Jason Major

Space Shuttle Challenger in orbit during STS-7 in June 1983

45 years ago today we got our first closeup of the Solar System’s very own “Death Star!” Captured by Voyager 1 on November 12, 1980 as it passed Saturn, this image (PIA01968) shows the moon Mimas with its 139 km wide, 5 km deep Herschel crater making it resemble the Empire’s infamous space station.

On November 10, 1967 #OTD NASA captured its first color picture of the entire daylit side of Earth from space using the Multicolor Spin-Scan Cloudcover Camera on the ATS-3 weather satellite from an altitude of about 22,000 miles. (More on the MSSCC here: journals.ametsoc.org/view/journal...)

So that light is actually the result of Earth's atmosphere; specifically, how sunlight reflected from the Moon is refracted when it passes through it. There's a brief point where green light is separated from other colors, and at that time we see a greenish boundary to the Moon's leading edge.

Astronomers from the International Centre of Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) have created one of the largest low-frequency radio colour images of the Milky Way ever assembled. This spectacular new image captures the Southern Hemisphere view of the Galactic Plane – the disk of our Galaxy, which appears to human eyes as the glowing band of the Milky Way – now revealed across a wide range of radio wavelengths, or ‘colours’ of radio light.

This is what the band of the Milky Way would look like at night if your eyes could see radio waves. A hidden beauty.

It's a new image created by the Murchison Widefield Array, which scanned the sky in 20 radio "colors" over frequencies from 72 to 231 megahertz. 🧪🔭

www.icrar.org/gleam-x-gala...

While shooting the moonrise last night (since the eastern horizon was relatively free of clouds) I did get to capture another nice green flash along the Moon's upper limb. (Really more of a wavering flicker than a flash, but it was visible through the viewfinder.) 📸🌖

This was a cool place to visit!

Jupiter's colorful, lava-coated moon Io imaged by NASA's Galileo spacecraft on October 16, 2001

Do it

Cassini was the goat

Dione in front of Saturn, captured by Cassini 20 years ago today on October 11, 2005 🌖🪐

A little bit of the "green flash" captured during Sunday night's sunset

The Moon and Earth together captured with a camera aboard the ESA European Service Module during NASA's Artemis I mission on November 28, 2022. The spacecraft was about 42,000 miles beyond the Moon when this picture was taken.🌖🌍

The Sun eclipsed by the Moon—a photo captured in the midst of the brief period of totality during the August 21, 2017 solar eclipse.

Cassini's final full view of Saturn 🪐 a mosaic comprising 11 color-composites captured by the spacecraft in visible light filters on September 13, 2017. The following day it dove into Saturn's atmosphere, ending its mission after 13 years in orbit.

Io in front of Jupiter. This is a color-composite made from images captured by NASA's Galileo spacecraft in red, green, and violet wavelengths on September 6, 1996. Io is the most volcanically-active world in our solar system.

Tonight’s waxing gibbous Moon 🌔

Fair enough. Look baby turkeys (yesterday) !!

and this is just level 1 of The Total Perspective Vortex

Proxima Centauri is pretty small, only about twice the size of Jupiter. We can’t see it with the naked eye.

So much in that movie is a slow burn and endlessly rewatchable. 👍

I know it’s an oldie but I’m a fan of so many short lines from the original Ghostbusters. Classic irreverent comedy.

“I’ve worked in the private sector. They expect results.”

“I’ve quit better jobs than this!”

“Please come down.”

The next-closest star would be a sphere about 12 feet (3.6 m) wide...49.3 million miles (79.3 million km) away. ⭐️

Space is big.

If we equate Earth with the scale size of a basketball, the Moon would be about the size of a tennis ball, 24 feet (7.3 m) away. 🌎🌖

The Sun would be a sphere 86 feet (26 m) wide—about the height of an 8-story building—1.8 miles (2.9 km) away. 🌞

Do humans count?

It's mind-bogglingly big.

The 1909 pennies were wheaties yeah

This is a closeup of the 1909 Lincoln penny that's been on Mars as part of Curiosity's MAHLI calibration target for almost 13 years

They wanted us to become friends with monsters

I think Mythbusters did it once. It works.

You could at least point and say “that could happen!”