But so does taking a one thousand-image photograph.

(See: “Space Shuttle in Extreme Detail: Exclusive New Pictures“)

I wanted to photographically capture that area three-dimensionally in a way that only astronauts had experienced. Not one inch is wasted in Discovery so every inch is worth investigating. Locations not covered in instruments, switches or monitors have squares of blue velcro to allow temporary materials to attach while in zero gravity. The floor is scratched, paint is chipped, and all surfaces are worn from decades of use. These details are perfect for a high-definition panorama.

Taking a gigapan picture in a tiny room involves a totally different photographic mindset than using a wide-angle lens or other technique. One must think outside of the frame because no frame exists when capturing an enormous single image. When composition isn’t regulated to 35mm, the possibilities are endless, but every detail becomes important and visible.

A wide-angle view of the flight deck of space shuttle Atlantis. Photo Credit: Jon Brack

The first thing I locate when setting up my shot is a visual sweet spot in that tight space, a central location where almost everything important is visible from the tripod point-of-view. There are always tradeoffs with what to include. Am I getting as much of the content as possible while still leaving places to hide lights behind sightlines? Once the shot and starting point is established, I have to check and make sure everything in the room is set, as no changes can be made once you’re underway.

(See: “Gigapan: Space Shuttle Discovery Mid-Deck“)

Then the photographic process begins. I’ll take over a thousand individual pictures from floor to ceiling in an automated grid. The whole set of images is only as good as each individual frame so each dark corner or over-exposed highlight must be accounted for. Dramatic depth-of-field changes require careful and often multiple focus and aperture settings because I have only one opportunity to capture all the images I’ll need. With each exposure lasting at least a second to allow for the clarity of a low ISO (an important key to the high resolution of the final image), this process takes three to four intense hours. But capturing the images is really only just the beginning.

Jon Brack manning the Gigapan on the flight deck of Discovery. Photo Credit: Susan Poulton

When these hundreds of detailed pictures are loaded into a computer, they become a puzzle of maddening proportions, a mosaic of bits and pieces cut from a confusing greater whole. In the post-processing workflow, this requires sorting, focus stacking, and color correction, resulting in the 608 finished pictures ready to be stitched into a 360-degree panorama. They must be arranged and rearranged until the stitching software seamlessly connects them.

(See: “Gigapan: Space Shuttle Discovery Toilet“)

Each one of these detailed frames tells a story – a small piece of the history of Discovery and her 39 trips into space.  Individually, their seemingly random colors, shapes, and lines are unintelligible to the casual observer but I came to know every pixel and where it fits in with its surroundings. Finding a new switch (like “Body Flap,” which still brings a smile) in a location that I’ve seen dozens of times is always an excellent moment.

The process can sometimes be maddening, but the result is unbelievably rewarding. I never thought that I’d be lucky enough to photograph let alone memorize the interior areas of a space shuttle in such intimate detail. It’s almost unimaginable.

Related Links:

– Spaceflight HD: High-Resolution Imagery of Spacecraft

For the past decade the ISS has been constantly manned and currently has six astronauts onboard.  Since the end of the shuttle progtram the Russian Soyuz spacecraft has been the the main resupply vehicle and astronaut ferry.  Private firms are now racing to build their own rockets and cargoships. At the end of April the ISS crew is expecting the arrival of the first private robotic cargo spaceship by SpaceX, called Dragon, to launch and dock with the station.

With over 11 pressurized metallic modules adding up to the size of a football field, the ISS is the largest spacecraft ever constructed in space. This makes it highly reflective, and therefore easily visible from the ground, even from urban light polluted cities. In fact on some flybys, when the solar panels are oriented just right, the station’s brightness can be on par with planet Venus now shining like a beacon in the west after dark- the second brightest celestial object in the night sky after the moon!

On most nights over the next week or so, observers may even get a chance to see the ISS make two or even three flybys. Orbiting at approximately 380 km above the planet and traveling at 27,000 km per hour, the station takes only 90 minutes to make one trip around the Earth putting it in direct sunlight for many hours after the sun has set locally on the ground.

To know when and where in the sky to look for the space station visit the flyby page of spaceweather.com

Fifty years after the fact, details about Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin‘s historic first mission into space are still creeping out from behind a shroud of secrecy.

But there is something we’ll never know about Gagarin’s flight, even in the age of Wikileaks: What did the farmer’s son from Klushino, Russia, see from 200 miles (322 kilometers) above Earth on April 12, 1961?

