Space

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On Johnson Style

Especially for those of us that grew up during the space race, NASA has a special place in our heart. Yes, I remember the first named flight by Russian Yuri Gagarin, the first US flight by Alan Shepard, and obviously the ones that followed. They were big news events – and I recall our grade school class stopping to watch the televised launches. From Mercury to Gemini, to Apollo missions the wonderful space shuttle, and countless satellite programs,  NASA has taken us to the heavens.

Today, the shuttle program is retired, the Russians transport the astronauts to/from the International Space Station, and satellite launches in this country is now by private business. Nonetheless, the Johnson Space Center in Houston is still operating, thus this video made by smile and laugh. Cheers to two space geeks who visit here, Alex and John.

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On a Header to Saturn by Cassini

Usually headers feature images from the Hubble Telescope, but when I saw this one, I knew it was a must-use image. Not sure for how long, but it is a user.

This is an image from the Cassini orbiter from the dark side of Saturn looking back at the sun, whose rays illustrate the main particles in the Saturn system. Similar to Hubble images, scientists use filtering techniques to determine the digitally created colors. Here is more information about this image.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a joint mission between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency. The Cassini orbiter, sending a steady stream of images of the Saturn system since 2004 arrival, is just another example of the awesome nature of creation.

This image happened to capture a small, bright speck of light on the left side, which happens to be the pale blue dot we call home. With that in mind, I can never get enough of this awesome video accompanying the words of Carl Sagan. Besides, he would be proud of the images from this mission.