It's About Art Man..

beautiful

Amazing space concept art by John Grello

Nikola Tesla once paid an overdue hotel bill with a ‘working model’ of his 'death beam’. He warned the staff never to open it, describing it as a war-ending particle weapon that could stop invading armies and make warfare pointless. After his death in 1943, someone finally pried the box open and found nothing but a bunch of harmless old electrical components. Source

The James Webb Space Telescope: A Story of Art & Science

Artists of all kinds were invited to apply for the chance to visit our Goddard Space Flight Center to be inspired by the giant, golden, fully-assembled James Webb Space Telescope mirror.

Art/Photo Credit: Jedidiah Dore

Webb has a mirror that is nearly 22 feet high and (to optimize it for infrared observations) is covered in a microscopic layer of actual gold.

Art/Photo Credit: Susan Lin

Because of Webb’s visually striking appearance, the project hosted a special viewing event on Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2016.

Photo Credit: Maggie Masetti

There was an overwhelming response to the event invitation and ultimately twenty-four people were selected to attend. They represented a broad range of artistic media and styles, including: watercolor, 3D printed sculpture, silk screening, acrylics, sumi-e (East Asian brush technique), comics, letterpress, woodwork, metalwork, jewelry making, fiber art, ink, mural painting, kite-making, tattooing, scientific illustration, poetry, songwriting, and video making.

Art/Photo Credit: Sue Reno

Project scientists and engineers spoke with visitors to give context to what they were seeing and explain why Webb is an engineering marvel, and how it will change our view of the universe. 

Among other things, Webb will see the first stars and galaxies that formed in the early universe and help us to better understand how planetary systems form and evolve. It will help us answer questions about who we, as humans, are and where we came from.

Art Credit: Jessica Lee Photo Credit: Maggie Masetti

The artists spent several hours sitting right in front of the telescope, where they sketched, painted, took photos and even filmed a music video.

Art Credit: Joanna Barnum Photo Credit: Maggie Masetti

While some of the pieces of art are finished, most of the artists went home with their heads full of ideas and sketchbooks full of notes. Stay tuned for more info on where you can see their final works displayed!

Art/Photo Credit: Susan Lin

Finished art from the event continues to be added HERE.

The James Webb Space Telescope is finishing environmental testing at our Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Next it will head to our Johnson Space Center in Houston for an end-to-end test at cryogenic temperatures. After that, it goes to Northrop Grumman to be mated with the giant tennis court-sized sunshield and the spacecraft bus.  The observatory will launch in October of 2018 from a European Space Agency (ESA) launch site in French Guiana, aboard an Ariane 5 rocket.  Webb is a collaboration of NASA, ESA, and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).

Follow Webb on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

The Pleiades from Saaremaa, Estonia

This image was taken by my friend Raivo Hein! Raivo has his own little observatory in Saaremaa, an Estonian island, and he has mastered astrophotography over the years. This brilliant view of the Pleiades or Seven Sisters was obtained with the exposure time of 8 hours by using the LRGB (Luminance, Red, Green and Blue) method.

As for technical details, ASA N12 Telescope, FLI MicroLine ML16200 Camera, and ASA DDM60 Pro Direct Drive Mount were used.

See more of his stunning images on Facebook & here on Tumblr.

"We shall never know all the good that a simple SMILE can do"

St.Mother Teresa

10 Times More Galaxies!

The universe suddenly looks a lot more crowded…

We already estimated that there were about 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe, but new research shows that this estimate is at least 10 times too low!

First, what is the observable universe? Well, it is the most distant part of the universe we can see from Earth because, in theory, the light from these objects have had time to reach Earth.

In a new study using surveys taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories, astronomers came to the surprising conclusion that there are at least 10 times more galaxies in the observable universe than previously thought. This places the universe’s estimated population at, minimally, 2 trillion galaxies!

The results have clear implications for galaxy formation, and also helps shed light on an ancient astronomical paradox – why is the sky dark at night?

Most of these newly discovered galaxies were relatively small and faint, with masses similar to those of the satellite galaxies surrounding the Milky Way.

Using deep-space images from the Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories, astronomers converted the images into 3-D, in order to make accurate measurements of the number of galaxies at different epochs in the universe’s history.

In addition, they used new mathematical models, which allowed them to infer the existence of galaxies that the current generation of telescopes cannot observe. This led to the surprising conclusion that in order for the numbers of galaxies we now see and their masses to add up, there must be a further 90% of galaxies in the observable universe that are too faint and too far away to be seen with present-day telescopes.

The myriad small faint galaxies from the early universe merged over time into the larger galaxies we can now observe.

That means that over 90% of the galaxies in the universe have yet to be studied! In the near future, the James Webb Space Telescope will be able to study these ultra-faint galaxies and give us more information about their existence.

So back to the question…Why is the sky dark at night if the universe contains an infinity of stars? Researchers came to the conclusion that indeed there actually is such an abundance of galaxies that, in principle, every patch in the sky contains part of a galaxy.

However, starlight from the galaxies is invisible to the human eye and most modern telescopes due to other known factors that reduce visible and ultraviolet light in the universe. Those factors are the reddening of light due to the expansion of space, the universe’s dynamic nature, and the absorption of light by intergalactic dust and gas. All combined, this keeps the night sky dark to our vision.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

At the beach with my cousins and family.......It's been an amazing and unforgettable experience on the Christmas day. ..... With @adrinbenjackson (Time lapse video)

Photographing Nature and giving them a special geometry inspired Idea to give them life with #shapical #nature #photography #onieropoluz #flow #geometricphotography #flowers #backyardfun #backyardphotography #naturelovers #peace #love #peaceandlove #peaceofmind #music #life #solivealifeyouwillremember

Pirates didn’t make their captives walk the plank. Though big fans of torture methods like flogging and marooning, there are no actual records of pirates using a plank. The first mention of plank walking was in a 1724 fictional novel by author Daniel Defoe, but if real-life pirates wanted to drown someone, they probably just threw them off the boat. Source Source 2

THAT’S MOON (this is a post of sci universe i am not stealing it ;) 

This stunningly clear view of the Moon’s craters was captured by an astrophotographer!

At first sight I’d guess this image to be taken by a spacecraft. However, Jordi Delpeix Borrell obtained this incredibly detailed view of our crater-studded Moon with a Celestron 14-inch (35cm) telescope, accompanied by Sky-Watcher NEQ6 Pro mount, and a ZWO ASI 120mm camera. Hundreds of exposures of the Moon’s southern region, taken at Barcelona, Spain in November 2015, were stacked to achieve this striking clarity.   

This is the winning image for Our Moon category of the Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2016 competition, which is run by the Royal Observatory Greenwich. Borrell’s original image title was “From Maurolycus to Moretus”.

image credit: Jordi Delpeix Borrell