Mike Mitchell's Tumblr of Amazing Things.

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Stayed up late to snap this one. 

Finally a clean enough night to bust out the telescope and snap a couple pictures. 

Obviously Jupiter on the top, and on the bottom is Jupiter again, but with enough time to capture the Galilean Moons Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. 

If you bust out a pair of binoculars and go outside, look to the East (or straight up in a few hours) and look for what seems to be a bright star. Assuming your binoculars are moderately powerful, you will be able to see Jupiter and those moons. 

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Lunar Exploration Suit designed by Allyn B. “Hap” Hazard in 1960. 

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Cassini captured this awesome storm on Saturn’s north pole earlier this week.

It’s been a long time coming, but I finally got some new shirts in the shop. Really excited about these! 

There’s also a restock of the original tri-black Skully shirts, as well as a grey Mouse Skully. 

http://sirmitchell.com/collections/shirts

“The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us — there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.”

Happy Birthday to Carl Sagan, who would have witnessed his 78th revolution around the sun had he not lost his battle with cancer. 

Though his life was cut short, he continues to inspire me in a way I never could have imagined, and for that, I am grateful. 

Our Story in One Minute by Melodysheep

So good. 

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Snapped a picture of Jupiter tonight.

Dat gas…….giant.

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I’ve been meaning to take this picture for a while. When the moon is low enough in the horizon and after sunset, it gathers a bit of reflected light from the Earth. It’s easy to see with your eyes but difficult to capture with a camera unless you do a long exposure. 

"How quickly do we grow accustomed to wonders. I am reminded of the Isaac Asimov story Nightfall, about the planet where the stars were visible only once in a thousand years. So awesome was the sight that it drove men mad. We who can see the stars every night glance up casually at the cosmos and then quickly down again, searching for a Dairy Queen."

— Roger Ebert

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Scale of the Moon. 

Can’t find a source! 

On August 31, 2012 a long filament of solar material that had been hovering in the sun’s atmosphere, the corona, erupted out into space at 4:36 p.m. EDT. The coronal mass ejection, or CME, traveled at over 900 miles per second. The CME did not travel directly toward Earth, but did connect with Earth’s magnetic environment, or magnetosphere, with a glancing blow. causing aurora to appear on the night of Monday, September 3.

Holy shit that is huge. Earth would be this big next to it

(Source: nasa.gov)

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We also snapped this picture of Mare Crisium, which doesn’t look very big, but it’s 345 miles across, roughly equal to the distance from LA to San Francisco.

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I brought my telescope to a friends last night and a bunch of us checked out Saturn for the short time it was in the sky. It wasn’t ideal conditions, but I managed to get this picture of Saturn. Once it starts appearing again later in the year I should be able to snap a better picture.