In the 1970s, NASA’s Ames Research Center gathered artists and asked them to imagine how feasible space colonies, able to accommodate about 10,000 people, might look.

The results are here (here in high resolution) and this an example.

Please note that Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur Clarke was first published in 1972.

Here there is a Java applet to interactively explore some aspects of living in a rotating environment, particularly jumping off high platforms and throwing balls.Wait the applet load and click jump (must have java enabled, of course)

Via Boing Boing

Tags: spazio

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In particular conditions the sound waves can become visible. This Atlas V launched from Kennedy Space Center at Feb. 11 2010, fly through a sun dog.

A sun dog is a prismatic bright spot in the sky caused by sun shining through ice crystals. The Atlas V rocket exceeded the speed of sound in this layer of ice crystals, making the shock wave visible from the ground.

Tags: spazio

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Una aurora boreale vista dall’alto, fotografata dalla ISS il 29 maggio scorso. Cliccare l’immagine per ingrandire.

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Astronauts onboard the International Space Station found out on May 29th when they flew through a geomagnetic storm and witnessed this green ribbon snaking over the Indian Ocean.

Click the image to enlarge.

Tags: spazio

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A good site of “sounds of space” collected by U Iowa instruments on various spacecraft.

Here you can find many sounds “recorded” (remember that this are radio frequencies not audio frequencies) by Cassini, Voyagers and Galileo spacecrafts during the Jupiter and Saturn missions.

The site is Space Audio.

Here you can listen to the famous Cassini’s sound recorded near Saturn claimed to resemble to an alien voice if transposed one octave up preserving the duration:

• the original sound
• the transposed sound

Tags: spazio

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Google celebra i 20 anni del telescopio spaziale Hubble includendone l’immagine nel proprio logo arricchito dai link ad alcune fra le più belle immagini scattate dell’HST, visibili in Google Sky.

Lanciato il 24 Aprile 1990, l’Hubble Space Telescope, che deve il suo nome all’astronomo americano E. Hubble che scoprì l’espansione dell’universo, orbita a circa 600 km di altezza con un periodo orbitale di 96-97 minuti.

In questi 20 anni di esercizio, ci ha inviato migliaia di eccezionali immagini permettendoci di fare nuove scoperte inerenti la struttura dell’universo e la sua formazione, di guardare nel passato del cosmo osservando le più lontane galassie finora conosciute, di provare l’esistenza di pianeti extrasolari e verificare l’omogeneità dell’universo (il famoso Hubble Deep Field). Si stima che i dati ricavati dalla sua lavoro abbiano permesso una media di 14 nuovi articoli scientifici alla settimana.

Ma soprattutto ci ha mandato immagini di una bellezza sconvolgente, mostrandoci che l’universo può essere misterioso, affascinante e sconosciuto, ma soprattutto è bello.

L’HST continuerà ad funzionare almeno fino al 2019. Non prima del 2013 è previsto il lancio del nuovo James Webb Space Telescope che però opererà principalmente nell’infrarosso e quindi Hubble, che lavora anche nel campo della luce visibile e dell’ultravioletto, continuerà a farci sognare per molti anni ancora.

Tags: spazio

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Another fascinating recording of space sounds captured by a NASA spacecraft.

This time it’s Jupiter sounds (electromagnetic “voices”) recorded by the Voyager. The complex interactions of charged electromagnetic particles from the solar wind , planetary magnetosphere etc. create vibration “soundscapes”.

Jupiter is mostly composed of hydrogen and helium. The entire planet is made of gas, with no solid surface under the atmosphere. The pressures and temperatures deep in Jupiter are so high that gases form a gradual transition into liquids which are gradually compressed into a metallic “plasma” in which the molecules have been stripped of their outer electrons. The winds of Jupiter are a thousand metres per second relative to the rotating interior. Jupiter’s magnetic field is four thousand times stronger than Earth’s, and is tipped by 11° degrees of axis spin. This causes the magnetic field to wobble, which has a profound effect on trapped electronically charged particles. This plasma of charged particles is accelerated beyond the magnetosphere of Jupiter to speeds of tens of thousands of kilometres per second. It is these magnetic particle vibrations which generate some of the sound you hear on this recording.

It’s interesting to compare this recording with some analog electronic music from the sixties (cfr. Screen (1968) by Jaap Vink) or some orchestral compositions by Gyorgy Ligeti (Lontano (1967) or Atmosphère).

In addition should be interesting to know if and how this recordings had been edited by the people of Brain/Mind Research that sell many NASA recordings.

Here are similar recordings from Uranus…

… and Neptune.

Tags: spazio

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Since its discovery in 1930, Pluto has been a speck of light in the largest ground-based telescopes. But NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has now mapped the dwarf planet in never-before-seen detail. The new map is so good, astronomers have even been able to detect changes on the dwarf planet’s surface by comparing Hubble images taken in 1994 with the newer images taken in 2002-2003. The task is as challenging as trying to see the markings on a soccer ball 40 miles away.

Hubble’s view isn’t sharp enough to see craters or mountains, if they exist on the surface, but Hubble reveals a complex-looking and variegated world with white, dark-orange, and charcoal-black terrain. The overall color is believed to be a result of ultraviolet radiation from the distant Sun breaking up methane that is present on Pluto’s surface, leaving behind a dark, molasses-colored, carbon-rich residue. Astronomers were very surprised to see that Pluto’s brightness has changed — the northern pole is brighter and the southern hemisphere is darker and redder. Summer is approaching Pluto’s north pole, and this may cause surface ices to melt and refreeze in the colder shadowed portion of the planet. The Hubble pictures underscore that Pluto is not simply a ball of ice and rock but a dynamic world that undergoes dramatic atmospheric changes.

Click the image to enlarge. Original site is here.

Tags: spazio

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Some years ago, the japanese Kaguya spacecraft orbited the moon with a HD camera onboard and take this movie.

The colors of the Earth rising above the horizon suggest our planet is a beautiful place to see from far away.

Sorry for the music and the comments.

from: Open Culture

Tags: spazio

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The Known Universe takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world’s most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History. The new film, created by the Museum, is part of an exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan through May 2010.

Tags: spazio

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The huge NASA Image Archive is now online thanks to the Internet Archive.

The site nasaimages.org is divided into five sections: Universe, Solar System, Earth, Aeronautics, and Astronauts, but the content is also indexed by a nice timeline.

Tags: spazio

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