Our Beautiful Universe - Photos and Videos

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Discussion Overview

This thread is dedicated to sharing and appreciating videos, photos, and animations of space and celestial objects, emphasizing the beauty of the Universe. Participants are encouraged to include scientific information alongside their contributions, while adhering to forum guidelines regarding mainstream science.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Conceptual clarification
  • Debate/contested

Main Points Raised

  • One participant initiates the thread by inviting others to share clips and photos of space, highlighting the beauty of the Universe.
  • Several participants share specific video clips, including time-lapse footage from the ISS and NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory.
  • Another participant mentions the upcoming capture of the Dawn spacecraft by Ceres, expressing excitement about future images from the New Horizons mission to Pluto.
  • One participant recalls a clip titled "The Known Universe" and reflects on its emotional impact while viewing the Milky Way.
  • Another shares a video about NASA astronaut Don Pettit experimenting with water in a weightless environment, noting its relevance to the thread's theme.
  • Some participants discuss the Digital Universe software, expressing mixed feelings about its representation of the solar system and the Milky Way.
  • A participant creatively describes the dynamics of Earth's atmosphere, drawing parallels to celestial phenomena and inviting further exploration of the topic.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

The discussion features a variety of contributions and perspectives, with no clear consensus on specific interpretations or representations of the shared content. Participants express personal reflections and emotional responses to the videos and images, indicating a shared appreciation for the beauty of the Universe while maintaining individual viewpoints.

Contextual Notes

Some posts reference specific scientific missions and software, but the discussion remains open-ended regarding the implications and interpretations of the shared materials.

  • #31
I open the ISS live stream every day. Nothing to see when it's on the dark side unfortunately but this image below will update with the current position of the ISS whenever you refresh the page.

orbitdisplay.aspx?icon=iss&width=300&height=300&satid=25544.png


Looks like PF is caching the image. Here's the direct link -
https://www.physicsforums.com/view-source:http://www.heavens-above.com/orbitdisplay.aspx?icon=iss&width=300&height=300&satid=25544
 
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Astronomy news on Phys.org
  • #32
52706main_hstorion_lg.jpg

Here we see disproven the commonly held notion that shields don't work inside a nebula. Bow shock of LL Orionis plowing through the Orion Nebula, protected by its stellar wind.
 
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  • #33
A Flight Through the Universe, by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
 
  • #35
PIA19821_modest.jpg


Picture of our sun.
 
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  • #36
I can't get enough of this 'song'. :woot:

SYMPHONY OF SCIENCE - WAVES OF LIGHT
Symphony of Science returns! A musical celebration of light and how it tells the story of our universe. Featuring Brian Cox.
 
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  • #38
I just recently joined this forum and this thread only would have made the act worthwhile. I am going to mark it as a favorite so that i don't lose it because i can't watch all those great videos in a single setting. thanks everyone for sharing! p.s. I am an action photographer but i managed to get this picture of venus and the moon right before the transit that occurred a few years back. I had forgotten that venus goes through cycles in a similar fashion as our moon.
sincerely,
k. doc holiday
197 sharp venus moon jpg copy.jpg
 
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  • #39
K. Doc Holiday said:
I am an action photographer but i managed to get this picture of venus and the moon right before the transit that occurred a few years back.

Welcome to PF :)

nice pic of the 2 ... but you really mean occultation ... neither the Moon nor Venus transit each other

An occultation is when a visually small object goes behind a larger body eg. the moon occultates planets, stars, nebula etc
A transit is the opposite, when a visually small object goes across the face of a larger object ...
we see transits eg. transits of Mercury and Venus across the face of the Sun. The moons of Jupiter across the face of Jupitercheers
Dave
 
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  • #40
Thanks Dave, that is exactly what i meant. I must have been thinking about the transit of Venus across the sun in 2004, which is, of course, a very rare event. I love constructive criticism. please keep it coming!
 
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  • #41
K. Doc Holiday said:
Thanks Dave, that is exactly what i meant. I must have been thinking about the transit of Venus across the sun in 2004, which is, of course, a very rare event. I love constructive criticism. please keep it coming!

all cool :smile:

for future images you post, just create a thread in the main astronomy section
periodically you will see astro pic posts by Andy Resnick, Russ Watters and myself being the 3 main contributors
and a couple of others on occasions :smile:
Always looking forward to seeing more people having a go at the nite sky
 
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  • #42
I love you all so much.
 
  • #43
Amazing video, really understand how galaxy is great
 
  • #44
I just love watching the sun, revolve, and via new techno-eyes, evolve.



I like that they replayed the whole thing, and had someone explain things to me in slo-mo. That actually made it much better.

