There's a pretty cool project called Uwingu currently running on fund-raiser on indiegogo.com (a crowd-funding site similar to Kickstarter). It's a new company whose goals is to create space-related apps, and use the profit from the sales to actually fund space research. I think it's imperative to find new ways to fund such research, as government funding will always be unreliable and subject to the ebb and flow of political interest, as evidenced by the recent slashing of NASA's budget. A project like Uwingu could partly remedy to the situation, as well as increase interest for space science among the public. Admittedly the details about their actual products are very sparse at the moment, but important and trustworthy people from the space community are behind it, such as Alan Stern (principal investigator on the New Horizons mission and former NASA Associate Administrator) being the CEO. It seems like this idea is worth a shot to me. There are 9 days left to their drive, consider supporting them if you're able.

This deals with a little more than just outer space, but this is still fascinating to see the scale of the universe. You can manipulate it with the mouse slider and scale in and out. Really jaw dropping.

http://htwins.net/scale2/

That is really, really cool.

I laughed when I saw Minecraft World on there.

New Hubble "extreme deep field" image:

I saw that the other day, it's quite cool. All the deep field images have fascinated me due to the number of galaxies in them and how far away those galaxies are.

I'll throw this into the mix:

http://www.cracked.com/article_19662_6- ... shame.html

That article is from Cracked.com, and while humorous, it has some pretty wild planets in there.

I also offer a nerdy female scientists' rebuttle to said Cracked.com article, which also features pretty wild planets:

http://astrobites.com/2012/03/05/6-real-planets/

"Imagine the Earth as if it were immersed in honey. As the planet rotates, the honey around it would swirl, and it's the same with space and time"

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/gpb/gpb_results.html

http://www.youtube.com/v/jKJCkqHsiZU

http://www.latinospost.com/articles/473 ... -video.htm
A black hole radius is measured for the first time.

Since we're talking about space, we also should talk about astronomy.
Here, we should all read this:
Astronomy for Development. Preety cool, huh?

Personally, I think very. Wish we were spending billions on this, instead of the middle eastern bs. Years ago, a lot of the stuff that is happening/possible now, wouldve been sci fi then.

Now I love you. But yeah. Pretty much everything technologic we have has been developed for science, including astronomy very often. We should thank then astronomy, and dedicate a little of our time to spread the word.

There are two articles that I found quite intriguing.

A mission to land on Titan's Ligeia Mare would probably provide the most fascinating visuals of any space mission to date. Imagine the view from a boat on a hydrocarbon sea...

Highs on Mars up to 43º Fahrenheit mean that temperatures definitely allow for liquid water. The only other factor is atmospheric pressure. However, Curiosity is inside a crater, which would have a higher air pressure than other areas of the planet. As southern Mars warms up, the CO2 ice would sublimate and thicken the atmosphere. This might just put the air pressure up high enough to allow for liquid water on the surface. What better way to prove that there is liquid water on Mars in the present than for it to trickle by Curiosity? This coming Martian spring and summer might just allow that.

That Titan mission would be amazing. That specific moon has so much potential for great discoveries it would be a shame to hold off on a mission to study it further.

The concept of space in my early teenage years basically made me suddenly think that Astrophysics was the major for me when I got into college (this concept has long changed, however). Even then, my fascination of space has remained. If anyone here is interested in the foundation and 'weird stuff' of space, I totally recommend Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time." Honestly this is a timeless book, even if it has more than 20-30 years. The best topic he covers in his book are the arrows of time, ultimately dealing with the beginning and ending of the universe. Sick stuff!!!

The best way to cover a space/universe fix is to buy a good, glossy picture book with tons of photos of stars, planets, nebulae, ect. It's like you get into this dreamy state just by looking at the photos

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/scie ... t/1622603/
The rover found something shiny. Who knows what it could be.

That's a shame, it appears it was something that fell off Curiosity. Probably.
http://www.space.com/17979-mars-rover-c ... piece.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19950923
New planet discovered that is surrounded by 4 suns.

That's pretty awesome.

Holy shit, this is the week for amazing exoplanet discoveries... it's just been announced that a planet has been found in Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to the sun! It's even nearly Earth-sized, with 1.13 times the mass of the Earth. Unfortunately though, it's also orbiting extremely close to its host star, Alpha Centauri B, so it's pretty much a scorched ball of hell with no chance of life... but still, incredible discovery! Hopefully there are more planets to find in that system.

Awesome news, Hellblazer.

Does anybody remember the name of the exo-planet that was engulfed by it's own star and yet the planet survived even after a vast amount of time spent within? I remember reading an article on the planet but the name eludes me.

That sounds familiar. Looking through my feed reader... maybe this is it?

Not quite but that was a very interesting read none the less. I seem to recall the article I mentioned saying that the planet was found drifting in space with no host star if that rings a bell.

It always kinda seemed obvious to me that if our solar system formed the way it did with a lot of fairly large "debris" (i.e. planets, moons etc.) then why wouldn't the same happen for pretty much every other star system... they're all formed by accreting gas and dust with plenty left over for planets. Our solar system really isn't that special. Now 4 suns, that's special. lol

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la- ... 6262.story
A new theory about the moon's origins.

SpaceX's Dragon capsule is back on Earth after successfully accomplishing its first commercial mission to resupply the International Space Station. Its next mission is currently scheduled for January, and SpaceX hopes to have the capsule human-rated to transport crew beginning in 2015.

http://www.tgdaily.com/space-features/6 ... -the-earth
This...I'm not exactly sure of what to say of it.

That's amazing. Now, when are we going to use these things in a actual paintball match? It could be used as a sort of orbital bombing....

Hmm, interesting. It seems like a gravitational tug would still be the most precise and likely to work way to do it, but I expect this "paintball" system would be much cheaper.

How about "awesome!"? Because exploiting albedo this way is really, really awesome, 20 years of cumulative effect or not.

As it turns out, apparently lasers work pretty well for this purpose too.

Did you by any chance read today's XKCD article?

Fuck, thanks for reminding me.

Of course.

self-image of Curiosity:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/m ... 16238.html
pretty cool.

edit:
no, idea where heise got this one from, but it is definitely better:
http://www.heise.de/imgs/18/9/4/1/9/8/1 ... 0df5e.jpeg

edit 2:
a nasa picture with a better resolution:
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/7035 ... 1_full.jpg

This is probably a dumb question but: How?

Cool pic, but I was immediately wondering about that too.

Mirror on a invisible stick.

Amazing pic, can't wait untill the Curiosity reaches the base of those mountains we saw earlier.

Every time I look at Mars' landscape, I can't help but feel my jaw slacken a little bit.

done by Martians of course ... and then uploaded to the NASA servers.

more serious:
55 pictures with this and then pasted together.