tophatdragon

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If you have received a Link or post from me in the past ~48hr, Don’t open it

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After 8 years of trying, selective breeder Justin Kobylka has created a Ball Python snake with smiles on the skin.

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WOW

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Cassini Spacecraft: Top Discoveries

Our Cassini spacecraft has been exploring Saturn, its stunning rings and its strange and beautiful moons for more than a decade.

Having expended almost every bit of the rocket propellant it carried to Saturn, operators are deliberately plunging Cassini into the planet to ensure Saturn’s moons will remain pristine for future exploration – in particular, the ice-covered, ocean-bearing moon Enceladus, but also Titan, with its intriguing pre-biotic chemistry.

Let’s take a look back at some of Cassini’s top discoveries:  

Titan

Under its shroud of haze, Saturn’s planet-sized moon Titan hides dunes, mountains of water ice and rivers and seas of liquid methane. Of the hundreds of moons in our solar system, Titan is the only one with a dense atmosphere and large liquid reservoirs on its surface, making it in some ways more like a terrestrial planet.

Both Earth and Titan have nitrogen-dominated atmospheres – over 95% nitrogen in Titan’s case. However, unlike Earth, Titan has very little oxygen; the rest of the atmosphere is mostly methane and traced amounts of other gases, including ethane.

There are three large seas, all located close to the moon’s north pole, surrounded by numerous smaller lakes in the northern hemisphere. Just one large lake has been found in the southern hemisphere.

Enceladus

The moon Enceladus conceals a global ocean of salty liquid water beneath its icy surface. Some of that water even shoots out into space, creating an immense plume!

For decades, scientists didn’t know why Enceladus was the brightest world in the solar system, or how it related to Saturn’s E ring. Cassini found that both the fresh coating on its surface, and icy material in the E ring originate from vents connected to a global subsurface saltwater ocean that might host hydrothermal vents.

With its global ocean, unique chemistry and internal heat, Enceladus has become a promising lead in our search for worlds where life could exist.

Iapetus

Saturn’s two-toned moon Iapetus gets its odd coloring from reddish dust in its orbital path that is swept up and lands on the leading face of the moon.

The most unique, and perhaps most remarkable feature discovered on Iapetus in Cassini images is a topographic ridge that coincides almost exactly with the geographic equator. The physical origin of the ridge has yet to be explained…

It is not yet year whether the ridge is a mountain belt that has folded upward, or an extensional crack in the surface through which material from inside Iapetus erupted onto the surface and accumulated locally.

Saturn’s Rings

Saturn’s rings are made of countless particles of ice and dust, which Saturn’s moons push and tug, creating gaps and waves.

Scientists have never before studied the size, temperature, composition and distribution of Saturn’s rings from Saturn obit. Cassini has captured extraordinary ring-moon interactions, observed the lowest ring-temperature ever recorded at Saturn, discovered that the moon Enceladus is the source for Saturn’s E ring, and viewed the rings at equinox when sunlight strikes the rings edge-on, revealing never-before-seen ring features and details.

Cassini also studied features in Saturn’s rings called “spokes,” which can be longer than the diameter of Earth. Scientists think they’re made of thin icy particles that are lifted by an electrostatic charge and only last a few hours.  

Auroras

The powerful magnetic field that permeates Saturn is strange because it lines up with the planet’s poles. But just like Earth’s field, it all creates shimmering auroras.

Auroras on Saturn occur in a process similar to Earth’s northern and southern lights. Particles from the solar wind are channeled by Saturn’s magnetic field toward the planet’s poles, where they interact with electrically charged gas (plasma) in the upper atmosphere and emit light.  

Turbulent Atmosphere

Saturn’s turbulent atmosphere churns with immense storms and a striking, six-sided jet stream near its north pole.

Saturn’s north and south poles are also each beautifully (and violently) decorated by a colossal swirling storm. Cassini got an up-close look at the north polar storm and scientists found that the storm’s eye was about 50 times wider than an Earth hurricane’s eye.

Unlike the Earth hurricanes that are driven by warm ocean waters, Saturn’s polar vortexes aren’t actually hurricanes. They’re hurricane-like though, and even contain lightning. Cassini’s instruments have ‘heard’ lightning ever since entering Saturn orbit in 2004, in the form of radio waves. But it wasn’t until 2009 that Cassini’s cameras captured images of Saturnian lighting for the first time.

Cassini scientists assembled a short video of it, the first video of lightning discharging on a planet other than Earth.

Cassini’s adventure will end soon because it’s almost out of fuel. So to avoid possibly ever contaminating moons like Enceladus or Titan, on Sept. 15 it will intentionally dive into Saturn’s atmosphere.

The spacecraft is expected to lose radio contact with Earth within about one to two minutes after beginning its decent into Saturn’s upper atmosphere. But on the way down, before contact is lost, eight of Cassini’s 12 science instruments will be operating! More details on the spacecraft’s final decent can be found HERE.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

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Siberia experiencing -57F cold. According to reddit user dogbunny, “I lived very close to Siberia for a while. I felt fine with the weather until it got lower than -20. My contact lenses would start to freeze and you feel like you have glass in your eyes. Your eyes water because of the cold, then your tears freeze, snot runs out of your nose and freezes forming snotcicles.

You have to store your car inside if you have any hope of starting it. The oil turns to sludge, so the car’s starter isn’t powerful enough to get the engine to crank over, also the battery is drained by the cold, so some people just remove it and take it inside for the night. If you were stupid enough to leave your car outside, they sell these blowtorch/lantern looking things, you light it up and stick it under the engine to warm the block enough for it to turn over. I learned the hard way.”

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HO HO HO MERRY CHRISTMAS!! 

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but of course

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These are black otter rex rabbits. 

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With Love from Cybermen!

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José Manuel Castro López manipulates stone like it was soft clay. His sculptures are full of twists and turns, waves and wrinkles which contrast with the tough material and make you question the laws of physics. (Source)

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Night crew bullshittery 1

C: dude have you seen any wrap

T: naw, I don’t need that 

C: of course you don’t

T:.............

T: 

______________________________________________________________

Ch dude wanna hear a joke

T:............

Ch: Gurl you should go date a pirate

T:  why?

Ch: cuz i hear pirates really love sunken chests

T:

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C: guys they’re putting me on a forklift

D: yea, to be used as counter balance

everyone else:

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some guy: instinct just memes around uselessly, i hardly see any of their gyms

me: holds ur face gently listen to me you little shit

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So I was telling my dad about neko atsume and he just scoffed and said “you don’t need a damn video game for that” and went out to our backyard and put apples and pears all around our yard and now we’re just watching the squirrels come and go and he’s naming them all after old military generals

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Merry tree day

bye till next year

tophatdragon.exe has crashed

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The above is the Honeycomb Calcite. This form of calcite has only been found one place in the world: Utah, USA. It is a newly discovered stone but is about 150 to 200 millions years old. 

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Believe it or not the perfect cubes of pyrite forms naturally.

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