It's A Bird... It's A Plane... It's A Flying Dog! "Flying Dogs"

Ask Ethan #110: What did the sky look like when Earth first formed?

“In general, what would the night time skies have looked like to an observer on a newly cooling Earth 4 billion years ago? Would the night sky be the same? Brighter?”

The night sky is a memorable, inimitable sight. With the exception of the planets, the stars that shine so brightly and consistently on your birthday will be the same ones — in both position and brightness — that shine on your dying day. But as recognizable as the stars and constellations are, the skies we recognize would have nothing in common with the skies as they were back when Earth first formed more than four billion years ago. With natural light pollution from volcanism and heat, a location inside a star cluster and the evolution of our local Universe, there are some huge differences that would make for some big surprises.

"Basically it's the eyebrows."

Lady Cassandra cookies! And in the back a Weeping Angel food cake and a TARDIS cake to the left!

#DoctorWho #Food

Zooming out of the Andromeda galaxy, more than 60,000 light years across and shows more than 100 million stars.

Barnard’s Star seen moving against the cosmic background.

Although it appears otherwise when looking up at the night sky, every object in the cosmos is actually moving. As a result of the Big Bang and gravity, stars are whizzing through space at astounding speeds - in fact, our own sun is orbiting the center of the Milky Way galaxy. But this motion through the heavens is not easily visible due to the sheer distances away most stars are from us. However, Barnard’s star is an exception. Located just six light years from Earth, Barnard’s star is actually moving closer to our own star system and will pass within four light years roughly 8,000 years from now. Due to its motion towards us and location in the sky, Barnard’s star has the highest apparent motion of any star in the sky, moving at roughly 10.3 arcseconds per year. Over the course of an average human life, about 72 years, the star will have moved roughly half the diameter of the full moon across the night sky. 

The gifset above was taken by astronomer Rick Johnson, who imaged the star once a year for nine years. In them, Barnard’s Star moved about 92.7 arcseconds in the sky. Barnard’s star is one of the few stars where we can observe this apparent motion. To capture any others, we’d have to be taking repetitive pictures for centuries.

Oh, H3!! No!!!! "This cliff on Navagio Beach in beach is sought after by adrenaline junkies and base jumpers because of its beautiful view on the way down."

GroupeF, a traveling French fireworks show, used LED suits and art pieces for their performance at the Buenos Aires International Festival.

Space Launch System

Our Space Launch System (SLS) is an advanced launch vehicle for exploration beyond Earth’s orbit into deep space. SLS, the world’s most powerful rocket, will launch astronauts in our Orion spacecraft on missions to an asteroid and eventually to Mars!

A launch system required to carry humans faster and farther than ever before will need a powerful engine, aka the RS-25 engine. This engine makes a modern race car or jet engine look like a wind-up toy. With the ability to produce 512,000 pounds of trust, the RS-25 engine will produce 10% more thrust than the Saturn V rockets that launched astronauts on journeys to the moon!

Another consideration for using these engines for future spaceflight was that 16 of them already existed from the shuttle program. Using a high-performance engine that already existed gave us a considerable boost in developing its next rocket for space exploration.

Once ready, four RS-25 engines will power the core stage of our SLS into deep space and Mars.

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOmb-STnOg4)