Originally Posted by Nic Name (Post 7775) http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html Rather than copy an individual image to this discussion thread, the above link will feature a different picture every day...

After years of planning, construction and assembly, a gigantic observatory billed as the world's most complex array of ground-based telescopes has opened its eyes in South America and captured its first image. <snip> ALMA is a complex of 40-foot (12-meter) radio telescopes sitting at an elevation of 16,500 feet (5,000 m) on the Chajnantor plateau in northern Chile. <snip> Currently, the array harbors 19 individual telescopes, though 66 should come online by 2013, researchers said. The array will ultimately be about 11 miles (18 km) wide.

Originally Posted by Lamplighter (Post 760422) Can anyone live/work at this altitude without oxygen ?

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Explanation: Why would the shadow of a space shuttle launch plume point toward the Moon? In early 2001 during a launch of Atlantis, the Sun, Earth, Moon, and rocket were all properly aligned for this photogenic coincidence. First, for the space shuttle's plume to cast a long shadow, the time of day must be either near sunrise or sunset. Only then will the shadow be its longest and extend all the way to the horizon. Finally, during a Full Moon, the Sun and Moon are on opposite sides of the sky. Just after sunset, for example, the Sun is slightly below the horizon, and, in the other direction, the Moon is slightly above the horizon. Therefore, as Atlantis blasted off, just after sunset, its shadow projected away from the Sun toward the opposite horizon, where the Full Moon just happened to be

Talk about a giant data set: scientists at the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III) have released the biggest three-dimensional map of the universe ever created. Using data collected by a 2.5-metre wide-angle optical telescope at the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico, scientists were able to pinpoint the locations and distances of 1.35 million galaxies. "We want to map the largest volume of the universe yet, and to use that map to understand how the expansion of the universe is accelerating," said Daniel Eisenstein, director of SDSS-III, in a statement.>snip> After a previous release of data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, Aragon-Calvo created a short film (above)* that lets viewers fly through a mostly accurate 3D model of the universe. While the 400,000 galaxies you virtually swoop past in the film are in the right spots based on the data available at the time, Aragon-Calvo had to magnify the galaxies so that you can actually see them.