For Comparison Purposes

theconstantbuzz:

Father and son oberve Apollo 11 Launch © Ralph Crane 

The Sun rises over Earth in a postcard illustrated by Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, recalling the 1965 mission when he became the first human to walk in space.

Sirens of Titan

Earth and Moon

The last shuttle

Europe - André Kuipers 

I - ISS Over Europe

II - Wolgograd

III - London

IV - Amsterdam

V - Naples

VI - Paris

(Original Photo credit to NASA)

The leisurely pace of light speed

In a 45-minute video called Riding Light, Alphonse Swinehart animates the journey outward from the Sun to Jupiter from the perspective of a photon of light. The video underscores just how slow light is in comparison to the vast distances it has to cover, even within our own solar system. Light takes 8.5 minutes to travel from the Sun to the Earth, almost 45 minutes to Jupiter, more than 4 years to the nearest star, 100,000 years to the center of our galaxy, 2.5 million years to the nearest large galaxy (Andromeda), and 32 billion years to reach the most remote galaxy ever observed.1 The music is by Steve Reich (Music for 18 Musicians), whose music can also seem sort of endless.

If you’re impatient, you can watch this 3-minute version, sped up by 15 times:

This isn’t strictly true. As I understand it, a photon that just left the Sun will never reach that most remote galaxy.↩

Ode to Apollo 11 and the joy of discovery

All here…

PLUTO