Outer Space 🚀

2023-07-25 21:00:07 SuperDraco Engine Tests

These are SpaceX liquid rocket engines for the Dragon 2 spacecraft.

A special mixture is used as fuel, allowing the engines to be restarted repeatedly and even a month after refueling. Open / Comment

2023-07-25 14:00:09 Comet 2I/Borisov

With the Hubble telescope, astronomers obtained images of the interstellar comet 2I/Borisov from a distance of 298 million km shortly after its closest approach to the Sun.

At that time, the icy guest was near the inner edge of the asteroid belt, located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

P.S A blurred image of the bright spiral galaxy 2MASX J10500165-0152029 can be seen to its left. Open / Comment

2023-07-24 21:00:10 Old Moon Rising

Ash light, the light reflected from the Earth, illuminated in this photo the part of the lunar disk in shadow and gave us the familiar outline of the Moon's near side.

The description of ash light as sunlight reflected by Earth's oceans and illuminating the dark surface of the Moon was written more than 500 years ago by Leonardo da Vinci. Open / Comment

2023-07-24 14:00:10 Sunspot

The sunspot's center has a temperature of less than 4,000 °C. Whereas on the surface of the Sun the temperature is about 6000°C. Open / Comment

2023-07-23 21:00:05 More than 20 amino acids already found in soil samples from asteroid Ryugu

Experts of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency have isolated isoleucine and valine in the sand from the asteroid.

This may confirm the theory of the cosmic origin of the materials that form the basis of life on Earth.

It is believed that amino acids were originally abundant on Earth when it appeared more than 4.5 billion years ago. However, they then failed to survive the period when the Earth was covered by magma. Open / Comment

2023-07-23 14:00:08 The most detailed image of emissions from the vicinity of a black hole in the Alpha Centauri A galaxy

The supermassive black hole in the Centauri A galaxy is the closest active black hole to us, which intensely absorbs matter.

This process provokes powerful radiation from the center of the galaxy, which is about 12 million light-years away.

The new images were obtained in the radio band from the WMA Observatory in Western Australia. Open / Comment

2023-07-22 21:00:10 Neil Armstrong and David Scott in Gemini 8 after returning to Earth.

March 17, 1966. Open / Comment

2023-07-22 14:00:13 A frank question about astronauts' underwear

Astronauts wear disposable underwear and change it three times a day. Since there is no washing machine on board and used clothes are simply thrown away. Open / Comment

2023-07-21 21:00:07 How was the explosion scene of the Endurances filmed?

With no computer graphics!

Interstellar had very little of that. All the spacecraft in the film actually existed in the form of scaled-down mock-ups.

Film director Christopher Nolan believes that using high-quality and detailed models instead of computer graphics adds realism to the picture. And it's hard to argue with him. Open / Comment

2023-07-21 14:00:09 Neutron stars are the remnants of massive stars

But only those that have already reached the end point of their evolutionary path in time and space.

These objects are born from once massive giants, which can be 4-8 times larger than our star.

Despite their small diameter (about 20 km), neutron stars boast a mass 1.5 times that of our Sun. They are so dense that one teaspoon of neutron star matter weighs as much as Mount Everest. Open / Comment