Cosmological myths, legends and superstitions of of our ancient ancestors were often tied to astronomical phenomena, and now researchers have found a truly stunning tool they used to make observations of these celestial happenings.

In the absence of modern magnifying glasses and reflective mirrors, the structure discovered in Portugal employed a lower-tech approach: a narrow passage filtered out extraneous light, helping people see stars at times when they would be hard to spot in the open sky.

Part of a prehistoric tomb complex called the Seven-Stone Antas, the astronomical observation device is thought to have been used to view Aldebaran, a red giant in the constellation of Taurus. This star becomes visible in the early morning s of spring, just before sunrise, but would be hard to see outside of a narrow window without a device to block out unwanted night. In turn, its passage was presumably used to mark a change of seasons from spring to summer.

More from the scientists behind the discovery and their next steps: “The team’s idea is to investigate how a simple aperture, for example an opening or doorway, affects the observation of slightly fainter stars. They focus this study on passage graves, which are a type of megalithic tomb composed of a chamber of large interlocking stones and a long narrow entrance. These spaces are thought to have been sacred, and the sites may have been used for rites of passage, where the initiate would spend the night inside the tomb, with no natural light apart from that shining down the narrow entrance lined with the remains of the tribe’s ancestors.”

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After much speculation, research and confirmation, it is official: NASA scientists have announced that the Earth has a second moon, known as Asteroid 2016 H03, that has been orbiting the planet for around a century.

The wee asteroid is just a few hundred feet across and was detected earlier this year from a survey telescope in Hawaii. It follows an orbital pattern taking it on slow long loops. No one is quite sure how long the body will stay in our vicinity, but gravitational forces seem intent on keeping it around, at least for a while.

Paul Chodas, manager of NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object (NEO) Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, explains that because of its distance, this object is “quasi-satellite” of Earth. “Its loops drift a little ahead or behind from year to year, but when they drift too far forward or backward, Earth’s gravity is just strong enough to reverse the drift and hold onto the asteroid so that it never wanders farther away than about 100 times the distance of the moon. The same effect also prevents the asteroid from approaching much closer than about 38 times the distance of the moon. In effect, this small asteroid is caught in a little dance with Earth.”

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Space is so hard to fathom, but thanks to this image, painstakingly compiled and combined by a musician and artist, one get start to get a sense of it within a single visual frame.

Pablo Carlos Budassi used photos from NASA rovers, orbiting satellites and other astronomical footage, then combined them into a singular shot of the known universe, using Earth as a center point.

The key to the image’s success is the use of a logarithmic scale, which helps viewers understand large numbers and distances more easily, each ring covering vastly greater space than the last. Our world and solar system look relatively large, a helpful jumping off point as the rings expand. The trick works somewhat like the classic Powers of 10 video, a classic educational device for understanding universal and microscopic scales, executed by zooming way out and way in, but with time frames likewise set in a log scale (film shown below, and well worth watching!).

From Colossal: “Budassi was aided by similar (though less visually stunning) logarithmic maps produced by astronomers at Princeton back in 2005. In this map, our sun and solar system are seen in the middle, followed by the Milky Way Galaxy, another ring of nearby galaxies like Andromeda, all the way out to cosmic radiation and plasma generated by the big bang on the furthest outskirts of the image.”

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Even before NASA started providing us with stunning pictures from super-powered telescopes, we still enjoyed gazing upon images of heavenly bodies. These Victorian-era astronomy illustrations are simply beautiful, and they prove that modern technology doesn’t necessarily make for a better picture.

All created between 1868 and 1880 by the great French artist and astronomer Étienne Léopold Trouvelot, the illustrations are surprisingly sophisticated for their time. This was thanks in large part to Trouvelot’s access to the U.S. Naval Observatory’s 26 inch refractor which allowed him to see stunning astronomical detail.

It was only after seeing several auroras that Trouvelot became interested in astronomy. He was already working as an artist, so his two passions naturally combined to become a new, and quite successful, career.

The complete series of illustrations from which these selections were chosen consisted of 15 of Trouvelot’s finest. His favorite subject was the Sun, which he studied extensively. In addition to his detailed and deeply beautiful illustrations, Trouvelot published around 50 respected scientific papers. The artist and amateur scientist died in 1895, about a decade after this series was completed.

The post Vintage Victorian Space Illustrations Are Delightfully Detailed first appeared on Gajitz.

More than one dedicated lover has promised to reach up into the sky to grab the stars for his or her beloved. The phrase has been merely metaphorical until now. The Stella Camera and Projector concept is a hand-held gadget meant to capture the stars and keep them where budding astronomers can gaze upon them forever.

Designed by Seung-Kwon Kim, Seung-Ju Kim & Zhong-fa Lie, Stella is a sweet little product aimed at children who are interested in the stars. Since light pollution is a problem that grows daily, the designers wanted to create a way for children to preserve the stars before they become completely invisible from Earth. The small glass lens adjusts easily to focus on the desired constellation and then stores its image digitally.

Once indoors, the Stella also acts as a projector. Captured constellations are displayed on the walls and ceilings, turning any room into a personal planetarium. The designers don’t go into much detail about whether the device is able to capture many individual constellations and patch them together into a large picture of the night sky, but that would be the ideal.

However the projector function works, the idea of “collecting” constellations is wonderfully romantic and just geeky enough that we really hope the designers are able to fund the project and make Stella into a reality.

The post Catch a Falling Star: Constellation Camera + Star Projector first appeared on Gajitz.