Space is a big place, a very big place, an unfathomably big place. Even our little corner of it is pretty gigantic, but it’s at least slightly more fathomable. If you think you’d like to attempt to fathom it, this infographic by the BBC is likely to help, illustrating the distance between you and the farthest reaches of the solar system with conveniently fathomable benchmarks. Spoilers: It’s still pretty hard to wrap your head around.

Get your mouse wheel finger warmed up and check out the full graphic after the jump.

Discovered back in 2009, exoplanet GJ 1214b has been the focus of interest from the start. One of the first planets discovered to have an atmosphere, there’s been a lot of guessing as to exactly what kind it actually has. In 2010, tests showed that the atmosphere was primarily composed of water, and now infrared spectra taken by the Hubble Space Telescope have confirmed that it is in fact a waterworld and a planet unlike any other that has been previously discovered.

Sure, some of the Angry Birds have already been in space, but starting March 22 they’re going to be launching a whole new campaign to settle once and for all the question of who is the best at space. Details are pretty sparse at the moment, but really there isn’t much that “Angry Birds Space” doesn’t say for itself. With Angry Birds having spun themselves out into so many different aspects of our Earthly culture, it’s only logical that they tackle the dark abyss.

They say a fine wine gets better with age. If so, it’ll probably also get better if you just throw a 4.5 billion year old meteorite in there as well, right? That might be up for debate, but that hasn’t stopped Ian Hutcheon from doing exactly that to produce his space-tastic wine Meteorito: “The wine that’s made with a really old rock in it.” I’m not sure that’s the official Meteorito tagline, but it might as well be.

NASA spacecraft Cassini has been chilling out in the area around Saturn just taking some pictures of the sights, and they are beautiful. It’s been focused primarily on Titan and Dione, but given the quality of the shots, it seems like that’s the right choice. More pretty pictures after the break.

In hopes of making it easier for future space missions to collect samples from asteroids and comets, NASA is working on a crazy space harpoon that will help make that happen. The issue with collecting samples from asteroids and comets aside from the fact that they are both moving fast and far away from Earth, is that they don’t command much gravity. This makes traditional approaches like the scoop or the shovel pretty much useless because they’ll push you right off the surface. An explosive powered space harpoon, on the other hand, can get the job done.

In addition to being terrifying celestial holes from which not even light can escape, scientists believe that the incredible gravity exerted by black holes has played a foundational role in the creation of galaxies. That theory might get refined even further, now that astronomers at the University of California, Berkeley have discovered the largest black holes ever detected. These monsters are billions of times larger than our sun, and more than three times larger than the previous record holder.

After being inspired by the recent lunar eclipse, Brad Goodspeed wondered what the sky would look like if the planets in our universe were as close to Earth as the moon is and revolved around us. And it would probably amaze us while, at the same time, scaring the crap out of us. Imagine if he’d included all 63 of Jupiter’s moons? Ouch.

(Click through to watch in HD.)

(BradBlogSpeed via Neatorama)

For those of you complaining about your cell-phone camera, please consider this image before continuing to kvetch.
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Douglas Trumbull, one of the special effects supervisors on 2001: A Space Odyssey, is no longer making his making-of documentary on the seminal science fiction film, since Warner Bros. pulled the plug on his funding.

But while in Toronto showing off stills from the photo-book that 2001: Behind the Infinite—The Making of a Masterpiece is being converted into, he happened to mention an interesting discovery made in the production of his now defunct movie.