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Pics from Hubble, Cassini, etc. - videos from the ISS, high-altitude jet flights, etc. I checked and didn't see a thread on this topic; it's not quite the same as Darmok's Skywatch thread.

This is from Cassini: I used it as my desktop background for awhile.



(edit in: resized. Much better.)

(I know one isn't theoretically *supposed* to bump one's own thread, but to share cool stuff, I think it can be forgiven )

This is NASA's realtime live stream from the International Space Station. One orbit takes 90 minutes. (I also like the music they have chosen, very much.)

Valley Marineris. Also known as "the Martian Grand Canyon". Its a gazillion times the size of Earth's
grand canyon. But they aren't even comparable geologic formations. Arizona's Grand Canyon was formed by water erosion. The Martian valley is thought to be a rift valley, and is in fact comparable in size to the Great Rift Valley of Africa.

That is gorgeous! So off I went looking for the Great Rift Valley... which is gorgeous too.



Thank you !

(Edit in: Oh God, pun totally not intended.)

Thank you!

I was gonna try to do that myself. Place a pic of the terrestrial Rift Valley up to next the Martian one, but you already did it for me.

Yeah, I kinda stole your idea there - thanks again. Additional pix/videos welcome!

No. You didn't steal my idea. You took it and ran with it. That's what I was thanking you for.

This is how I envisioned the surface of Titan to look when I did a book report in highschool in the early seventies on a novel by Vonnegut.

In the next post is how Titan actually looks.

Magnificent video! I'm amazed by those gullies carved by liquid methane, and things that looks like river rock or glacial till but are water ice boulders. With the colors and haze, I kept thinking of aridity and heat - but that is so totally not the case.



(edit in: when I looked up the book cover, I found a blurb by Brian Aldiss on the back. He's where this started for me; I read The Long Afternoon of Earth (US title, I think it was Hothouse elsewhere) when young.)

Yeah. As they say "Titan is so weird that its normal". It so different from Earth that the many differences cancel each other out so it ends up being oddly similar to the Earth. It has what looks like rounded water eroded rocks, but the rocks are themselves frozen water. It has an atmosphere. And liquid lakes. And so on. Quite a fascinating place.

Aurora Borealis from the ISS, in HD

This one is apparently out as a poster now. It's also an Aspie Trap - I gaze at this and lose all track of time.

The Nile Valley is a literal river of light.

^^ It's a very beautiful image, but it kind of saddens me slightly too. Right there is the very reason that so many of us will never get a good view of the Milky Way or be able to count the Pleiades.

Yes. I wish there were ways to have both safely lit streets and starlit skies - I never saw the Milky Way, or the Aurora, until I lived in Oregon, in my early 30s.

I count my lucky stars (pun intended! ) that I live quite close to a National Park, so I can get some good stargazing at least a couple of times a year if I pitch my tent in a good spot.

There is a little hope with the street-lighting. Around here, a few of the major roads between villages have had new lighting installed that concentrates the light only on the carriageway. I think it's intended as an energy saving thing really, but the improvement in seeing if you go out into the surrounding fields is definitely noticeable.

That's really encouraging news. I hope it catches on and goes international