Cool astronomy photos

sparks · Post by **sparks** » Sun Sep 27, 2020 4:40 am

Mars is always at opposition, he's the Gawd of war after all. :)

Skeeve · Post by **Skeeve** » Sun Sep 27, 2020 8:02 pm

Anaxagoras wrote: ↑Thu Jan 03, 2019 1:30 pm
Witness wrote: ↑Thu Jan 03, 2019 4:57 am Chang’e 4 successfully landed on the far side of the moon.
First photos published:

https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/ ... 60-960.jpg

https://www.businessinsider.com/photos- ... ing-2019-1

UPDATE: New measurements show moon has hazardous radiation levels

Say WHAT?
:o

Future moon explorers will be bombarded with two to three times more radiation than astronauts aboard the International Space Station, a health hazard that will require thick-walled shelters for protection, scientists reported Friday.

China's lander on the far side of the moon is providing the first full measurements of radiation exposure from the lunar surface, vital information for NASA and others aiming to send astronauts to the moon, the study noted.

A Chinese-German team reported on the radiation data collected by the lander—named Chang'e 4 for the Chinese moon goddess—in the U.S. journal Science Advances.

"This is an immense achievement in the sense that now we have a data set which we can use to benchmark our radiation" and better understand the potential risk to people on the moon, said Thomas Berger, a physicist with the German Space Agency's medicine institute.

Astronauts would get 200 to 1,000 times more radiation on the moon than what we experience on Earth—or five to 10 times more than passengers on a trans-Atlantic airline flight, noted Robert Wimmer-Schweingruber of Christian-Albrechts University in Kiel, Germany.

"The difference is, however, that we're not on such a flight for as long as astronauts would be when they're exploring the moon," Wimmer-Schweingruber said in an email.

Cancer is the primary risk.

"Humans are not really made for these radiation levels and should protect themselves when on the moon," he added.

Radiation levels should be pretty much the same all over the moon, except for near the walls of deep craters, Wimmer-Schweingruber said.

"Basically, the less you see of the sky, the better. That's the primary source of the radiation," he said.

Wimmer-Schweingruber said the radiation levels are close to what models had predicted. The levels measured by Chang'e 4, in fact, "agree nearly exactly" with measurements by a detector on a NASA orbiter that has been circling the moon for more than a decade[/highlight], said Kerry Lee, a space radiation expert at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"It is nice to see confirmation of what we think and our understanding of how radiation interacts with the moon is as expected," said Lee, who was not involved in the Chinese-led study.

In a detailed outline released this week, NASA said the first pair of astronauts to land on the moon under the new Artemis program would spend about a week on the lunar surface, more than twice as long as the Apollo crews did a half-century ago. Expeditions would last one to two months once a base camp is established.

NASA is looking to put astronauts on the moon by the end of 2024, an accelerated pace ordered by the White House, and on Mars sometime in the 2030s.

The space agency said it will have radiation detectors and a safe shelter aboard all Orion crew capsules flying to the moon. As for the actual landers, three separate corporate teams are developing their own craft with NASA oversight. For the first Artemis moon landing, at least, the astronauts will live in the ascent portion of their lander.

The German researchers suggest shelters built of moon dirt—readily available material—for stays of more than a few days. The walls should be 80 centimeters (about 2 1/2 feet) thick, they said. Any thicker and the dirt will emit its own secondary radiation, created when galactic cosmic rays interact with the lunar soil.

"So in this sense—I think the walls of European Castles would be too thick!" Berger wrote in an email.

So, was there less radiation in 1969, or did all that jumping around and stuff help those dudes fight cancer...
If there was less radiation back then, what happened?
Is global warming to blame?

Inquiring minds want to know!

Witness · Post by **Witness** » Sun Sep 27, 2020 10:04 pm

↑ Not really fresh news, the whole of space is full of radiation (fast protons and hard UV from the Sun + cosmic rays, which can be anything), so we fragile meatbags better stay under our cushy atmosphere. And send robots.