(Also see “On Yuri Gagarin’s Night, Spy the Space Station Flying Overhead.”)

More concerned about survival than documentary footage, Gagarin brought back sparse imagery of his monumental voyage—and obviously nothing in full-color HD.

“What Gagarin did is something of galactic significance, and it needs marking in some way other than crackly, black-and-white footage,” said film director Christopher Riley.

Now Riley hopes to re-create this piece of history with the worldwide, online premiere of his new Gagarin movie, First Orbit.

Posted on YouTube at midnight GMT on April 12, 2011, the roughly 108-minute film blends a few 1960s historic reels with modern shots taken from the International Space Station (ISS) by Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli. His video not only retraces Gagarin’s view from orbit, it shows Earth bathed in sunlight at the same angle the cosmonaut would have seen during his 1961 flight.

We chatted with Riley about his inspiration for the film, the challenges of shooting a movie vicariously from space, and the changes that have happened on Earth since the human race first put a man into orbit.

How did you first get the notion to “refilm” Yuri Gagarin’s flight?

I hadn’t been born when Gagarin went into space—I was minus six. But by the time I was born, people were regularly landing on the moon and sending spacecraft to Mars, so I grew up unable to not be excited about space flight. (Explore a space travel time line.)

However, I was always somewhat disappointed that the first person in space [Gagarin] didn’t film much. (Watch video from the dawn of the space race.)

Then in early 2010 they installed the cupola on the ISS, and it offered this amazing new perspective on Earth from space. So I emailed the European Space Agency and said, What do you think? Could we do it? (See first pictures taken from the ISS cupola.)

Their first action was to put me in touch with one of their orbital mechanics gurus, who worked out whether the ISS covers the same ground as Vostok 1 [Gagarin's spaceship]. It turns out we would have a chance to film every six weeks, but Paolo flew up to the station at the end of November last year, and the crews on the station work very hard—they’re always doing something, so it was a challenge fitting this into his schedule.

We had one shot at this around Christmas last year for Paolo to film before the 50th anniversary.

Do you ever see Paolo during the film?

Not directly, but there is one scene when Paolo slightly appears in reflection in the window as he floats in to adjust the cameras—it’s that Hitchcock moment!

[That scene helped fill in] the problem of what to show as Yuri headed into darkness near the start of the flight, about 30 minutes in.

[For a 40-minute period during his 1961 flight, Yuri passed over parts of Earth where it was night, meaning that what he saw were] dark conditions over the Pacific Ocean. So we had to use shots from an image-intensified camera that NASA flew for us to shoot over the Pacific, and we added a shot of the moon, because Yuri had looked for the moon, but he didn’t get to see it.

How do you think the view of Earth has changed between what Yuri Gagarin saw in 1961 and what Nespoli captured on film in 2010?

When Yuri flew 50 years ago, there was not much human impact you could see from 200 miles up. Today we have double the population as in the 1960s, and there is more of a visible impact.

NASA astronaut John Young—who flew Gemini, Apollo, and space shuttle missions—has said that he’s been going into orbit for about 30 years, and he’s seen the way Earth has changed over that time, especially the atmosphere. (Also see “Apollo 11: Five Little-Known Facts About the Moon Landing.”)

Cities today seem to have their own atmospheres due to pollution. Actual boundaries between countries are also very clear now. Certain counties have overgrazed ground, and big sprawling cities are very visible from space.

Still, Yuri’s route around Earth was over very sparsely populated areas that are largely unchanged 50 years later, so we see little change in human terms.

The movie sounds like a massive effort! What sparked you to release it on YouTube?

Right from the beginning we wanted to share the film with as many people as possible for free, in the same way Yuri’s flight was done.

It’s true world militaries and governments were scared and anxious about the space race, but most of the public was just jubilant about it. As a species we’d sent a human being into space, and how fantastic was that, and it didn’t matter what country he was from.

When Yuri landed, the streets were packed with people who thought he was the greatest man in history. We kind of wanted to instill the same reaction, and allow people to watch from anywhere and show it wherever they want.

Right now we know of 600 screenings taking place around world, from museums to people’s backyards, and we’re hoping to see upward of a million viewers in the next 24 hours.

But in a new twist, astrophotographer Babak Tafreshi has aimed his lens at the people who scan dark skies for their treasures with the same gusto as foodies shopping in a farmer’s market.

