FROM EARTH TO SPACE: Where Space Begins And Earth’s Atmosphere Starts To Fade Away

MARTIAN STORMS - Seen in 1977 by the Viking 2 Orbiter

“Like its predecessor, the Viking 2 mission consisted of a lander and an orbiter designed to take high-resolution images, and study the Martian surface and atmosphere. Both the Viking 1 and 2 landers benefited greatly from their orbiting counterparts, which snapped images that helped mission controllers navigate the landers to safe landing sites.”

This particular image was taken by the Viking 2 Orbiter and shows a massive dust storm on the red planet. This spectacular storm can be seen on a global scale. The Viking 2 mission would end 3 years later on April 11, 1980.

Credit: NASA/JPL

MBTI Studying Tips - Part 1

DISCLAIMERS: 

What I did do: Collect information and organize them into an easy-to-read-and-understand-post. What I didn’t do: Write most of it. Most of the information here isn’t my own writing, but rather useful tips I found from various sources. Credit is given at the bottom of the post.

I wrote most of this by doing a hell lot of research online and trying to ask my friends of different types irl what they thought of it. I am no professional, and my words in no way should be taken as gospel. Please, please send me corrections or your thoughts if anything I wrote was inaccurate, I will appreciate all the feedback I can get.

Hello hello! Your old friend Skye is here with some tips for studying based on your MBTI personality type. Now before we jump straight into things, let’s answer a few basic questions:

What is MBTI?

MBTI stands for the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which is basically a personality test that classifies you into one of 16 different personality categories based on a four-letter code. This is what the “INFP” or “ESFJ” codes mean if you’ve been seeing them around in the community. The test assesses you on four of your main traits:

How do you prefer to direct your energy? (I vs E)

What kind of information do you prefer to gather? (S vs N)

What criteria do you prefer for making decisions? (T vs F)

What kind of environment do you prefer? (J vs P)

So how do I find out what’s my type?

You can take a free online quiz here!

Okay, but what’s with the ‘Introverted Thinking’ and ‘Fi’ and all the fancy terms?

You can read more about Cognitive Function Theory here! I will be basing my post off this theory because I think it’s a more comprehensive method of understanding MBTI. 

Onwards! (The rest is under the cut bc skye rambled and it’s long af even tho I’m just covering the introverted functions)

Keep reading

Infographic about Planet 9, the required planet to explain the trajectory of six of the most distand known Kuiper Belt Objects.

Source: http://imgur.com/S5faizX

Hmm. Things. — view on Instagram http://bit.ly/2TnZRqx

“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known”

- Carl Sagan

Convergence II

Jaxson Pohlman Photography

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There’s a rare type of blood that’s shared by only 43 people in the entire world.

‘Rhnull’ blood doesn’t contain any of the Rh antigens that 99.9% of humans have. It’s often called ‘golden blood’ because it can be given to anyone who has a rare Rh blood type, but there are only 9 active donors, so it’s only used in extreme circumstances.

(Source, Source 2)

It’s Surprisingly Easy To Brew Something Like RNA In A Puddle 

One of the biggest mysteries in science is how you could get life in a place where it doesn’t already exist. Scientists have found some clues, though.

The latest is that Georgia Tech chemist Nicholas Hud was able to create something that looks a lot like RNA — a relative of DNA — using ingredients that would have been common on Earth when it was 4 billion years younger.

The study used two common chemicals left alone in what amounts to a mud puddle. The chemicals synced up and started forming that twisting ladder shape we think of when we picture DNA.

Scientists say this looks like a decent candidate for how simple organisms may have gotten started on Earth, and it wasn’t even all that hard.

Earlier studies have shown you can get some of the building blocks of life in the right situation, like extreme heat or lightning strikes. Some have even been found on asteroids.

The Georgia Tech study shows you don’t even need that much excitement. Swirling puddles could potentially have done the job.

By: Newsy Science.

at what point in history do you think americans stopped having british accents

ATLASGAL Survey of Milky Way Completed

ESO - European Southern Observatory logo. 24 February 2016

The southern plane of the Milky Way from the ATLASGAL survey

A spectacular new image of the Milky Way has been released to mark the completion of the APEX Telescope Large Area Survey of the Galaxy (ATLASGAL). The APEX telescope in Chile has mapped the full area of the Galactic Plane visible from the southern hemisphere for the first time at submillimetre wavelengths — between infrared light and radio waves — and in finer detail than recent space-based surveys. The pioneering 12-metre APEX telescope allows astronomers to study the cold Universe: gas and dust only a few tens of degrees above absolute zero. APEX, the Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment telescope, is located at 5100 metres above sea level on the Chajnantor Plateau in Chile’s Atacama region. The ATLASGAL survey took advantage of the unique characteristics of the telescope to provide a detailed view of the distribution of cold dense gas along the plane of the Milky Way galaxy [1]. The new image includes most of the regions of star formation in the southern Milky Way [2].

The southern plane of the Milky Way from the ATLASGAL survey

The new ATLASGAL maps cover an area of sky 140 degrees long and 3 degrees wide, more than four times larger than the first ATLASGAL release [3]. The new maps are also of higher quality, as some areas were re-observed to obtain a more uniform data quality over the whole survey area. The ATLASGAL survey is the single most successful APEX large programme with nearly 70 associated science papers already published, and its legacy will expand much further with all the reduced data products now available to the full astronomical community [4].

