The Astronomy Thread

Tuco

Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
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Mudcrush Durtfeet said:
SpaceX had another successful launch yesterday.
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Not only that, but it was the biggest thing they've shot into orbit and first geostationary (which means really fuckin' high) orbit.

What is funny is they originally planned to use their falcon heavy to launch it, but it wasn't ready so they used their standard issue falcon. But because it was so heavy they didn't have enough fuel for relanding, so they had to lose their rocket.

I'm not sure if they went through with it so they didn't break contract or if they had another reason.

It's a very good thing that a mission where the booster isn't recovered now seems wasteful and regressive.
 
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Palum

Palum

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Tuco said:
Not only that, but it was the biggest thing they've shot into orbit and first geostationary (which means really fuckin' high) orbit.

What is funny is they originally planned to use their falcon heavy to launch it, but it wasn't ready so they used their standard issue falcon. But because it was so heavy they didn't have enough fuel for relanding, so they had to lose their rocket.

I'm not sure if they went through with it so they didn't break contract or if they had another reason.
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My guess is to keep schedule and prove they had the capacity to meet deadlines and had adaptable equipment.

One should not forget that part of the commodification of lifting cargo into space is going to be creating the customer/client interface that's less 'NASA-y' (experimental, if you like) which means consistent costs and schedules. No one gives a fuck what taxi cab is in the shop for maintenance, they expect to get picked up in *a* car, however.
 
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Tuco

Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
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Palum said:
My guess is to keep schedule and prove they had the capacity to meet deadlines and had adaptable equipment.

One should not forget that part of the commodification of lifting cargo into space is going to be creating the customer/client interface that's less 'NASA-y' (experimental, if you like) which means consistent costs and schedules. No one gives a fuck what taxi cab is in the shop for maintenance, they expect to get picked up in *a* car, however.
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Yeah that's what I'm guessing too.

I wonder at this point what the difference between recovering the lifter and letting it burn up in re-entry is. It could be the difference between SpaceX literally losing money on lifting the satellite and a criminal profit margin.
 
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meStevo

meStevo

I think your wife's a bigfoot gus.
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This is a shot from New Horizons on it's way to Pluto, reprocessed with tools they later developed for the Pluto imaging.

BUFfW3o.jpg


 
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spronk

spronk

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light from that "aliens?" star is dimming again, they probably just found out Trump got elected and are preparing to build their own wall

 
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Moogalak

Moogalak

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Nola said:
Has anyone seen this patent and is this a real patent? If so this is truly amazing.

Patent US20060145019 - Triangular spacecraft
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lol, look at the list of patent citations at the bottom of the page.

Very first one (from 1969): method and means to create artificial gravity in a spacecraft. Seems like someone has entirely too much time on their hands and faked all the math and shit in the triangle craft page, although I am far too lazy to check it.
 
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Kharzette

Kharzette

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Right on time!

I was thinking about dyson swarm and golden hour style habs. If your collectors were made from some crazy material and super efficient, you might not have any heat glow? Like 100% efficient solar collectors made from super space wizard magic stuff.

Eagerly awaiting the spectra infos!
 
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meStevo

meStevo

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'Alien Megastructure' Star Is at It Again with the Strange Dimming

The perplexing cosmic object known as "Boyajian's star" is once again exhibiting a mysterious pattern of dimming and brightening that scientists have tried to explain with hypotheses ranging from swarms of comets to alien megastructures.

Today (May 19), an urgent call went out to scientists around the world to turn as many telescopes as possible toward the star, to try and crack the mystery of its behavior.
 
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meStevo

meStevo

I think your wife's a bigfoot gus.
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nrao17cb20a.jpg


Composite image of the Fomalhaut star system. The ALMA data, shown in orange, reveal the distant and eccentric debris disk in never-before-seen detail. The central dot is the unresolved emission from the star, which is about twice the mass of our sun. Optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope is in blue; the dark region is a coronagraphic mask, which filtered out the otherwise overwhelming light of the central star.
​
Icy ring around Fomalhaut observed in new wavelength – Astronomy Now
 
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Ukerric

Ukerric

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Moogalak said:
Very first one (from 1969): method and means to create artificial gravity in a spacecraft. Seems like someone has entirely too much time on their hands and faked all the math and shit in the triangle craft page, although I am far too lazy to check it.
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Patented in 2004, published in 2006...

... and somehow, SpaceX is still using rockets. Im disapoint.
 
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Lambourne

Lambourne

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They had a guy from the US patent office on at one of the James Randi's Amazing Meetings. I have it on DVD, dunno if it's on youtube.

He said that although they legally can request a working model for a patent, it is rarely done because they are underfunded and understaffed, as well lacking expertise in many areas. They just process most of what comes in. In their view at worst someone has paid to register a useless patent on an invention that doesn't work. A patent is merely a way of protecting an idea, and not an endorsement or verification.
 
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Dandain

Dandain

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NASA's Kepler Confirms Details of TRAPPIST-1’s Least Understood Planet

The animation shows a simulation of the planets of TRAPPIST-1 orbiting for 90 Earth-days. After 15 Earth-days, the animation focuses only on the outer three planets: TRAPPIST-1f, TRAPPIST-1g, TRAPPIST-1h. The motion freezes each time two adjacent planets pass each other; an arrow appears pointing to the location of the third planet.

This complex but predictable pattern, called an orbital resonance, occurs when planets exert a regular, periodic gravitational tug on each other as they orbit their star. The three-body resonance of the outer three planets causes the planets to repeat the same relative positions, and expecting such a resonance was used to predict the orbital period of TRAPPIST-1h.
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meStevo

meStevo

I think your wife's a bigfoot gus.
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This whole album is ridiculous. Think there's some artistic license here to some degree, but starting w/ Juno data.

Jupiter

upload_2017-5-24_22-20-56.png


34686183812_ce67711581_h.jpg


Also, someone animated the last Perijove:

 
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Drakain

Drakain

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Our gas giants are absolutely gorgeous. I would give almost anything to see them with my own eyes before I die.
 
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Dandain

Dandain

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So I'm not sure if rocket labs released a contiguous video of their flight. But this is a nice edit of a bunch of clips from different twitter posts.

 
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Cad

Cad

scientia potentia est
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Drakain said:
Our gas giants are absolutely gorgeous. I would give almost anything to see them with my own eyes before I die.
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On principle I agree but those planets don't have any coherent surface so there's not really anything we can do with them. They're just pretty balls of gas.
 
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Drakain

Drakain

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Cad said:
On principle I agree but those planets don't have any coherent surface so there's not really anything we can do with them. They're just pretty balls of gas.
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I was talking about seeing them from an orbit.
 
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