Tafreshi’s newest video is described on his Vimeo page as “a tribute to to all skygazers around the world who enjoy exploring the night sky with their telescopes.” It was released today to celebrate April 2012 as Global Astronomy Month.

The video captures the frenetic bustle as people participate in star parties, compete in observing marathons, and engage in their own astrophotography—while the glittering cosmos sails serenely above.

Footage for the film was taken between 2007 and 2011 in Iran, Austria, Germany, Nepal, and La Palma.

One event Tafreshi features is a Messier Marathon, which was started in the U.S. in the 1970s as a challenge for dedicated deep-sky observers. The observing competition is now an annual activity held by astronomy clubs around the world.

During a marathon, “people race to see all the Messier 110 deep-sky objects (galaxies, nebulae, clusters),” Tafreshi said in an email.

[The widely used Messier Catalog of "nebulous objects" was compiled by French astronomer Charles Messier in the late 1700s. The original list of 103 items was published in 1781, with updates bringing the number to 110 by the 1970s.]

For some groups the marathon is “just a group observing night, and everyone does it for fun and they check their own list,” Tafreshi said. But “in some other occasions, like the one I founded in Iran in 2001 … it’s a national level [event] and there are judges for each of several observers. So it could be a serious competition.”

The idea is that “observers only have a few minutes to locate each object, and most of these are too faint to see by unaided eye, so finding them in a telescope or binoculars needs experience with sky navigation. So people who win such competitions know every corner of the sky very well!”

In addition to the marathon and several similar gatherings shown in the new video, “the two images in Nepal from 5:10 to the end was a very interesting event I was involved with,” Tafreshi said.

“On a TWAN trip to the country we also had some outreach programs. Together with the Nepal Astronomical Society we organized a public star party in the middle of the [Kathmandu Valley World Heritage center's] Durbar Square of Bhaktapur, surrounded by temples, and this Dobsonian telescope was the highlight of the night,” he said.

“Many young people who never had a chance to look through a telescope were standing on a very long line across the square to see the moon. This was the longest line behind a telescope I have ever seen.

“A look to the moon through a small telescope changed my life forever when I was 13, and this might happen to few of these people too!”

See more of Tafreshi’s pictures from the Nepal trip on TWAN.org, and find out how to participate in sky-watching events during Global Astronomy Month 2012.

To do this sky test – you need to track down the Little Dipper and see how many stars you can find of this stellar pattern. It won’t stand out like its neighbor, the Big Dipper, and it is actually trickier to see all its stars – which is precisely why it makes it a great gauge for light pollution.

Find the Little Dipper and use its stars to see how light polluted your night sky is.

To start your experiment, face the northeast horizon and look halfway up the sky for the bigger and bright neigboring star pattern called the Big Dipper.

During mid evenings this time of the year you should be able to see the Big Dipper lying upside down or on its side with the handle pointing down towards the horizon.

Take the two end stars in the bowl and draw an imaginary line down and left until you hit the next brightest star – which is the North Star or Polaris.  It marks the tail end of the Little Dipper or little bear. Now for the tricky part – try and connect the dots and trace out the remaining stars of the Little Dipper pattern.

Can you  see all the stars that make up the handle and bowl? Backyard astronomers use these stars to get a sense of how light polluted their local skies. The darker the skies, the fainter the celestial objects you can see.

While the two end stars of the little bowl are considered magnitude 2 and 3 on the brightness scale astronomers use - making them just visible from suburban skies – the remaining two stars in the bowl and handle are all 4th magnitude – which means they are usually not easily visible under lots of light pollution in  urban and suburban sites.

To really tell what difference light pollution can make – try your hand at looking for the Little Dipper stars before all lights are turned off for Earth Hour and then during the event. Since you may find not all your local city lights may be turned down – the effect may be minimal.  So to really appreciate the effect all those artificial lights have on the night sky – try doing these same observations on any clear night – first from the city and then again from a dark countryside location. You will be amazed at the difference.

For a comprehensive rundown on what you can do to conserve the night sky and how to reduce light pollution check out the International Dark Sky Association website.

Andrew Fazekas, aka The Night Sky Guy, is a science writer, broadcaster, and lecturer who loves to share his passion for the wonders of the universe through all media. He is a regular contributor to National Geographic News and is the national cosmic correspondent for Canada’s Weather Network TV channel, space columnist for CBC Radio network, and a consultant for the Canadian Space Agency. As a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Andrew has been observing the heave

To help track these high altitude winds, as each unmanned rockets reached the 60 mile altitude mark, they released a chemical tracer which formed wispy, white clouds that allowed researchers to visualize the winds.

