What kind of clouds are these? Known informally as Undulatus asperatus clouds, they can be stunning in appearance, unusual in occurrence, are relatively unstudied, and have even been suggested as a new type of cloud. The above image, taken above Hanmer Springs in Canterbury, New Zealand, in 2005, shows great detail partly because sunlight illuminates the undulating clouds from the side. High-res

What kind of clouds are these? Known informally as Undulatus asperatus clouds, they can be stunning in appearance, unusual in occurrence, are relatively unstudied, and have even been suggested as a new type of cloud. The above image, taken above Hanmer Springs in Canterbury, New Zealand, in 2005, shows great detail partly because sunlight illuminates the undulating clouds from the side.

Source apod.nasa.gov

The American Astronomical Society (AAS) conference is in full swing in Long Beach, Calif., and this morning’s sessions can be summarized as follows: There’s more exoplanets than you can shake an exostick at. Earth-Sized Alien Worlds Orbit One in Six Stars: About 17 percent — one in six — of Kepler’s target stars have Earth-sized worlds orbiting closer to their parent stars than where Mercury orbits the sun. High-res

DiscoveryNewsReblogged from DiscoveryNews

The American Astronomical Society (AAS) conference is in full swing in Long Beach, Calif., and this morning’s sessions can be summarized as follows: There’s more exoplanets than you can shake an exostick at.

Earth-Sized Alien Worlds Orbit One in Six Stars: About 17 percent — one in six — of Kepler’s target stars have Earth-sized worlds orbiting closer to their parent stars than where Mercury orbits the sun.

(via infinity-imagined)

Source news.discovery.com

The first-ever image of a massive river system on another world.

This image was taken by the space probe Cassini, and shows what appears to be a massive river system on Saturn’s moon Titan.

The European Space Agency reports that it flows 400 km across the cloudy moon’s surface, where it meets a large sea. This is most likely a river made of liquid ethane or methane, not water. Though previous Cassini observations of Titan revealed what appeared to be seasonal lakes there, this is the first confirmation we’ve had that the moon also has long, meandering rivers that form tributaries just like water does on Earth.

Source io9.com

That bright dot in the center of this image is Hercules A, a galaxy located over two billion light-years from Earth. But what really dominates the scene are the two gargantuan jets of plasma shooting out of Hercules A. The plasma jets themselves are each over a million light-years long, meaning you could lay ten copies of the entire Milky Way end-to-end inside each one of the jets. The jets themselves aren’t visible in the wavelengths we’re used to — they only show up when this area of space is imaged in radio waves. High-res

That bright dot in the center of this image is Hercules A, a galaxy located over two billion light-years from Earth. But what really dominates the scene are the two gargantuan jets of plasma shooting out of Hercules A.

The plasma jets themselves are each over a million light-years long, meaning you could lay ten copies of the entire Milky Way end-to-end inside each one of the jets. The jets themselves aren’t visible in the wavelengths we’re used to — they only show up when this area of space is imaged in radio waves.

Source io9.com