Rosette Nebula & Pelican Nebula By Jesper Sundh

space is weird

It was a huge disappointment as a child to fall in love with the stars and then find out how much math it requires to get anywhere near them. 

The Newest & Clearest photo of Pluto.

See intricate cloud patterns in the northern hemisphere of Jupiter in this new view taken by NASA’s Juno spacecraft.

The color-enhanced image was taken on April 1 at 2:32 a.m. PST (5:32 a.m. EST), as Juno performed its twelfth close flyby of Jupiter. At the time the image was taken, the spacecraft was about 7,659 miles (12,326 kilometers) from the tops of the clouds of the planet at a northern latitude of 50.2 degrees.

Image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill

Happy Valentines day

Crab Nebula - a supernova remnant in the constellation Taurus.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Hester, A. Loll (ASU)

"We are made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself"

-Carl Sagan

By Lauchie Macdonald, at Boston Barber and Tattoo

the astronomy students

drawing your own star charts

staying up late to watch a meteor shower

constellations painted on your ceiling

tracking the planets, noting their paths in a pocket-sized journal

an old wool scarf wrapped around your neck to keep out the cold

marveling over photographs of distant galaxies

retelling the stories of Orion and Cassiopeia

the glittering expanse of a cloudless night sky

moonlight shining through gauzy curtains

driving somewhere remote to see the milky way, far from the light pollution of the city

looking for your place in the cosmos

finding comfort in the vastness of the universe, in your own comparative insignificance

a model of the solar system resting on your desk

old sci-fi novels with battered covers

studying the contributions of Copernicus and Al-Battani and Kepler

watching the moon wax and wane

your favorite blanket wrapped around your shoulders

maps of the constellations, illustrated with figures from the associated myths

wondering about life on other worlds

memorizing the constellations, noting how their positions move as the seasons change

a thermos of hot tea

stargazing with friends, gazing up and watching for shooting stars

learning the physics of stars and planets

a fascination with the unknown

May 11, 2009 — The Space Shuttle Atlantis blasts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, heading to orbit for an 11-day mission to the Hubble Space Telescope.

(NASA)