notes.husk.org. scribblings by Paul Mison.

Astronaut Takes Amazing Self Portrait in Space, (via meatrobot):

[Taken by] Aki Hoshide, [this] self portrait brings into one frame “the Sun, the Earth, two portions of a robotic arm, an astronaut’s spacesuit, the deep darkness of space, and the unusual camera taking the picture.”

As seen on Astronomy Picture Of The Day. Oddly, what grabbed me was the sensor flare around the sun in the top left.

Molniya orbit at Wikipedia (via iamdanw)

An 1882 map by Richard A Proctor showing the cones of visibility of the 2012 transit of Venus (which happens tomorrow). It’s remarkable partly as it’s so well designed, and partly as it’s over a hundred years old but matches the modern map.

Gemini 6A from Gemini 7, from Remembering Project Gemini at The Atlantic’s In Focus.

A world map of magnetic field inclination created by the National Geophysical Data Center, NOAA. More from Wikipedia on the magnetic dip. (The strange lines near South Africa are due to the South Atlantic Anomaly, where the Van Allen belt comes closest to the Earth’s surface.)

The green line is the aclinic line, where the magnetic field is balanced between the north and south poles; you could think of it as the magnetic equator. It’s clearly not exactly aligned with the geographic equator. (The south magnetic pole is marked on the map at the far bottom right corner.)

Station Crew Views Shuttle Landing:

This unprecedented view of the space shuttle Atlantis, appearing like a bean sprout against clouds and city lights, on its way home, was photographed by the Expedition 28 crew of the International Space Station. Airglow over Earth can be seen in the background.

Space Station Over Earth by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center on Flickr.

The pictures are the first taken of a shuttle docked to the International Space Station from the perspective of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

Image credit: NASA.

Objects from the Whipple Museum by Gaetan Lee on Flickr.

“ISS now” at Wolfram Alpha (in ortographic projection) (via)