Rob Masters

How dark is your sky? How far do you have to travel to reach a dark sky? Originally shared by Friends of NASA The New World Atlas of Artificial Sky Brightness How far are you from a naturally dark night sky? In increasing steps, this world map (medium | large) shows the effect of artificial night sky brightness on the visual appearance of the night sky. The brightness was modeled using high resolution satellite data and fit to thousands of night sky brightness measurements in recent work. Color-coded levels are compared to the natural sky brightness level for your location. For example, artificial sky brightness levels in yellow alter the natural appearance of the night sky. In red they hide the Milky Way in an artificial luminous fog. The results indicate that the historically common appearance of our galaxy at night is now lost for more than one-third of humanity. That includes 60% of Europeans and almost 80% of North Americans, along with inhabitants of other densely populated, ligh...

Science! We get gravitational acceleration, tidal stringing, and redshifting all in one! Originally shared by Solar VPS How a Black Hole Consumes a Star This amazing footage (from NASA - who else?) shows just how devastatingly powerful a #blackhole  truly is. Shot over the course of 139 days , this visualization footage shows a supermassive black hole that is approximately 2.7 billion light years away from earth decimating a star. From SPACE.com: "In this visualization, some of the murdered star's debris falls into the void, but some is spun up and shot out at high velocities.Credit: NASA, S. Gezari (The Johns Hopkins University), and J. Guillochon (University of California, Santa Cruz)." The arc of stardust that is flung out into the #cosmos  is unbelievable. It's a #gif  like this that reminds us here at www.solarvps.com that #space  is not only mind boggingly big, but also mind-boggingly violent and treacherous, even for objects as massive as stars. #cool ...