The Astronomy Thread

  • Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!



    Go here and give us your nominations!
    Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
chthonic-anemos

chthonic-anemos

bitchute.com/video/EvyOjOORbg5l/
8,606
27,290
Yesterday I was reading about how this big rock is pooing and farting ice in our space. Now everyone is rethinking everything they thought they knew about space water.
 
Eomer

Eomer

Trakanon Raider
5,472
272
This is pretty neat:Planet portrait captured by Gemini Planet Imager is the best ever - Technology Science - CBC News

And to think, this is from a ground based telescope.

The device can also distinguish between different colours of light that are the fingerprints of certain molecules in the atmospheres of planets, such as oxygen or carbon dioxide.

Konopacky said its discoveries about Beta Pictoris b's atmosphere will be reported in another soon-to-be published paper.
Click to expand...
Tuco_sl said:
From what I read the landing shit didn't work, yeah?
Click to expand...
From the sounds of it, the controlled descent aspect has been working fine. I'm not sure if that's the biggest hurdle or if physically landing on the legs is. In any case, they have already done successful landings on the legs on other test flights. But they haven't done an actual launch, controlled descent, and a touchdown on land yet.

SpaceX Achieves First Booster Flyback During Space Station Mission | MIT Technology Review

However, Musk reported via Twitter about two hours after the press conference that the booster had indeed landed safely. "Data upload from tracking plane shows landing in Atlantic was good!" he tweeted. "Flight computers continued transmitting for 8 seconds after reaching the water. Stopped when booster went horizontal." At last report, the crews of several boats were attempting to retrieve the booster.
Click to expand...
 
Tuco

Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
<Gold Donor>
47,468
81,123
image from the article for those who are lazy
beta-pictoris-b.jpg
 
Eomer

Eomer

Trakanon Raider
5,472
272
Oh, I also came across this:WATCH: SpaceX Completes Controlled Falcon 9 Landing - TIME

The link has a video of a test landing.

Musk also announced Friday that SpaceX is filing suit against the U.S. Air Force to encourage competition for national security-related rocket launches. A joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin provides all rocketry for USAF space launches. Musk said that arrangement is expensive, outdated and doesn't allow new independent bidders to compete for procurement deals.

"This is not SpaceX protesting saying these launches should be awarded to us. These launches should be competed, and if we compete and lose that's fine," Musk said.

The suit was filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.
Click to expand...
He's The Man, seriously.
 
iannis

iannis

Musty Nester
31,351
17,656
article_sl said:
Because this light has difficulty escaping from the extreme gravitational fields of these objects, the image of the cloud of plasma becomes smeared out. But the difference in size between a black hole and a wormhole causes a crucial difference in this smearing. This distinctive pattern of smearing is the signature that astronomers can use to tell them apart.
Click to expand...
There seems to be something fundamentally wrong with this step. There's a disconnect. Not that the method can be used to measure size, which is the science of it, but in theassumptionthat any object within some arbitrary range -must- be a "wormhole", which is just speculation.

If they find it to be smaller than they expect it should be what that proves is that either our thinking includes bad assumptions or that it fails to include good assumptions.

"Wormhole" could be one of those good assumptions, sure. But that's a real leap, applying a theory with no observational merit to an observation... just because you want to.
 
Cybsled

Cybsled

Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
17,092
13,620
The blackhole in the center of the milkyway is a prison for an alien being with godlike powers, duh.
 
BoldW

BoldW

Molten Core Raider
2,081
25
Karloff had recommended the Astroscan Plus telescope as an excellent starter scope. It's still on my list but currently out of stock and not taking orders on it. I purchased a Celestron 114eq from hayneedle.com for 150 (price went up since I ordered), and am happy with it. It doesn't even come with a collimation cap, which sucks, as it's out of collimation (mirrors not in alignment), but I'm quite happy with it as a starter scope and being able to easily make out Saturn and its rings out of the box is pretty friggin cool. I just ordered an eyepice and filter kit (and laser collimation tool) which includes a Barlow lens so am excited about that. Both of these things are about the price of the scope to begin with, LOL, but I'm totally hooked and the eyepieces have good reviews so should be good when I upgrade my scope.

Anyways, a funny (I thought) story: I setup my EQ mount pretty well and am following Saturn when I see three bright objects in a V formation jet down across my field of view. I was like woah, did I just see some meteorites? I pull my eyes up from the eyepiece and see that a plane had crossed it's path, but since reflectors invert everything, it looked like they were shooting down even though they were shooting up, and it was just the lights from the plane.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.