One more picture of the moon tonight.

Vännäs Sweden. 22.20. local time.

Blue moon tonight.

Picture is taken outside my home right now.

Vintage Space. Is Pluto a Planet Yet ?

Blå måne I natt.

Blå måne är när fullmåne inträffar två gånger på samma månad som man kallar det för blå måne. Fenomenet beror på att månens omloppstid runt jorden och tiden mellan två fullmånar är något kortare än en genomsnittligt lång kalendermånad.
Det är första gången på tre år som fenomenet uppstår och det dröjer ytterligare tre år innan det uppstår igen.
I kväll väntas en till stora delar molnfri kväll och natt i framför allt mellersta Sverige. Där är alltså chanserna att få se månen som störst.
Fenomenet uppstod senast i augusti 2012 och trots namnet så innebär det inte att månen kommer att färgas blå.

My name will be at Planetary Society HQ at 60 S. Los Robles. Pasadena, CA, USA.

Bill Nye

Planetary Societys new HQ. The building is expected to be fully functional in July, but won’t be ready for a public opening until this fall. An open house and a 35th Anniversary celebration are planned on October 24th.

SciShow time.

Rosetta lander science.

The Rosetta orbiter is continuing its science until the end of the extended Rosetta mission in September 2016. The lander’s future is less certain. This film covers some of what we’ve learnt from Philae about comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko so far.

Space to Ground this week.

One Year Mission Crew Members Discuss Life and Research in Space.

Aboard the International Space Station, Expedition 44 Flight Engineers Scott Kelly of NASA and Mikhail Kornienko of the Russian Federal Space Agency discussed the progress of their year-long mission on the orbital complex with Fox News Channel’s “America’s News Headquarters” program and Reuters TV during a pair of in-flight interviews July 30. Kelly and Kornienko are now in the fifth month of their one-year mission, gathering valuable biomedical data on the effect of long periods of weightlessness on the human body that will be used to help formulate the planning for a future mission to Mars.

Pluto in a Minute 25.

Science enthusiasts around the world have a unique opportunity to help NASA learn more about Mars.

Science enthusiasts around the world have a unique opportunity to help NASA learn more about Mars. Members of NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) science team are asking the public to help them categorize strange features near the Red Planet's south pole for further study and analysis.
Those who join the effort will review photos of the region captured by MRO's Context Camera (CTX), identifying areas that deserve more detailed scrutiny by the orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera. HiRISE has a resolution of about 20 inches (50 centimeters) per pixel, compared to 20 feet (6 m) per pixel for CTX, NASA officials said.
Volunteers should see some interesting features in the CTX images, thanks to the seasonal thawing and freezing of carbon-dioxide ice (also known as dry ice) in the Martian polar regions.
"In the spring, the dry ice turns to gas and carves unusual features in the Mars surface, resulting in exotic terrains described informally as 'spiders,' 'Swiss cheese' and 'channel networks,'" HiRISE deputy principal investigator Candice Hansen, of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, said in a statement.
You can learn more about the project — including how to participate — at the "Planet Four: Terrains" website here: http://terrains.planetfour.org

 

Catching a GLIMPSE of the Milky Way.

Welcome home! This is our Milky Way galaxy as you've never seen it before. Ten years in the making, this is the clearest infrared panorama of our galactic home ever made, courtesy of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

Space Station Live: From Underwater, The NEEMO Commander.

In the midst of a 20-day mission on the Aquarius underwater laboratory, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Luca Parmitano talks with NASA Commentator Pat Ryan about the NEEMO (NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations) mission he is commanding. Parmitano and five crewmates are using the underwater laboratory to simulate being in space away from Earth, testing spacewalking tools and techniques, protocols for communications during periods of long transmission delays, and assessing other new hardware being developed for use on future missions into deep space.

Simulation of Gravitational Microlensing.

This simulation shows the 22-year journey of a star moving through space and passing directly in front of a more distant background star. All stars drift through space. Occasionally, a star lines up perfectly in front of a more distant star. The momentary alignment magnifies and brightens the light from the background star, an effect called gravitational microlensing.

In April 2005, ground-based gravitational microlensing searches detected a star that had aligned perfectly with a distant background star. Light from the background star briefly appeared two percent dimmer and then brighter than it would have without the gravitational lensing effect of the planet. The planetary system is catalogued as OGLE-2005-BLG-169L.

The simulation continues to show the passage of the foreground star. Observations in April 2011 by the Hubble Space Telescope allowed astronomers to separate the light of the foreground star and the background star. The planetary system microlensing model predicted the rate by which the foreground star and planet would separate from the background star on the sky, and these Hubble observations confirmed this prediction. The combination of the measured brightness of the planetary host star and the gravitational lensing light-curve model allowed astronomers to deduce the mass of the foreground star and its planet.

Credit: NASA, ESA, D. Bennett (University of Notre Dame), Wiggle Puppy Productions, and G. Bacon (STScI)

Descending to a comet.

