Real life science fiction

[mycroftt]

I'm a huge APOD fan too. When I need some humbling I like to look at the Coma Cluster of Galaxies.

 

[Esav Benyamin]

When I need some humbling I like to look at the Coma Cluster of Galaxies.

On a southern night, I lay on a hayrick facing the sky,
And the choir of stars was spread out in a circle, alive and friendly.

The earth, mute as a vague dream,
Was receding into the unknown,
And I like the first dweller in paradise,
Alone beheld the night face to face.

Was I racing towards the midnight abyss,
or were the hosts of stars rushing towards me?
It seemed I was held in a mighty hand
Suspended above this abyss.

And with a sinking and bewildered heart,
I spanned with my gaze the depth
Into which with every moment
I was sinking more irrevocably.

-- Afanasy Fet, Russian poet (1820-92)

 

[powernoodle]

"The Heavens declare the Glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge." - Psalm 19:1.

:thumbup:

Great pics, Esav.

 

[kozak6]

Those are some cool pictures, and a great website. Thanks for linking to them.

I'm taking a planetary science class right now, and this stuff is so fascinating.

 

[Lazydog1]

Thanks Esav, for starting this thread, and all who posted. I'd wandered away from these sites. Glad to be back. Art is out there...by the Greatest Artist of all.

 

[markksr]

A good article from wired.com... Humans in Space: 10 Amazing Spacewalk Photos

One of my favorite photos from the article...

Kathy Thornton prepares to send a broken solar panel from Hubble plunging toward atmospheric incineration. Astronauts successfully replaced the damaged panel in 1993. What looks like the Deathstar is actually Earth.

 

[Esav Benyamin]

The Soviets beat Americans to spacewalking. On March 18, 1965, Aleksey Leonov became the first human to walk in space. The image is a still from the external movie camera attached to his vessel, the Soviet Voskhod 2.

"Chelovek vyshel v kosmicheskoe prostranstvo - Man has gone out into cosmic space."

Leonov went on to head the cosmonaut program. While on his space flights, he sketched scenes that he later worked up in oils.
I was at the Smithsonian one year and saw some of his work on loan-display. He was pretty good!

 

[Esav Benyamin]

Some pictures I took of the Space Shuttle launch on March 15. I live about 100 miles north of Cape Canaveral.

The pictures reminded me of this.
(Finally got around to finding a copy!)

The Green Hills of Earth

Let the sweet fresh breezes heal me
As they rove around the girth
Of our lovely mother planet
Of the cool, green hills of Earth.

We've tried each spinning space mote
And reckoned its true worth:
Take us back again to the homes of men
On the cool, green hills of Earth.

The arching sky is calling
Spacemen back to their trade.
ALL HANDS! STAND BY! FREE FALLING!
And the lights below us fade.

Out ride the sons of Terra,
Far drives the thundering jet,
Up leaps a race of Earthmen,
Out, far, and onward yet ---

We pray for one last landing
On the globe that gave us birth;
Let us rest our eyes on the fleecy skies
And the cool, green hills of Earth.

-- Robert A. Heinlein​

 

[markksr]

The pictures reminded me of this.
(Finally got around to finding a copy!)

The Green Hills of Earth

...​

Thanks Esav.

As a relatively new fan of Heinlein, I was not aware of his poetry.



BTW- For others looking for free ebooks; that site Esav linked to, www.baen.com, has a free library of science fiction.

 

[b.c.molin]

Space travel yes, but a long way to go...

More pictures and story here:

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2431157.ece

 

[markksr]

Space travel yes, but a long way to go...

More pictures and story here:

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2431157.ece

Absolutely incredible!


I found this info on another site ...http://www.skynyx.fr/legault/atlantis_hst_transit.html

Only image ever taken of a transit of a space shuttle (Atlantis) and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in front of the Sun, during the last repair mission of Hubble, obtained from Florida at 100 km south of the Kennedy Space Center on May 13th 2009 12:17 local time, several minutes before grapple of Hubble by Atlantis.

Transit duration: 0.8s. Transit bandwidth on Earth: 5.6 km. Altitude: 600 km. Speed: 7 km/s (25000 km/h). Length of Atlantis : 35m, length of Hubble : 13m.
Transit forecast (place, time...) calculated by www.calsky.com.

Takahashi TOA-130 refractor (diameter 130mm, final focal 2200mm), Baader solar prism and Canon 5D mark II. Exposure of 1/8000s at 100 ISO, extracted from a series of 16 images (4 images/s) started 2s before the predicted time.