Picture Of The Day - December 12, 2018

Pictures of the day - November 24, 2018

Venus-like world with two moons in orbit. I had to use the editor in Space Engine to get a true Venus-Like appearance for this world.

I am not a fan of how some of the planets appear in the game, luckily an editor is provided in order to make some of these worlds appear more realistic.

Space Engine System ID: RS 5581-42-1-2-487 2

High Resolution Pictures

Venus Analog

Two moons

Stormy planet

Closeup

In honor of NASA’s successful landing of the InSight Lander, here are a couple of Space Engine pictures of Mars centered on the Elysium Planitia.

Had to take a second closer picture since Phobos got in the way of the first picture.

High Resolution Pictures

Picture 1

Picture 2

Triangulum Log - Post 2 - The Outskirts

More pics of the system. Notice the lack of stars in the background. The system being a runaway star, is quickly escaping the galaxy. The nearest stars are more than 1,000 light years away. Interesting enough in this system, while the major planets orbit the system’s common center of mass, a dense asteroid belt and 3 dwarf planets directly orbit the system’s black hole. The dwarf planets and asteroids likely formed out of some of the remaining debris from the supernova that created the black hole.

The last two pics are a massive red moon orbiting the systems 7th planet. The moon has a very Mars-like feel to it.

Busy & Hazy Sky

Picture of the Day 2 - October 23, 2018

Another beautiful aurora shot, looking towards a gas giant under a hazy atmosphere. The Andromeda galaxy is visible to the right of the picture as a hazy bright spot just below the aurora.

The Andromeda Galaxy will be the next galaxy I will be exploring in space engine beginning next month.

Picture of the day - January 8, 2019

Earth-Like planet with red-colored vegetation.

Space Engine System ID: 8550-3145-7-381564-296 3 to visit the planet in space engine.

If Mars were Terraformed (tablet) Click the image to download the correct size for your tablet in high resolution

What’s the biggest misconception people have about space or astronomy in general?

I’m not sure which is the biggest mistake, but I believe that one of them is the colors that are imposed on the images of planets, nebulae and other bodies of space. Many images are not real colors, many of them are fake colors. False colors are used to differentiate, some particular type of material, temperature, wavelength, chemical or mineral variations, and other factors.

Mercury with colors in visible light

Color-enhanced, this image represents chemical and mineral variations across the planet: tan areas are lava-formed plains, and blue regions show material that reflects little light.

This image shows two different views of the Horsehead Nebula. On the right is a view of the nebula in visible light, taken using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile . The new image on the left shows the nebula in the infrared, using observations from Hubble’s high-resolution Wide Field Camera 3.

Some illustrations of space can also deceive or confuse, like images of exoplanets, where in fact we do not know for sure what it would be, since we can not have such clear images to the point where we can see them closely, and other things like representation of the curvature of space time, which shows a curvature in 2D, would actually be in 3D, but this is a little harder to visualize.

Curvature of the space-time fabric in 2D

Curvature of the space-time fabric in 3D

An annotated view of the Beta Pictoris system.

Artist’s impression of Beta Pictoris b. The debris disk around the parent star can be seen.

You can learn more about it by clicking here!

Picture of the day 2 - November 23, 2018

Two moons transit in front of a large Titan-Like world with methane oceans.

Space Engine System ID: RS 5581-14-7-1797564-12533 6

Oculus System - Post 1 (Introduction)

We are now inside the giant NGC 604 Nebula. I’ve come across this wide binary system consisting of a F4 giant that is almost 16 times brighter than Earth’s sun and a smaller, but still bright G0V type star more than twice the brightness of Sol. The first worlds I am exploring are the ones orbiting the smaller or secondary of the two stars.

Descriptions of the planet’s to follow in the next post.

Space Engine System ID: RS 1229-171-5-23517-58

High Resolution Pics

Picture 1 - Inner-most Planet

Picture 2 - Surface

Picture 3 - Warm Ice-Giant

Picture 4 - System's fourth planet from a satellite

Picture 5 - Double occultation of two moons

Picture 6 - World with Ethane Oceans

Picture 7 - Setting distant 2nd sun

Pillowfort reopens new user registrations at 10 am est

Pillowfort has finally reopened new user registrations which will begin at 10 am eastern. There is a small $5 fee until the site is no longer in beta. I have permanently switched all my posts over there. I’ll be posting a follow up post with my blog link later today