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!

Kajiimagi

<Aristocrat╭ರ_•́>
2,726
5,123
Tweet is kind of clickbaity. Unless they can transmit data faster than the speed of light, you still are going to have around a 13ish minute delay each way, so there is no “instant communication”

That being said, having a more robust means of data transmission would be nice for both manned and unmanned missions
I thought the same thing , and didn't even click it. Stupid old physics messing up all their plans.
 

Cynical

Canuckistani Terrorist
2,338
5,423
It's just an upgrade for the same ole really.

I'm curious what we will implement for a fixed system in the future, still early for any real plans now. Our mission based systems won't be effective for a colony, especially more than one.

I've always imagined some kind of high intensity laser array on each, with repeaters to account for orbits, basically the wireless point of a giant fibre cable, but I'm sure there's a smarter way.
 

Lambourne

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
2,969
7,093
You're going to need a local proxy on Mars for data heavy stuff like video streaming because any Earth-Mars link is going to have limited capacity and (when the planets are on the opposite side of the Sun) over 20 minutes of latency. Early on it's probably cheapest to just ship physical media when it comes to stuff the size of Netflix libraries.
 

Kajiimagi

<Aristocrat╭ರ_•́>
2,726
5,123
M74 is a large spiral galaxy 32 million light years from earth.

This is the result of 924 10 second exposures stacked and processed using Siril, Starnet ++, & GraXpert. Captured by a ZWO Seestar S50.

Funny thing about this one, in one of the 10 second stacks and airplane flew right through the picture, and now it's gone!

M74 processed_GraXpert.jpg
 
  • 10Like
Reactions: 9 users

pwe

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
997
6,351
This is from a weather radar an hour ago. What are we looking at here? The trail is 200km/124 miles long. Radar images are 5 minutes apart, and it doesn't show before or after this one. Is it Musk sending a Tesla in orbit? It is Bitcoin going to the moon? A plane? A bird? Looks pretty cool anyways.

1731477607127.png
 
  • 3Like
Reactions: 2 users

Lambourne

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
2,969
7,093
This is from a weather radar an hour ago. What are we looking at here? The trail is 200km/124 miles long. Radar images are 5 minutes apart, and it doesn't show before or after this one. Is it Musk sending a Tesla in orbit? It is Bitcoin going to the moon? A plane? A bird? Looks pretty cool anyways.

View attachment 558890

Reflection or other radar artifact. If you want to go look for it on maps, you'll find the antenna is at the tip of the wedge.
 
  • 1Truth!
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 users

Lenardo

Vyemm Raider
3,661
2,580
camera arrives tomorrow. will try it over the weekend. for 50 bucks got a used canon eos 12.2 MP camera and for 10 got 1.5" to eos adapter for my mak-cas 102mm telescope,. and got a cheap 800 mm telephoto lens off amazon for 80 bucks, will try camera only then the makcas
 
  • 2Like
Reactions: 1 users

Lambourne

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
2,969
7,093
Launch window starts at 4 Central. If things go like the previous test and there are no issues it will probably launch very close to the beginning of that time window. Broadcast starts a little earlier.


1732039180941.png
 

meStevo

I think your wife's a bigfoot gus.
<Silver Donator>
6,534
4,819

1732311703019.png


Located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, at a staggering distance of over 160 000 light-years from us, WOH G64 is a dying star roughly 2000 times the size of the Sun. This image of the star (left) is the first close-up picture of a star outside our galaxy. This breakthrough was possible thanks to the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (ESO’s VLTI), located in Chile.​
The new image, taken with the VLTI’s GRAVITY instrument, shows that the star is enveloped in a large egg-shaped dust cocoon. The image on the right shows an artist’s impression reconstructing the geometry of the structures around the star, including the bright oval envelope and a fainter dusty torus. Confirming the presence and shape of this torus will require additional observations.​

 
  • 4Like
Reactions: 3 users

Ukerric

Bearded Ape
<Silver Donator>
8,404
10,497
Scott Manley talk telescopes and notably digital telescopes:

 
  • 3Like
Reactions: 2 users