The Astronomy Thread

khorum

khorum

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They weren't landing the 2nd stage this time were they? I thought Musk said they were thinking about trying that with the first Falcon Heavy launch.

He actually went on at length about the problems with landing the upper stage at an interview at MIT a couple years ago.... and it sounds like all his objections are addressed by the Falcon Heavy's extra lift:

 
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Dandain

Dandain

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If you want to end it all, just draw Mohammad on the wall of the Moon Base/Spaceship. Religion is bad for even a stable mind in closed and technology supported environment. Bad Explanations about how anything works, this is not how you thrive in Space.
 
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AngryGerbil

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Dandain said:
If you want to end it all, just draw [Mohammad on the Moon] Base.
Click to expand...

The sacrilege of this would actually be quite deep.

The Black Stone is housed inside the Cube or the Kaaba. The Kaaba was taken over by Islam. It predates Muhammad.

The original story is that the there were djinns out in the vastness of the desert. They were dust devils. Allies of Shaitan, the lord of the dead. Djinns were responsible for oasis mirages and tiny desert tornadoes. At night, you could see the shooting stars all over the vast desert. The Arab people grew up in a land with not much greenery or trees or large mountains. They had an unprecedented look at the sky. That is why their symbol is a moon and a star, both night time symbols. That is also why many of the most visible stars have Arabic names. Betelgeuse.

The pre-Muhammad Arabs, like everyone else, were polytheistic pagans and had a pantheon of Gods. Allah was but one of this pantheon. Another very greatly respected God was Hubal, the Moon God. It was Hubal who was responsible for shooting stars and meteorites. What was happening was that Hubal was throwing space-rocks at the djinns in order to protect his people that he loved so much... the Arabs. The largest of these Huballian stones ever cast down by the Moon God was 'The Black Stone' in Mecca.

They look at it as a symbol of love. Hubal loves us so much and he is such a strong and powerful God, that he can and will hurl something this large and this magnificent and this beautiful down in order to save us from what must have been a very large and menacing Daddy-Djinn. A large 'demon' if you will. They didn't say demon. They didn't have that word. That is our word. But djinns were basically like demons. Anyway, Hubal is a wonderful and great and magnanimous fighter on behalf of the Arabs against the forces of the djinns. We love Hubal. We worship Hubal. The Black Stone is a symbol of our beloved Hubal.

That is, until Muhammad came along and advocated that everything else be destroyed that wasn't Allah. The only exception to this rule, was the Kaaba and the Black Stone itself. He didn't destroy those. He appropriated them. Muhammad on the Moon would be the final insult to the old Arabic cult of Hubal and it would defy the Islamic ban on images of The Messenger.
 
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meStevo

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That video is amazing. Just saw this raw image come in. So many images of Saturn's rings, but this one seems especially amazing.

W00107219.jpg


Cassini: The Grand Finale: Image of Saturn-rings
 
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khorum

khorum

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Will it have enough time to send back the color images (like the ones of enceladus) before de-orbiting?
 
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meStevo

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Haven't heard about data return being limited at all, so think so. That's just multiple shots w/ different filters that have to be processed.

Wouldn't mind learning how, I should go through these sometime - Space Image Processing Tutorials
 
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khorum

khorum

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Were the enceladus images post-processed then? Wondering how come the dive images are B/W while previous cassini images have been color.
 
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meStevo

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Yeah, most everything that comes down requires processing in some form, you can see all the raw images here and all the different filters - Cassini: The Grand Finale: Raw Images

This remarkable 'true color' photo for example:

rhea_enceladus_mimas_janus_pandora_rings_20110729_color.jpg


Was this:

rhea_enceladus_mimas_janus_pandora_rings_20110729_stack_intermediatestep.jpg


The images didn't come down in technicolor, those are just the different shots offset by satellite/spacecraft movement between shots (image is aligned on the rings) and then colored to represent the wavelength they captured. At least as I understand it.

Want to learn how to process space images? Take my Cosmoquest Academy class!
 
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Dandain

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So, I just wanted to add a little personal commentary to this video. First, is that I think its important to appreciate just how complex this spacecraft's orbits have been for its 13 years. This is not an accidental understanding of nature. This is reaching a degree of proximity to the real laws of nature that to be ignored is to stay ignorant. This video implies a full modeling of virtually all of the pressure's affecting Cassini's trajectory, and understanding their strength.

This is understanding that truly models the future. No prophecy has ever been as true as the scientists understanding of the future of their spacecraft. No ancient predictions can be modeled like this.

You won't be disappointed with this link, I could not get this to embed.

Cassini: The Grand Finale: The Ball of Yarn: Cassini's Orbits

The Ball of Yarn: Cassini's Orbits

April 22, 2017

This computer-generated animation shows all of Cassini's orbits - affectionaly called the "ball of yarn" by mission planners. The time frame spans Saturn Orbit Insertion on July 1, 2004 to the end of mission on Sept. 15, 2017.

Color key:

Green: Prime Mission (2004-2008)

Orange: Equinox Mission (2008-2010)

Purple: Solstice Mission (2010-2017)
Click to expand...
 
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Kiroy

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Dandain said:
So, I just wanted to add a little personal commentary to this video. First, is that I think its important to appreciate just how complex this spacecraft's orbits have been for its 13 years. This is not an accidental understanding of nature. This is reaching a degree of proximity to the real laws of nature that to be ignored is to stay ignorant. This video implies a full modeling of virtually all of the pressure's affecting Cassini's trajectory, and understanding their strength.

This is understanding that truly models the future. No prophecy has ever been as true as the scientists understanding of the future of their spacecraft. No ancient predictions can be modeled like this.

You won't be disappointed with this link, I could not get this to embed.

Cassini: The Grand Finale: The Ball of Yarn: Cassini's Orbits
Click to expand...

Nuts. What's the mechanism that changes it angle? Gravity difference between the moons or thrusters?
 
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Dandain

Dandain

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Cassini has thrusters, but the entire dynamics of the Saturnian system and all it's moons must be modeled accurately enough that this is even possible. Titan is 1.5 times the size of the Moon, and the moon configurations are going to be constantly changing and affecting the spacecraft. Remember that all the commands are on a massive delay, to misunderstand the forces at work is to lose your spacecraft. There is no emergency maneuver's in the same sense as a we live them. There can be emergency maneuver's but they require a level of prophecy that can only be derived from sufficiently approximate understanding. All those close flyby's of any of the larger moons can only be done in context of how it will change the spacecraft through time.

Cassini: The Grand Finale: Quick Facts

Also, the page with the ball of yarn has many other videos on the right as links, that I believe dive deeper into each mission phase if you want to really see more detail.
 
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Dandain

Dandain

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Approaching Jupiter

This enhanced color view of Jupiter’s south pole was created by citizen scientist Gabriel Fiset using data from the JunoCam instrument on NASA’s Juno spacecraft. Oval storms dot the cloudscape. Approaching the pole, the organized turbulence of Jupiter’s belts and zones transitions into clusters of unorganized filamentary structures, streams of air that resemble giant tangled strings.

The image was taken on Dec. 11, 2016 at 9:44 a.m. PST (12:44 p.m. EST), from an altitude of about 32,400 miles (52,200 kilometers) above the planet’s beautiful cloud tops.
Click to expand...

pia21390.jpe
 
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meStevo

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Cool gif. Solar eclipse on Mars observed by a rover.

 
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Aaron

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I feel this thread needs the "mind blown" rating.
 
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