We perceive light–we see it—but what we see and what it means are not the same. Without context, detail means nothing.

Oh, there are so many factors at play here: what wavelengths of light can we see, how well can our brains take what we see and turn it into something we understand?

And also, how do we compare ourselves to the thing we’re observing? What tools do we use to help us capture information? How do we turn light into data, data into pixels, pixels into meaning? Start with a planet.

For example, Earth. And as long as we’re at it, let’s tip the Earth to spin properly on its axis. Now, recall our original points of light. Our idea.

These are satellites in orbit. Satellites collect data as the Earth rotates beneath them.

Think of satellites as paint brushes working in reverse: instead of painting planets with light, satellites collect light reflected from planets below. With enough data we can paint a world.

Data that make this image come from instruments on two NASA satellites called AQUA and TERRA. These instruments see the Earth in what we might regard as “natural color.”

They can also see certain events as they happen. There, splattered like white paint on a blue canvas, something important: Hurricane Katrina.

These satellites are only two of many that can see hurricanes. The stripes you see building up come from a unique spacecraft called TRMM. Among the many remarkable things TRMM can do, it can look inside hurricanes like nothing else in the world.

See for yourself. TRMM sees the actual body of the beast in three dimensions. Orange and red zones indicate higher rainfall rates. Cloud spires called hot towers drive the storm’s greedy grab for energy.

The Earth changes. It breathes. And it surprises. Though we live on a planet largely covered by water, we often forget that huge tracts are frozen solid. Let’s change the perspective.

Ice covers much of the world. The eternally frozen parts are called the Cryosphere. It’s the planet’s thermostat, and a hydrological warehouse, and in terms of a changing climate, it’s the canary in a coalmine.

You may live your whole life and never visit these places, but these places will affect your life nonetheless.

You know this place. The Moon. Earth’s closest neighbor is little more than a beautiful stranger across an airless room. There are mysteries here and answers. And, like love, perhaps, destiny.

Back on Earth, day and night change like moods, with points of light pricking the darkness like vaguely remembered dreams. City lights shine into space at night, like ancient campfires, like candles of civilization.

No other place beyond the Earth shows signs of life like this, or shows signs of life at all. But we’re looking.

Before we can find life elsewhere, we need to be good at reading its signs at home first. And on Earth, life is everywhere.

This is the living Earth: the biosphere. Phytoplankton bloom in vast oceanic fields. Land plants pulse rhythmically with seasonal growth. Together, these sound the global heartbeat, the pulse of life powered by the sun.

The Sun. All energy on Earth comes from the sun.

The Moon…the Earth…the Sun: celestial spheres we see and feel everyday. But in our solar neighborhood, there are other places, too. Fabulous places. Mysterious places.

As a tourist destination, Mars has an impressive brochure. The longest, deepest canyon in the solar system. A volcano so high it’s peak climbs above most of the Martian atmosphere. Nothing like these places exists on Earth. Nothing.

This is from a NASA mission called WMAP. If the whole universe were a person, this would be its first baby picture. There are no stars here, no galaxies, certainly no planets. But there is energy. The rest came soon enough, once the new kid could collect herself.

This is the universe we see today. It’s a lively place. That’s a gamma ray burst, spotted by NASA’s “SWIFT” satellite. These cosmic blasts have long puzzled scientists. They may be stars collapsing in upon themselves, or two densely packed remnants of stars merging together.

But in either case, scientists believe they herald the births of black holes. They’re the most powerful explosions in the universe after the Big Bang. And they seem to happen all the time, as often as once a day.

We look outwards as much as we look inwards, for if there is any certainty in the journey of knowledge it’s that travel in any direction can lead to the same destination.

We see only what we look for, and in space and on Earth we seek the wisdom to ask the right questions.

