Space: The Final Frontier

[Stan]

'Think it turned out quite well'.

It's fucking amazing and beautifully so' .

Can see the 3 moons as well without clicking on it anyway. Great stuff!

[CaaC (John)+]

Quote

Nasa Moon news - live: Major announcement of mysterious ‘new discovery’ to be revealed today

Nasa is set to reveal an “exciting” new discovery about the Moon on Monday.

The US space agency has not revealed any details about what the news will be, though a pre-announcement last week dropped plenty of clues.

The major announcement “contributes to Nasa’s efforts to learn about the Moon in support of deep space exploration”, and will be made at 4 pm GMT.

A live stream of the event will appear on Nasa’s website, as well as on its official YouTube channel,

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/nasa-moon-news-live-major-announcement-of-mysterious-new-discovery-to-be-revealed-today/ar-BB1aoRXf?li=AAnZ9Ug&ocid=mailsignout

 

[nudge+]

Water found on the sunlit surface of the Moon for the first time!

[Beelzebub]

Could be alien piss though

[Stan]

15 minutes ago, nudge said:

Water found on the sunlit surface of the Moon for the first time!

 

3 minutes ago, Azeem said:

Could be alien piss though

If it's on the sunlit surface, it's probably the cheese melting and the water content seeping out. 

[CaaC (John)+]

 

[Stan]

Very bright night sky. Took this tonight (again on my phone) 

[nudge+]

Moved it to the right place, as you posted in the corona thread  

[Dr. Gonzo]

3 hours ago, nudge said:

Water found on the sunlit surface of the Moon for the first time!

Water... or is it just the "mozzarella-juice" fresh mozarella sits in?

The moon is fresh mozzarella, confirmed.

[nudge+]

3 hours ago, Azeem said:

Could be alien piss though

 

3 hours ago, Stan said:

 

If it's on the sunlit surface, it's probably the cheese melting and the water content seeping out. 

 

4 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

Water... or is it just the "mozzarella-juice" fresh mozarella sits in?

The moon is fresh mozzarella, confirmed.

 

Looks like we have a full lineup for the standup comedy night  

[Dr. Gonzo]

@Stan's headlining

[Stan]

20 minutes ago, nudge said:

Moved it to the right place, as you posted in the corona thread  

Thanks but it was meant to be there. I want to go live on the moon as corona is not there.

[nudge+]

Just now, Stan said:

Thanks but it was meant to be there. I want to go live on the moon as corona is not there.

I'll join you.

[Stan]

3 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

@Stan's headlining

In queso emergency you can take my place.

[Beelzebub]

9 hours ago, nudge said:

 

 

 

Looks like we have a full lineup for the standup comedy night  

Comedy? They don't want us to know the truth i bet they changed the news at the last second

[CaaC (John)+]

Quote

NASA/JPL EYES

Eris (dwarf planet)

     This article is about the dwarf planet. For the asteroid, see 433 Eros.

Eris (minor-planet designation 136199 Eris) is the most massive and second-largest known dwarf planet in the Solar System. Eris was discovered in January 2005 by a Palomar Observatory-based team led by Mike Brown, and its discovery was verified later that year. In September 2006 it was named after the Greco-Roman goddess of strife and discord. Eris is the ninth-most massive object directly orbiting the Sun, and the sixteenth-most massive overall in the Solar System (including moons). It is also the largest object that has not been visited by a spacecraft. Eris has been measured at 2,326 ± 12 kilometres (1,445 ± 7 mi) in diameter. Its mass is 0.27 per cent that of the Earth and 127 per cent that of the dwarf planet Pluto, though Pluto is slightly larger by volume.

Eris is a trans-Neptunian object (TNO) and a member of a high-eccentricity population known as the scattered disk. It has one large known moon, Dysnomia. In February 2016, its distance from the Sun was 96.3 astronomical units (1.441×1010 km; 8.95×109 mi),[17] roughly three times that of Pluto. With the exception of some long-period comets, until 2018 VG18 was discovered on December 17, 2018, Eris and Dysnomia were the most distant known natural objects in the Solar System.

Because Eris appeared to be larger than Pluto, NASA initially described it as the Solar System's tenth planet. This, along with the prospect of other objects of similar size being discovered in the future, motivated the International Astronomical Union (IAU) to define the term planet for the first time. Under the IAU definition approved on August 24, 2006, Eris is a "dwarf planet," along with objects such as Pluto, Ceres, Haumea and Makemake, thereby reducing the number of known planets in the Solar System to eight, the same as before Pluto's discovery in 1930. Observations of a stellar occultation by Eris in 2010 showed that it was very slightly smaller than Pluto, which was measured by New Horizons as 2,377 ± 4 kilometres (1,477 ± 2 mi) in July 2015.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eris_(dwarf_planet)

 

Edited October 27, 2020 by CaaC (John)

[nudge+]

There's an interesting documentary mini-series (4 episodes) called "Challenger: The Final Flight" on Netflix. It's an in depth look into the tragic incident of 1986, including the events leading to it, the people involved, as well as the general overview of the Space Shuttle program. Highly recommended.

[CaaC (John)+]

Quote

28 October 2020 / Cosmos

Bulging with a galaxy’s data

Astronomers get to the heart of the Milky Way.

