Alastair Williams
Space engineer, science writer, and author of The Quantum Cat
- A geologic relief map of France created in 1905 from the 'Service De La Carte Geologique detaillee de la France'. #France #Geology #Art #Maps #Cartography
- It is possible, if you can move fast enough, to outpace the shadow of the Moon. In 1973 someone actually did this: they took a prototype of Concorde, cut holes in the roof for cameras and telescopes, and then flew at speed across the deserts of northern Africa. #science #space #astronomy #esa
- The solar eclipse of 1869, photographed by Henry Morton and published in the first ever edition of Nature. #history #historyofastronomy #photography #space
- Kepler's Rudolphine Tables, showing eclipses of the Sun and Moon. #historyofastronomy #history
- The so-called Pythagoreans applied themselves to mathematics, and were the first to develop this science; and through studying it they came to believe that its principles are the principles of everything. - Aristotle, the Metaphysica. #science #math #history #historyofscience
- Apollo 17 remains the heaviest-ever payload, coming in at a massive 140,000kg launched by the Saturn V.
- The Kosmos spacecraft probably came down over the Indian Ocean, though some models hint at either Australia or parts of Central Asia.
- This is a place where stars are being born, where fantastic winds are sculpting clouds of gas, and where streams of stardust are cascading out into the vastness of space. This is what the universe looks like to Hubble. Image credit: NASA, ESA, M. Livio #space #astronomy #hubble #art
- Reposted by Alastair Williams
- Jupiter with its moon Europa on the left. To put the sizes in context, Europa is only slightly smaller than the Earth’s Moon, while the Earth could fit in the Great Red Spot three times over. Image credit: NASA, ESA, A. Simon, and M. H. Wong, and the OPAL team. #astronomy #space #art #hubble
- It was only a matter of time, really.
- NASA Announces Moon Will Be Leaving Earth’s Orbit To Take On New Position With Bigger Planet theonion.com/nasa-an...
- Reposted by Alastair WilliamsOur cover this week.
- This week I'm focusing on exoplanets - do worlds with two suns like Tatooine really exist? What happens when a planet falls into a star? And should we take claims of life on a distant planet seriously? #space 🧪🔭
- Reposted by Alastair WilliamsThe partial solar eclipse shot this morning with my small solar scope in France. This is a combination of two layers, one overexposed to bring out the flares, and another shorter one for the chromosphere details. #Astrophotography 🔭📷
- Voyager I has travelled 167AU from Earth, or roughly twenty-three light hours. Getting there took almost half a century. But could we go further? Could we send a probe not to the stars, but into interstellar space itself? And what might we find there? #science #astronomy #space #future #technology
- Reposted by Alastair WilliamsWho is John Halsey? Is he the nice man of piracy? Does he have a plan? Where did all the dragons come from? Find out in this episode! www.podbean.com/eas/pb-4m6st...
- The world, as depicted by al-Idrisi in 1154. North is at the bottom. #history #maps #art #historyofmaps
- Did you know the number of hours in a day comes from the number of bones in our fingers? #history #historyofastronomy #space
- An Eclipse of the Sun by the Earth, imagined from the lunar surface. James Nasymth, 1874 #art #historyofastronomy #space
- Irresponsible again. What happens when someone gets hurt?
- "According to Simplicius, Diogenes the Cynic said nothing upon hearing Zeno's arguments, but stood up and walked, in order to demonstrate the falsity of Zeno's conclusions." Zeno was clearly wrong... or was he? #science #history #philosophy #math
- Reposted by Alastair WilliamsSeperation of the Ariane 6 first stage. Stunning views!
- Guess who monitors the Sun for incoming solar flares? That's right - NOAA, and Musk has just decided to cut the staff who do that...
- Is Elon Musk capable of hearing disagreement without resorting to crude insults? I can hardly imagine an astronaut in any way qualifies as an "idiot" or any of the worse terms Musk is using. Rather, it tells me who the idiot in that exchange really is.
- Étienne Léopold Trouvelot made more than seven thousand astronomical drawings, covering everything from the planets to the coming of a solar eclipse. He drew this one, of Jupiter, in 1882. #art #historyofastronomy #space #theartofscience
- Reposted by Alastair WilliamsTidal tails are beautiful examples of what happens when you let gravity play with sparkling sand that isn’t held together by anything more than gravity.
- Hubble image of Arp 288, also known as NGC 5221. In 2016, a supernova appeared in the galaxy's long tidal tail to the right, about 260 thousand light years from the galactic center. Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, J. Dalcanton, Judy Schmidt Source
- In November of 1743 a comet appeared in the sky. Within weeks it had become one of the brightest of time. It had - for reasons still unclear - six dramatic tails sweeping out from its head. Image from A Popular Treatise on Comets, 1861 #historyofastronomy #art #science #astronomy #history
- In this week's newsletter round-up: the risks of an asteroid impact, why the search of alien technology may come up empty handed, what OSIRIS-REx found on Bennu, and the discovery of a nearby super Earth. And all with the astronomical art of Étienne Trouvelot. 🧪 #space #science #seti #physics
- Reposted by Alastair Williams#NASAWebb’s sunshield plays a vital role in protecting the telescope from light from the Sun, Earth, and Moon, which could overheat the mirror and its scientific instruments. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI. 🔭 🧪
- It is said the Pythagoreans once drowned a man for revealing the secrets of irrational numbers. Or maybe it was existence of the dodecahedron. Whatever it was, they clearly took their numbers seriously. But why? And who was this Pythagoras fellow anyway? 🧪 #science #history #pythagoras #math
- Europe has plenty of big achievements in space over the past decade or so we should be shouting about.
- Reposted by Alastair WilliamsPeople did lots of stuff with numbers in ancient Mesopotamia - multiplication tables, area calculations, complex geometry to follow planetary motion, etc. I love that we can still pronounce many of the numbers. For an brief primer, this by Prof Eleanor Robson is great www.m-a.org.uk/resources/Vo...
- ESO has some fantastic images of comet C/2024 G3 from their observatory in Chile 🧪🔭 Credit for this one belongs to F. Millour/ESO
- Reposted by Alastair WilliamsSupport Canadian alternatives!
- Canals on Mars? Lowell's 1908 map of the Martian Canals, from his book "Mars as an Abode of Life". #historyofastronomy #history #art #science
- Traditionally, the story of science begins with Greek philosophy. And the Greeks, for their part, thought philosophy began with Thales. Of course, there are reasons to doubt both these things… #science #history #thales #philosophy
- Reposted by Alastair WilliamsFor anyone wondering, some possible dog names have survived from cuneiform sources. On tiny dog figurines found buried under a palace in Nineveh, Iraq are inscriptions that seem to be names. dan rigiššu “loud is his bark” munaššiku gārîšu “biter of his foe” mušēṣi lemnūti “expeller of evil”
