Archive for category Space

Our Strange Sky: Canadians Launch a Lego Man Into Space, Films it All. Awesome Journey, Eh?

They claim to have more video on how they did it and extended footage in the works. We’ll keep an eye on their Facebook page for these bits.
Official site http://www.facebook.com/legomaninspace

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Our Strange Sky: Father, Son Space Balloon Launch REMIXED

In October 2010, a father and son launched an iphone and HD camera into space to film low earth orbit.

We talked it up back then.

A Space Balloon Remix video set to a cut from Brian Eno’s 28 DAYS LATER soundtrack quickly followed. We just found out about that this year.

via +Sean Cowen

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NASA’s Astounding Photo of Earth as It Hangs in Space, See the Earth as it Truly Is

This photo of the world as stitched together from NASA’s weather satellite Suomi NPP is the very definition of amazing. We can’t stress enough how much you need to follow this link to the high definition image on NASA Flickr.

Download and have a look at our world, standing alone, in the black.

Most Amazing High Definition Image of Earth - Blue Marble 2012

Because we could not leave well enough alone, and perhaps this image stirred a bit of our poetic spirit, we found a website of Space Quotations devoted specifically to the big blue marble that is Earth.

To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves a riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold—brothers who know now they are truly brothers.

— Archibald MacLeish, American poet, ‘Riders on earth together, Brothers in eternal cold,’ front page of the New York Times, Christmas Day, 25 December 1968

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ISS Crew Greets Puny Earthlings 2012 New Year with a Video…FROM SPACE

Six space station astronauts ushered in 2012 together: European astronaut Andre Kuipers, American Don Pettit, Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, American Dan Burbank, and cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Anatoly Ivanishin. According to NASA, the crew will also commemorate Russian Orthodox Christmas on January 7, 2012.

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Today in Star Wars: Comparing the ISS against a Star Destroyer

One can view the International Space Station ISS from the ground. It’s a fairly large piece of orbiting human engineering. But what of the interstaller ships of fiction. The ones so large they block out suns just before the fatal attack?

Recently, the Lounge of the Lab Lemming explored this very concept.

Science fiction generally depicts people walking around on the ground, or starships floating close above a planet, but with little connection between the two; The only time I can recall people on the ground seeing spacecraft above are when the Death Star explodes in Return of the Jedi, and when the remains of the Enterprise re-enter the atmosphere in Star Trek 3. But if you can see the ISS from here on Earth, then surely a larger science fiction (or alien) spacecraft would be brighter still.

Drop below the jump to see a comparison against the moon.
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Our Strange Sky: Astronaut Ron Garan Shares the Moon

via +Ron Garan

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Juno Photographs Earth and the Moon from 6 Million Miles Away, Puts Life in Perspective

The Juno spacecraft took the new photo on Aug. 26 as part of a test of its camera imaging system called JunoCam. The result: a parting shot of the Earth-moon system as the probe sails on its five-year trip to Jupiter.

“This is a remarkable sight people get to see all too rarely,” said Juno principal investigator Scott Bolton, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, in a statement. “This view of our planet shows how Earth looks from the outside, illustrating a special perspective of our role and place in the universe. We see a humbling yet beautiful view of ourselves.

via Space.com

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Astronomers Locate Geidi Prime, House Atredies Put on Alert

The Jupiter-sized gas giant named TrES-2b was found using NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, which has the capacity to measure light, even in extremely distant objects. However, TrES-2b reflects less than one percent of light shined upon it, making it the darkest planet or moon ever discovered thus far.

TrES-2b is considerably less reflective than black acrylic paint, so it’s truly an alien world,” said lead author and astronomer David Kipping of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).

TrES-2b is heated up to temperatures greater than 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit by its star, which it orbits from a mere distance of 3 million miles. This planet is unique as it does not have any clouds similar to planets like Jupiter, cloaked by clouds of ammonia. Rather, high temperatures prohibit any clouds from forming, causing a mystery as to why the planet is so dark and unreflective.

What said astronomers forgot to mention, it’s Giedi Prime. All of you who haven’t read or watched DUNE(David Lynch or SyFy miniseries style) need to get caught up on this.

In the meantime, science has found House Harkonnen lurking in The Black. This means, we’ve got to get on that traveling without moving business and bring the rain to Arrakis.*

*This post is heavily saturated in nerd references. Follow those links if you feel confused.

via IBT, IPOD

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Our Strange Sky: NASA’s Bird’s Eye View of Hurricane Irene

We’ve had our eyes to the skies even though our blog has been silent. Here we have @Astro_Ron‘s tweeted photo of Irene from the ISS. Below the jump, NASA video of Irene from space and a live blog of her passing.

@Astro_Ron Views Irene on August 27, 2011

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Our Strange Sky: The Plains Milky Way of South Dakota

Notes on experiencing this video to the fullest:

1) Wait until the dark of night.
2) Find the darkest corner of your house/apartment/cave hole.
3) Set the video to fullscreen
4) Enjoy

We love what Randy Halverson sees in Our Strange Sky.

During the month of May, I shot Milky Way timelapse in central South Dakota, when I had the time, and the weather cooperated.

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This was all shot at night. If you see stars and it looks like daylight, it is actually moon light. 20+ second exposures make it look like daylight.

Official Site: http://dakotalapse.com/

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