INNOVATION

10 Twitter users to follow for cool space pictures

23 Jun 2015

top twitter accounts for space – Galactic-Centre-Hubble

Top Twitter accounts for space – Here is Hubble's infrared image of the center of our Milky Way Galaxy

If pictures of space are your thing, Twitter is the place to be. The social media platform is awash with cool accounts bursting at the seams with great imagery.

Below we’ve listed 10 of the top Twitter accounts for space pictures, with a couple of surprising inclusions along the way:

Commander Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly)

Scott Kelly is the current Commander aboard the ISS. He’s now leading a whole new mission up there where he, along with Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, will spend a full year in space together.

Kelly consistently sends us pictures from above, often of what he sees below.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Labs (@NASAJPL)

For those who don’t know, JPL runs an awful lot of NASA’s coolest projects. It also competes in robotics tournaments, unsuccessfully. JPL does more than just posting cool pictures, it also shares stories and other tidbits to keep the masses happy.

NASA’s Hubble Telescope (@NASA_Hubble)

Hubble, the observatory, is the first major optical telescope to be placed in space, the ultimate mountaintop. From there it tweets us images of faraway galaxies and even, on occasion, some refurbishing professionals cleaning the windows…

The Curiosity Rover (@MarsCuriosity)

Curiosity is a little robot car rolling around the Martian wastelands, gradually mapping our nearest planet ahead of our impending colonisation. Its Twitter is a bit random, given the understandably slow work it is doing up there. However, if you time it right you can catch some brilliant, TS Eliot inspired updates.

SpaceX (@SpaceX)

SpaceX is basically the project we would all embark on if we were given an infinite amount of money. Created by Elon Musk to make travelling to Mars a reality, it now acts as a private courier of sorts, shipping supplies up to the ISS and showing cool videos of its descents down to Earth.

NASA Kepler (@NASAKepler)

The Kepler Mission is designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover Earth-size planets in the habitable zone. Which means pictures. Lots of pictures.

The Rosetta Mission (@ESA_Rosetta)

Of course, despite its immense expertise, NASA isn’t the sole purveyor of space, nor is it the sole explorer.

Last winter the European Space Agency’s Rosetta Mission landed a probe on an asteroid. That sounds easy in sentence form, it’s not in reality.

“I am an ESA space probe at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. I’m studying the comet up close and have sent @philae2014 to its surface.”

Spirit & Oppy (@MarsRovers)

Our second Mars inclusion on this list is a double act, of sorts. Roaming the Red Planet on six wheels for more than a decade now, the Spirit and Opportunity rovers send some amazing images and videos back from the surface of the planet. They also, occasionally, run marathons.

Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield)

Commander Chris Hadfield left the ISS a few years ago, however, he still continues to entertain. He’s now an established public speaker, space enthusiast and all round good guy.

He still, on request, sends pictures he took when on the ISS. Like New Zealand, for example.

Lego Space Bot (@LegoSpaceBot)

Okay, this isn’t exactly space. Okay, this isn’t even nearly space. But on LegoSpaceBot you can see pictures of Lego Space stuff, “the Classic and System eras”, uploaded every two hours.

Gordon Hunt was a journalist with Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com