ceres: a small planet in a giant solar system
Solar System
The Solar System is the gravitationally bound system of the Sun and the masses that orbit it, most prominently its eight planets, of which Earth is one. The system formed about 4.6 billion years ago when a dense region of a molecular cloud collapsed, creating the Sun and a protoplanetary disc from which the orbiting bodies assembled.
Planets and Bright Stars
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.
Eyes on the Solar System - NASA/JPL
Explore the 3D world of the Solar System. Learn about past and future missions.
We need more tiny knowledge projects—here’s one
Crowdsourcing dynamic illustrations for a new astronomy book by Terry Tao and Tanya Klowden. The other day I was reading the sample chapter of a new book by Terence Tao and Tanya Klowden, on the so-called cosmic distance ladder. It’s a lovely piece of writing. The chapter tells the story of how Johannes Kepler, using data collected by Tycho Brahe, solved the puzzle of planetary motion. It puts us in the discoverers’ shoes: instead of working backwards from Kepler’s equations, we work forwards from the inexp
How To Mobilise | Inea Lehner
Johannes Kepler
Johannes Kepler was a German polymath who was an astronomer, mathematician, astrologer, natural philosopher and music theorist. He is a key figure in the 17th-century Scientific Revolution, best known for his laws of planetary motion, and his books Astronomia nova, Harmonice Mundi, and Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae. The variety and impact of his work made Kepler one of the founders and fathers of modern astronomy, the scientific method, natural science, and modern science. He has been described as the "father of science fiction" for his novel Somnium.
The Coming Second Copernican Revolution | NOEMA
Astrobiology is rewiring our understanding of the intimate connection between life and planets as they appear in the universe.
The Cosmic Crash That Made the Moon
About 4.5 billion years ago, give or take, a planet the size of Mars slammed into the Earth. The Moon is what was left of the wreckage.
Planetary Lexicon: Key Terms in Earth System Science
Define 90+ terms in planetary science — from Anthropocene and tipping points to planetary boundaries and the ecosphere.
Planetary Sapience & Planetary Stupidity: a Bildungsroman for the Baby Noosphere | Antikythera
That is, the faculty of recollection and foresight? Until recently, I would argue, our planet was amnesiac. That is, no part of it was reflectively aware of the place of the present relative to the established past nor the expected future. But then peculiar animals emerged, capable—no matter how imperfectly—of cooperation, abstraction and invention. In the last blink of geologic time, through the collaboration of these animals with their increasingly cunning artifacts, this state of planetary amnesia has faltering begun being cured. That is, through our artifacts, our planet is becoming aware of its own unfolding biography. In our fallible attempts to model our world—alongside our growing legion of sensors—The Earth system has developed a way of recollecting its deepest past and tracking the changing complexities of its present so as to forecast its furthest future.
Did a little project this weekend to get caught up with #ATProto dev. Wrote a custom lexicon `com.chrisvanderloo.project`, wrote and published an Astro loader, and loaded my projects section on chrisvanderloo.com directly from my PDS. Package here: github.com/chrisvander/at-astro-loader
GitHub - chrisvander/at-astro-loader: An Astro loader for ATProto data.
github.comLots of awesome OS for the PDS posts flying around today, but what about a PDS in the OS? Here's a peek at the native Linux rewrite of @aetheros.computer, built on NixOS with PDS backed user accounts and experimental support for spaces. Still WIP, but stay tuned for more info later this year...