Equinox in the Sky

https://i.imgur.com/j8lFPLp.jpg

Does the Sun set in the same direction every day? No, the direction of sunset depends on the time of the year. Although the Sun always sets approximately toward the west, on an equinox like today the Sun sets directly toward the west. After today's September equinox, the Sun will set increasingly toward the southwest, reaching its maximum displacement at the December solstice. Before today's September equinox, the Sun had set toward the northwest, reaching its maximum displacement at the June solstice. The featured time-lapse image shows seven bands of the Sun setting one day each month from 2019 December through 2020 June. These image sequences were taken from Alberta, Canada -- well north of the Earth's equator -- and feature the city of Edmonton in the foreground. The middle band shows the Sun setting during the last equinox -- in March. From this location, the Sun will set along this same equinox band again today.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap200922.html

Fid · Post by **Fid** » Mon Sep 28, 2020 1:14 pm

Well duhh... the moon landing hoaxtards say the Van Allen radiation belt would have fried anyone. This is true but (slaps ample butt) it wasn't like they lounged around there.

Witness · Post by **Witness** » Mon Sep 28, 2020 9:05 pm

Filaments of the Cygnus Loop

https://i.imgur.com/b5qqK9A.jpg

What lies at the edge of an expanding supernova? Subtle and delicate in appearance, these ribbons of shocked interstellar gas are part of a blast wave at the expanding edge of a violent stellar explosion that would have been easily visible to humans during the late stone age, about 20,000 years ago. The featured image was recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope and is a closeup of the outer edge of a supernova remnant known as the Cygnus Loop or Veil Nebula. The filamentary shock front is moving toward the top of the frame at about 170 kilometers per second, while glowing in light emitted by atoms of excited hydrogen gas. The distances to stars thought to be interacting with the Cygnus Loop have recently been found by the Gaia mission to be about 2400 light years distant. The whole Cygnus Loop spans six full Moons across the sky, corresponding to about 130 light years, and parts can be seen with a small telescope toward the constellation of the Swan (Cygnus).

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

Bruce · Post by **Bruce** » Wed Sep 30, 2020 2:03 am

This is one of the coolest discoveries I've ever seen...

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap200929.html

It's a solar system with 3 stars. Besides being cool, it shouldn't even exist. There is a classic physics conundrum called the Three Body Problem.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem

Basically, the whole reason we only see single and binary solar systems is because three stars don't seem to form a stable orbit. One of the three quickly gets chucked. There are special and bizarre mathematical solutions to the 3 body problem, but this is the first real life example that I'm aware of.

The painfully brief paragraph about this system indicates that it could break apart in the near future, or that it may be in the process of breaking apart, but the fact that the system formed such beautiful concentric rings indicates that it has remained relatively stable for quite a long time. Would love to see more study on this system and would love to know if the orbits follow on of the mathematical 3 body solutions. 8)

Anaxagoras · Post by **Anaxagoras** » Wed Sep 30, 2020 2:28 am

Not to be pedantic, but I don't think the three body problem means that trinary star systems don't exist. It just means that it's difficult to predict how they will behave using Newton's laws of motion. Not impossible, but difficult.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_system#Trinary

Bruce · Post by **Bruce** » Wed Sep 30, 2020 2:47 am

https://64.media.tumblr.com/b0672048281 ... o2_250.gif

robinson · Post by **robinson** » Wed Sep 30, 2020 2:29 pm

The earth moon and sun is a three body problem

Bruce · Post by **Bruce** » Wed Sep 30, 2020 10:12 pm

robinson wrote: ↑Wed Sep 30, 2020 2:29 pm The earth moon and sun is a three body problem

It's a 3 body solution, thanks to GOWD. :P

Bruce · Post by **Bruce** » Wed Sep 30, 2020 10:13 pm

Robinson is a one body problem. :D :D :D

sparks · Post by **sparks** » Wed Sep 30, 2020 10:38 pm

He simply excludes that we are fortunate in that the bodies in our planetary system are largely in the same plane. A fact easily overlooked by any unimaginative street-fool. :)

Witness · Post by **Witness** » Sun Oct 04, 2020 1:53 am

HubbleESA

This video shows a unique time-lapse of the supernova in galaxy NGC 2525. The supernova is captured by Hubble in exquisite detail within this galaxy in the lower left portion of the frame. It appears as a very bright star located on the outer edge of one of its beautiful swirling spiral arms. This new and unique time-lapse of Hubble images shows the once bright supernova initially outshining the brightest stars in the galaxy, before fading into obscurity during the telescope’s observations. This time-lapse consists of observations taken over the course of one year, from February 2018 to February 2019.

NGC 2525 is located nearly 70 million light-years from Earth and is part of the constellation of Puppis in the southern hemisphere. Hubble captured this series of images of NGC2525 in 2018 as part of one of its major investigations; measuring the expansion rate of the Universe, which can help answer fundamental questions about our Universe’s very nature.

