Space collisions are massive, unbelievably powerful events. When two galaxies collide — that is, when their gravitational fields start interacting with one another — the resulting billion-year-long process contorts and twists the galaxies into the fascinating shapes we’ve seen in photographs taken by powerful space telescopes.
The above video is a supercomputer simulation of two galaxies going through a many-hundred-million-year-long collision. As the galaxies merge into the known stages of collision that have been photographed by Hubble, the video is paused and replaced with a photograph of that stage taken IRL. Read more…
Late last month, NASA launched Orbital Sciences’ Antares rocket into space, and with it a trio of satellites powered, get this, by Android Phones. Part of the NASA project “PhoneSats,” the three satellites spent a total of 5 days in space, after which they burned up in the atmosphere as planned — but not before they had a chance to beam down some sub-par smartphone snaps of Earth as seen from Orbit. Read more…
Photographer Richard Gottardo tells us that he spent a few months in the Rocky Mountains, trying to see and photograph the Northern Lights. A brilliant aurora display finally happened a week ago, and Gottardo’s mission was accomplished. Read more…
If you’ve ever watched the evening news on television, you’ve probably seen photos and video captured by the powerful cameras on the station’s helicopter. Here’s something interesting: on a clear night, the long reach of the helicopter’s camera can actually snap a clear photograph of the planet Saturn!
In the past, we’ve shared some interesting experiments that photographers and artists have done, imagining what our photos would look like if something were to be drastically different about out planet or solar system. Today, we’re adding another one to that list. Read more…
Taking a cue from the music industry and those incessant Now That’s What I Call Music! albums, NASA has released its own “best-of” compilation of the most compelling imagery its satellites collected this past year. A mixture of true color, computer models, visualizations, and time-lapses from the ISS, the video gives us yet another stunning view of our little blue planet. Read more…
On March 16th, a massive solar flare at sunspot AR1692 — a spot roughly the size of our quaint little planet — sent a huge burst of solar wind headed our way. On March 17th, when it came into contact with the Earth’s magnetic field, several hours of breathtaking aurora borealis resulted. Read more…
Some people have been asking for tips on how to do star trails. There seems to be a few misconceptions and a few different methods. Here’s a tutorial on my personal technique. Read more…
By using Photoshop on photos taken by NASA at the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, London-based illustrator Chris Keegan is able to create beautiful images of people and creatures out of deep space nebulae.
The process begins a lot like those summer days as a kid lying in the grass and picking shapes out of the clouds — just replace clouds with celestial imagery. Once Keegan has picked out a shape, he takes the image into Photoshop and strengthens that shape until it will be recognizable to everyone. Read more…
Like many of us, astrophotographer Christoph Malin is a big fan of astronaut and fellow photographer Don Pettit. We’ve featured Pettit’s photography several times before — we even shared his entire talk from Luminance 2012 here — but in the video above, Malin puts together a little bit of both into a fitting tribute to his favorite “astronaut, poet and astrophotographer.” Read more…
