Friday night eyecandy

Friday night, time to switch off.

   --   via IMSO

Mileage in extraterrestrial vehicles - Moon and Mars distances

I recently run into a cool infographic showing distances driven by vehicles on the surface of the Moon and Mars, and a great time-lapse of the martian rover Curiosity - its 9 month squeezed into a minute.
That’s all dandy, but one has to get to the Moon and Mars before being able to enjoy some offroading. How far are they? The answer is not one number.
In this post: distances to ponder.

Earth, Mars and Moon to scale   --   source: ESA

Earthy Cake

It really is a cake - fantastic!

Friday night eyecandy

If you had a stressful week and just heard about the Virgin Galactic space flight with Leonardo DiCaprio -  you know, the one that sold for 1.5 million dollars in Cannes yesterday - than you are probably ready to take a deep breath and jump into a restful weekend.
Here are some relaxing images and videos to start you off: a gallery of chicks in a cockpit, a very pretty bling-bling time-lapse, and an award winning animated short film.
Happy weekend!

Flying Pancake

I made pancakes the other day and it reminded me ..

 

The strange-looking Vought V-173, nicknamed Flying Pancake, was a proof-of-concept aircraft from the U.S. dating back to World War II. The plane was designed by Charles H. Zimmerman, who in his patent wrote that an object of this invention was "to provide an aircraft capable of high speed in normal flight, of ascending and descending vertically, and of hovering without substantial horizontal motion."

Best of Chris Hadfield

Chris Hadfield, Canadian astronaut is back home by now from the International Space Station. He arrived to the ISS in December, and in mid-March he became the commander of Expedition 35.

Safely home - back on Earth, happily readapting to the heavy pull of gravity. Wonderful to smell and feel Spring.
— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) May 14, 2013

--   image by Sean Rhodes

He has been tweeting from space, sending back incredible pictures, and has recorded fantastic videos showing us how life is on the ISS, bringing space a little closer to all of us.

In one of the last videos he recorded aboard the station he said "this experience is not individual, it is shared, it is mutual, and it is worldwide". He definitely made it just exactly that.

Here are my favorite images by and of Chris Hadfiled aboard the ISS - not in any particular order, plus the first music video from space!

Your Space Adventure 2: You stay in space for half a year!

So you want to go to space?
Let's say you are invited to the International Space Station. We take two scenarios from here:

1. You arrive to the space station, but your colleagues don't like you. They send you to an EVA (Extra-Vehicular Activity a.k.a. spacewalk) without a space suit. Oops. (An impossible scenario, but for now let's just assume this can happen.)
2. Your colleagues love you and make you stay for a half a year. (Much more likely.)

How does your body take all this?  Here it is for Scenario 2:

Moonrise over LA

A very cool time lapse video of the Moon rising over LA by Dan Marker-Moore.



And a time slice collage:

In the meantime on the ISS - Ammonia leak fixed

News reports have been all over the media about the liquid ammonia leak at the International Space Station. On May 9, astronauts aboard the ISS noticed small white "snowflakes", the frozen ammonia coolant, floating around outside the station.

Leaking ammonia coolant   --   via Discovery News

Visualizing Meteorites Throughout History

This is an amazing visualization of meteorites, those meteoroids that survived the impact with the Earth's surface. Click on the animation for more info.

Your Space Adventure 1: Out in Space without a Space Suit

So you want to go to space?
Let's say you are invited to the International Space Station. We take two scenarios from here:

1. You arrive to the space station, but your colleagues don't like you. They send you to an EVA (Extra-Vehicular Activity a.k.a. spacewalk) without a space suit. Oops. (An impossible scenario, but for now let's just assume this can happen.)
2. Your colleagues love you and make you stay for a half a year. (Much more likely.)

How does your body take all this?  Here it is for Scenario 1:

Fuzzy Slippers

--   image sources: 1. amazon.com; 2. credit: Gillett Griffin

Moon Phases & Faces

Why do we see the Moon changing shape on the night sky? Why do we see only one side of the Moon, and what's up with that "dark side"?

Lunar Phases

This will be a little visualization exercise.
Imagine that you are above the North Pole looking down on the Earth and the Moon orbiting around it. The Sun, shining from your right, illuminates the half of the Moon that faces it, this is the day side of the Moon.
From the Earth, we see the Moon changing shape: as the Moon revolves around the Earth, we see varying amounts of its sunlit day side and dark night side. This causes the lunar phases.

In the meantime on the ISS - Space Onion

-- source: colchrishadfield.tumblr

We are but a tiny dot in the Universe

We are but a tiny dot in the Universe.
This is how tiny. To scale.

   

Don't Panic