The Milky Way Domain

The acclaimed work by Nick Risinger, Photopic Sky Survey, can be admired here as a marvelous 360-degree photomosaic of the Universe joined together in 2011, and it portrays a boundless continuum of stars and galaxies, each one regularly visible to the naked eye on a really clear night. Begin the simulated arena looking towards the galactic center of the Milky Way, and every direction you go expands the background into a gorgeous panorama with rich interstellar details that appear to make the screen look replete with starry objects. It is honestly quite entertaining just to move around some particular region and then gain a better perspective back from planet Earth, the vantage point looking free through the atmosphere, set aside from the Sun and the Moon. A few major identifiable celestial objects include the Pleiades (M45), Andromeda Galaxy (M31), the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), and the Orion Nebula (M42), and they can easily be spotted in this 37,440-exposure, 5000-megapixel shot. The image provides an alluring insight into the breathtaking cosmic matter radiating light from the galactic realm of the Milky Way and space within the Virgo supercluster of the observable universe.


Andromeda (M31) is shown here as it is Milky Way's closest spiral galaxy neighbor (Image: NASA).

Robotic Vehicles on Mars

Interest in exploring the Red Planet started with the first robots designed to investigate it in the 1960s, and continues today with the Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity, where recent efforts have shown to be what looks like evidence of an ancient riverbed and organic compounds on the Martian surface. Organic compounds are those with molecules containing carbon and are potential indicators of life.


Mars and Earth riverbeds in comparison (Image: NASA).


A landscape of Mars captured by Pathfinder in 1997 (Image: NASA).

Mars is the fourth planet from our Sun and is believed to be about 10.7% the mass of Earth and approximately half of its size. It is currently thought that sustainable life on Mars may be possible and might have existed there a long time ago, if Earth and Mars share similar planetary histories. We know that they both have polar ice caps, an atmosphere, and exceptional terrain features. With several vehicles set to test for habitability on Mars in the future, humans will be able to properly assess whether a manned mission to Mars prevails as a safe and advantageous exploration plan.