NASA took its first major step towards a manned mission to Mars today with the successful launch and landing of its Orion spacecraft. Orion completed its first voyage to space, traveling farther than any spacecraft designed for astronauts has been in more than 40 years. Orion blazed into the morning sky at 7:05 a.m.…
© Tormod Sandtorv / Darvasa gas crater panorama / CC BY-SA 2.0 Nicknamed the ‘door to hell’, the Darvaza Crater in Turkmenistan has been burning for over 40 years. The 225 ft wide (69 meters) and 98 ft deep (30 meters) crater is located in the middle of the Karakum Desert which occupies…
‘Snow artist’ Simon Beck creates the most amazing temporary artworks using just a compass, string, measuring tape and a pair of snowshoes. Beck graduated in Engineering from Oxford University but decided later on to leave his office job in order to become a cartographer. In December 2004 after a day of skiing, he got…
Photograph by Abrget47j on Wikimedia Comoons Seen here is the famous Tamme-Lauri oak, the thickest and oldest tree in Estonia, located in Urvaste Parish, Võru County. The height of the tree is 17 metres (56 ft) with a circumference of 831 centimetres (327 in). According to researchers the tree was planted around 1326. [source]…
Ben Coffman is a landscape photographer based out of Portland, Oregon, who specializes in night photography, in particular ‘landscape astrophotography’ featuring the Milky Way. Not only does this give Ben the opportunity to explore the great outdoors, but it lets us city dwellers gain a greater appreciation for the awe-inspiring night sky as well…
Wanderers is a vision of humanity’s expansion into the Solar System, based on scientific ideas and concepts of what our future in space might look like, if it ever happens. The locations depicted in the film are digital recreations of actual places in the Solar System, built from real photos and map data where…
This amazing graphic was created by Roberto Ziche and shows our solar system to scale. Roberto explains: “At the Chabot Space and Science Center there were some old, poor quality images, probably downloaded from internet and printed on office paper, showing the Sun and the planets to scale. I found the images content to…
Photograph by NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team In some areas, winds tend to blow in roughly the same general direction all year. The Grand Erg Oriental, a sprawling sea of sand dunes in the Saharan Desert, is not one of them. The winds in northeastern Algeria tend to be complex and changing.…
Reddit user odstane recently shared a series of photos of his backyard frozen pond. The frozen water created some interesting patterns drawing comparisons to a Japanese rock garden or the contour lines on a map (used to show elevation). If any of our knowledgeable readers can explain why this occurs (in simple terms!), let…
Photograph by Joseph DeBenedictis (@Joseph_Video on Twitter) Western New York is currently experiencing a historic snowstorm with another 2 – 3 ft of snow expected to fall in the Buffalo area by late Thursday. Driven by the lake effect, a massive snowstorm dumped upwards of 60 inches (152 cm) on parts of Western New…
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