Whether it be Earth, our solar system, the Hubble telescope, the Kepler planet search or anything to do with astronomy and the night sky, feel free to post anything related here.
Here is a stream showing the current view fro the International Space Station. If all you see is darkness, then it is currently not on the illuminated side of earth.
ISS current position
http://iss.astroviewer.net/
Other cool videos that show small we are in the bigger picture.
Are other telescopes to be included such as the James Webb telescope and telescopes that will gather even more data than the Webb?
Any telescopes or anything at all. I only listed a couple as examples. 
Here’s a good app. You point it at the sky and it tells you what your looking at.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.PYOPYO.StarTracker&hl=en
When I lived in a less populated area, I liked going out under the night sky to take the garbage out. A few moments of awe + wonderment.
The James Webb Telescope is to launch in October 2018. There are other large telescopes to launch as well. One is called ATLAST.
ATLAST is envisioned as a flagship mission of the 2025 - 2035 period, designed to address one of the most compelling questions of our time. Is there life else where in our Galaxy? It will accomplish this by detecting"biosignatures" (such as molecular oxygen, ozone, water, and methane) in the spectra of terrestrial exoplanets.
But ATLAST is more than just a “life-finder”. ATLAST will have the performance required to reveal the underlying physics that drives star formation and to trace the complex interactions between dark matter, galaxies, and the intergalactic medium.
The recent accomplishments of these researchers make for some of the best news of 2015.
@Del79, whenever I read about NASA expecting to find alien life elsewhere, I think about Nick Bostrom’s 2013 opinion about the Curiosity Rover on Mars and how he hopes the mission fails.
That’s why Bostrom hoped the Curiosity rover fails. ‘Any discovery of life that didn’t originate on Earth makes it less likely the great filter is in our past, and more likely it’s in our future,’ he told me.
http://aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/ross-andersen-human-extinction/
The article is called When we peer into the fog of the deep future what do we see – human extinction or a future among the stars? I have read this article more than once. There is a lot to think about. But as you can tell right off from Bostrom’s quote, life forms elsewhere may not be the best news we receive if we consider what Bostrom accounts for in terms of extinction.
Ah the nighttime sky…I logged many hours hiding in the branches of our tree out front just thinking, wondering, supposing…
It wouldn’t be a suprise to find out that not only are we not alone in the universe, but they have been here on earth mingling amongst us all along.
Keck observatory…
Yeah i think Stephen Hawking said that a highly intelligent species coming here would be bad news for us as history might repeat itself like whenever a more advanced civilization has conquered people on Earth. Another threat may be the invisible weapon the Conquistadors had which is disease. We would have no idea how our immune systems would react to any alien viruses. Hopefully we develop enough to explore space some day, if we don’t wipe each other out first.
Staring at the night sky without much light pollution is one of the most relaxing experiences imo.
@Csummers, I favor your attitude for sure.
One thing I am hoping for in my lifetime, I want to see advanced ETs who interact without any conceivable notion to threaten their own species, in the strictest sense, or any other species.
David Brin wrote a great novel about the filter, called Existence. Highly recommended.
But I do think we are not alone, and that there are plenty of other planets with life on them. Intelligent, technologically advanced life, now that’s a whole other ballgame, that might well be a lot rarer. Look at how many intelligent races the earth has produced (that we know of) in her long history… What would be the chances of us encountering another civilisation just at that stage of development?
Pretty sure I have, although I’m not about to have the experience written off as “delusional”
all I can say if you get past the fear and just relax and observe…you’ll understand.