Our Solar System, to scale

Josh Worth has created what he calls a “tediously accurate scale model of the Solar System: If the moon were only 1 pixel There’s lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of empty space out there. Josh Worth ha creado lo que él llama un modelo de “escala tediosamente exacta del Sistema Solar: Si la luna…

March 8, 2014
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Jupiter’s Great Red Spot

Jupiter's red spot
June 12, 2013

  Jupiter’s Great Red Spot was discovered by the English scientist Robert Hooke in 17th century. It lies very close to the giant planet’s equator and its major axis is 40,000 km (twice the diameter of the Earth. We now know that it’s a hurricane, which rotates anticlockwise with wind speeds around the edge of up to 400 km / sec. Photo taken by NASA’s Voyager 1 space probe.

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A stunning photo of Saturn

Saturn and its rings backlit, taken by NASA's Cassini mission on Sept. 15, 2006
June 7, 2013

  This wonderful photo of Saturn was taken by NASA’s Cassini mission on Sept. 15, 2006. The sun is behind the planet, giving a wonderful view of the rings. Even more spectacular, you can just see the Earth at the left.

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Curiosity is sitting on a stream bed

Rounded gravel fragments, or clasts, up to a couple inches (few centimetres), on dry stream beds on Mars and Earth Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS and PSI
September 30, 2012

  The Mars rover Curiosity is driving over a dried-up stream bed. Looking at the gravel under Curiosity, NASA scientists say the water must have flowed about 1 m/s and been somewhere between 10 cm and a metre deep. That’s a lot of water, although it was probably billions of years ago.

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Diamond Ice on Mars

Diamond dust in Antarctica. Credit: Wikipedia commons
June 24, 2012

  Sometimes it snows on Mars.  In autumn, the snow is probably water ice, and in the depths of winter, when temperatures drop to -125 º C, it’s carbon dioxide snow. The atmosphere is thin and dry, and the temperature drops very fast after sunset, so the snow flakes are tiny, about 7 microns in diameter, like a human red blood cell.  In fact, it’s a lot like the diamond ice…

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Internet feeds of the Venus transit

If you live somewhere where you can see part or all of the transit, -I hope the clouds stay away for you.  REMEMBER NOT TO LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE SUN. If you’re on the wrong part of the planet (like me) or unlucky with the weather, here’s some places to watch it live on the Internet for free. Slooh.com will be broadcasting ten feeds of the Venus transit live from…

June 5, 2012
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