Duration : 0:13:13

Technorati Tags: astronomy, Black, burst, einstein, Gamma, grb, Hole, hubble, hurricane, Jupiter, katrina, Light, Mars, Moon, NASA, planets, ray, Saturn, solar, space, Sun, supernova, swift, System, telescopes, universe, wmap

And if it is would it be possible for us to see them?

Surprisingly the answer to both questions is a resounding YES.

How is that possible? How can something travel faster than the speed of light?

Today we will try and paint an accurate picture of the universe based on the Lambda-Cold-Dark-Matter model, which is the best cosmological model today.

Once we have painted that picture, the answers to our questions will be straightforward.

Duration : 0:12:55

Technorati Tags: Bang, Big, billion, Cold, Dark, doppler, Earth, electrons, energy, event, expand, Expansion, fluctuation, Galaxy, gravitational, gravity, Heisenberg, horizon, hubble, inflation, Lambda, Length, Light, mass, Matter, mechanics, particle, photons, Planck, Principle, quantum, quarks, redshift, scalar, space, Speed, sphere, Star, Sun, Uncertainty, universe, volume

The Universe : 1/14
Beyond The Big Bang : 1/7
Copernicus

Learn about Copernicus’ theories of a sun-centered universe.

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It all began inside a violent, blinding explosion that threw everything into chaos. Ever since, our greatest thinkers have peered into that chaos in search of order, logic & the answers to where we began.

As earlier generations learned to decipher the cosmic clues of how we came to be, we stepped from revelation to revelation; epiphany to epiphany.

Aristotle told us the world was round. Ptolemy conceived of a system of planets, stars & sun.
Copernicus placed the sun at the center of this system.
Galileo confirmed it.
Newton explained what held it all together. Einstein offered insight into what fueled it.
Hubble proposed it started with a “Big Bang”.

Our search for answers has shaped how we have evolved as thinking creatures.
The Big Bang is the history of why & how we think about who & what we are.

We’ll contemplate how various cultures believe the world began & how it will all end…& what comes after.
& for the first time, we’ll be able to see what it might have all looked like, sitting in God’s front row seats.

Using unprecedented cutting edge animation, The Big Bang will recreate that amazing moment when everything started.
With interviews from the world’s leading physicists, engineers & historians we will employ every storytelling tool to make complex & confusing ideas clear, exciting & dramatic.
Recreations, visual metaphors & first-person accounts will explain concepts like: the formation of galaxies, the existence of other dimensions & the idea of a parallel universe.

The Big Bang will pose one of history’s greatest questions, Where do we begin?

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http://www.thehistorychannel.com.au

Duration : 0:4:22

Technorati Tags: Bang, Big, centered, channel, copernicus, History, solar, space, Sun, System, universe

Duration : 0:2:44

Technorati Tags: cleese, eric, Galaxy, idle, john, jones, life, meaning, Monty, Of, planet, python, solar, song, Stars, Sun, System, terry, universe

It shows:
Mercury Mars Venus Earth Neptune Saturn Jupiter Sun Sirius Pollux Arcturus Rigel Betelgeuse Antares MY Cephei W Cephei

Duration : 0:1:25

Technorati Tags: Betelgeuse, cephei, Earth, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Neptune, planets, Pluto, Saturn, Scale, sirius, Size, Stars, Sun, Uranus, Venus

Duration : 0:21:29

Technorati Tags: alien, aliens, avatar, earth-like, einstein, ET, exo-planets, Exoplanets, extraterrestrial, Galaxy, milky, pandora, planets, rockets, solar, speed of light, Star, Sun, System, ufo, way

Duration : 0:9:51

Technorati Tags: cosmos, planets, space, Sun, universe

Duration : 0:20:13

Technorati Tags: alan, asteroids, black holes, cern, Cobe, Comets, cosmic, cosmos, Earth, galaxies, guth, hubble, inflationary, lhc, Mars, Moon, NASA, planets, solar, space, Stars, Sun, supernova, System, Theory, universe, wmap

For nineteen years, NASA/ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope has made some of the most dramatic discoveries in the history of astronomy but it has also helped scientists learn more about our own Solar System. From its vantage point 600 km above the Earth, Hubble has studied every planet in our Solar System except Mercury where light from the Sun would damage its instruments.

