Awesomeness Round-up – 8/30/10
- By Sara Mitchell
- August 30, 2010
- 2 Comments
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech
What happens when planets form around a tightly orbiting binary star system? A cosmic smashup! As this particular type of binary stars get cozier, they cause a disturbance in the force… err, I mean, in their gravitational influences on their local planetary system. Things start colliding, and it’s not pretty for the planets involved. It does create a lovely glowing disk of dust, which you can see in the next image. It’s also worth reading the associated press release from Spitzer, which points out that the residents of a planet in one of these systems would see two suns in the sky, just like on Tatooine. Not sure if that’s worth living on a planet that’s likely to be pulverized, but it would be pretty awesome.
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech
These two images were created by visual effects artist Tim Pyle, and Geeked on Goddard did a profile about his work.
The Sun has been busy lately, having six eruptions during the two-day period of August 14th and 15th. The video above, from SOHO, shows this activity – including three eruptions occurring at once!
Trying to keep up with the ever-growing list of astronauts on Twitter? The folks at collectSPACE have assembled a comprehensive (and regularly updated) list – including active, former, international, and private space travelers! Conveniently, they’ve also created a Twitter list so that you can easily follow all of them at once.
At the session grid, by arma358
And finally, a couple of members of the Blueshift team spent this past weekend at the SpaceUpDC unconference, a two-day gathering of people with a common interest in one thing: space. It had an open format, and participants set the schedule right there on the spot. The whole event was archived on a wiki, and you can watch the session on YouTube. It’s almost like you’re there, but you don’t get to take part in the two most awesome aspects – the terrific networking and the Tribble fight!
What happens when you mix geeks, space, and ThinkGeek by brunosan
It’s all fun and games until a rocket scientist loses an eye. (Then it’s epic ;) )
Wow! I didn’t even know my picture was used until now! Awesome! Thanks guys! The conference was great, and I loved meeting like-minded people.