This was one of my favs to make. It shows a close-up of the eight planets in our solar system, along with a couple of dwarf planets, to scale in relative rotation speeds and axial tilts.
The band
@BTS_twt
have a song named 134340 and those aren't random numbers! They refer to the minor planet designation given to Pluto after its demotion in 2006. Even the lyrics relate: "Why did you chase me away... Without a name, I still orbit around you". Also here's a gif(t)!
Here's what the Earth & Moon look like for a month from eachother This was reconstructed from real images, with night-side Earth made brighter / cloudless so you can see it. Jin can have the one on the right, thanks for sharing science
#BTSarmy
💜
Actual footage of the Earth from a spacecraft orbiting the Moon in 2007. The "Earth rise" you're seeing here is caused by the motion of the spacecraft itself around thr Moon.
Credit: Japanese space agency (JAXA)
I'm a planetary scientist with published papers specifically on Saturn's atmosphere/rings, so thought it'd be fun to rank the "Ringed Planet" emojis🪐
First I'm gonna assume they're trying to be SATURN ok, so I'll be ranking their accuracy based on that. Results end of thread!👇
"How long has the moon
And earth been together like this?"—🐹
Earth formed 4.6 billion years ago and then a Mars-sized object hit 100 million years later. It was from the Saturn-ring like wreckage that our Moon formed. Here's how big it used to look in our sky thereafter
#BTSArmy
I'm learning
@BTS_twt
have 100,000+ shares within minutes on their posts 🤯. As a scientist doing astro-outreach it has me wondering: what space fact could I share that'd have anywhere near that appeal, b/c in outreach terms BTS are bigger than the universe they're contained in
@physicsJ
@BTS_twt
lol you might want to turn on notifs to see it yourself. A total guess is into the 100k+ range w/in minutes?
They don’t twt too often but prob will at least once in the next few days so you shouldn’t hv to wait too long
Consider the last twt only took~1hr 15mins to pass 1M likes
New! Relative Cosmic Velocities
Driving on a highway at a constant speed, you don't really feel your motion (aside from the vibrations). In the same way, we also don't 'feel' these cosmic velocities
@BTS_twt
I see maybe a galaxy is already named after JK? Well, since I'm a planetary scientist and study the solar system and planets around other star systems, maybe I can find something closer to home 🌎
Actual footage of stars orbiting the supermassive black hole Sag A* at the center of our galaxy. One of the stars, S0-2, moves faster than 27 million kilometers per hour, or 2.6% the speed of light!
NEW: Earth-Moon-MARS scale🔦😱
• Real-time speed of light shown!
• Distances between objects to scale
• Earth/Moon/Mars shown 20x larger
• Mars 142 times further than Moon
• Made using NASA data/imagery
Too long for Twitter, so finish it here:
There's a huge crater on Mars permanently filled with frozen water and it's nearly 2 km / 1 mile deep
📷Taken from orbit by ESA’s Mars Express
(c) ESA/DLR/FU Berlin
TOMORROW Jupiter and Saturn will be at their closest separation in the sky since 1623 at 0.1° apart. Here's an animation showing exactly how close that is relative to a familiar object, the Moon! (Moon ONLY added to illustrate the scale)
#GreatConjunction2020
@BTS_twt
I see maybe a galaxy is already named after JK? Well, since I'm a planetary scientist and study the solar system and planets around other star systems, maybe I can find something closer to home 🌎
Selected Solar System objects to scale in size, rotation, axial tilt and numbered in order of distance from the Sun. Ceres is a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt
“Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot”
— Carl Sagan
These are the planets to scale not only in size, but also in their tilt and rotation speed. Pluto and Ceres are included whether you like them or not...
Here's the solar system right now! Now you can see why Jupiter and Saturn look close together from Earth's point of view. You can see a 3d view here: . The image below was produced by
@TheSkyLive
(via the linked website)
The Andromeda galaxy is heading toward the Milky Way at 110 km per second! In billions of years gravity will ensure both galaxies are torn apart across the cosmos, but because the stars are spaced so far apart it's unlikely any two will collide! Credit: NASA/ESA/STScI/(+my edits)
*NEW* Final version: FASTER, longer, and corrected thanks to Twitter! 👍
Day length (sidereal) & axial tilt for the 8 largest planets in our solar system!
Which planet best represents you? 🧐
HD Download for educators etc:
#SolarSystem
#SciComm
@BTS_twt
The "v" star at the bottom is Nu Puppis (ν Puppis). In this case v is the Greek letter "nu", which is a lower case n in the Greek alphabet. The star is about 370 light years away and it's blue!
