Eight Minutes of Cardinals Feeding Their Babies
I watched half of this video straight through, wondering why life can’t be this easy. Just open your trap and in goes the grub. Enjoy.
West Virginia-Milky Way Weekend
Sometimes you need to break away from your own element and experience the rest of the earth’s elements. Kev and I are escaping the surly bonds of DC and we’re taking a little retreat into West Virginia for the weekend. We’ve been looking forward to this trip since November, and for different reasons. He’s excited to go horse-back riding; I’m just excited to see the Milky Way. Why? Because few things compare to looking up and seeing a strand of millions of stars that stretch as far as the eye can see. Maybe some of those stars have planets orbiting them. Maybe they’re so far away and so old, some of them have exploded to become supernovae. We don’t know. It’s profoundly humbling and it makes me wonder - if more people would look up, maybe there would be less conflict in the world. Idealistic? Yeah. But I like this idea.
First image taken at Guesthouse Lost River in Lost City, WV
Second image taken at Lost River State Park, WV
Mars’ Phallic History Mystery Solved - Almost:
Someone who still has access to the data says I *did* draw the #MarsPenis, but I can’t confirm that — I really don’t know. I hope so. :-)
— Scott Maxwell (@marsroverdriver)
Scott Maxwell, a former Mars rover driver, tweeted that he is one of two candidates who may have inadvertently drawn the now-inphamous phallic symbol on the red planet. He writes on his G+ post:
So, for all who are asking whether I “drew” the now-infamous “Mars penis” — the answer is, maybe. I no longer have access to the data I’d need to answer that question definitively, but the image is from a mosaic taken around sol A-58, making me one of the two very likely candidates.
I sure as hell hope I did, though. Because that’s hilarious. Needless to say, it wouldn’t have been on purpose. But it’s still hilarious.
The tracks appear to have been made from the Spirit rover, who ceased communications in 2010. Just for kicks, here’s a link to a panorama shot and a mosaic (a whole mosaic!) of the tracks in question.
Survival of the Vainest: Extreme Closeup of Galápagos Tortoise
This Galápagos giant tortoise is probably anywhere between 50 and 100 years old. You can tell it has weathered quite a few storms just by looking into its eyes. As one YouTube commenter points out, change the video settings to at least 720p HD and prepare to feel judged.
Rare Photos Of The Soviet Space Program From Gagarin To Intercosmos
Incredible shots. What an incredible era for spaceflight.
(Source: pablolf)
Grasshopper 250m Test | Ring of Fire (by spacexchannel)
SpaceX, the famed space transportation company, just successfully completed another milestone in their quest toward developing reusable launch vehicles. Watch how their aptly-named Grasshopper test vehicle lifts off the ground 820 feet and comes right back down in a controlled descent. This technology is called Vertical Takeoff, Vertical Landing (VTVL) and could drastically cut down expenses on their Falcon 9 rockets. You see, instead of allowing the rockets to crash into the sea, they could become completely salvageable and most importantly, reusable.
Hey Science Tumblr! You forgot someone!
Happy Belated International Women’s Day Henrietta Leavitt, you deserve to be among the ranks of fantastically intelligent women who rose above the men and said, “I, too, am smart (and deserve a raise)!”
Henrietta Leavitt | 1868-1921
Miss Leavitt attended Oberlin college in 1892 where she discovered astronomy and her passion for it. After college she continued pursuing her love for the subject, but later went deaf while suffering from an illness. In 1902 she was hired as a staff member at the Harvard College Observatory after volunteering countless hours. Charles Pickering, director of the observatory, appointed her the chief of the photographic photometry department, along with the duty to keep the telescopes in perfect working condition.
Her $0.30 salary was every dollar shy of her mental capacity when she was given the task of being in charge of the photographic photometry department, which studied the magnitudes of stars through photographs.
As head of the department she developed a standard for determining the magnitude of stars using the north polar sequence. Her system was later recognized as an important standard in 1913 and was adopted by the International Committee on Photographic Magnitudes.
She also discovered over 2,000 variable stars, which later led her to the period-luminosity relationship. Through observation and complex mathematics, not commonly seen in women’s minds in this period, she discovered a correlation between a star’s magnitude and the time of its luminosity. What she found was that the luminosity of a star did not depend on its distance, but its magnitude.
Her discovery was very important (and very revolutionizing), being recognized and used by Edward Hubble as the “yardstick of the Universe” to find the age of the Universe, and surpassed others’ use of their mathematics to measure magnitudes of stars up to 100 light years; Miss Leavitt’s method could span up to 10 million light years.
She is undoubtedly one of the most unrecognized women in science, and despite her 30 cent wage at the Harvard Observatory even Charles Pickering recognized her as the “most brilliant woman at Harvard”.
No doubt the field of astronomy would have seen more spectacular findings from Miss Leavitt had she not died of cancer in 1921.
(via thescienceofreality)
Bright Meteor Steals the Show in Argentina
In this video shared on Twitter by Geoff Notkin, host of TV’s Meteorite Men, a massive fireball can be seen lighting up the pre-dawn sky in the Argentine province of Santiago del Estero. Look at that steep angle! The event happened at around 3:30 in the morning of Sunday, April 21st, 2013. Considering that millions of meteors enter Earth’s atmosphere every day, it’s no surprise that occasionally we get one large enough to become a fireball. Thankfully, this one didn’t appear to cause any damage like the one in Chelyabinsk, Russia, did earlier this year. A quick refresher:
(Wow, I had forgotten how intense that was.)
Rocket Launch to be Visible from the East Coast (but not Florida because you guys get enough already and need to learn how to share)
Liftoff: 5:00 p.m.
Destination: Orbit
Orbital Sciences, a commercial space transportation company, is expected to conduct the first test flight of their largest vehicle, the Antares rocket. According to Space.com, the mission’s success will take them one step closer to servicing the international space station. Currently, the only other private company that does this is SpaceX.
Antares will be the largest rocket to launch from the brand new launch pad at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Virginia. A dummy cargo ship representing Antares’ Cygnus capsule sits at the top of the rocket. The real Cygnus is expected to dock with the space station after a launch later this fall.
If you live anywhere in the shaded areas, you should be able to see the 131-ft, 600,000-lb rocket lift off, provided you are high enough above the horizon and not watching a marathon of My Cat From Hell.
Image Credit: Orbital Sciences Corporation
NASA is Still Alive
There’s a big misconception that NASA has been completely defunded and that the end of the shuttle program means the end of human spaceflight as we know it. Fortunately, that’s not true. Despite significant budget cuts, the agency continues to do science and launches important missions all the time.
Do you know what the photo above is? Not many people do, but NASA is working on that. It’s the space launch system, or SLS, and it’s being developed to take humans beyond low-earth orbit. It’s kind of like if Apollo and the space shuttle had a baby but the baby’s growth hormones went rogue. It will be the largest rocket ever built. Do you know the name of the rocket’s crewed capsule? Few people know it yet. It’s the Orion capsule and it will be much larger and more capable than the Apollo spacecraft.
So aside from human spaceflight, which is a small component of NASA’s core objectives, there is a lot of science being done every day. I compiled a short list briefly detailing some of these missions. A few are rather low-profile, but their objectives are crucial to our understanding of Earth. Check it out here.
