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Photography
NASA Releases First Ever Photograph of Saturn, Venus, Mars and Earth
You might remember earlier this summer when NASA released a striking image taken by the Cassini spacecraft of Earth as it appears from the dark side of Saturn. Yesterday the space agency wowed again with the first ever photograph of Saturn, Mars, Venus, and Earth all in the same shot. The image spans about 404,880 miles (651,591 kilometers) across and is made from 141 wide-angle photos taken by Cassini. You can learn more about the image over on JPL’s site where you can even download some wallpapers. (via PetaPixel)
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Science
Falling from Space: Felix Baumgartner’s Leap from 128,000 Feet
It’s already been a year since daredevil, stuntman and BASE jumper Felix Baumgartner leapt out of a hot air balloon some 24 miles off the ground plummeted at speeds surpassing Mach 1 (761.2 mph or 1225 km/h) back to Earth. The team over at Redbull Stratos finally released footage from the stunt, capturing the view from multiple angles. Ridiculous. (via kottke)
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Science
Mauna Kea Heavens Timelapse or Three Minutes of Telescopes Shooting Lasers into Space
Shot over a period of three nights in April of this year, this timelapse from Sean Goebel shows the myriad telescopes at the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii. The clear view at 14,000 feet is the premiere location for astronomy in the Northern Hemisphere. The lasers you see are called laser guide stars and they help astronomers correct the atmospheric distortion of light by creating an artificial “star” to use as a reference point. (via Coudal)
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Photography
Observing the Earth: Incredible Satellite Photos of Earth from the European Space Agency

Namib Desert / October 5, 2013

Ganges’ dazzling delta / July 31, 2009

Scandinavian snows / February 1, 2013

Mississippi River Delta / May 25, 2012

Clearwater Lakes, Canada / May 17, 2013

Peruvian landscape / July 4, 2013

Plentiful plankton / September 14, 2009

Swirling cloud art in the Atlantic Ocean / June 11, 2010

Agricultural crops in Aragon and Catalonia / November 26, 2010
Though I don’t have a homepage set, the first page in my daily rounds is always the Astronomy Picture of the Day (site currently down), a website launched by NASA and the Michigan Technological University way back in 1995, a nearly continuous publication run of 18 years. Unfortunately due some minor, uhm, budget cuts in the U.S. government, all NASA websites are currently down due to a crushing 97% cut in workforce, including the humble Astronomy Picture of the Day.
Luckily there’s at least one space agency still publishing photos of space (and space from Earth), the European Space Agency. The ESA has an incredible Observing the Earth archive that’s updated every week and each satelitte image is usually accompanied by a brief essay to explain a bit about what you’re looking at. Collected here are some of my favorite images from the last few years taken with too many different satellites to mention, and you can search photos back through 2005 here.
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Photography
One Giant Leap: Frog Photobombs NASA Spacecraft Launch Photo
In one one of the more bizarre photobombs ever, NASA released a photograph of what appears to be a frog that may have attempted, and subsequently failed, to hitch a ride aboard a Moon-bound rocket. The shot was captured on September 7th during the launch of the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE), and NASA’s photo team confirms the image is genuine, but stated “the condition of the frog, however, is uncertain.” (via PetaPixel)
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Photography
The Earth’s Seasonal “Heartbeat” as Seen from Space
We all know that as the seasons change on Earth, temperatures rise and fall, plants grow or die, ice forms or melts away. Perhaps nobody is more aware of this than NASA’s Visible Earth team who provide a vast catalog of images of our home planet as seen from space. Last month designer, cartographer, and dataviz expert John Nelson download a sequence of twelve cloud-free satellite imagery mosaics of Earth, one from each month, and then created a number of vivid animated gifs showing the seasonal changes in vegetation and land ice around the world.
Despite having encountered numerous seasonal timelapse videos shot here on Earth, this is the first time I’ve ever seen anything like this visualized on such a large scale from space. It really looks like a heartbeat or the action of breathing. Read more over on Nelson’s blog, or see a much larger version of the gif here. (via Co.Design)
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