Made in isolation, depicting isolation. Here's how Earth looks from the Moon & how Moon looks from Earth, April 2020: showing accurate phases and rotations. CGI based on real NASA imagery, lunar topography (exaggerated for fun), using NASA data (see it 4K )
These newly released JWST images of Jupiter are blowing my mind. Incredible detail of the turbulent atmosphere, auroras at the poles, rings encircling the planet, tiny moons and even some *galaxies* in the background!
It's fair to say planets orbit the Sun, but that's not 100% true. The Sun holds 99.8% of the Solar System's mass, Jupiter contains most of what's left (Saturn a distant 2nd), and in this vid you'll see how Jupiter plays tug of war with the Sun. Everything orbits a center of mass!
The Hubble Space Telescope observed this 'tiny' point in space for 23 days to make an extremely deep-space image. They found 5500 galaxies, each containing tens to hundreds of billions of stars, with some galaxies as old as 13 billion years
Credit: NASA/ESA/HUDF09 Team
A day on Jupiter is 9hr 56min, it's the biggest and also fastest planet. In the early solar system it grew from loads of Sun-orbiting material, converting the orbital momentum into spin angular momentum. Bigger planets are likely to be fast for this reason
Did you know the planets don't technically orbit the Sun's center, instead, everything orbits our solar system center of mass, including the Sun! While our star holds 99.8% of the solar system's mass, Jupiter/Saturn hold most of the rest, so the Sun orbits them slightly (thread)
Curiosity rover selfie on Mars, 12th Nov., 2020. The main image was so large and detailed that Twitter would have compressed and ruined it... so instead here are 4 zoomed-in parts. Check it out: Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Hubble captured over 5000 galaxies in this extreme deep space image, some as old as 13 billion years and each one contains billions of stars. But what really explodes my head is that this was only one 32-millionth of the whole sky!
This incredible HD video footage shows Earth rising over the Moon's horizon. The Earthrise effect is due to the lunar spacecraft Kaguya's motion as it orbited the Moon, just 100 km above its surface
Credit: JAXA/NHK/(+edits)
Did you know planets don't technically orbit the Sun? Instead, everything orbits the Solar System center of mass, even the Sun! While the Sun contains 99.8% of the Solar System's mass Jupiter holds most of the rest (Saturn is 2nd), so the Sun actually orbits Jupiter slightly —
Earth physically rotates in 23hours 56min relative to distant stars – a Sidereal Day, BUT it takes 24hours to rotate relative to the Sun – a Solar Day
The difference? Earth orbits the Sun, so the Sun appears to move (down, in the vid), which means Earth needs +4mins to catch up!
The Webb telescope launches tomorrow and just look at its weird and wonderful path through space. Webb will orbit the Sun about 1.5 million km away from Earth, but it'll also perform a mini-orbit within that which keeps it out of the shadows of the Earth and Moon!
Vid: NASA GSFC
The Andromeda galaxy is headed toward our Milky Way galaxy at 110 km every second! It'll appear increasingly large before colliding with us in a few billion years — cataclysmic tidal forces will then tear both galaxies apart across the cosmos
Credit: NASA/ESA/STScI/[I made edits]
This is the first-ever picture to fully contain both the Earth and Moon together. It was captured by Voyager on September 18 1977, from a distance of 12 million km (7.5 million miles)
Credit: NASA/JPL
How's this, Twitter? Stars are so distant that they have only a TINY light beam passing through our sky. This mini-beam is easily refracted by density irregularities in our atmosphere. In fact, the entire beam can be momentarily diverted or blurred out, making the star TWINKLE!
One my favs to make:
This vid shows how fast each planet physically moves through space relative to eachother. Close to the sun you necessarily have to be moving fast to escape the suns pull! Relative rotations (10hrs/sec) & tilts are also accurate
It's Feb 29th, Happy Leap Day!
Earth needs 365.24 days to lap the Sun (equinox → equinox) but for time keeping we say a year is 365 days. To keep our calendar from drifting through the seasons a *leap day* is added every 4 years! Read more below
#LeapDay
#Feb29
#LeapYear2020
Remember not to say "dark side of the Moon" when referring to the "far side of the Moon" – this graphic shows the dark side is always in motion. In a 12hour period the darkness moves 185km across the lunar equator, so you can actually see lunar phase changes over a single night!
One of humanity's finest images
The Hubble space telescope tracked a tiny point in space, with an area just one 32-millionth of the whole sky, to create a 23-day long exposure. In this extreme deep field view, over 5500 galaxies were captured, some as old as 13 billion years
🚨 Our Jupiter discovery is now published!
We found that Jupiter's powerful polar auroras blast heat across the *entire planet* answering why for 50 years its upper atmosphere has measured hundreds of degrees hotter than sunlight alone can explain!
Paper
Neptune's Great Dark Spot, which was about the size of Earth, had the fastest ever measured wind speeds in the solar system at 2400 km/h (1500mph) 🔵
Image: NASA/JPL/Voyager 2 (1989)