nudge

Or with Ronald Reagan.

Already regret posting that.

A 28-year-old Brazilian volunteer in the Oxford/Astrazeneca vaccine trials has died of COVID-19 complications He is reported to have received a placebo, not the vaccine, and Oxford University confirms there are no safety concerns, the trials continue.

I swear someone is making Darth Vader sounds in the background of NASA broadcast

Welcome aboard, @Coma.

Technically, it's not a landing, it's a Touch-and-Go event, but I agree - it's mindblowing nonetheless... I've read about the whole procedure and watched them practice actual maneuvers a few months ago, and it's a highy complex engineering feat. Things like that make me proud of the progress we are making in terms of technology and engineering. Imagine a van-sized spacecraft about 330 million kilometers away from the Earth trying to collect a surface sample of an asteroid as big as the Empire State building, and we get to watch it live on youtube. Wouldn't have believed it if even just 20 years ago someone told me it would be possible. This is a cool map of the asteroid: The sample will be taken from the Nightingale site.

Finally, I can use this again! get well soon...

Haha if it was worth millions the picture would look more like this: But yes, that's the actual shot the image is obviously cropped and the contrast is boosted in post processing though. Looks much better through the scope, you can even make out some of the moons! Seeing the rings for the first time made me more excited than I thought it would

Not a fan of Audi, but Winkelhock, Nico Müller, Christopher Haase... That's a very strong driver lineup.

@CaaC (John)

It's official, we'll have WiFi on the Moon by 2022...

56 car grid, 11 automotive brands. Full entry list: http://vmail.vertouk.net/userfiles/sro/file/2020 GTWCEU Endurance Total 24H of Spa - Provisional Entry List Event V10[1].pdf

Will do, but don't expect any high quality photos as this scope is not really suitable for astrophotography... Will see what I can do though!

Taking decent moon pictures with a smartphone is nearly impossible, you usually end up with a tiny bright blob...If it has manual controls then you can play around with them, reducing exposure, etc for better results, but it will still be disappointing and won't show any detail. I have taken some decent moon shots with a DSLR, and even then it can be quite tricky as the moon is so bright it fools the lightmeter into trying to average out the bright celestial body with the dark sky, so you end up with overexposed shots again. A tripod, a telephoto lens (at least 200-300mm) is a must, and then finding the right exposure is key. Simple exposure compensation of at least two steps back might work, but I always got best results with spot metering and focusing on the brightest spot on the moon so the exposure goes down to around 1/125s minimum. I know those detaisl probably do not interest you at all, but I love talking about it

The pictures don't do it justice... the actual view is breathtaking.

Two Moon shots I took last month using a friend's scope.

The telescope arrived today... took a while to set it up and allign the finder etc, but I think I'm done now. Will try to do first observations tonight, wanted to properly check the Moon first due to how close it is, but sadly it's not the best phase for it now as just a small part of it is illuminated... Venus, Mars and Saturn should apparently have good to perfect visibility tonight, so I'll just try to check them out first.

Sigh. It's by far more complicated. Once the pandemic hit, Thailand stopped issuing tourist visas altogether. A while ago, they came up with an idea to create something called "special tourist visa" for citizens of countries they deem to be not affected by the virus, which is essentially a 9 month visa (3 months initially with possibility to extend it for 3 more months twice), and to get it, you were supposed to fulfill certain requirements - negative corona test upon entry, multiple testing when in land, 100000$ health insurance with covid coverage, 14 day quarantine upon arrival, tracing app afterwards. Anyway, to be granted the visa, you also had to provide paid receipts of flight and hotel bookings as well as pay the visa fees. Nothing unusual, except Thai government decided to suspend all already issued "special tourist visas" less than 48 hours before first groups of tourist were supposed to arrive claiming the infrastructure was not yet ready for that, and refused to refund any money for charter flights or hotels or anything else for those who were already flying in. The truth is, there was barely any interest for this "special tourist visa" ; Thailand tourism authorities were hoping to attract a lot of rich Chinese with it, but quite clearly nobody wants to spend their holiday quarantining in expensive hotels and having to report to the immigration authorities every time you move around in the country. So since this experiment failed before it even started, Thailand decided to re-introduce the regular tourist visa (2 months) they offered before covid, but added an extra requirement of 15000€ in a bank account in the last 6 months in order to limit the number of applications, as what they badly want now are some rich tourists to boost their economy while still keeping the overall number of tourists low during the pandemic, not hordes of cheap charlies chugging Chang beer on the beach 24/7. What they don't realise is that not many people will be interested in a month of holiday if they have to go through a bureaucratic nightmare to get a visa and then have to spend half of their holiday locked in a hotel room... Meanwhile, a lot of people with valid visas, families and livelihoods in Thailand - including actual Thai nationals - aren't allowed to enter the country because contrary to rich tourists, they are not considered to be walking ATMs and are therefore useless.

No.

Yes, although granted, it's more about pro-democracy and against the military junta rather than against the royalty per se.

Warrior S2E3 is out, @Bluewolf!

A bit over 300€. It's too massive to confuse it with binoculars, I think

What a bunch of toddlers!

Welcome aboard!