Meanwhile early bird skywatchers across much of the U.S. northeast coastline were treated to an eerie sky show too, with many reporting from Massachusetts to North Carolina of seeing the luminous white vapor trails.

Veteran astrophotographer Jeff Berkes captured the awesome image above, of these man-made high altitude streaks from just outside of Philadelphia in West Chester, Pennsylvania, about 180 miles north of the launch site.

“The chemical tracers could be seen for hundreds of miles,” said Berkes.

As a prelude to the main act to come, start by watching Saturday, March 24 for all the main cosmic actors – star-like Venus at just 105 million km away is brighter and higher up than 870 million km distant Jupiter. The trickiest to find however will be  a razor-thin waxing crescent moon, only 400,000 km from Earth, which will appear hidden in the glow of the sunset, quite low to the western horizon – to the lower right of the planets.

By the following evening, March 25, the moon will have jumped considerably higher in the sky for a wonderfully close meeting with the king of the planets, Jupiter. The pair will be separated by only 1.5 degrees- about the width of your little finger held at arm’s length.

Then on March 26, the moon snuggles up with the goddess of love, Venus. While the planet is actually 250 times farther than our neighbouring satellite, the two will appear to the naked eye to be spectacularly close in the sky at only 2.5 degrees apart – that’s a little less than the width of your three middle fingers held at arm’s length.

Then in one final curtain call, on March 27th the moon will continue its trek higher up in the evening sky and park itself next to the brilliant orange star Aldebaran. Representing the eye of Taurus the bull this red giant star is 65 light years from Earth. Those with keen eyes may notice to the lower right of the moon is a faint hazy patch of light – that’s the Pleiades open star cluster. Binoculars will help you resolve some of the brighter members of this 400 light year distant stellar nursery.

In case it does get cloudy in your neck of the woods then why not check out the show online with live video feeds and expert commentary from telescopes sites around the world.

Skywatching extra: Anyone with a telescope equipped with a digital imager may want to keep an eye on  Mars next few days. According to Sky and Telescope website,  starting on March 20th, reports from backyard astronomers are abuzz about what appears to be a new unknown visible feature extending out along the Red Planet’s  southern hemisphere. While speculations on its origins are still running rampant,  hopes are that NASA’s Mars orbiters may be put into action to follow-up on this mysterious and unusual event.

Andrew Fazekas, aka The Night Sky Guy, is a science writer, broadcaster, and lecturer who loves to share his passion for the wonders of the universe through all media. He is a regular contributor to National Geographic News and is the national cosmic correspondent for Canada’s Weather Network TV channel, space columnist for CBC Radio network, and a consultant for the Canadian Space Agency. As a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Andrew has been observing the heave

Saturn‘s moon Titan is unique in our solar system, being the only natural satellite to boast a significant atmosphere, somewhat like Earth’s.

Also like Earth, Titan has bodies of liquid on its surface that support processes akin to our water cycle—the huge moon has clouds, spring rains, and fog—and even shows signs of a lake effect similar to the one seen over North America’s Great Lakes.

The key difference, of course, is that the liquid on chilly Titan is methane, a carbon-based chemical that, on our world, is the prime component in natural gas.

Still, Titan’s hydrocarbon haze is exciting to scientists who are hoping to get a glimpse of how life might have been sparked on Earth: Lab experiments, for example, suggest that the moon’s atmosphere may be flush with the building blocks of life, such as amino acids and DNA bases.

And now, for the first time, scientists say they have proof that early Earth had a very Titan-like atmosphere … at least periodically.

On today’s Earth, dry air contains roughly 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen, with trace amounts of other gases. But ancient rocks show that, before about 2.5 billion years ago, atmospheric oxygen was a scarce commodity on our planet.

The widely held theory has been that before the so-called Great Oxygenation Event, Earth’s atmosphere was dominated by Titan-esque organics—but no one had yet found evidence for such a chemical makeup in the planet’s rocky history.

In a study published online yesterday in Nature Geoscience, Aubrey Zerkle of Newcastle University in the U.K. and colleagues report their analyses of rocks from South Africa that date to between 2.65 and 2.5 billion years ago.

Core samples from these rocks contain microbial mats, which show that some of the tiny creatures in shallow seas were producing oxygen long before the Great Oxygenation of our atmosphere.

