The Official Space and Astronomy Thread v. Well, this is weird.

[Chino]

https://patch.com/new-jersey/mahwah/watch-nj-astronaut-parts-earth-look-sick-0

From my local news, a comment from an American Astronaut who has been in space longer than any other American.  Pretty sad, if from above you can tell things don't look right.

My favorite quote about space is the Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan.

My second favorite one is this by Edgar Mitchell, about seeing Earth from space:

“You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.”

These are the things the human leaders should care about, preserving our planet and fighting off the diseases on it, the rest are just petty problems not worth killing each other over.

"Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the Momentary masters of a Fraction of a Dot"

I love that Sagan quote as well. Might be my favorite of all time.

Nice quotes, honestly whenever I have some down time to myself and it's a nice night out, I like to stargaze in my hammock or if I am lucky enough to be somewhere else that has less light polution and just look up... it ALWAYS makes me feel like all the BS in life is "petty"  Quite an amazing feeling actually to be put in place.

The worst part about moving out and buying my own house was losing the night sky. My parents lived at a pretty high elevation on what used to be part of a large farm in town. The lots were large and there was no main anything for miles. Light pollution wasn't even a thing out there. I used to love getting off work and standing in the driveway for a few minutes just staring up. I can't see shit from my house now. I'm not far from the main areas of Waterbury, light pollution is an issue, and my property is covered by massive oak trees that block out nearly all sky.

[cramx3]

There's a lot of light pollution by me, but I have a decent view from my backyard with no trees and can see a surprisingly amount of stars considering where I live, I have one of those star map apps too which is fun.  Also love looking at full moons. There is just something eerily peaceful about staring at the night sky.

[cramx3]

So after mentioning this last night, I had no idea it was actually a full moon until I left work and saw the bright yellow full moon over the Empire State building.  It wasn't too cold either so I grilled some sausages for dinner and chilled for about a half hour on my hammock.  I don't have a great camera or anything, just my phone so I snapped a couple shots of the Moon and you can also clearly see Jupiter as well.  It was pretty cloudy, but really awesome how bright those two were to be able to be seen and caught on my phone camera.

[Hyperplex]

https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1606/

A spectacular new image of the Milky Way has been released to mark the completion of the APEX Telescope Large Area Survey of the Galaxy (ATLASGAL). The APEX telescope in Chile has mapped the full area of the Galactic Plane visible from the southern hemisphere for the first time at submillimetre wavelengths — between infrared light and radio waves — and in finer detail than recent space-based surveys. The pioneering 12-metre APEX telescope allows astronomers to study the cold Universe: gas and dust only a few tens of degrees above absolute zero.

The images are amazing.

[Chino]

Wow. Those are stunning.

[jasc15]

Schematic diagram of exploration missions of our solar system:



Apparently its for sale

[Chino]

That's too cool.

[cramx3]

Very cool indeed 

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

^^That's really cool, I wan't one!

Would be cool to have this one too:


https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/figures/PIA17172_fig1.jpg

Have to be one of the coolest photos of a planet i've seen. The brightest spot to the right of Saturn below the rings is Earth.

[TioJorge]

So friggin' mesmerizing and incomprehensible.


I swear, every time I come into this thread I'm all       mmm....SPACE.

[jasc15]

On the lighter side, vintage space "travel" posters created by JPL free for download:

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/visions-of-the-future/

[Chino]

The girlfriend and I are getting a few of those blown up on nice print at Costco.

[jasc15]

I've only downloaded the PDF versions, not the high res TIFF files (my work connection is barely 1Mbps download).  It has a white border with the NASA logo in the corner and some footnotes on the bottom.  Do the TIFFs have this too?  I think the prints would look nice with the border.

[Vandalism]

Check this out. Interesting!

https://news.discovery.com/space/alien-life-exoplanets/has-kepler-discovered-an-alien-megastructure-151014.htm

[jasc15]

In 1973, before the Concorde was operational, scientists convinced Aerospatiale to use a prototype aircraft to chase a solar eclipse across the Sahara desert.

https://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-concorde-and-the-longest-solar-eclipse

Some of my favorite lines from the article:

"Turcat would later deliberate about whether to file the flight as a day or night one."

"veteran American airborne eclipse chaser Donald Liebenberg"

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

This is a 58 shot, 150MP image someone took recently of the Milky Way over Guilderton Lighthouse in Western Australia:



Pretty stunning photo.

I found this answer on why the Milky Way often looks curved on photos which I think is interesting, I hadn't really thought about it that much myself.

https://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2014/01/10/ask-ethan-19-why-does-the-milky-way-look-curved/

[jasc15]

Bigelow inflatable module being launched to ISS today on a Falcon 9.  I think this is a pretty cool development in space habitat technology and I'm interested to see how it develops.  As I understand, once docked it will be mostly isolated by airlock from the rest of the ISS, but will be periodically accessed by astronauts.  I've also heard that astronauts are eager for some new air (this module will have to bring additional air to inflate) because the smell is rather unpleasant on board.