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—

Hubble has captured the impact of a comet on Jupiter, immense storms on Neptune and even tiny dwarf planets at the edge of our Solar System. The veteran telescope keeps a watchful eye on our solar backyard.

Regarded by many as the most valuable astronomical tool, the Hubble Space Telescope is approaching its 19th anniversary in space. Hubble sees into the far reaches of the universe but its powerful instruments have also surveyed our planetary neighbours. In this episode, well see what Hubble has revealed to us in our own solar backyard.

Even those who, for some strange reason, arent astronomy enthusiasts are likely to recognise some of Hubbles most famous images, like the “Pillars of Creation”in the Eagle Nebula or the Hubble Deep, and Ultra Deep, Fields which have shown us some of the most distant galaxies ever observed. The Hubble Space Telescope has really fundamentally changed our understanding of the Universe at large, but with its high resolution images of planets and moons in our own Solar System, it has also taught us a lot about our own cosmic neighbourhood.

Hubble cannot observe our Sun, or the closest planet, Mercury, because its instruments are light-sensitive and would be damaged. However, the telescope has examined every other planet in the solar system, including dwarf planets Pluto, Ceres and Eris. But, of course, Hubble does not just produce pretty pictures, it provides planetary scientists with vital information about our neighbours that may help us better understand our own home planet, Earth.

More (PDF): http://www.spacetelescope.org/videos/scripts/hubblecast27a.pdf

Credits:
• ESA/Hubble (Martin Kornmesser, Colleen Sharkey & Lars Lindberg Christensen)
• Visual design & Editing: Martin Kornmesser
• Animations: Martin Kornmesser
• Host: Dr. J
• Narration: Robert Fosbury
• Cinematography: Peter Rixner
• Music: movetwo
• Web Hosting: Leibniz-Rechenzentrum (LRZ)
• Web Technical Support: Lars Holm Nielsen & Raquel Yumi Shida
• Written by: Lars Lindberg Christensen
• Directed by: Colleen Sharkey
• Additional photos and footage: United States Air Force photo by Senior Airman Joshua Strang, NASA-JPL/ESA, NASA/JHU/APL,

Dr. J is a German astronomer at the ESO. His scientific interests are in cosmology, particularly on galaxy evolution and quasars. Dr. J’s real name is Joe Liske and he has a PhD in astronomy.

Hubble European Space Agency Information Centre
Garching/Munich, Germany
• http://www.eso.org
• http://www.spacetelescope.org
• http://hubblesite.org
.

Duration : 0:6:44

Technorati Tags: 27, About, Astro, Astronomers, astronomy, Background, Bang, Big, Black, Cast, Clusters, Cobe, Comets, cosmic, Dark, Deep, energy, ESA, ESO, Exoplanets, Field, galaxies, Gamma, hawking, HD, Herschel, Holes, hubble, Hubblecast, Images, ISS, JPL, Kepler, Large, Light, Mars, Matter, Meteorites, Microwave, milky, Mission, Moons, NASA, Physics, Planck, planets, Rays, Sagan, Science, Shuttle, solar, space, Speed, Spitzer, Stars, Station, Stellar, Sun, supernova, System, Taught, telescopes, The, UFOs, Ultra, universe, Us, Very, Videos, VLT, way, What

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimas_(moon)

Images showing the size of the planets compared to the Sun, and the Sun compared with other stars.

Music: Title Music from A Clockwork Orange, Wendy Carlos. (Original version: Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary, by Henry Purcell).

Duration : 0:2:22

Technorati Tags: Earth, estrellas, galaxia, Galaxy, lactea, milky, planetas, planets, sol, Stars, Sun, tierra, universe, universo, via, vvcephei, way