The rocks also contain carbon and sulfur isotopes—chemicals that would have reacted with oxygen. The levels of the different kinds of isotopes present indicate that sometimes oxygen production was happening when the atmosphere was thick with methane—but other times the atmosphere must have been haze-free.

The clarity of the early atmosphere seems to flip flop roughly every few million years, Zerkle and co. report, hinting at a push and pull between microbes that generated oxygen and those that belched methane.

At last, though, *something* happened about 2.5 billion years ago to trigger the planet’s permanent oxygen high. (What that “something” was is still a mystery, although theories abound.)

Of course, this pattern has so far been seen only in the South African rocks, so more research on samples from around the world will be needed to truly tell whether Earth was once a Titan—atmospherically speaking.

Victoria Jaggard is a senior editor for National Geographic News, specializing in all things space. You can follow Victoria on Twitter @vmjaggard99.

The main event will be from March 12 to 15 when the two worlds will come closest together in the sky. The planetary pair will be only 3 degrees apart. That is equal to the width of your three middle fingers at arms length, making for a spectacular sight not to be missed. By the way, Venus is the brighter of the two.

Over the course of a few nights Jupiter and Venus have a stunning close encounter. Illustration courtesy of Sky & Telescope

After this week the two planets will part company – like two passing ships – with Venus continuing its climb higher in the sky and Jupiter slowly sinking towards the horizon.

Conjunctions between planets are not the rarest sights but it does really depend  on their placement in their orbits so that they appear to be in the same line of sight from our point of view here on Earth.

While Venus takes 224 days to make one orbit around the Sun,  it takes Jupiter just under 12 years to do the same since it circles the sun much farther away.

It’s incredible to think that these bright points in the sky are the reflection of sunlight off the cloud tops of Jupiter and Venus.  And remember that it’s only an optical illusion that they appear side by side. While Venus is about 150 million km from Earth, Jupiter is more than 600 million km further away!

Illustration Courtesy of Sky & Telescope

So it’s really just a matter of time for Jupiter and Venus to have a another close encounter in our skies.

If you miss this close conjunction however you will have to wait until 2015 for the next opportunity.

Also, as a final celestial act, mark March 25 and 26 on your calendar- the thin crescent moon will join Jupiter and then Venus in back to back pretty pairings in the western sunset sky.

The Eagle Nebula, a grand old bird roughly 6,500 light-years away.
Image courtesy T. A. Rector & B. A. Wolpa, NOAO, AURA

Green pigs across the cosmos should start looking for places to hide, because the Angry Birds are headed to space.

In partnership with NASA and National Geographic, series creator Rovio is bringing the popular game to the final frontier with Angry Birds Space, scheduled for launch on March 22.

Today [March 8] attendees at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, are getting the first taste of this spacey new game, which features new, astronomy-themed mechanics such as zero gravity, slow-motion puzzles, and “lightspeed” destruction.

Even more exciting, from this blogger’s perspective, is that saving those precious eggs will involve increasing your space savvy—you and your birds will have to know all about planets, gravity, nebulae, and other astronomical wonders to finish your quest.

To lend gamers a helping wing, National Geographic today also announced its official companion book for the game. Author Amy Briggs deftly guides humans and birds alike from our familiar “home base” here on Earth, through the solar system, and beyond, into mysterious corners of the universe filled with black holes, exploding stars, and alien worlds.

The book goes on sale March 20, giving you a few days to mentally prepare for your epic trek with the space-bound birds. (Click here or on the image of the book cover to find out how to get the book.)

In the meantime, astronaut Ron Garan—who’s currently down at SXSW for the official announcement—has given us a sneak peek at some of the things we’ll need to know to conquer the Angry universe:

The Angry Birds are about to boldly go where they’ve never gone before. How does an astronaut get suited up for a trip to space?

Very carefully, of course, and exactly how you put on the suit depends on the spacesuit. For the U.S. spacesuit that we use when we go outside for a spacewalk, you first put your “Space Pants” on and then slither and squeeze yourself up into the torso, the mid-section, pushing your head out the top of that section and your arms out the sides. Then you attach the gloves and your helmet, and you are ready to go. For the Russian spacesuit that also is used for spacewalks from the International Space Station, you open a hatch in the back and climb inside — it is all one piece, except for gloves that you attach. Either way, getting into a spacesuit is a lot easier when you can “fly” in zero gravity than it is to practice it on Earth. By way of explanation, I will just say that in zero gravity, you really can put your pants on both legs at a time. Oh, and I forgot to mention the long underwear you put on first with miles of tubes that water flows through to keep you cool and acts as your personal climate control in the suit. The birds could probably use a pair of those…

Can travel via slingshot actually get someone from Earth into space?

