3 Reasons 2016 is the year of Jupiter

Forget about starting the new year with a gym membership, all you need is this an email subscription to NASA's Juno Mission! And here is why...

1. Let's start off with the first awesome Jupiter related event for the year! On March 8th make sure you step outside, and enjoy seeing Jupiter with your own naked eyes! Not only will Jupiter be visible but it will be at its closest point to Earth!

Now for the truely exciting stuff...

2. On the 4th of July, 2016, the Juno spacecraft will begin its orbital insertion around Jupiter! It will have taken only 5 years to travel the 2.8 billion km. Juno will be only the 2nd spacecraft to actually enter the orbit of Jupiter, the first being Galileo which ended its mission in 2003. 

3. A bit of an extension from reason number two, but Juno is also going to be flying past three of the most interesting moons in the entire Galilean system! Over 33 orbits, data will be continuously collected from Jupiter and it's passing Moons. Why is getting a few data sets from Moons so interesting? All three of these Moon's are believed to have liquid oceans under their surfaces, hinting to be some of the most likely places for life beyond earth to have evolved! 

2016 is looking to be a great year for space exploration, with patience the secrets of Jupiter and its Moons will hopefully be solved! 

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What is a Star?

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- Stay Curious

Do you actually know how our Sun works?

The Sun and solar flares to scale - NASA

Don't you just love beautiful sunny days with warmth on your skin and rays of light through the trees! Do you ever stop and think about what the sun is? How big it is? The fact it's just an enomous ball of gas literally on fire?

I do, properly more then most people, because the process of fusion energy is pretty damn cool once you know how it works! 

Fusion first begins when the core of dust/gas ball reaches 15 million degrees celsius. Majority of the gas in the core is hydrogen atoms, which begin the fusion process. Two hydrogen atoms fuse together undergoing weak interaction which transmutes one proton to a neutron. This forms a hydrogen 2 atom. This newly created hydrogen2 fuses with a single hydrogen atom, emitting a gamma ray and creating Helium 3. Finally two Helium 3 fuse together emitting two normal hydrogen atoms and a Helium 4.  

This process continues for millions of years because of the continual creation of hydrogen atoms. The gamma rays that are released from this process will go on to continually interact with electrons and protons, creating the heat energy. 

There you have it! Next time you walk outside into the Sun enjoy the beautiful process of nuclear fusion.

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What's the deal with this Christmas asteroid?

Even chucks of space rock are heading over to earth for some Christmas pie today.

An 2km wide asteroid named 2003 SD220 (catchy name), will fly by Earth to say hi tonight, so get out your telescopes for a unique Christmas Day experience. 

It will be travelling a little faster then Santas sleigh, moving at a massive 27km per second! 

No need for doomsday preparations just yet however, the asteroid will be 10.6 million km from Earth, about 27 times Earth-Moon distance.

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Final Cassini Pictures of Enceladus

Cassini completed the final close-up flyby of Enceladus yesterday, and has send back some beautiful images for us to say goodbye! If you want to read more about the final flyby, and the final stages of the Cassini mission, click here.

Close up of Enceladus's icy surface

Image of the ice structure and atmosphere

Features of the Northpole

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Why SpaceX's Rocket landing will let you go to space!

It look's like a scene from a blockbuster movie, a rocket gently touching down on the Earth's surface in perfect reusable condition. Excitingly it's not! SpaceX successfully launched their Falcon 9 rocket into low orbit and re-entered the atmosphere continuing to this graceful landing. 

Now if a reusable self landing rocket wasn't exciting enough, what the Falcon 9 was carrying will be life changing. A module called the Blue Origin was fixed to the top and released in orbit, with it gradually falling back to Earth to make a safe landing using several parachutes. 

Why is that exciting? Because the Blue Origin is designed for human space flight. As displayed in the short animation within the video, being aboard the module will allow humans to witness the breathtaking view of our planet Earth, while experiencing the weightlessness of space. 

Now, are you ready for the most amazing part, you can subscribe to the waiting list for prices and launch information for when this becomes publicly available... Just click here.

- Stay Curious 

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Largest Universe Simulation Created So Far

Take a moment to appreciate just being alive. This video shows over 400,000 galaxy's, each with an average of 300 billion stars! 

And here we are, floating through space on our little planet around just one star in our galaxy. Life's problems seem so small don't they? 

This is a super computer simulation created from the BOSS and Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, and is currently the largest sky map simulation ever created.

- Stay Curious 

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