A colour-composite image of the bulge of the Milky Way. Credit: CTIO / NOIRLab / DOE / NSF / AURA

More than 250 million stars in the bulge at the heart of the Milky Way have been surveyed in near-ultraviolet, optical and near-infrared light for the first time, offering the chance to re-examine questions about the galaxy’s formation and history.

The work was carried out by a team of astronomers using the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) mounted on the Víctor M Blanco 4-metre Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.

By detecting the ultraviolet light from what are known as Red Clump stars, they were able to analyse the chemical composition of over 70,000 stars over an area of sky 1000 times as large as the full Moon (an area larger than 20 x 10 degrees stretching over the constellations Sagittarius and Scorpius). 

There were more than 7000 DECam exposures in all, comprising more than 3.5 trillion pixels.

A colour-composite showing a main part of these data is shown above and can be explored in all its whopping 50,000 x 25,000 pixels in a zoomable version. In this image, interstellar dust and gas seemingly acts like a red “filter” in front of the background stars, scattering the blue light away.

The image below, also taken with DECam, shows a region near the centre of the Milky Way that covers 0.5 by 0.25 degrees on the sky (an area about twice as wide as the full Moon) and contains over 180,000 stars.

Credit: CTIO / NOIRLab / DOE / NSF/ AURA / STScI, W Clarkson (UM-Dearborn), C Johnson (STScI), M Rich (UCLA)

The research is described in two papers published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (here and here).

It shows that the stars near the very centre of the Milky Way have a similar composition, which suggests, the authors say, that they formed at around the same time.

Normally composition is measured with a spectrograph, targeting a relatively small number of stars at a time. The Blanco DECam Bulge Survey took a different approach, precisely measuring the stars’ brightness differences from ultraviolet to infrared wavelengths.

These differences in brightness at different wavelengths, called photometric colours, can reveal the composition of stars when the dataset is calibrated with stars measured spectroscopically.

The Dark Energy Camera mounted on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope. Credit: DOE / LBNL / DECam / R. Hahn / CTIO / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA

https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/astronomy/bulging-with-a-galaxys-data/

 

Edited October 28, 2020 by CaaC (John)

[CaaC (John)+]

11 hours ago, nudge said:

There's an interesting documentary mini-series (4 episodes) called "Challenger: The Final Flight" on Netflix. It's an in depth look into the tragic incident of 1986, including the events leading to it, the people involved, as well as the general overview of the Space Shuttle program. Highly recommended.

Cheers just joined Netflix on this laptop so I will be watching all 4 episodes with my earphones on while the wife is watching her bloody Bride shows and whatnot. 

 

[CaaC (John)+]

16 hours ago, nudge said:

There's an interesting documentary mini-series (4 episodes) called "Challenger: The Final Flight" on Netflix.

That's the first episode seen, sad really with the loss of life but looking forward to the other 3 episodes, some lovely space shots in it also.

 

[nudge+]

1 minute ago, CaaC (John) said:

That's the first episode seen, sad really with the loss of life but looking forward to the other 3 episodes, some lovely space shots in it also.

 

Glad you like it... Keep on watching, it gets more interesting, especially with the reveal how the tragedy really should have been avoided.

[CaaC (John)+]

23 hours ago, nudge said:

Glad you like it... Keep on watching, it gets more interesting, especially with the reveal how the tragedy really should have been avoided

That's episode 2 watched and they all died because of dodgy O rings on the boosters, I feel sad for Christa McAuliffe the first non-professional teacher astronaut to be chosen and she loses her life with the others, so sad. 

[nudge+]

1 minute ago, CaaC (John) said:

That's episode 2 watched and they all died because of dodgy O rings on the boosters, I feel sad for Christa McAuliffe the first non-professional teacher astronaut to be chosen and she loses her life with the others, so sad. 

More like they died because NASA violated its own safety rules by ignoring numerous warnings from the solid rocket booster manufacturer regarding the O-Rings issue for years prior to the incident, and decided to launch despite Thiokol key engineers being strongly against it on the day of the launch. Episode 4 made me furious.

[CaaC (John)+]

1 minute ago, nudge said:

More like they died because NASA violated its own safety rules by ignoring numerous warnings from the solid rocket booster manufacturer regarding the O-Rings issue for years prior to the incident, and decided to launch despite Thiokol key engineers being strongly against it on the day of the launch. Episode 4 made me furious.

Just found this and it's a good read, the NASA management should have listened to Bob Ebeling and his engineers about the O rings and the cold weather on that fatal launch.

Quote

30 Years After Explosion, Challenger Engineer Still Blames Himself

Thirty years ago, as the nation mourned the loss of seven astronauts on the space shuttle Challenger, Bob Ebeling was steeped in his own deep grief.

The night before the launch, Ebeling and four other engineers at NASA contractor Morton Thiokol had tried to stop the launch. Their managers and NASA overruled them.

That night, he told his wife, Darlene, "It's going to blow up."

FULL REPORT

 

[nudge+]

2 minutes ago, CaaC (John) said:

Just found this and it's a good read, the NASA management should have listened to Bob Ebeling and his engineers about the O rings and the cold weather on that fatal launch.

 

Yes, keep on watching, the series cover that all in detail... It's crazy how the engineers who actually tried to intervene and get the launch delayed still felt guilty and blamed themselves for the rest of their lives, whereas NASA management who decided to launch despite knowing the risks and ignoring them said they did not feel guilty at all and would have made the same decision again, because they thought it was the right decision  Mental.