Wow – didn’t think I’d be in tears today, but this message sent home from Gaia as it was shut down forever today hits hard 😭

What you’re seeing is a map of the 106 CCD detectors that Gaia used to measure the positions of billions of stars in the Milky Way for the past 11 years 🛰️✨

They were turned off in a special sequence … 😕

#SpaceScience #Astronomy #Science

I definitely wasn't supposed to be doing this this afternoon, but ... 🤷‍♂️🙂

A time lapse movie of the northern hemisphere of Saturn, showing a full rotation of the famous polar hexagon, a very cool fluid dynamics phenomenon in the planet's atmosphere 🪐🐻‍❄️

Taken by the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini spacecraft over a 12.5 hour period on 3 & 4 April 2014: 35 ISS WAC images 512x512 pixels, CB2 filter at 752nm 🛰️📷

Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, SSI, Mark McCaughrean

#SpaceScience

Poetry in motion 🌕🛰️🌏

A week ago today, ESA's Jupiter-bound JUICE mission was approaching Earth, a day after its close flyby of the Moon.

You'll have seen some of the monitoring camera shots that @stim3on & I processed, & here's the chaser: a timelapse of both flybys that I set to some brilliant music by Gautier Acher 🎶

The full 4K version has been released by ESA here: https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Videos/2024/08/Juice_s_lunar-Earth_flyby_the_movie/?1

Credit: ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

#SpaceFlight #SpaceScience #SpaceExploration #Astrodon #Astronomy