[Chino]

Bigelow inflatable module being launched to ISS today on a Falcon 9.  I think this is a pretty cool development in space habitat technology and I'm interested to see how it develops.  As I understand, once docked it will be mostly isolated by airlock from the rest of the ISS, but will be periodically accessed by astronauts.  I've also heard that astronauts are eager for some new air (this module will have to bring additional air to inflate) because the smell is rather unpleasant on board.

There's a lot of awesome stuff on that rocket heading to the ISS. I'm very much looking forward to the results of the fungi tests that are being sent up. The inflatable habitat going up there is the third one from this company to be sent to space, I believe. The first two just hung out in orbit, and this is the first one that will physically be attached to the space station. It won't be used for anything related to ISS operations. It is primarily up there just to provide data related to it's durability and longevity in space. Definitely a cool step in the right direction, especially seeing as we can't bring large objects up with the shuttle anymore.

[cramx3]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pUAydjne5M&t=35m50s

Timestamped to see the spacex rocket land in open water.  Pretty impressive.

[BlobVanDam]

Seen this linked all over my news feed today. Damn impressive to see. Congrats to them!

[Implode]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pUAydjne5M?t=1594

Timestamped to see the spacex rocket land in open water.  Pretty impressive.

Fixed the timestamp.

But this is so amazing. It's unreal how well that went. 

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

"Can we literally reach the stars, and can we do it in our lifetime?"

Milner is backing the $100 million R&D program necessary to get this to work. Existing technology won't do; New Horizons is the fastest spacecraft we've ever launched, and it would take 78,000 years to get to any of the stars in Alpha Centauri, a nearby three-star system. The plutonium in its power systems alone weighs 11kg and would require staggering amounts of energy to accelerate to the necessary speeds.

Instead, Breakthrough Starshot plans to build what's essentially a spacecraft on a chip, which Milner called a nanocraft. A gram-scale wafer will include "cameras, photon thrusters, power supply, navigation and communication equipment." The technology behind the power supply wasn't mentioned; communications at these distances will require something with pretty considerable power, even when using the optical communication that Breakthrough Starshot plans to rely on.

Each device would cost roughly the same as a high-end smartphone to make, allowing a massive number to be sent on the journey, providing some significant redundancy. Milner held up an early prototype during the announcement.

Propulsion will be outsourced to a facility on Earth. The small spacecraft will be equipped with a light sail, and a phased array of lasers in the 100GW range will provide the sail with enough push to get the craft moving at roughly 20 percent the speed of light in just a matter of minutes.

He noted that we can sacrifice ships to hit closer targets, mentioning that it would take only three days for these craft to reach Pluto, and we could drive one right into Saturn's rings to sample the material there. Worden later agreed that the basic technology could help move things around within the Solar System, possibly including moving heavier hardware at a somewhat slower pace.

https://arstechnica.co.uk/science/2016/04/breakthrough-starshot-alpha-centauri-spaceship-details/

Yea we'll see about this but it sounds interesting though.

[Bolsters]

That's insane if it will actually work as intended. 20% the speed of light? Three days to Pluto? It sounds too good to be true really.

[adace]

Awesome idea. Hope they can pull it off.

[Orbert]

I want to believe!

[axeman90210]

Was just coming in here to post that. Incredibly cool.

[MirrorMask]

That massive Milky Way pic above is awesome!!! I'd love for the night sky to be visible to the naked eye like that, without all the light pollution...

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

https://www.iflscience.com/space/surprising-spacex-announcement-reveals-mission-mars-2018

[Chino]

https://www.iflscience.com/space/surprising-spacex-announcement-reveals-mission-mars-2018

Really cool stuff. This has been a long time coming. I still argue that all of this is rooted in Elon's dream of going to Mars. I think he's doing all of this, in part, so he can personally visit the red planet. If having to open aerospace company is what it takes, he has no problem doing it. It's like James Cameron agreeing to make the movie Titanic just so he could get the funding to go visit the wreck for himself. That's the only reason he made that movie.

Though I do believe Elon is complete genuine in his intentions of bettering and advancing the human species.

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

If anyone haven't checked out Space Engine yet, I highly recommend it.

https://en.spaceengine.org/

[jasc15]

It's a bit past peak time, but on June 3 Saturn was at its closest approach to earth.  I broke out my cheapo telescope and was able to see its rings.  I tried to wake up my wife (it was about 1am) but she wasn't interested.  Very cool to see it for the first time with my own eyes, even though we have lots of great pictures.

[Implode]

I'll have to remember to check that out this weekend! I'm always amazed at the detail you can get of Jupiter and Saturn even with low powered telescopes or binoculars.

[Sir GuitarCozmo]

Jupiter Orbital Insertion, coming soon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2fknqVk2yk

[BlobVanDam]

I hope that acronym was intentional.

[Orbert]

I just think "orbital insertion" sounds kinduv interesting.