cosmosscience:

It’s time to make history, and there will be history made tonight. Every time you’ve opened your mouth, took a step or any other thing we take for granted (or not), you’ve made history.

As you’ve probably guessed, this is a picture of Mercury.

We’ve never gotten really close up to Mercury,…

fuckyeahspace:

Two of its apparent planets share the same orbit around their star. If the discovery is confirmed, it would bolster a theory that Earth once shared its orbit with a Mars-sized body that later crashed into it, resulting in the moon’s formation.

The two planets are part of a four-planet system dubbed KOI-730. They circle their sun-like parent star every 9.8 days at exactly the same orbital distance, one permanently about 60 degrees ahead of the other. In the night sky of one planet, the other world must appear as a constant, blazing light, never fading or brightening.

(via NewScientist; related: Kepler data release)

fuckyeahspace:

You can watch the planets, moons and asteroids of our solar system move in proportional time with this awesome visualiser. Set the date and speed, as well as the model (Copernican or the pre-Renaissance Tychonian/geocentric model) and watch the physics happen. Unfortunately, it doesn’t depict the degradation of orbits over time, nor does the sun explode when set a few billion years in the future. Still cool, though!