Author and engineer Jules Verne, in his novel From the Earth to the Moon, envisioned a giant space gun that could fire a bullet-shaped projectile carrying people to the moon. Later, German rocket scientist Hermann Oberth explained that living things could not survive the initial acceleration needed to get Verne’s bullet to the moon.

The same is true with a slingshot. If you had one big enough and strong enough to accelerate an object to the speed that’s necessary to stay in orbit (17,500mph) it could work. Unfortunately people couldn’t survive the acceleration the slingshot would need to produce to get them into space. Angry Birds are pretty tough though and they might be able to make the trip.

I’ve heard that a “gravitational slingshot” can help a spacecraft travel faster—how does that work?

A gravity assist maneuver uses the relative movement and gravity of a planet (or other celestial body) to alter the direction and speed of a spacecraft. As a spacecraft nears the planet, it begins to gain speed from the tug of the planet’s gravitational pull. Because the planet and spacecraft are traveling in the same direction, if everything is just right, the spacecraft won’t be pulled into the planet and crash. Instead the spacecraft will slingshot past it. The idea is that using a gravity-assist maneuver, the spacecraft comes up and steals some angular momentum of a planet’s orbit around the Sun, removing a small amount of momentum from that planet. A slingshot maneuver can therefore be used to change the spaceship’s trajectory and speed relative to the Sun. Gravity assist is like a Ping-Pong ball hitting the revolving blade of a ceiling fan and being thrown further and faster than before it hit the blade.

We use gravity-assist maneuvers to shave time of a spacecraft’s trip. Each Voyager mission, for example, used the enormous gravity field of Jupiter to be hurled on to Saturn, experiencing an increase in speed of roughly 35,700 mph. Voyager 2 did slingshots around Saturn and Uranus to reach Neptune, and those maneuvers reduced Voyager 2′s trip by nearly 20 years.

For more detailed information on how gravitational slingshots work, visit: http://go.nasa.gov/gravitationalslingshot

Was a bird the first animal to travel to space?

No. To the best of our knowledge, no birds have flown in space. It seems that Angry Birds are the first.

The first animals to go into space were fruit flies aboard a U.S.-launched V-2 rocket on Feb. 20, 1947. On June 11, 1948, Albert I, a rhesus monkey, became the first primate to fly in space when he launched from White Sands, N.M., also aboard a V-2 rocket. Laika became the first animal to orbit Earth on Nov. 3, 1957, when Russia launched Sputnik 2 with the dog aboard.

Is it true our moon was born from Earth’s collision with a large, round object?

The origin of the moon is now commonly believed to be the result of a Mars-sized object that impacted the Earth 4.5 billion years ago. This impact put a large amount of material into Earth’s orbit that ultimately formed into our moon.

Red Bird is probably most excited about visiting the red planet—which other explorers have made it to Mars?

NASA’s first successful Mars mission was Mariner 4, launched on Nov. 28, 1964. Since then, we have sent 15 other missions to the Red Planet. The most recent, the Mars Science Laboratory, launched on Nov. 26, 2011, and is due to arrive at Mars on Aug 5.

For more information about all of our missions to Mars, visit http://go.nasa.gov/mars-missions

Saturn’s hazy moon Titan seems like a good place to hide eggs—what’s under that dense atmosphere?

Titan, the largest of Saturn’s 62 moons, has an icy surface with lakes made of, and channels cut by, liquid hydrocarbons. It is probably not the best place to hide eggs.

As a fan of all birds great and small, I’d love to know more about the Eagle Nebula.

The Eagle Nebula, cataloged as Messier 16 or M16, and as NGC 6611, is a young, open cluster of stars in the constellation Serpens. It was discovered by Jean-Philippe de Cheseaux in 1745-46. It received its name from its shape, which resembles an eagle. It’s the subject of the famous Hubble Space Telescope photograph called “Pillars of Creation” that shows pillars of star-forming gas and dust within the nebula.

What exactly is an exoplanet, and could one harbor little green piggies?

An exoplanet is simply a planet found outside of our solar system. Sorry, we have not found any little green piggies…yet.

Click here for full information about the National Geographic Book Angry Birds Space.

Victoria Jaggard is a senior editor for National Geographic News, specializing in all things space. You can follow Victoria on Twitter @vmjaggard99.