In 2017, I crocheted myself a solar system costume. The headpiece is mounted on a bike helmet for stability (I got that tip from some folks who build showgirl costumes). The tunic is made from fine black linen yarn, very matte, very tedious, much like I imagine space is most of the time. The planets are made using an online sphere pattern generator, so that I could vary the sizes in a predictable way; they are strung on a fishing line with beads, and suspended from an elastic collar, also crocheted. They are also kept in place with a beaded "asteroid belt", located between Mars and Jupiter, of course. Photographed at Manhattan Beach Pier. All second-hand yarns, though I had to ask around for enough yellow to make the sun so large. #solarsystem#crochet#costume#planets#sun#astronomy#planetary#yesplutotoo
The Mars Express probe has been exploring Mars for 20 years now. As part of an anniversary celebration, the ESA team released this new color-enhanced close-up of Valles Marineris, the largest canyon in the solar system. It's more than 4,000 kilometers wide!
OTD in 2020, Jupiter & Saturn came into conjunction (closest since 1643). MeerKAT (radio interferometer in South Africa) also turned its gaze towards the planets to observe their radio emissions.
They serendipitously discovered a pulsar in the background!
Here in the first inset, you can see Jupiter (which is a bright radio source in our sky), as well as Saturn (annotated 'S' - note that it is not as bright a radio source as Jupiter) and the pulsar (annoyed 'P' which stands for pulsar with anomalous refraction recurring on odd timescales - PARROT).
Also (last two insets), can we all appreciate how incredible Jupiter looks in radio with MeerKAT 𝐵-field vectors overplotted? Radiation belts FTW!
Oh, and those other sources - they aren't stars ... they are all supermassive black holes in distant galaxies in the background! (look at those jets!)
NASA's Webb captures Uranus in unprecedented detail, unveiling 13 rings and nine moons, providing groundbreaking insights into the ice giant's dynamic atmosphere.
Astronomers Discover Rare #SolarSystem Where Planets Orbit in Mathematical Harmony
In a solar system 100 light years away, six #planets are locked into a precise dance. The amount of time it takes each one to #orbit the system’s sun forms a neat ratio with the orbits of neighboring planets—a trait that’s rare in outer space.
Space telescopes with deformable mirrors may directly image exoplanets
Deformable mirrors have been envisioned as a key component in imaging Earth-like worlds with future space telescopes
The Big Numbers argument notes that our #galaxy, the #MilkyWay 🌌, has something like 400 billion #stars 🎇, and it’s just one of untold billions of galaxies in a #universe that might be infinite. Moreover, in the past 30 years, astronomers have discovered that #planets 🪐 of all shapes and sizes are common in the universe.
With so much turf out there, even the most frowny-faced skeptic must admit it’s hard to run the numbers 📊 in a 13.8 billion-year-old universe like ours and wind up with just one self-aware, technological, #telescope 🔭-constructing species.
The universe is not about us, and what happened on this planet over the past 4 billion years could happen elsewhere.