The whole galaxy for reference:

https://i.imgur.com/uwrbIlB.jpg

Witness · Post by **Witness** » Mon Oct 05, 2020 2:25 am

robinson · Post by **robinson** » Mon Oct 05, 2020 6:19 pm

Just got my new avatar from that

robinson · Post by **robinson** » Mon Oct 05, 2020 6:23 pm

pillars avatar.png

Witness · Post by **Witness** » Wed Oct 07, 2020 1:47 am

Planet Earth, from a company said to be able to take a picture of any place inside of 24 hours. They have a nice gallery here: https://www.planet.com/gallery/.

https://i.imgur.com/jMsA15i.png

https://i.imgur.com/XMPOBrp.jpeg

Anaxagoras · Post by **Anaxagoras** » Sat Oct 10, 2020 8:08 am

Witness wrote: ↑Wed Oct 07, 2020 1:47 am Planet Earth, from a company said to be able to take a picture of any place inside of 24 hours. They have a nice gallery here: https://www.planet.com/gallery/.

https://i.imgur.com/jMsA15i.png

Wow, That looks vulnerable to me.

Witness · Post by **Witness** » Sat Oct 10, 2020 10:17 pm

Anaxagoras wrote: ↑Sat Oct 10, 2020 8:08 am Wow, That looks vulnerable to me.

Most of the time they are out at sea, and won't come back to base if the situation gets tense. Not the same role as submarines during WWII.

Witness · Post by **Witness** » Sat Oct 10, 2020 10:19 pm

https://i.imgur.com/FvipURM.jpg

Witness · Post by **Witness** » Sun Oct 11, 2020 7:57 pm

https://i.imgur.com/2xKcPwL.jpg

shemp · Post by **shemp** » Sun Oct 11, 2020 9:52 pm

How did you get a picture of the inside of my septic tank?

Witness · Post by **Witness** » Mon Oct 12, 2020 9:36 pm

↑ Great vid! Here's the same with comments:

robinson · Post by **robinson** » Tue Oct 13, 2020 7:03 pm

Witness · Post by **Witness** » Wed Oct 14, 2020 3:35 am

Can you spot the asteroids? Three of them:

https://i.imgur.com/3XiMJZ0.gif
https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Imag ... _asteroids

I only found one… :(

Anaxagoras · Post by **Anaxagoras** » Wed Oct 14, 2020 4:51 am

I see two. One is in the lower left quadrant moving from left to right. a second one is in the lower right quadrant at about the level and moving from 10 o'clock to 4 O'clock.
There also seems to be a movement near the second-largest star near the top and slightly to right of center in the image. Like something appears and disappears.

Bruce · Post by **Bruce** » Thu Oct 15, 2020 2:19 am

Witness wrote: ↑Mon Oct 12, 2020 9:36 pm ↑ Great vid! Here's the same with comments:

This is exactly what I expected a proto-planet to look like at the point in between agglomeration and the point where gravity starts to crush the cluster of boulders into a spherical shape. Very cool.

Witness · Post by **Witness** » Thu Oct 15, 2020 10:25 pm

Mars is at opposition.

https://i.imgur.com/3K0TJA7.gif
By this guy.

Witness · Post by **Witness** » Fri Oct 16, 2020 11:07 pm

Not really news (2010), but interesting factoid:

Big Mystery: Jupiter Loses a Stripe

Lost: A giant belt of brown clouds big enough to swallow Earth twenty times over. If found, please return to Jupiter.

May 20, 2010: In a development that has transformed the appearance of the solar system's largest planet, one of Jupiter's two main cloud belts has completely disappeared.

"This is a big event," says planetary scientist Glenn Orton of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab. "We're monitoring the situation closely and do not yet fully understand what's going on."

https://i.imgur.com/dWOBAxH.jpg
These side by side images of Jupiter taken by Australian astrophotographer Anthony Wesley show the SEB in August 2009, but not in May 2010.
Known as the South Equatorial Belt (SEB), the brown cloudy band is twice as wide as Earth and more than twenty times as long. The loss of such an enormous "stripe" can be seen with ease halfway across the solar system.

"In any size telescope, or even in large binoculars, Jupiter's signature appearance has always included two broad equatorial belts," says amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley of Australia. "I remember as a child seeing them through my small backyard refractor and it was unmistakable. Anyone who turns their telescope on Jupiter at the moment, however, will see a planet with only one belt--a very strange sight."