The southern plane of the Milky Way from the ATLASGAL survey (annotated)

At the heart of APEX are its sensitive instruments. One of these, LABOCA (the LArge BOlometer Camera) was used for the ATLASGAL survey. LABOCA  measures incoming radiation by registering the tiny rise in temperature it causes on its detectors and can detect emission from the cold dark dust bands obscuring the stellar light. The new release of ATLASGAL complements observations from ESA’s Planck satellite [5]. The combination of the Planck and APEX data allowed astronomers to detect emission spread over a larger area of sky and to estimate from it the fraction of dense gas in the inner Galaxy. The ATLASGAL data were also used to create a complete census of cold and massive clouds where new generations of stars are forming.

Comparison of the central part of the Milky Way at different wavelengths

“ATLASGAL provides exciting insights into where the next generation of high-mass stars and clusters form. By combining these with observations from Planck, we can now obtain a link to the large-scale structures of giant molecular clouds,” remarks Timea Csengeri from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR), Bonn, Germany, who led the work of combining the APEX and Planck data.

Comparison of the central part of the Milky Way at different wavelengths (annotated)

The APEX telescope recently celebrated ten years of successful research on the cold Universe. It plays an important role not only as pathfinder, but also as a complementary facility to ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, which is also located  on the Chajnantor Plateau. APEX is based on a prototype antenna constructed for the ALMA project, and it has found many targets that ALMA can study in great detail.

Comparison of the central part of the Milky Way at different wavelengths

Leonardo Testi from ESO, who is a member of the ATLASGAL team and the European Project Scientist for the ALMA project, concludes: “ATLASGAL has allowed us to have a new and transformational look at the dense interstellar medium of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. The new release of the full survey opens up the possibility to mine this marvellous dataset for new discoveries. Many teams of scientists are already using the ATLASGAL data to plan for detailed ALMA follow-up.”

Close look at the ATLASGAL image of the plane of the Milky Way

Notes: [1] The map was constructed from individual APEX observations of radiation with a wavelength of 870 µm (0.87 millimetres). [2] The northern part of the Milky Way had already been mapped by the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) and other telescopes, but the southern sky is particularly important as it includes the Galactic Centre, and because it is accessible for detailed follow-up observations with ALMA. [3] The first data release covered an area of approximately 95 square degrees, a very long and narrow strip along the Galactic Plane two degrees wide and over 40 degrees long. The final maps now cover 420 square degrees, more than four times larger. [4] The data products are available through the ESO archive: http://archive.eso.org/wdb/wdb/adp/phase3_main/form?phase3_collection=ATLASGAL&release_tag=1 [5] The Planck data cover the full sky, but with poor spatial resolution. ATLASGAL covers only the Galactic plane, but with high angular resolution. Combining both provides excellent spatial dynamic range. More information: ATLASGAL is a collaboration between the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR), the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), ESO, and the University of Chile. APEX is a collaboration between the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR), the Onsala Space Observatory (OSO) and ESO. Operation of APEX at Chajnantor is carried out by ESO. ALMA is a partnership of the ESO, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA is funded by ESO on behalf of its Member States, by NSF in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the National Science Council of Taiwan (NSC) and by NINS in cooperation with the Academia Sinica (AS) in Taiwan and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI). ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world’s most productive ground-based astronomical observatory by far. It is supported by 16 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, along with the host state of Chile. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope, the world’s most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and two survey telescopes. VISTA works in the infrared and is the world’s largest survey telescope and the VLT Survey Telescope is the largest telescope designed to exclusively survey the skies in visible light. ESO is a major partner in ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. And on Cerro Armazones, close to Paranal, ESO is building the 39-metre European Extremely Large Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become “the world’s biggest eye on the sky”. Links: The ATLASGAL survey: http://www3.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/div/atlasgal/index.html LABOCA (the LArge BOlometer Camera) : https://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/apex/laboca/ Max-Planck-Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR): http://www.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/2169/en Onsala Space Observatory (OSO): http://www.chalmers.se/en/centres/oso/Pages/default.aspx ATLASGAL information at MPIfR: http://www3.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/div/atlasgal/index.html The Csengeri et al. 2016 paper on the combination with Planck data: http://esoads.eso.org/abs/2016A%26A…585A.104C ATLASGAL papers linked in the ESO Telescope Bibliography: http://telbib.eso.org/?q=atlasgal&boolany=or&boolaut=or&boolti=or&yearto=2016&boolins=or&booltel=or&search=Search ESA’s Planck satellite: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Planck_overview Related article: First ATLASGAL release: https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso0924/ Images, Text, Credits: ESO/APEX/ATLASGAL consortium/NASA/GLIMPSE consortium/ESA/Planck/D. Minniti/S. GuisardAcknowledgement: Ignacio Toledo, Martin Kornmesser/Videos: ESO/APEX/ATLASGAL consortium/NASA/GLIMPSE consortium/ESA/Planck/VVV Survey/D. Minniti/S. Guisard/Acknowledgement: Ignacio Toledo, Martin Kornmesser. Music: Johan B. Monell (www.johanmonell.com). Best regards, Orbiter.ch Full article