2:52 Hello, I'm Nicholine Phile (took me 15 minutes to find her name!: Nicki Viall), and I'm a solar physicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Observatory...​
 
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  • #45
A pretty cool idea how to show size comparisons...
 
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  • #46
Three clips on gravitational waves, LIGO and the recent discovery:





 
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  • #48
Very nice videos, @1oldman2! The third video (Aurora Borealis) was magical! :smile:
 
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  • #49
DennisN said:
Very nice videos, @1oldman2! The third video (Aurora Borealis) was magical! :smile:
Magical is a great description, :thumbup:. I found myself caught up in any of the SDO video also, puts Hollywoods "Special effects" too shame. I was going to post some of that stuff to the new video thread but not sure how to pull it off, however this looked like the perfect thread for it. :smile: ( I love space and stuff )
 
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  • #50
We have got quite a few clips from the ISS in this thread, so I thought I'd post a tour of the International Space Station itself (1080p):
 
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  • #51

:smile:
 
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  • #52
Without the existence of Fourth dimension aka time the universe is useless to look at.
 
  • #53
The constellation Virgo is passing by and I'm in the process of assembling a panoramic image of the dense cluster of galaxies present. I have another month or so to acquire images before it's time to move on to Hercules, but in the meantime here's a small menagerie of the more visible non-elliptical (except one) galaxies present in this region:

Montage_zps4nljtg2o.jpg


Integration times vary, ranging between about 17 and 50 minutes. 400/2.8, ISO 1000.
 
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  • #54
Andy Resnick said:
The constellation Virgo is passing by and I'm in the process of assembling a panoramic image of the dense cluster of galaxies present. I have another month or so to acquire images before it's time to move on to Hercules, but in the meantime here's a small menagerie of the more visible non-elliptical (except one) galaxies present in this region:

Integration times vary, ranging between about 17 and 50 minutes. 400/2.8, ISO 1000.

nice one Andy
The Virgo Cluster is a cool place to test out a scope and eyesight seeing how many faint fuzzies can be picked out :smile:Dave
 
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  • #55
Andy Resnick said:
The constellation Virgo is passing by and I'm in the process of assembling a panoramic image of the dense cluster of galaxies present. I have another month or so to acquire images before it's time to move on to Hercules, but in the meantime here's a small menagerie of the more visible non-elliptical (except one) galaxies present in this region:

This was a great shot! It made me a little curious, so I went through some of your photobucket.

Now, I have to ask you a weird question... What was that off-white, powdery substance cut out into four lines with the Santa Claus figure behind it? Fuel for your many passions and talents? :smile:
_
A newer one I found:


But, this next is my very most favorite at the moment. The amount of work and computational power that went into this 11 sec(or so I can find) simulation is incredible. I do enjoy other videos and many are quite creative and artistic, but I prefer ones that are published by researchers or where I can at least find some credibility for the video. They also found that the reionization era ended later than we predicted earlier from observations and need to make adjustments.
"Such a multi-faceted simulation needed not only a powerful supercomputer, but also one that had plenty of GPUs so the team could offload its radiation and ionization calculations. Thankfully, the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s (OLCF’s) Cray XK7 Titan supercomputer fit the description. The OLCF, a DOE Office of Science User Facility located at ORNL, built Titan with a GPU for every one of its 18,688 compute nodes. The Shapiro team needed 8,192 GPUs to run its simulations."

 
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  • #56
OmCheeto said:
Explain what you've just seen, in 100 words years, or less.

-Entropy increases in the atmosphere the closer that it gets to the surface of the earth.

NASA has a model for the ocean currents in one of those videos posted- incredible to watch it move relative to the land masses. You know though, it sure would be nice to see what the core of the Earth really looks like. Then all 3(or more layers) could be placed into one model zooming from the core out to the upper atmosphere and back again.
 
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  • #57
Fervent Freyja said:
This was a great shot! It made me a little curious, so I went through some of your photobucket.

Now, I have to ask you a weird question... What was that off-white, powdery substance cut out into four lines with the Santa Claus figure behind it? Fuel for your many passions and talents? :smile:
<snip>

Heh... it was flour. I was wondering why nobody asked! :)
 
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  • #58
Andy Resnick said:
Heh... it was flour. I was wondering why nobody asked! :)

I relooked yesterday ... still haven't seen it LOL
 
  • #60
DennisN said:
Two recent clips about the ISS:
The International Space Station Has Made Its 100,000th Orbit!
:thumbup::partytime: Awesome, thought I'd share a few screenshots.
west coast.PNG
California

queensland.PNG
Queensland

sunset  west africa.PNG
West Africa

flathead.PNG
Flathead lake
 
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