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FOR READERS WRITERS: Show Us Your Shelves

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computer books - deposit photos

FOR READERS & WRITERS Today’s writer topic comes from QSFer Ryane: Over the last 17 months. we’ve all gotten used to peering over people’s shoulders on TV and zoom to see their bookshelves. So let’s make it official. Readers and writers, show us your shelves (real and virtual)! Writers: This is a reader/writer chat – you are welcome to share your own book/link, as long as it fits the chat, but please do so as part of a discussion about the topic. Chat on FacebookChat on MeWe

SPACE: Ganymede Gets Its Close-Up

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Ganymede - Juno - NASA

Swooping low over Jupiter’s largest moon, Ganymede, NASA’s Juno probe has snapped the first close-up photographs of the frozen giant in more than two decades — and they’re breathtaking. Juno zoomed as close as 645 miles (1,038 kilometers) from the icy surface of the solar system’s largest moon Monday (June 7), giving the spacecraft just a 25-minute window to snap photos — long enough for five exposures —— before it zipped away on its 33rd orbit of Jupiter. Two photos from the flyby released by NASA Tuesday (June 8) — one of Ganymede’s light, sun-facing side and the other of … Read more

SPACE: Chinese Moon Rover Checks Out the Far Side

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Chinese Moon Rover

China’s far-side moon mission has turned its history-making gaze underground. The Chang’e 4 spacecraft touched down on the floor of the 115-mile-wide (186 kilometers) Von Kármán Crater on Jan. 2, 2019, becoming the first probe ever to ace a soft landing on the moon’s mysterious far side, which forever points away from Earth. A rover called Yutu 2 (“Jade Rabbit 2”) rolled off the stationary Chang’e 4 lander just hours after touchdown. These two solar-powered craft have now been taking the measure of their exotic surroundings for more than a year with a variety of science gear, giving us unprecedented … Read more

SPACE: New Horizons Spacecraft Reaches New Record

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Kuiper Belt Objects

The New Horizons spacecraft’s imager (called the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager) captured these false-color images in December 2017 of Kuiper Belt Objects 2012 HZ84 (left) and 2012 HE85. These are, for now, the farthest images from Earth ever captured by a spacecraft. The photos don’t look like much: blurry green splotches against pixelated blue. But they’re arguably among the most amazing photographic images ever. That’s because they were taken from the farthest point from planet Earth of any images ever captured, snapped by a spacecraft just over 3.79 billion miles (6.12 billion kilometers) from its home planet. That spacecraft is … Read more

New Pics From Sense8 Season Two

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Sense8

New photos have been released from season 2 of Sense8 that hint at what viewers can expect when the show returns on Netflix for viewers to binge. The series was created by Lana and Lilly Wachowski, best known for The Matrix movies. They are also the creative minds behind the films Cloud Atlas and Jupiter Ascending. Full Story at Towleroad.com

The Milky Way’s Photo Close-Up

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Milky Way

If you’re wondering what sort of psychedelic visuals we’re looking at here, it is the Milky Way in amazing detail. The European Southern Observatory (ESO) made these pictures public announcing the completion of its huge galaxy survey, with the help of a really strong telescope in Chile. “The APEX telescope in Chile has mapped the full area of the Galactic Plane visible from the southern hemisphere for the first time at submillimeter wavelengths — between infrared light and radio waves — and in finer detail than recent space-based surveys,” the ESO’s release says. “The pioneering 12-meter APEX telescope allows astronomers … Read more

News: Stunning New Photos from Pluto

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Pluto

A new set of images has been received from the New Horizons spacecraft, showing close-up images of Pluto taken on July 15 (and only just recently processed) while it was passing by the dwarf planet at high speed — but not so fast it couldn’t see terrain so varied it’s astonishing astronomers. “If an artist had painted this Pluto before our flyby, I probably would have called it over the top — but that’s what is actually there,” said the mission’s principal investigator, Alan Stern, in a NASA release. With wide plains, mountains and valleys, deltas implying moving liquids, and … Read more

New Photos of Saturn’s Moon Rhea

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Rhea

After a couple of years in high-inclination orbits that limited its ability to encounter Saturn’s moons, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft returned to Saturn’s equatorial plane in March 2015. As a prelude to its return to the realm of the icy satellites, the spacecraft had its first relatively close flyby of an icy moon (apart from Titan) in almost two years on Feb. 9. During this encounter Cassini’s cameras captured images of the icy moon Rhea, as shown in these in two image mosaics. The views were taken about an hour and a half apart as Cassini drew closer to Rhea. Images … Read more