The Astronomy Thread

Looks like a wrecked butthole.

Saw this in person today. Pictures don’t do it justice. If you love Astronomy, you gotta check this out.

For the upcoming 50th anniversary.

When I was a little kid I read all I could on space books. A lot of the books available at the library were published before man walked on the moon. Bought some too. Pretty sure I still have some of them in my massive book collection. I may need to drag some out one day.

Couple of years ago talked to Buzz Aldrin for 30 seconds when he was manning a ham radio event site for the anniversary. I know it's odd and only 30 seconds, long enough to get into my log book and say hello. Was still kind of cool. Still have the QSL card (contact card people send to those that they have contacted) the station in Hoover, Alabama where the event site was at and he signed it. Get motivated one day I'll frame it. Yeah I know, should have asked if he punched any moon landing deniers lately, but I didn't.

Not sure what they are doing this year for the 50th.

New Earth-like exoplanets discovered around red dwarf Teegarden star

Brad2770 said:

Saw this in person today. Pictures don’t do it justice. If you love Astronomy, you gotta check this out.

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Meteor Crater in Arizona?

ShakyJake said:

Meteor Crater in Arizona?

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Yup. I visited there about 10 years ago. Kind of like the Grand Canyon, you don't really get a sense of the true scale of the thing until you're there in person.

Cybsled said:

Yup. I visited there about 10 years ago. Kind of like the Grand Canyon, you don't really get a sense of the true scale of the thing until you're there in person.

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Yep, went to Grand Canyon today. I’ll just copy and paste what I told my cousin:

Grand Canyon. Seriously, no words. Looking out beyond the edge close to you is very surreal. It almost makes you dizzy because it's so much to take in at once.

Tuco said:

Interesting that Earth is on the left side of that conservative habitable zone.

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The habitable zone shifts outward over time as the Sun becomes brighter. We're not that far away from becoming too hot to sustain liquid water. The expectation is that in one billion years the Sun's brightness will have increased by 10% which will be enough to trigger a runaway greenhouse effect causing the oceans to evaporate completely (water vapor is actually a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2). Earth will be unsuitable for life long before the Sun actually runs out of hydrogen and turns into a red giant.

meStevo said:

I've been to Meteor Crater, but not to the Grand Canyon, lol. That's particularly sad when I've lived fairly close my whole life. I've got kids though, it's my duty to take them.

Anyways, Falcon Heavy launch next week!

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Looks like SpaceX will beat NASA in taking the first maneuverable reaction-less propulsion system to orbit next week.

Mars, it appears, is belching a large amount of a gas that could be a sign of microbes living on the planet today.

In a measurement taken on Wednesday, NASA’s Curiosity rover discovered startlingly high amounts of methane in the Martian air, a gas that on Earth is usually produced by living things. The data arrived back on Earth on Thursday, and by Friday, scientists working on the mission were excitedly discussing the news, which has not yet been announced by NASA.

“Given this surprising result, we’ve reorganized the weekend to run a follow-up experiment,” Ashwin R. Vasavada, the project scientist for the mission, wrote to the science team in an email that was obtained by The Times.

The mission’s controllers on Earth sent new instructions to the rover on Friday to follow up on the readings, bumping previously planned science work. The results of these observations are expected back on the ground on Monday.

Methane, if it is there in the thin Martian air, is significant, because sunlight and chemical reactions would break up the molecules within a few centuries. Thus any methane detected now must have been released recently.

On Earth, microbes known as methanogens thrive in places lacking oxygen, such as rocks deep underground and the digestive tracts of animals, and they release methane as a waste product. However, geothermal reactions devoid of biology can also generate methane.

It is also possible that the methane is ancient, trapped inside Mars for millions of years but escaping intermittently through cracks.