The Astronomy Thread

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Mudcrush Durtfeet

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Ukerric said:
Anything worth going in tiny quantities from space will be rare earths...
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No, the expense on Earth for rare earths is getting is more related to the expense of the extraction process (it is expensive) rather than the rarity of the various elements themselves. The US has (if my memory serves) rare earths that can be mined or whatever, but not the infrastructure (expensive) to refine it.
 
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Ukerric

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One of the advantages of space-based origin for rare earth is that asteroids haven't been subjected to the kind of gravity-enforced separation that affects earth crust.

Basically, earth's crust is poorer than average in heavy metals, notably a number of rare earths. Those metals sank toward earth core during formation. An asteroid with a completely negligible gravity will not exhibit this stratification, and you'll get a higher concentration of metals compared to earth's ores, making separation and refining easier.
 
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Cad

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Ukerric said:
One of the advantages of space-based origin for rare earth is that asteroids haven't been subjected to the kind of gravity-enforced separation that affects earth crust.

Basically, earth's crust is poorer than average in heavy metals, notably a number of rare earths. Those metals sank toward earth core during formation. An asteroid with a completely negligible gravity will not exhibit this stratification, and you'll get a higher concentration of metals compared to earth's ores, making separation and refining easier.
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Sure, but when you start talking about $1M/kg for return costs or whatever it ends up being, extraction on earth looks a lot more appetizing...
 
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Qhue

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Just need to never return it... Set up shop on a decent sized planetoid and start cranking out industrial bits for everyone else outside a planetary gravity well.
 
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Ukerric

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Qhue said:
Just need to never return it... Set up shop on a decent sized planetoid and start cranking out industrial bits for everyone else outside a planetary gravity well.
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You can do that, but even without, the access cost for space are going down. At the moment, it's in the low 5 figures per kg. 1M$/kg is what it costs the NASA to run an experiment, not what it would cost to run a mining operation.

The official cost for a Falcon Heavy launch is 90M$ to launch 16 TONS to Mars. Even if you halve the payload to the asteroid belt, and divide again by 2 for the return capability, we're at 22k$/kg. Today.
 
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Oldbased

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Why I never bought another telescope. $7000 scope +$1000 camera.
It's a nice photo but for that sort of money I would hope I could zoom in and see the zits of an alien on the moon.
 
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Big Phoenix

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Hah I have the $1000 camera covered, gf has a canon 80D. I'll probably pickup an adapter for it and take some pictures.

This is thebest I could do with my now worthless Note 4;

42ZOrL7.jpg
 
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Pops

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Olebass said:

Why I never bought another telescope. $7000 scope +$1000 camera.
It's a nice photo but for that sort of money I would hope I could zoom in and see the zits of an alien on the moon.
Click to expand...


exponential-curve.png


Cost vs effect.
 
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Ukerric

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That reprocessed flyby was gorgeous (seen it on youtube last week). The full flyby has artefacts (you can see the holes in the photos remapped on the full sphere of Jupiter), this one is more artistic. But shorter.
 
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Ukerric

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ShakyJake

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Olebass said:

Why I never bought another telescope. $7000 scope +$1000 camera.
It's a nice photo but for that sort of money I would hope I could zoom in and see the zits of an alien on the moon.
Click to expand...


I took an astronomy class at college and the professor had his own observatory at his house. Had us all come out and take a look. I think he said it cost him about 20 grand or so. We looked at Andromeda and all you could see is a fuzzy mass. Might as well just look at pictures from Hubble, you know?
 
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Jysin

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ShakyJake said:
I took an astronomy class at college and the professor had his own observatory at his house. Had us all come out and take a look. I think he said it cost him about 20 grand or so. We looked at Andromeda and all you could see is a fuzzy mass. Might as well just look at pictures from Hubble, you know?
Click to expand...

Provided you have very dark skies and have reasonable eyesight, you can see Andromeda with the naked eye.

It is actually quite massive and if it were brighter, this is its relative size in the night sky!

Andromeda-FEATURE.png


If Andromeda Were Brighter, This is What You'd See - Wait But Why

Another fun fact: We all know the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies are attracted to one another and will eventually merge. The interesting thing to note is the absolute vastness of space between celestial bodies means the likelihood of any planetary / star collisions is very slim during the merge phase.
 
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ShakyJake

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Jysin said:
Provided you have very dark skies and have reasonable eyesight, you can see Andromeda with the naked eye.

It is actually quite massive and if it were brighter, this is its relative size in the night sky!

Andromeda-FEATURE.png
Click to expand...

Yeah, but it doesn't look like that to the naked eye (or through a telescope). You have to take long exposures for it to appear anything close to your picture.
 
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Jysin

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Yea, I didn't claim it looked like that. I said "if it were brighter" and linked the explanation. However, I have seen it myself with the naked eye. It's definitely a fuzzy blob. But with a scope should be quite a bit more detailed. Not sure what the guy was doing with his $20k scope.
 
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Chanur

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Jysin said:
Provided you have very dark skies and have reasonable eyesight, you can see Andromeda with the naked eye.

It is actually quite massive and if it were brighter, this is its relative size in the night sky!

Andromeda-FEATURE.png


If Andromeda Were Brighter, This is What You'd See - Wait But Why

Another fun fact: We all know the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies are attracted to one another and will eventually merge. The interesting thing to note is the absolute vastness of space between celestial bodies means the likelihood of any planetary / star collisions is very slim during the merge phase.
Click to expand...


This comment from the article had me face palming.
Care to elaborate why scientists think they would see our past when looking at us with a telescope. Are our supposed greatest minds really that stupid.
Click to expand...
 
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Warmuth

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I'd have never guessed it would look that big in the sky. Amazing. That picture is messing with my head a bit.
 
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