Picture Of The Day 2 - November 25, 2018

Front row seat to a galactic merger.

What’s the biggest misconception people have about space or astronomy in general?

I’m not sure which is the biggest mistake, but I believe that one of them is the colors that are imposed on the images of planets, nebulae and other bodies of space. Many images are not real colors, many of them are fake colors. False colors are used to differentiate, some particular type of material, temperature, wavelength, chemical or mineral variations, and other factors.

Mercury with colors in visible light

Color-enhanced, this image represents chemical and mineral variations across the planet: tan areas are lava-formed plains, and blue regions show material that reflects little light.

This image shows two different views of the Horsehead Nebula. On the right is a view of the nebula in visible light, taken using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile . The new image on the left shows the nebula in the infrared, using observations from Hubble’s high-resolution Wide Field Camera 3.

Some illustrations of space can also deceive or confuse, like images of exoplanets, where in fact we do not know for sure what it would be, since we can not have such clear images to the point where we can see them closely, and other things like representation of the curvature of space time, which shows a curvature in 2D, would actually be in 3D, but this is a little harder to visualize.

Curvature of the space-time fabric in 2D

Curvature of the space-time fabric in 3D

An annotated view of the Beta Pictoris system.

Artist’s impression of Beta Pictoris b. The debris disk around the parent star can be seen.

You can learn more about it by clicking here!

Oculus System - Post 1 (Introduction)

We are now inside the giant NGC 604 Nebula. I’ve come across this wide binary system consisting of a F4 giant that is almost 16 times brighter than Earth’s sun and a smaller, but still bright G0V type star more than twice the brightness of Sol. The first worlds I am exploring are the ones orbiting the smaller or secondary of the two stars.

Descriptions of the planet’s to follow in the next post.

Space Engine System ID: RS 1229-171-5-23517-58

High Resolution Pics

Picture 1 - Inner-most Planet

Picture 2 - Surface

Picture 3 - Warm Ice-Giant

Picture 4 - System's fourth planet from a satellite

Picture 5 - Double occultation of two moons

Picture 6 - World with Ethane Oceans

Picture 7 - Setting distant 2nd sun

Pictures of the Day - December 14, 2018

Insight A System - Inner-Most Planet (Insight A-I)

The Inner-most planet is a baked world orbiting perilously close to its sun at a distance of just 0.04 AU. The planet has a mass of roughly 0.56 Earth Masses and a diameter 93% that of Earth. It is rocky desert world. A thick carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide atmosphere covers the surface with an atmospheric pressure 10 times that of Earth.

Surface temperatures are extreme, reaching 1,800 F during the day.  At these temperatures some surface rocks melt into lakes of magma and the surface glows a dull red at night. The atmosphere also contains clouds composed of liquid glass droplets. Despite it’s close orbital proximity to the sun, it is not tidally locked. The planet has a moderately elliptical orbit with an eccentricity of 0.10. This results in a 3 to 2 orbit to spin resonance. In other words the planet completes three rotations for every 2 orbits, just like the planet Mercury.

BTW Everyone, it looks like Space Engine version 0.999 is probably going to be released sometime soon, probably before the end of the year. Can’t wait to start taking pics in it.

High Resolution Pictures

Insight A-I

From a Glowing Asteroid Moon

Atmospheric Glow

Sunrise

Green Desert

Picture of the Day - November 2, 2018

Weird green desert-world rich in life, but lacking any bodies of surface liquids. Planet has a thin carbon dioxide atmosphere, average surface temperature of 73°F on the day side and is tidally locked to the sun.

Insight System - Post 1

First post of the Insight System.

The Insight system (named after the newest Mars lander) is a wide-spaced binary system consisting of a yellow G1V type star (Insight A) and a dimmer orange K5V type star (Insight B), that orbit each other in an elliptical orbit at an average distance of 192.3 AU. Both stars complete 1 orbit around each other every 2,432 years.

Insight A is 1.6 times brighter than our sun, and Insight B is only 1/6th the brightness of our sun.

Both stars have their own solar systems.

My first post if of the 6 planets orbiting the dimmer star Insight B.

First Planet Insight B-I (1.1 Earth masses)

Second Planet Insight B-II (5.3 Earth Masses)

Third Planet Insight B-III (11.7 Jupiter Masses)

Fourth Planet Insight B-IV (0.20 Jupiter Masses)

Fifth Planet Insight B-V (0.27 Earth masses)

Outer-most planet Insight B-VI (1.42 Jupiter Masses)

More pictures to come soon.

Pictures of the day - December 16, 2018

Insight A System - 3rd Planet (Insight A-III)

Insight A-III is the third planet orbiting Insight A. It is a hot Ice-giant orbiting it’s sun at an average distance of 0.12 AU. The planet’s atmosphere has a temperature of 960 F and it’s atmosphere lacks any type of define cloud decks. This is a helium ice giant, meaning that it has lost all of it’s hydrogen and the atmosphere is dominated by helium instead. As a result, the planet has a monochromatic color.

Insight A-III has a mass of 13.22 Earths, and a diameter of 4.03 times that of Earth. The planet is tidally locked to it’s sun and orbits the sun once every 14.76 Earth days.

High Resolution Pictures

Insight A-III

Lunar View

Asteroid Moon

Blinding Sun and Inner Planets

IC 5070, Pelican in the Swan

Horns by Michal Kváč https://ift.tt/2zvtNZ1

Hey Tumblr!

I have started a new blog to share the joys of fishing and kayaking! This post is all about the best cheap kayaks for under 200 dollars. I hope some of you who are interested can find more about kayaking and fishing! Either way, it’s worth a read if you have a minute. It might just save you a few hundred dollars down the road.

Read my blog at Get Fishing Equipment

Picture of the day - December 13, 2018

Two large moons cross the face of an ice giant.