• Title Descending to a comet
• Released 30/07/2015 8:00 pm
• Copyright ESA/Rosetta/Philae/ROLIS/DLR
• Description Images taken by Philae’s ROsetta Lander Imaging System, ROLIS, trace the lander’s descent to the first landing site, Agilkia, on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko on 12 November 2015. The first image was taken just over 3 km from the comet, and indicates the position of Agilkia and the area covered by the next image in the sequence, taken just 67 m away. The six images that follow were taken at approximately 10 second intervals prior to landing, with the final image of the sequence acquired 9 m above the touchdown site. The time the images were acquired, along with distance from the surface and image resolution, are marked on each image. The final slide is annotated with the estimated touchdown position and orientation of Philae, which has been calculated to within ±20 cm.
  The images taken shortly before touchdown progressively reveal a surface comprising metre-size blocks of diverse shapes and random orientations, coarse regolith with grain sizes of 10–50 cm and, in the closest image, granules less than 10 cm across. The regolith in this region is thought to extend to a depth of 2 m in places, but seems to be free from fine-grained dust deposits at the resolution of the images.
  The largest boulder, seen only in the images taken from distances between 67.4 m and 28.9 m, measures about 5 m high, with a peculiar bumpy structure and fracture lines running through it that suggest erosional forces are working to fragment the comet’s boulders into smaller pieces. The boulder also has a tapered ‘tail’ of debris behind it, yielding clues as to how particles lifted up from one part of the eroding comet are deposited elsewhere. This boulder can also be viewed in an anaglyph image here.
  
  

Should We Be Excited For 'Earth 2.0'?

Recently, NASA’s Kepler space telescope discovered the most Earth-like planet yet! Should we prepare to move there, or do we need to tone down our excitement?

How Sunlight Pushes Asteroids.

Rotating asteroids have a tough time sticking to their orbits. Their surfaces heat up during the day and cool down at night, giving off radiation that can act as a sort of mini-thruster. This force, called the Yarkovsky effect, can cause rotating asteroids to drift widely over time, making it hard for scientists to predict their long-term risk to Earth. To learn more about the Yarkovsky effect, NASA is sending a spacecraft called OSIRIS-REx to the near-Earth asteroid Bennu. OSIRIS-REx will observe how Bennu’s shape, brightness, and surface features influence the strength of the Yarkovsky effect, helping scientists to better predict Bennu’s orbit over time and pin down its long-term risk.

Vintge Space. When a Muscle Car Towed a Lifting Body into the Air.

Space Station Live: Astronaut T.J. Creamer Leaves the POD.

Pluto in a Minute 24.

Pluto in a Minute 23.

SciShow time.

Stephen Hawking lecture in Stockholm. Blast !!! Sold out !!

So cool. RT reporter metres from launch pad as Soyuz blasts off

 From 2009. Canadian billionaire and circus entrepreneur Guy Laliberte has blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome with the 21st mission to the International Space Station.
RT's Gayane Chichakyan was there for the lift-off.

The plan to clean up space junk.

A team of engineers has been at work for the past three years to develop a space cleanup satellite. The intent is to eliminate threatening, human-made orbital debris.
The worry is not new – there's lots of clutter to pick and choose from, be it broken down satellites to tossed away rocket stages.
Source: Space.com

Mickes Space Roses

Vintage Space. When Gemini 11 Almost but Not Really Went to the Moon.

Space News. Pluto's got an atmosphere, and it's changing.

Space News. Pluto's heart is lined with ice flows.

NASA. Driving A Lunar Spacecraft

Want to fly a spacecraft around the Moon? Take this video for a spin to see how NASA operates the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

How Did 1960's Technology Get Us To Space?

Pluto in a Minute 22.

Kepler-452b.

NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed the first near-Earth-size planet in the “habitable zone” around a sun-like star. The newly discovered Kepler-452b is the smallest planet to date discovered orbiting in the habitable zone -- the area around a star where liquid water could pool on the surface of an orbiting planet -- of a G2-type star, like our sun. The confirmation of Kepler-452b brings the total number of confirmed planets to 1,030. This video shows an artist's concept that depicts one possible appearance of the planet Kepler-452b.

Vintage Space. Going to the Moon with Gemini Instead of Apollo?

Pluto in a Minute 21.

Wonders of the Universe.

SciShow. There's a Giant Hole in the Universe.

Jenny On Console - Episode 11.

D-News. Should We Mine This Asteroid For Platinum?

D-News. Is There A Bermuda Triangle In Space?

SciShow time.

Rosetta orbiter science.

It is almost a year since the Rosetta spacecraft began orbiting comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on 6 August 2014. The orbiter’s eleven instruments are studying the comet at different wavelengths - infrared, ultraviolet, microwave and radio – as well as gathering high-resolution images and information about its shape, density, temperature and chemical composition.
This video outlines the mission’s scientific highlights so far – “a geologist’s playground” - and some of the latest science from three of the orbiter’s instruments: the Osiris camera, the microwave MIRO instrument and VIRTIS (visible and infrared thermal imaging spectrometer), which is studying the comet’s nucleus.
It contains footage from the first Rosetta science workshop, which was recently held in Rome, as well as the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany – where a copy of Osiris is maintained in a vacuum chamber to test commands.

Stars: Crash Course Astronomy #26.

Today Phil’s explaining the stars and how they can be categorized using their spectra. Together with their distance, this provides a wealth of information about them including their luminosity, size, and temperature. The HR diagram plots stars’ luminosity versus temperature, and most stars fall along the main sequence, where they live most of their lives.

NASA’s New Horizons Team Discusses New Science Findings on Pluto.

These key excerpts from a July 24 science update at NASA headquarters, features team members of NASA’s New Horizons mission discussing surprising new images and science results from the spacecraft’s historic July 14 flyby of Pluto.

This Week @NASA.

Space to Ground this week.

Pluto in a Minute 20.

Pluto in a Minute 19.