r/space

Just like it says. Something I've always thought about.

lets say we are located 300k light years in a 700k light year elliptical galaxy of 50 trillion stars would it be always day time? as elliptical galaxies have for most part exhausted their hydrogen for star formation and what wasn't was expelled outwards or been eaten up by central black ole

A newly discovered asteroid the size of an adult blue whale is set to fly past Earth today (May 18) at 24% of the average Earth-moon distance, and you can watch the event unfold in real time from the comfort of your home with this Virtual Telescope Project livestream.

The near-Earth asteroid 2026 JH2 was discovered on May 10 by the Mount Lemmon Survey in Arizona. Follow-up observations estimate the asteroid measures between 52 and 114 feet (16-35 meters) based on its apparent brightness, according to ESA.

2026 JH2 will make its closest approach to Earth at 5:23 p.m. (2123 GMT) on May 18, when it passes within 56,628 miles (91,135 kilometers), while traveling at 19,417 mph (31,248 km/h) relative to Earth.

I was speaking with Caroline Paul recently over a long conversation. She’s a pilot and writer, and she brought up something I hadn’t really thought about before.

Astronauts talk about the “overview effect” after seeing Earth from space. They come back describing this feeling of being more connected to people, more protective of the planet, more aware of how fragile everything is. In fact many of them come back and say come passionate environmentalists!

Caroline’s question was basically: do you have to go all the way to space to feel even a small version of that?

She flies small aircraft, including a gyrocopter, and was talking about how seeing the world from even a few thousand feet up can shift something. Not in the same cosmic way, obviously. But enough that the ground starts to feel different. Your problems look smaller. The place you live feels less like the center of everything.

I don’t fly planes, so I can’t relate to that exact version. But I’ve felt something similar looking out of a passenger plane window, or standing on a ridge, or being somewhere with a really dark night sky.

Curious if anyone else has had that kind of experience, just a moment where scale or perspective briefly knocked you out of your usual headspace?

Not sure if this is space or astronomy.
Time . 00.10 GMT
South facing.
North Cambridgeshire
Bright yellow fireball, seemingly large, nice tail with sprites flickering from head
Either a beautiful fireball or something else burnt up.
2nd one I have seen in my life 32 years apart.
Absolutely stunning.. was only outside letting my dogs wee.

we feel that out head/body is flipped bc earth attracts us but in space there is no gravity so how do astronuts know when they are flipped