TOUCHDOWN OF INSIGHT ON MARS! Man, This Just Never Gets Old. I Am SO Over The Moon (or Mars) Each And

Ember in the Sky

Picture of the Day 3 - November 10, 2018

Moon orbiting a young gas giant still glowing with heat from it’s formation with a distant blue sun beginning to set.

My first posts will be from systems located within the Triangulum Galaxy. The above 3 images were taken from Space Engine of the galaxy. The background galaxy in the images is Andromeda.

For those of you that are not familiar with the Triangulum Galaxy, it is the third largest member of the local group, sometimes considered a satellite galaxy of Andromeda. The galaxy is also known as M33, NGC 598 or the Pinwheel Galaxy. Approximately 40 billion stars reside within this spiral galaxy. It is believed that the galaxy lacks a central supermassive black hole and central halo.

Wikipedia link below.

Triangulum Galaxy

Split Moon. –outerspaceclothing.com–

Inside - Vadim Sadovski

Neptune ♆

On this day in 1846 was discovered the planet Neptune.

The ice giant Neptune was the first planet located through mathematical predictions rather than through regular observations of the sky. (Galileo had recorded it as a fixed star during observations with his small telescope in 1612 and 1613.) When Uranus didn’t travel exactly as astronomers expected it to, a French mathematician, Urbain Joseph Le Verrier, proposed the position and mass of another as yet unknown planet that could cause the observed changes to Uranus’ orbit. After being ignored by French astronomers, Le Verrier sent his predictions to Johann Gottfried Galle at the Berlin Observatory, who found Neptune on his first night of searching in 1846. Seventeen days later, its largest moon, Triton, was also discovered.

Neptune is invisible to the naked eye because of its extreme distance from Earth. Interestingly, the highly eccentric orbit of the dwarf planet Pluto brings Pluto inside Neptune’s orbit for a 20-year period out of every 248 Earth years. Pluto can never crash into Neptune, though, because for every three laps Neptune takes around the Sun, Pluto makes two. This repeating pattern prevents close approaches of the two bodies.

Nearly 4.5 billion kilometers (2.8 billion miles) from the Sun, Neptune orbits the Sun once every 165 years. 

Uranus’ blue-green color is also the result of atmospheric methane, but Neptune is a more vivid, brighter blue, so there must be an unknown component that causes the more intense color. 

Despite its great distance and low energy input from the Sun, Neptune’s winds can be three times stronger than Jupiter’s and nine times stronger than Earth’s.

Winds on Neptune travel faster than the speed of sound.

In 1989, Voyager 2 tracked a large, oval-shaped, dark storm in Neptune’s southern hemisphere. This “Great Dark Spot” was large enough to contain the entire Earth.

Neptune has five known rings. Voyager 2’s observations confirmed that these unusual rings are not uniform but have four thick regions (clumps of dust) called arcs. The rings are thought to be relatively young and short-lived.

Neptune has 14 known moons, six of which were discovered by Voyager 2.

Triton, Neptune’s largest moon, orbits the planet in the opposite direction compared with the rest of the moons, suggesting that it may have been captured by Neptune in the distant past. 

To know more about the planet Neptune click here and here.

Images credit: NASA/JPL- Caltech (some images processed by Kevin M. Gill)

Picture of the day - December 29, 2018

Binary Sunset over an ice giant.

End of the Day

Picture of the Day - October 18, 2018.

Sunset on an alien moon.

Pictures of the Day - December 15, 2018

Insight A System - Second Planet (Insight A-II)

Insight A-II is the second planet orbiting Insight A. It is a Venus-like planet shrouded in a thick carbon dioxide and water vapor atmosphere 716 times thicker than Earth’s. The surface temperature averages 1,980 F, and most of the surface is covered in molten rock.

The planet orbits just 0.07 AU from the sun, completing an orbit once every 6.72 Earth days. Insight A-II is a super-earth with a mass 2.66 times that of Earth and a radius of 1.15 Earths.

High Resolution Pictures

Insight A-II

Comet-like planet

The Atmosphere

The Surface

Lunar Rings

Pictures of the Day - October 21, 2018

Normally, giant planets are the ones with rings, but in some situations a moon of a gas giant can have its own rings. Here we come across such a satellite.

Pictures of the day - December 27, 2018

Parting Shots of the Insight A and Insight B Systems, Alien Skies.

Now that all of the worlds of the Insight A and Insight B systems have been revealed, here are some parting shots before I begin my exploration of new star systems.

Space Engine System ID: RS 5581-42-6-76887-1116

High Resolution Pictures

Insight B-IV-M3 sky

Insight A-VII Sky

Insight A-V Sky

Insight A-IV-M8 Sky

Insight B-V Sky

Insight B-VI-M2 Sky

Insight B-I Sky