The Astronomy Thread

Palum

Palum

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If only there was a large nearby body of water to land the rocket in, cushioning the last moments of impact at low speed and eliminating the necessity of a complicated vertical landing on a moving platform.
 
LachiusTZ

LachiusTZ

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Wonder if it would have stayed upright even after landing in 13ft seas . . . assuming the barge is stable enough it would. Either way, landed the damn thing right on the money.

Looks like they are getting very close to sticking all those landings.

That star is interesting as hell. Wish I knew enough about it to have a real opinion on what it is, but instead I'll have to wait for someone to tell me. Lol
 
S

spirytus

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"...Even months later, this single object continues to emit more energy per second than all the stars in the Milky Way..."

Bear in mind its ~ 2.9 billion light years away as well -- That's a colossal ammount of energy.

In your hypothetical scenario, a second sun torching the surface of the earth would be catastrophic for sure. Throw in massive amount of high energy radiation accompanying a nova of any size I doubt earth's weak em field would shield us from that shit.

There are candidates in our own Galaxy close enough to the Solar system that raise eyebrows in this regard. E.G.Betelgeuse
 
Cad

Cad

scientia potentia est
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Tuco_sl said:
I wonder how damaging a supernova would be if it temporarily illuminated our earth as much as the sun.
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I'm sure Rescorla would encourage us to burn more fossil fuels in that case
 
Eomer

Eomer

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Neph_sl said:
If your landing platform is moving up and down by 13 ft, you'd think they'd postpone the test. I haven't really been following their efforts too closely, but why are they trying to land over sea versus over land? The benefits don't seem that obvious to me.
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They don't have the necessary approvals to land on the West coast, so their only option if they wanted to do another test landing was on the barge. Also, for high velocity launches, it won't always be possible for the rocket to turn around and make it back to the original launch site, like they've been doing in Florida. In those cases if they want reusability, they'll need to land on a barge as well.

It really has been fascinating to watch SpaceX slowly but surely figure all this stuff out over the past few years. And their progress is pretty amazing. They've given up on making the second stage re-usable apparently, but if they manage to achieve full re-usability with the first stage, it will have a huge impact on launch costs. They're already the cheapest around by far.
 
Tuco

Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
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spirytus_sl said:
"...Even months later, this single object continues to emit more energy per second than all the stars in the Milky Way..."

Bear in mind its ~ 2.9 billion light years away as well -- That's a colossal ammount of energy.

In your hypothetical scenario, a second sun torching the surface of the earth would be catastrophic for sure. Throw in massive amount of high energy radiation accompanying a nova of any size I doubt earth's weak em field would shield us from that shit.

There are candidates in our own Galaxy close enough to the Solar system that raise eyebrows in this regard. E.G.Betelgeuse
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Let's say Betelgeuse blows, how much illumination will we get and for how long? Will it be a second where one of the stars twinkles a bit, or would it be a nice light show for an hour?
 
Araxen

Araxen

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Pluto's Bizarre 'Ice Volcano' Seen Up Close In Latest New Horizons Image

Ice Volcano's on Pluto!
569ca9e72a00002c00030ab7.png
 
Brad2770

Brad2770

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Tuco_sl said:
Let's say Betelgeuse blows, how much illumination will we get and for how long? Will it be a second where one of the stars twinkles a bit, or would it be a nice light show for an hour?
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It would take about a week or two to build up to the peak brightness. It would remain that bright for a few days and then it would fade away over the next couple of weeks to a month.
 
Khalan

Khalan

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Palum_sl said:
If only there was a large nearby body of water to land the rocket in, cushioning the last moments of impact at low speed and eliminating the necessity of a complicated vertical landing on a moving platform.
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Not the point. A lot of the landing tech is designed around a future mars mission where there is no ocean.
 
Dandain

Dandain

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Tuco_sl said:
Let's say Betelgeuse blows, how much illumination will we get and for how long? Will it be a second where one of the stars twinkles a bit, or would it be a nice light show for an hour?
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There has been a few supernova's close/bright enough to be logged by different civilizations, these two seemed most tracked in different records. Quoted from the Wiki Page.

The supernova SN 1006 appeared in the southern constellation of Lupus during the year 1006 CE. This was the brightest recorded star ever to appear in the night sky, and its presence was noted in China, Egypt, Iraq, Italy, Japan and Switzerland. It may also have been noted in France, Syria, and North America. Egyptian physician, astronomer and astrologer Ali ibn Ridwan gave the brightness of this star as one-quarter the brightness of the Moon. Modern astronomers have discovered the faint remnant of this explosion and determined that it was only 7,100 light-years from the Earth.[7]

Supernova SN 1054 was another widely-observed event, with Arab, Chinese, and Japanese astronomers recording the star's appearance in 1054 CE. It may also have been recorded by the Anasazi as a petroglyph.[8] This explosion appeared in the constellation of Taurus, where it produced the Crab Nebula remnant. At its peak, the luminosity of SN 1054 may have been four times as bright as Venus, and it remained visible in daylight for 23 days and was visible in the night sky for 653 days.
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History of supernova observation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
K

Kedwyn

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One thing that could fuck us is a Gama Ray Burst from a Super Nova relatively close to us. From what I've read they are usually shot out on the axis of the star but if one of those were to hit earth it would be bad. Closer it is the more deadly. Obviously the odds of that are ridiculously low and there isn't a thing that can be done about it happening either. Wolf Rayet 104 is one such binary star that is currently pointed as us but I imagine by the time anything were to happen that wouldn't' be the case anymore.

Real Death Star Could Strike Earth
 
Void

Void

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I'm not really sure what the correct place for this is, but since we're talking about supernovas, this short story by Arthur C. Clarke (Hugo award winning story I think) always stuck with me every time I think about them. It has religious connotations, but I'm not trying to get into a debate over it, I just always thought it was a really cool and thought-provoking story, and maybe some of you that haven't been introduced to it before might appreciate it. If not, just forget I linked it.

http://www.uni.edu/morgans/astro/course/TheStar.pdf
 
Furry

Furry

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Palum_sl said:
If only there was a large nearby body of water to land the rocket in, cushioning the last moments of impact at low speed and eliminating the necessity of a complicated vertical landing on a moving platform.
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Water and cushioning aren't exactly two terms that work together in physics.
 
LachiusTZ

LachiusTZ

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I dont think a GRB has to be that close to wipe out half of the planet. Those things are fucking nasty.

Had to google it to scratch the itch, looks like 8k ly is about the max, with the referenced star, Wolf Rayet 104, being about 7800 ly. Cause of the size prolly still bake half of the planet. Lol

One theory is it happened in 774AD, but was 13k ly from earth, so it just produced a ton of carbon 14. Not sure how that works, and not curious enough to look it up.
 
Khalan

Khalan

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Palum_sl said:
Compared to concrete at a few MPH it works wonders. Also lol that this is mars tech. This is Elon being Musky.
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Elon has stated repeatedly that his end goal game is to colonize/land people on Mars. Every piece of tech they develop is towards this goal. Sure they want to bring cheaper LEO vehicles to be used by NASA etc but if they can develop mars tech in tandem while still accomplishing their goals they will. It's the same reason they don't just develop a big parachute or some other soft landing tech since neither would work on Mars.
 
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