Lava cascades over the Pali on its way to the ocean during the eruption. This is substantially sped up from how fast Pahoehoe lava typically flows.
