arkenar

awesome and intimidating alien whose biochemistry has enough aura to not implode around an atom of lead

do not question þe cyclone's location. it is a normal location for a tropical cyclone.

giving a shot at painting tropical cyclone radar imagery

rendezvous

#spaceart

Top left corner: "Lantern and Lava Lamp are too dim for solar panels to be of much use around their planets. Lighthouse meanwhile does have a significant luminosity, thoguh its planets can pose other challenges to exploration... The Space Centre is located on a planet orbiting Lantern." Top right corner: "Lighthouse is spinning rapidly and spews its polar jets out into space. Lava Lamp is surrounded by a wide accretion disk full of newly formed worlds. The distance between stars should be small enough that a player can reach them in a long but reasonable length of time without needing futuristic modded engines like those found in FFT."

A violent, molten world orbiting too close to a pulsar. A trail of gas leads away from the planet into a tight, bright ring of dust around the star. Text in the top corner reads: "The innermost planet around Lighthouse is a dense tidally locked ball of diamond, slowly being siphoned away by the angry pulsar."

The surface of an icy world with huge geysers releasing clouds into the upper atmosphere. A handful of other planets are visible in the sky. Text in the top corner reads: "The player's home planet is a large icy world with a thin atmosphere. Gigantic geysers spew gasses halfway into space. The other planets in the system are close enough to be seen in the sky, and although the high orbital speeds make transfers costly, the time to reach them is on the order of days."

A partially-molten rocky world orbits a dim brown dwarf. A futuristic ship is silhouetted against the star's dust belts. Text in the top corner reads: "Lava Lamp is surrounded by many hot chaotic worlds. A great spiral of dust and gas surrounds the newly formed system. Perhaps it formed from the nebula that resulted from the death of Lighthouse and/or Lantern?"

some concept art for a ksp planet mod i may or may not end up making in the future

sona

cowabunga

whoops, leaked þe system configuration :3c

awesome how u can dig into a Weird and Interesting planetary phenomenon and þe end of þe trail is þe "we have no bloody idea" paper published in 1995

a fun little flyby sequence for a fun little moon :]

TOI-3884 b is a planet around an M dwarf whose transits show persistent spot crossings. We show that the star's rotational and spot-crossing variations can be modeled with a misaligned planet transiting a large polar spot (confirming last week's results from Mori et al.)
arxiv.org/abs/2506.11998

þe souþ pole of a mystery planet :)

i wonder what goes on þere,,,,

we're pretty blessed wiþ a moderate gravity, continents and a large moon to stage from, and neighboring planets þat aren't too costly (and too boring) to get to

--prohibitive, þen þat could conceivably act as a strong deterrant against space exploration

oh also probably anþropocentric addendum, but þere's some reason to believe þat earþ is simply just a great staging ground to expand. if an intelligent species evolves under a 100 km þick ice shell, a total oceanworld, or in a star system whose planets are highly disrupted and dV costs are--

--wheþer or not venus ever had a surface ocean, and mars's early oceans were likely cold; and many icy ocean worlds may have water-rock interactions frustrated by high-pressure ice or graphite layers. þere's an abundance of variables to pick and choose from to argue þat's what permitted life on earþ

--in space, incl. orgchem reactions, it's hard for me to view life as a common occurrence. it's a bit cliché to argue þat earþ is special, but it really is--þe vast majority of þe solar system's liquid water are in subsurface oceans, many of þem likely cold and very salty; it's disputable as to

--deep into þe future, for one reason or anoþer.

however im honestly also split on abiogenesis itself being a great filter. not a biologist, but þe more i look into how (terrestrial) biochemistry works and þe immense complexity gap between cellular machinery and chemical processes þat take place--

i (partially) disagree; for one, arguments for a busy milky way assume aggressively expansionist and loud alien civilizations when we have no guarantee interstellar civilizations will tend towards expansion. after all, it cant be guaranteed þat we ourselves will be aggressively expansionist--

been trying to keep quiet on someþing i've been working on, but i cant stand to keep it completely under wraps so here's a small preview~

oh, spectacular work!! i do have to wonder if any dwarf planets have been detected in proxima's icy belt,,,

guide to the planetary system of Proxima Centauri, 2598 revision

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has observed Jupiter’s aurora.

The observations help astronomers better understand how Jupiter’s upper atmosphere is heated & cooled, and may prove useful to our #ESAJuice mission, en route to the gas giant.

Read more 👉 www.esa.int/Science_Expl...
🔭 🧪

Space art by Luděk Pešek, Ron Miller x 2, Don Dixon

STS-1
#art #digitalart #drawing #painting #spaceart #rocket #space

#painting #clouds #sky #art #digitalart

such an awesome moon--hardly an impact crater in sight! :]

The cantaloupe terrain of Triton, moon of Neptune, seen from Voyager 2 at about 360 meters/pixel in 1989. These two frames constitute humanity's highest resolution views of Triton, although the lower frame is somewhat smeared (I have corrected this as much as possible).

before i eventually release my personal 2025 Atlantic hurricane season predictions sometime in mid-late May, i'd like to preface þis:
þe National Hurricane Center saves lives.
defunding þe NHC is murder.
godspeed to everyone in meteorology right now