Awesome Space

Unistellar’s Enhanced Vision Telescope or eVscope is a newbie-friendly portable telescope. You can use its app to pick from a list of heavenly bodies, and the telescope will automatically move to the right position so you can enjoy the sights.

NASA’s Halloween treat is a set of short eerie audio clips. These celestial whistles, moans and screams were converted from radio emissions captured by various spacecraft from across the Solar System. Cassini’s beats are legit nice.

This electromechanical sound maker uses moving turntable arms to select and play grooves carved into an enormous cylinder. The positions of the arms and sounds played correspond to the positions of 27,000 pieces of space junk drifting about over our heads.

The latest timepiece from the consistently innovative Xeric Watches has a luminescent moonphase indicator and planetary objects which represent hours and minutes, as a starfield dances in the background. We’re particularly taken with the Blue IP colorway.

Captured by astronaut Bill Anders during the Apollo 8 mission in 1968, Earthrise is not only one of the most iconic photos of all time, but it was the first time humanity was able to see our planet from a distance, providing a humbling sense of our place in the universe.

Director Martin Nabelek’s CGI short film is short on story, but big on atmosphere, as we are left to ponder just what this space explorer is doing, and what the universe has in store for him. Be sure to check out the equally compelling VFX breakdown reel.

Harow’s Apollo 11 table features an accurate scale model of part of the Moon’s surface. The craters were carved into fiberglass and then covered with resin. The table’s brass and aluminum alloy feet are based on the Lunar Module’s landing pads. Limited to 8 units.

Tested’s Adam Savage stopped by UK special effects costume house FBFX to check out some of the incredible spacesuits they’ve made for science fiction movies. The engineering, detail, and craftsmanship in each of these outfits is truly extraordinary.

It’s the stuff of science fiction at this point, but it’s certainly worth exploring the idea that building a planet capable of supporting human life could be an alternative to colonizing an existing, less hospitable planet. Life Noggin ponders this question in this all-too-short video.

The Orrery Lamp is a beautiful dimmable light inspired by its namesake. Although it’s not to scale, you can move the Earth and Moon models around the lamp to mimic the celestial bodies’ positions at any point in time. Available as a desk lamp or a floor lamp.

Kurzgesagt simplifies two thought experiments stemming from black holes. The universe being a “hologram” is too literal though. Saying that you can describe a cube by drawing a cube is not the same as saying that a cube is indistinguishable from a drawing of a cube.

Lots of us stayed outside to watch the big solar eclipse this week, but this isn’t the view any of us saw. Instead of looking up at the skies, the University of Wisconsin Madison time-lapsed weather satellite imagery to track the shadow of the moon as it crossed the US.

MinuteEarth teamed up with their sister channel MinutePhysics to dig into how astronomers define something as a “moon,” and how we probably need to have better size and movement parameters before every random speck of space dust is called the same thing.

Emic Films introduces us to Wanda Diaz-Merced, an astrophysicist and computer scientist from Puerto Rico who studies the stars not through sight, but through sound. Despite losing her eyesight due to diabetes, she’s as passionate as anyone else in her field.

Casually Explained stops talking about love and life for a moment to dish out some hard science. Fiction. Watch his breakdown of our celestial neighborhood, which includes Earth’s hot sister, Elon Musk’s homeworld, and yo momma.

See what NASA’s Curiosity Rover has seen over the last five years trucking along the surface of Mars, as it meandered its way across the Gale Crater. The map on the right of the video provides an overhead view of its trek, collecting data along a 6.1 mile-long path.

So is the vastness of space an actual thing, or is it merely the absence of things? It’s Okay To Be Smart explores this perplexing question that at first seems to be philosophical, but is really something that can be answered with science.

After watching Adam Savage and his pals assemble the new LEGO Saturn V rocket, we already wanted one. But JK Brickworks went and made it even more droolworthy, adding LEDs to the engines, as well as a speaker that plays sounds from NASA’s Apollo missions.

Adam, Will and Norm got their hands on the awesome LEGO Ideas NASA Apollo Saturn V scale model rocket a bit earlier than us mere mortals. Watch them unbox, methodically knoll parts, and build the set. Assembly and story time start at 2:25.

Named for the first man ever in space, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, this substantial 45mm wrist watch features a rotating image of earth in the middle, as viewed from above the North Pole, as well as both 12-hour and 24-hour dials. Winding provides a 31-hour power reserve.

After NASA shared some incredible images it captured from its Juno mission Seán Doran took a series of images colorized by Gerald Eichstädt, and transformed them into a 2-minute motion video. Avi Solomon’s addition of music from Moonraker completes the effect.

As NASA’s Juno spacecraft orbits Jupiter, it’s sending back data and imagery that reveals new details about the gas giant. The planet’s poles are awash with constantly swirling cyclones, and its powerful magnetic field is even stronger than scientists had estimated.

Designer Duane King is making exact replicas of the plaques (same size and material) that were placed on board the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 space probes as a message to extraterrestrials. The laser-engraved plaques come with unreleased Pioneer stamps.