Space and Astronomy in general

Curiosity time-lapse

tanstaafl wrote:

The Sun just released it's largest set of flares for the year. Three of them. In a row.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/su...

I checked out those images and watched the video. Amazing.

Looks like Ecuador's only satellite may have been damaged in a collision. Not a huge deal because it's just a little 1.2kg guy put up for show, but indicative of the growing problem with space junk.

This is what I was doing this week.

Haakon7 wrote:

This is what I was doing this week.

Writing the article about Tim Peake, choosing Tim Peake as an astronaut going to the ISS, or being Tim Peake and being chosen to go to the ISS?

I assumed that he was doing Tim Peake, playing the role of the ESA's pre-launch fluffer or something like that.

peedmyself wrote:

I assumed that he was doing Tim Peake, playing the role of the ESA's pre-launch fluffer or something like that.

(in space)

Working with ESA and our parent department to get the press release ready, organizing the press conference for Tim, managing media bids for his time, organising the reception at the Houses of Parliament and accompanying him to No. 10 with our minister and the Secretary of State.

Not being a fluffer.

There is a kickstarter for a new space telescope here. Bill Nye is involved, as are some actors and an MIT astrophysicist. It looks pretty damn sweet, and I'm tempted to throw a few bucks there way. Science!

Guess I'll tag into this thread. I've been dusting off my rig, hoping to get back into some astrophotography and general visual observing. The weather and visibility here doesn't really cooperate though.

Sunday evening my wife and I were able to take our telescope out again.on that day right after dusk Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury were at their closest point together this year, all within a binoculars view of one another. They are very low to the horizon, particularly Venus, but they are bright enough that they all come out very early, while their section of the sky is still quite blue. You can see them all easily still with your naked eyes by looking West right after the disk of the sun goes below the horizon.

We haven't installed the new scope yet, but after sighting in the original properly (I feel very foolish for not checking that before) it worked out just fine. Venus was incredibly bright, and we actually were able to make out the shadow line of the horizon, as the portion farthest from where the sun was was noticeably darker.

Jupiter was also very nice, although we weren't able to make out any distinguishing features. We're still not able to focus very well, whether that's the television fault or ours.

We didn't get a chance to spot Mercury. It was the last of the the we looked for and we couldn't catch it before it sunk below the trees.

The mystery 'mascons'--localized areas of the moon Apollo astronauts had to look out for because they had more gravity than they should--was solved by NASA's GRAIL mission.

The GRAIL data indicated that the mascons, which resulted from asteroid impacts more than 3 billion years ago, appear in a target pattern. There is a surplus of gravity in the bull's-eye, surrounded by a ring with a gravity deficit, which in turn is surrounded by a ring of gravity surplus.

This pattern could occur only if the interior of the moon was significantly warmer than it is now when it was pounded by the asteroids that caused the craters, Melosh said.

"The hot rock under the surface was able to rebound upward in response to the impact and got frozen in that concentration," he said. "The interior had to be warmer to allow it to flow up, and the surface had to be cool enough to allow it to freeze and hold that excess mass up."

This pic from the ISS showed up in my twitter feed this morning. Just thought it was worth sharing.

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BLyKcreCAAIgXTg.jpg)

New theory about dark matter

Most of the matter in the universe may be made out of particles that possess an unusual, donut-shaped electromagnetic field called an anapole.

This proposal, which endows dark matter particles with a rare form of electromagnetism, has been strengthened by a detailed analysis performed by a pair of theoretical physicists at Vanderbilt University: Professor Robert Scherrer and post-doctoral fellow Chiu Man Ho. An article about the research was published online last month by the journal Physics Letters B.

(abstract of the paper)

Ooo... donuts!

Does not compute:

Most of the matter... possesses an unusual... rare form of electromagnetism.

How is something unusual and rare if it is a basic property of most of the matter in the universe?

MoonDragon wrote:

Does not compute:

Most of the matter... possesses an unusual... rare form of electromagnetism.

How is something unusual and rare if it is a basic property of most of the matter in the universe?

To us? Not to the universe as a whole?

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/U71EmmG.jpg)

I had no idea Armstrong had to kill zombie Aldrin on the moon.

Yonder wrote:

I had no idea Armstrong had to kill zombie Aldrin on the moon.

No wonder no one knows who Collins is, he was dead?

So, it looks like we're going to fund engine development for a spaceplane. Wicked.

Haakon7 wrote:

So, it looks like we're going to fund engine development for a spaceplane. Wicked.

[citation needed]

The Russians lost a launch yesterday. Unmanned, it was putting up a trio of GPS satellites.

MeatMan wrote:
Haakon7 wrote:

So, it looks like we're going to fund engine development for a spaceplane. Wicked.

[citation needed]

I'm assuming they are referring to this

Someone forgot to turn on SAS.

Looks like they forgot to turn on SAS.

-edit-
Dammit.

Yeah, definitely an SAS failure...

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/Ighkti1.png)

It looked like it actually came down near some buildings. Hopefully that was just lens foreshortening...

Here's another angle. This guy was enough in the line-of-flight that they ran for cover.