A Cosmic Blossom

Solarbeat

This is magical. whitevinyldesign.com/solarbeat

via wired

Because every planet has its own orbital period, “it ends up generating this unending, interesting pattern,” Twyman says. For example, Mercury, which has an orbit of 88 Earth days, is the backbeat to the sound, while Pluto, which takes approximately 248 years to orbit the sun, rarely makes an appearance in the music. “It really lends itself to generating ambient music,” he says. You can tweak the speed of orbit, slowing it down to make a soothing tinkle of a child’s mobile or speeding it up to orchestrate a chaotic planetary choir. New features allow you to add sound effects like echo, flutter and bass, and you can choose from eight different chords to personalize the sound. READ MORE

Aurora and Manicouagan Crater from the Space Station : How many of these can you find in today’s featured photograph: an aurora, airglow, one of the oldest impact craters on the Earth, snow and ice, stars, city lights, and part of the International Space Station? Most of these can be identified by their distinctive colors. The aurora here appears green at the bottom, red at the top, and is visible across the left of image. Airglow appears orange and can be seen hovering over the curve of the Earth. The circular Manicouagan Crater in Canada, about 100 kilometers across and 200 million years old, is visible toward the lower right and is covered in white snow and ice. Stars, light in color, dot the dark background of space. City lights appear a bright yellow and dot the landscape. Finally, across the top, part of the International Space Station (ISS) appears mostly tan. The featured image was taken from the ISS in 2012. via NASA

At the Heart of Orion.

The orbit of Jupiter protects the Earth from asteroids.

The Pinwheel Galaxy - this giant disk of stars, dust and gas is 170,000 light-years across; nearly twice the diameter of the Milky Way. It is estimated to contain at least one trillion stars, approximately 100 billion of which could be like our Sun in terms of temperature and lifetime [6000x4690]

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The Carina Nebula - A Birthplace Of Stars

The Carina Nebula lies at an estimated distance of 6,500 to 10,000 light years away from Earth in the constellation Carina. This nebula is one of the most well studied in astrophysics and has a high rate of star formation. The star-burst in the Carina region started around three million years ago when the nebula’s first generation of newborn stars condensed and ignited in the middle of a huge cloud of cold molecular hydrogen. Radiation from these stars carved out an expanding bubble of hot gas. The island-like clumps of dark clouds scattered across the nebula are nodules of dust and gas that are resisting being eaten away by photons (particles of light) that are ionizing the surrounding gas (giving it an electrical charge).

Credit: NASA/Hubble

VIMOS’s last embrace

Sunset from the International Space Station, taken by Scott Kelly

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M51: The Whirlpool Galaxy

Credit: NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI), and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Atmospheric Jellyfish are described as jellyfish-like creature seen floating in the Earth’s atmosphere. Atmospheric Jellyfish are said to look like normal jellyfish except they are floating in the sky much like a cloud and are seen mostly around military bases. Skeptics believe that the Atmospheric Jellyfish could be misidentified clouds or weather balloons however believers hold true to the idea and remember the time that NASA sent 60,000 jellyfish into space during their From Undersea to Outer Space experiment.