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TRAPPIST-1 Planets - Flyaround Animation

Credit: NASA/Spitzer

Consider this: You can see less than 1% of the electromagnetic spectrum and hear less than 1% of the acoustic spectrum. As you read this, you are traveling at 220 km/sec across the galaxy. 90% of the cells in your body carry their own microbial DNA and are not “you.” The atoms in your body are 99.9999999999999999% empty space and none of them are the ones you were born with, but they all originated in the belly of a star. Human beings have 46 chromosomes, 2 less than the common potato. The existence of the rainbow depends on the conical photo-receptors in your eyes; to animals without cones, the rainbow does not exist. So you don’t just look at a rainbow, you create it.

NASA Lunar Science Institute, 2012 (via cylon)

A Pair of Staggering Infographics Organizes 1,600 Planets Beyond Our Solar System by Color

Laika's still up there. not her body, sure, but her soul is. i saw it through my telescope one night when i was looking for aliens. she was sniffing for table scraps under saturn's ring. she chases comets and bites down on satellites. i saw her napping by neptune, she was kicking her feet. passing through the oort cloud is like the stroke of a hand on her fur. eyes like marbles and four little paws like flames. she bobs through jupiter's moons like cold moscow streets. up there the stars are a great big field. and look, she's running so fast. god damn, look at her go.

the astronomy students

drawing your own star charts

staying up late to watch a meteor shower

constellations painted on your ceiling

tracking the planets, noting their paths in a pocket-sized journal

an old wool scarf wrapped around your neck to keep out the cold

marveling over photographs of distant galaxies

retelling the stories of Orion and Cassiopeia

the glittering expanse of a cloudless night sky

moonlight shining through gauzy curtains

driving somewhere remote to see the milky way, far from the light pollution of the city

looking for your place in the cosmos

finding comfort in the vastness of the universe, in your own comparative insignificance

a model of the solar system resting on your desk

old sci-fi novels with battered covers

studying the contributions of Copernicus and Al-Battani and Kepler

watching the moon wax and wane

your favorite blanket wrapped around your shoulders

maps of the constellations, illustrated with figures from the associated myths

wondering about life on other worlds

memorizing the constellations, noting how their positions move as the seasons change

a thermos of hot tea

stargazing with friends, gazing up and watching for shooting stars

learning the physics of stars and planets

a fascination with the unknown

Something to think about that we don't usually think about

You actually can’t see light. You can only see what light hits.

Webb captures Jupiter's faint rings, auroras & hazes

l composite from its NIRCam instrument(x)

The essence of astronomy. 1914. Book cover.