Yuri’s Night 2017

No matter where you live, there is likely to be a Yuri’s Night event coming up soon.

On the anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s historic first human spaceflight on April 12, 1961, people gather around the world to celebrate humanity’s past, present and especially future of our collective exploration of the cosmos.

Check this link to see the schedule of events near you and even if you don’t attend any events, why not grab some Yuri’s Night merch at chopshopstore to show others you care about our future in space!

New Chop Shop Poster for Vostok 1

The third and final design in their Giant Leaps in Space Print Series was posted last week for Vostok 1. This was the first ever mission to achieve human spaceflight. Check out this and the rest of the series currently funding on Kickstarter with only a few days left. The campaign ends on March 14.

All three designs are now posted for this latest installation of Chop Shop’s series of Space Exploration Mission posters. Consider becoming a backer and the rewards go on sale for their normal retail price.

The Exotic Tiny Moon Pan

Pan is a moon of the planet Saturn and also happens to have an unusual job “Ring Shepherd”. These are moons which help maintain the many gaps we find within Saturn’s rings. Pan is shown above in it’s natural habitat within the Encke Division of Saturn’s rings. But take a look at what Pan looks like up-close (below).

We have seen this kind of phenomenon at Saturn before, but never quite this dramatic. A small standard potato shaped moon transformed by the accumulation of ring dust and particles into a ravioli shaped moon.

Worth noting that the color shown above is mostly true. The red channel is replaced by infrared and blue channel replaced by ultraviolet — both offer a view that comes close to what you would see with natural light (RGB).

All images were taken by Cassini in March 2017 and processed by Ian Regan.

New Chop Shop Poster for ISS

The second design in their Giant Leaps in Space Print Series was posted this weekend. Check out the full series now funding on Kickstarter. Next up is Vostok 1 and Yuri Gegarin’s historic first mission of human spaceflight.

Juno in the South

Did those cameras suddenly get better? Link to NASA page.

Giant Leaps in Space Poster Series

If you are familiar with Chop Shop’s Historic Robotic Spacecraft Series then their next three space exploration prints might also interest you. The new series is called Giant Leaps in Space and the focus is now on human spaceflight. This series will consist of three prints featuring Apollo 11 (already designed), The International Space Station (due Feb 21) and Vostock 1 (due Feb 28).

It is now funding on Kickstarter through to March 14 with rewards ranging from screen prints, more affordable archival digital prints, t-shirts and stickers.

Sputnik Poster

I just realized there are still some spacecraft posters that I never posted here. This is Sputnik and is actually the second best seller from the series after Voyager (which is nearly sold out). From a series of 175 there are only about 20 left of these beauties.

Juno @ Jupiter

Hopefully better images are coming from Juno. It always seems the resolution is not that great. Not sure if it is because the mission’s primary goal is not imaging — but still, you would think a trip to Jupiter would warrant a better imager?

Imaged by Ted Stryk.

Saturn’s Rings Slip Into Shade

Ganymede Looking Better, Thanks Ted

Another new near global image of Ganymede by Ted Styrk. He has been producing new views of this Galilean moon for a while now from the old Galileo image sets which were compromised by a glitch that effected the entire mission.

Click on it… it’s large.

Project Blue: A Mission to Image Another Earth

Help support the creation of the first space based telescope dedicated to the observation of one star system: Centauri our closest celestial neighbor. Project Blue’s ultimate goal is to take the first visible light image of an Earth like planet outside of our own Solar System. The Kickstarter funding goal is 1 million, but I have been posting this image with the goal of 4 million becuase that pays for everything except getting the telescope launched.

The mission patch was designed by our sister site chopshopstore.com, well known for their Robotic Spacecraft Series of prints. They are also responsible for the official mission patch for The Planetary Society’s LightSail. As of now only the patch design is released to the campaign, but there are also plans for a more detailed limited edition screenprint for the campaign to be unveiled around November 28.

99% Invisible: Space Trash

This week’s 99% Invisible is all about the ever worsening issue of space trash. If you haven’t heard of the show… this would be a great one to start with.

Full disclosure: Our sister site chopshopstore.com also sells merchandise for 99% Invisble and several other public radio programs from Radiolab to the Radiotopia family of podcasts.

Rosetta’s Goodbye Landing

All images were taken from under 10km as Rosetta approached the surface.

This first image was manipulated to reduce noise and increase contrast. What we see here is cometary dust particles moving in varied directions and lengths. Check out this animated GIF sent to me by Phil Stooke showing cometary dust moving around 67-P.

A Major Discovery at Proxima Centauri

The closest star to our own is apparently going to be the center of a major announcement at the end of the month. Sorry to tell them, but the cat (if there is a cat) is already out of said bag. And — this is coming on the heels of the Breakthrough Initiatives announcement of Starshot, a nano-mission to the nearest star system within a generation. A group backed by Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan’s widow Ann Druyan and Mark Zuckerberg.

On a related note, Chop Shop (our more commercial entity) just released their first design for Icarus Interstellar Build a Starship which happens to feature the Centauri System (that is Proxima upper right). Centauri is a triple star system with Beta Centauri in orbit around Alpha Centauri. Despite the graphic’s presentation… Proxima Centauri’s orbit (if there is one) is so long that they are not even sure if it actually orbits the two or if it is just locked into position trailing the two.

Hellas Basin from Mars Express

Another one definitely worth clicking to see the full-resolution. Image by Justin Cowert and more information on his Flickr page.

A Long Amazing Stretch of Pluto

I still cannot believe Pluto has this much variance in it’s geology. I truly expected New Horizons to arrive and find something more like Dione. No disrespect intended to one of Saturn’s own, but you don’t want to travel nearly 10 years to uncover a frozen and cratered dirty snowball. Even while Hubble was hinting at something amazing before we finally arrived, I still expected to be underwhelmed.

New Horizons has revealed one of the most diverse bodies in our Solar System which presents an intriguing mystery. How does an object so far from the warmth of the sun, and too small to generate it’s own internal heat manage to create floating mountains, smooth icy plains and truly wild textures that we are used to seeing on small bodies orbiting too close to giant planets?

Even more exciting… we now know that size and distance may not matter as much as we had thought. All of the other Dwarf Planets in the Kuiper Belt may each be just as amazing as Pluto has been revealed to be. When do we start planning for a New Horizons 2 visit to Eris?

Saturnati XXXI

Okay, so it is not totally real. An IR filter was added to the normal RGB files to exaggerate the clouds. Also made the rings appear red. But we couldn’t find a version of this image without the added filter. So — it is about 80% true color. Seen on The Planetary Society image library by Judy Schmidt.

Old Timey Jupiter

I love this “old timey” animation of Jupiter from Voyager 1. It reminds me of these Mars and Moon shots posted so long ago. The animation was created by unmannedspaceflight.com user Astroboy and modified by user Herobrine.

Cyber Tuesday Spaceprobe Deal

For two days only, buy one of our limited edition Robotic Spacecraft Series Prints and get the full suite of vinyl stickers for free. This is a total savings of $24 and would serve as a great stocking stuffer to follow the presentation of the print.

Pluto: Sending Geophysicists Back to Drawing Boards

I have never seen anything like this. What we are seeing are many different kinds of materials in two image frames (mosaic by Emily Lakdawalla). The shiniest textures seen here are more than likely water ice, the darker material may be tholins (a theoretical substance predicted by Carl Sagan himself) and frozen carbon monoxide — but we don’t know for sure.

Thus far, Pluto is so unexpected and so many times more exotic than I would have ever guessed.