I once wrote a series of short stories that was basically just sensory descriptions of what it would be like to walk around on every planet, moon, and celestial body I had heard a description of. I later remembered that stories have to have plots and feebly attempted to introduce some actual events happening, but mostly I just wanted to write flowery descriptions of walking around on other planets (and moons and space rocks, etc) because, like... just imagining being on their surfaces is so deeply mind blowing. There are molten magma rivers on Venus, and lakes of liquid methane on Saturn’s moon Titan, and Jupiter’s moon Europa is covered in an ever-cracking miles-deep ice-crusted ocean, and I just wanted to walk around in all of those places, just walk around and see them.
This is a fantastical accumulation of photos and it’s astonishing to realize how many places we have pictures of like this, as if we’re really there--places where we sent something and that thing of ours, at least, was really there.
On the other hand, funnily enough, these pictures also prove Doctor Who’s assertion that a significant portion of the universe bears a striking resemblance to a quarry in Wales.
dude seeing these Mega high quality images of the surface of mars that we now have has me fucked up. Like. Mars is a place. mars is a real actual place where one could hypothetically stand. It is a physical place in the universe. ITS JUST OUT THERE LOOKING LIKE UH IDK A REGULAR OLD DESERT WITH LOTS OF ROCKS BUT ITS A WHOLE OTHER PLANET?