Wesley is a veteran observer of Jupiter, famous for his discovery of a comet hitting the planet in 2009. Like many other astronomers, he noticed the belt fading late last year, "but I certainly didn't expect to see it completely disappear," he says. "Jupiter continues to surprise."

https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/s ... oststripe/ for the rest.

Witness · Post by **Witness** » Mon Oct 26, 2020 2:06 am

Nasa to make major announcement of ‘exciting news’ about the moon

Nasa will hold a major event to announce an “exciting new discovery” about the Moon, it has said.

The space agency did not reveal details about the discovery, but said that it “contributes to Nasa’s efforts to learn about the Moon in support of deep space exploration”.

It also said that the discovery had come from the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or Sofia.

Sofia is a modified Boeing 747 that flies higher than much of the atmosphere, allowing its built-in, 9-foot telescope to get a clear view of our solar system and the broader universe. The plane is able to get up above 99 per cent of the atmosphere’s water vapour, which normally obscures our view of space.

The telescope instruments at the centre of the flying observatory gather infrared light, meaning it can “pick up phenomenon impossible to see with visible light”, Nasa noted in its announcement.
...
Nasa’s notice of the event made heavy reference to the Artemis programme, which hopes to send the first woman and next man to the Moon in 2024, with the hope of using it as a base to launch missions to Mars from the 2030s. They will be the first people to set foot on the Moon since 1972.
...
The event will take place at noon eastern time, or 5pm in the UK, on Monday, 26 October, Nasa said. Audio will be streamed live on its website.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-styl ... 09506.html

:?

shemp · Post by **shemp** » Mon Oct 26, 2020 2:18 pm

They found Jimmy Hoffa. And Judge Crater.

robinson · Post by **robinson** » Mon Oct 26, 2020 4:47 pm

They found water

Witness · Post by **Witness** » Tue Oct 27, 2020 1:15 am

https://i.imgur.com/3EsY8Db.jpg

Reflections of the Ghost Nebula

Do any shapes seem to jump out at you from this interstellar field of stars and dust? The jeweled expanse, filled with faint, starlight-reflecting clouds, drifts through the night in the royal constellation of Cepheus. Far from your own neighborhood on planet Earth, these ghostly apparitions lurk along the plane of the Milky Way at the edge of the Cepheus Flare molecular cloud complex some 1,200 light-years away. Over two light-years across and brighter than the other spooky chimeras, VdB 141 or Sh2-136 is also known as the Ghost Nebula, seen at toward the bottom of the featured image. Within the reflection nebula are the telltale signs of dense cores collapsing in the early stages of star formation.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

Witness · Post by **Witness** » Sat Nov 07, 2020 2:42 am

https://i.imgur.com/Cg7Fpsc.jpg

Witness · Post by **Witness** » Mon Nov 16, 2020 11:17 pm

Ryugu, taken by the Japanese Hayabusa 2 space craft.

https://i.imgur.com/blExFwR.jpg

shemp · Post by **shemp** » Mon Nov 16, 2020 11:52 pm

Abdul Alhazred wrote: ↑Fri Nov 06, 2020 5:18 pm Moon over ISS :coolspecs:

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap201106.html

https://i.imgur.com/e8kszHz.jpg

But where's Miami?

shemp · Post by **shemp** » Mon Nov 16, 2020 11:53 pm

Witness wrote: ↑Mon Nov 16, 2020 11:17 pm
Ryugu, taken by the Japanese Hayabusa 2 space craft.

https://i.imgur.com/blExFwR.jpg

Bullshit! It's just a melted down slag pile from Fukushima!

Witness · Post by **Witness** » Mon Nov 16, 2020 11:59 pm

shemp wrote: ↑Mon Nov 16, 2020 11:53 pm Bullshit! It's just a melted down slag pile from Fukushima!

You naive optimist. It's the whole Universe who looks like a pile of dirt. :cry:

Bruce · Post by **Bruce** » Tue Nov 17, 2020 3:19 am

shemp wrote: ↑Mon Nov 16, 2020 11:53 pm
Witness wrote: ↑Mon Nov 16, 2020 11:17 pm
Ryugu, taken by the Japanese Hayabusa 2 space craft.

https://i.imgur.com/blExFwR.jpg

Bullshit! It's just a melted down slag pile from Fukushima!

It's the insulation in my attic.

Fid · Post by **Fid** » Tue Nov 17, 2020 7:30 pm

They really should have included Shemps penis for scale.
That is standard right?