Astronomy

This might sound nerdish and weird of me (since I don't think I have seen a subject like this posted and hope it's in the right place), but one of the subjects that I've always found interesting is astronomy. From all of the theories, mysteries, discoveries, events, and whatnot that comes out of it, I just find it fun to learn and chat about it. I'll be honest, one of my favorite past times is to stargaze and look at planets with a telescope. There are a lot of resources, videos, and whatnot out there about it... Of course, I haven't seen or read about all of them, but feel free to share. Sorry if you seen this stuff already, but I'll just post a few things to get this started for those interested.

Voyager 1 is the farthest man-made object from Earth and is still traveling out there since its launch in 1977. It is expected to stop in 2025, but until then it is collecting and transmitting data back to Earth. As of today, it has left the solar system almost 2 years ago; the distance of it is about 127.14 AU (1.902×10^10 km), and takes over 17 hours for the data to reach Earth. Besides various instruments used to collect and transmit data, it also has a gold plated record on board. From wikipedia:

The Voyager space probe carries a gold-plated audio-visual disc in the event that either spacecraft is ever found by intelligent life forms from other planetary systems.[17] The discs carry photos of the Earth and its lifeforms, a range of scientific information, spoken greetings from people such as the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the President of the United States and a medley, "Sounds of Earth," that includes the sounds of whales, a baby crying, waves breaking on a shore, and a collection of music, including works by Mozart, Blind Willie Johnson, Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode", and Valya Balkanska. Other Eastern and Western classics are included, as well as various performances of indigenous music from around the world. The record also contains greetings in fifty different languages.

I guess they were a bit optimistic in thinking it would be found by aliens, or if future earthlings find it first? There are probably sources where you can find all of the exact contents being stored on the record.

This is a screenshot off of a video I found and cropped. It is said that the Andromeda Galaxy is headed our way and is going to collide with the Milky Way Galaxy in a few billion years. This is a simulation or a prediction in what it would look like at that time when viewing it from Earth. It looks cool, but a bit scary even though we won't be alive long enough to see this happen.

 Spoiler

A few random videos,
[video=youtube;FJB7gbjiJKw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJB7gbjiJKw[/video]

[video=youtube;gCBlAAtJA54]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCBlAAtJA54[/video]