A Worthy Endeavor

The largest image of the Andromeda Galaxy ever created. (69536 x 22230 pixels)  Source; NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope

Comet PanSTARRS with galaxy NGC 3319 Image credit: Alessandro Falesiedi

(When the image is black, it means that the ISS is on the night side of the Earth. Gray image means switching between cameras, or communications with the ISS is not available.)

Estonian astrophotographer Raivo Hein captured Moon with Jupiter and its moons!

The planet is at the point in its orbit where it is roughly closest to Earth, making it appear bigger and brighter. It’s visible almost all night, so if you have a chance, grab binoculars or a telescope and see Mars with your own eyes!  (Image: NASA, edited by me)

In 1952 Alan Turing, a british mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist, wrote a paper which remains influential in computational biology today. He explained how stripes might form on a snake’s skin [and other patterns on animals], using the dispersion of two chemicals; an activator [red] and an inhibitor [yellow]. The activator causes the colouration, and the inhibitor inhibits it. Turing wrote a pair of equations which say that concentrations of the activator cause creation of more inhibitor, but that the inhibitor diffuses and spreads out more quickly than the activator. As shown in the animation, this causes the activator to form peaks with surrounding basins of inhibitor. The concentrations of the two chemicals quickly converge to a stripey pattern where the red activator is periodically in higher concentration than the yellow inhibitor. [video] [more] [code]

Imagery from the intro to Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey: A dandelion seed morphs into the shape of the Voyager 1 spacecraft. This is a nod to Carl Sagan. The original “Spaceship of the Imagination” appeared, on the outside, as a dandelion floating on the wind. The “Golden Record” (seen glistening in the last few frames of this gif) that was affixed to the side of Voyager 1 was a project that was dear to his heart, and was the project on which he met his wife, Ann Druyan.

17 Equations That Changed The World

Cosmos, Part 13 - Who Speaks For Earth?

Carl Sagan on Literacy & Nutrition

New show clips available on the Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey website. 

Credit: Thomas Bergwinkl

Image Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio [x]

A collage of photos reveals the fatal trajectory of the Space Shuttle Challenger on January 28, 1986. (io9)