Awesome Space

Luxury electronics maker Bang & Olufsen presents a special edition of its Beoplay A9 living room speaker. Designed in collaboration with pop artist Daniel Arsham, this model takes advantage of its circular shape, replacing the solid color face with an image inspired by the artist’s cratered blue moon globe.

As Charlotte peers out into space from her observatory, she sees what can only be described as a literal black hole. As it approaches the Earth, she dives in and experiences a new perspective on her home planet. A wonderfully imaginative short film by animator Marlies van der Wel with music by Pieter de Graaf.

There’s a lot of debate as to whether the universe goes on and on forever, or if you kept going, you’d eventually reach its edge. PBS Space Time digs into this astrophysics quandary. Whether the universe is geographically-flat and infinite, or it curves in on itself, it’s still more enormous than most of us can fathom.

Artist Thomas Blanchard follows up his stunning short film The Other Side with a more singular effort, filling our screens with colorful planetary bodies and galaxies. Like his other works, there’s no CGI here – the images you see are made entirely from paint, oil, inks, and soap.

Designer VisualDon has created all kinds of wonderful video eye candy, including this emotive and calming image of an astronaut on an endless walk along the lunar surface as the Earth hangs in the distance. The video is available for free download for non-commercial use, or can be licensed for commercial use.

Astrophysicist and author Sarah Barker teamed up with illustrator Maria Nilsson to create this great book for beginner stargazers. It offers up informative details and viewing tips for things you can glimpse when you look up with off-the-shelf binoculars or a telescope. The glow-in-the-dark book cover is a nice touch.

More than five decades ago, NASA landed the first humans ever on the moon. But prior to the 1969 Apollo 11 mission, Hollywood took us there thanks to a heaping helping of imagination and movie magic. The Royal Ocean Film Society looks back at some of these early examples of science fiction films.

Christophe Ruge’s LEGO Ideas model of the International Space Station is going into production. This outstanding 864-piece kit is packed with solar arrays, each of which can rotate, along with a dockable Space Shuttle, and a deployable satellite. It also comes with scale astronaut micro-figures for conducting spacewalks. Drops 2/1/20.

Navigate the wonders of the night sky via Phaidon’s book Universe: Exploring the Astronomical World. It’s an entertaining and thought-provoking journey through our fascination with space, from cave paintings to modern astrophotography. Its 300 images were curated by stars of astronomy, photography, and art.

While it might not look so huge up in the sky, the sun is big enough that it could fit 1,300,000 Earths inside of it. What If ponders what might life be here on our planet if it were that huge. While we’d have way more room to roam, we’d also have some pretty insurmountable problems.

“Jupiter is the largest, all the planets could fit inside…” Learn a thing or three about the planets in our solar system with this catchy little ditty by Clare and Si Bennett of Planet Custard. A kid-friendly track that’ll have adults tapping their feet and singing along too.

It’s been more than four decades since the U.S. sent anyone to the Moon. With its upcoming Artemis missions, NASA will return to the moon, establishing a regular presence on the lunar surface. The space agency explains how astronauts will travel to, spend time on the surface, and come home from the moon in the future.

Things are always changing in the universe, so it’s possible that someday in the distant future that the Earth could be in danger from a catastrophic force. But is there a way that we could avoid such a fate given enough notice and ingenuity? Kurzgesagt digs into a theoretical method to do just that, by moving our entire solar system.

Through the use of high-contrast black-and-white imagery, and a stark, minimal soundtrack by Paul Vinsonhaler, filmmaker Jason Allen Lee’s incredible animated short will truly transport you into the isolation of outer space. If you can, watch it full screen in a darkened room with headphones on.

RealLifeLore talks about interesting or bizarre phenomena and conditions on other planets – and a moon – in our universe. There’s a planet where objects have two shadows, one that rains glass at terrifying speeds, and more.

A while back, Vincent Brady created an otherworldly time-lapse video featuring night skies captured via a special 4-camera rig. He since remastered the clip in 4K, added new effects, and improved its visual fidelity. Be sure to check out the 360º/VR companion piece.

Filling up an actual astronaut’s helmet with hot coffee sounds like a terrible idea. But these ceramic astronaut mugs make a bit more sense for your morning cuppa. Each one looks like a bubble-shaped helmet, complete with a shiny visor and handle in gold, black, or silver.

Photographer and filmmaker Bruce W. Berry Jr. collected and cleaned up video and time-lapse footage captured by astronauts on-board the International Space Station to give us this stunning short film that provides a glimpse of our planet from the vantage point of space.

After offering up a size shootout between Star Wars spacecraft, MetaBallStudios decided to do the same with some real world rockets and spaceships, from the diminutive 42 foot Black Arrow to the ginormous Saturn V, which was over 360 feet tall. They should have included some model rockets for comparison.

This cast aluminum wall clock is perfect for anyone who loves space, rockets, or classic sci-fi. The pointy metal rocketship looks like it’s straight out of an H.G. Wells story. It features an analog dial with brass details, and can be hung at any angle thanks to a rotating hanger on the back. It measures 17″ long from tip to tail.

We know John D. Boswell aka Melodysheep best for his awesome musical mashups, but he is also fascinated with science. The first episode of his series “Live Beyond” explores the origins of life and humanity’s place in the universe, while further episodes will dig into the potential for life beyond our world.

Sending cargo and ships into space is extremely expensive and resource-intensive. But there’s an idea that’s been bandied about that would use endlessly-moving tethers to catapult ships into space from Earth’s orbit. Kurzgesagt explains how this relatively simple concept could dramatically improve space travel.

This beautifully-crafted desktop sculpture features a precision laser-etched map of the Milky Way, using data captured by the ESA’s Gaia mission. Its 5068 stars look particularly stellar when set on the LED-illuminated base, which projects its light into the heart of our galaxy. Measures 3″ in diameter, and runs on AAA batteries.