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

[Dublagent66]

Yeah, I also watched a show on the H2 channel a couple weeks ago about the scientific explanation of the star of Bethlehem.  They also concluded that it was Jupiter in close conjunction with Venus.  It was interesting especially since I had noticed Jupiter and Venus getting closer prior to knowing anything about that occurrence.  It donned on me that it wasn't a coincidence that the show was on TV prior to the actual conjunction.  Pretty damn cool!

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

Hmm that's really interesting.

[Chino]

Sheeeiiiiiiit.

https://news.sky.com/story/1514080/alien-life-on-philae-comet-scientists-say

Prof Wickramasinghe said: "What we're saying is that data coming from the comet seems to unequivocally, in my opinion, point to micro-organisms being involved in the formation of the icy structures, the preponderance of aromatic hydrocarbons, and the very dark surface.

[rumborak]

I'll stick with Carl Sagan. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

[jasc15]

I read that this morning.  Title should read "It's not impossible that life exists on 67P".

Also, this on the same day:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2015/07/06/sorry-there-probably-isnt-life-on-rosettas-comet-even-if-scientists-said-so/?postshare=2031436199815692

[jasc15]

Check out all that space junk!

https://stuffin.space/

[Chino]

I just joined the Planetary Society.

[jasc15]

This was from July 7 at a distance of 5 million miles.  The closest approach is only a week later, at a distance of 7,750 miles.  I need to remember July 14.

[BlobVanDam]

It's hard to even comprehend how far away this image was taken, and everything that was involved to get there. Just amazing.

[Chino]

It really is mind blowing.

[Azyiu]

It is ALIVE! ALIVE I said!    The black hole at the center of galaxy NGC 660 came back to life!!! 


https://www.astronomy.com/news/2015/07/radio-astronomers-see-black-hole-come-to-life

[Implode]

Who's ready for some Pluto pictures tomorrow?

[jasc15]

Here is one from today!

[Implode]

And to think they say that the ones tomorrow should have 300 times more detail. 

[Azyiu]

Check out this Eyes On the Solar System app for PC / Mac developed by NASA here : https://eyes.nasa.gov/

It is quite well done and you can get a "live" simulation of the New Horizon mission as it is happening.

[millahh]

Closest approach is 34 minutes out..why is this thread not on top?? (well, I guess it will be now that I've made this pots, if at least for a moment).

I remember Voyager from when I was ten, it feels like that did...

[millahh]

Scientists trying not to cry is one of the most amazing things to see...

[Chino]

Couple minutes away!!!

[BlobVanDam]

The last picture before the fly-by is absolutely beautiful. I can't wait to see the high quality photos afterwards.

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

Exciting times!

[Implode]

So it happened, but Horizons was programmed to stop communication with Earth while it did all its picture stuff, so we won't hear from it again until 9PM EDT.

[Chino]

I read earlier that New Horizon's banwidth is roughly 1/50 of a 56k modem from the 90s. It takes 42 minutes to send a single 1024 pixel image back.

[BlobVanDam]

I read earlier that New Horizon's banwidth is roughly 1/50 of a 56k modem from the 90s. It takes 42 minutes to send a single 1024 pixel image back.

We must have read the same page (or at least taken from the same source). Apparently it will take about 16 months to send all of the data.

[El Barto]

Final picture for a while:



While this is going on we've also got a modern probe heading to a polar orbit of Jupiter which should be pretty cool, as well. I'm glad we're still using some good tech to study the solar system.

[Chino]

While this is going on we've also got a modern probe heading to a polar orbit of Jupiter which should be pretty cool, as well. I'm glad we're still using some good tech to study the solar system.

Sadly, that's diminishing. I think after the one you're referring to, the Ceres mission, and this New Horizons mission, we don't have much left on our plate in regards to exploring our solar system. We have a project in the works now to go to Europa, but we won't get to that moon until the mid 2030s assuming everything stays on schedule. It's a shame. We have so much technology and talent, and exploring our solar system is such a small part of our budget, it's a shame we don't have more missions in the pipeline.

I saw a lot of hate online for this mission. A lot of people think the $700million this mission cost could have been better spent feeding people or helping third world countries. While it's true that $700million could feed a lot of mouths, but so could the $7trillion we've spent in the Middle East, the $1.4trillion we've spent building the F35, or the $800billion that was spent bailing out the banks. When I look at expenses like that, it absolutely blows my mind that cutting NASA's budget is ever on the table. It's such a small fraction of our national expenses and gives us so much in return. I'm not just talking about breath taking pictures. The unexpected technological breakthroughs that have originated with space travel are too many to count.

[El Barto]

Juno is the mission I was referring to. DAWN is currently exploring proto-planets. NASA currently has a ton of missions underway, although few on other planets (Mars excluded).

And the problem is that few people really grasp the nature of change and research. Learning specific things is great, but just learning "stuff" will often yield far greater results. There's no telling what some currently anonymous egghead in his mom's basement might discover from research gathered by one of the many probes we're sending out. Might be far more helpful than a couple of more years of Meals on Wheels.

[cramx3]

Juno is the mission I was referring to. DAWN is currently exploring proto-planets. NASA currently has a ton of missions underway, although few on other planets (Mars excluded).

And the problem is that few people really grasp the nature of change and research. Learning specific things is great, but just learning "stuff" will often yield far greater results. There's no telling what some currently anonymous egghead in his mom's basement might discover from research gathered by one of the many probes we're sending out. Might be far more helpful than a couple of more years of Meals on Wheels.

Also the technology created to do these missions can come back and play a role somewhere else in society.  Im all for funding NASA, in fact I am wearing my NASA tshirt today 

[Chino]

Juno is the mission I was referring to. DAWN is currently exploring proto-planets. NASA currently has a ton of missions underway, although few on other planets (Mars excluded).

And the problem is that few people really grasp the nature of change and research. Learning specific things is great, but just learning "stuff" will often yield far greater results. There's no telling what some currently anonymous egghead in his mom's basement might discover from research gathered by one of the many probes we're sending out. Might be far more helpful than a couple of more years of Meals on Wheels.

Also the technology created to do these missions can come back and play a role somewhere else in society.  Im all for funding NASA, in fact I am wearing my NASA tshirt today 

One of my favorite spinoff technologies is the ultrasound. NASA needed a way to see through the dust on the moon in order to find a safe landing site. Being able to see inside the human body was a fantastic repurposing of the technology. Memory foam, scratch resistant lenses, water filtration, cordless tools, and satellite television are cool too.

Here is a really good read on technologies that have stemmed unexpectedly from NASA work.
https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2008/tech_benefits.html

[jasc15]

This is all an argument for fundamental scientific research, rather than targeted research to a specific end.  Fundamental research doesn't need to have an end goal other than expanding our knowledge.  Most of the great technology came not from specific research toward that technology, but from applications unintended at the beginning.  Carl Sagan said it all better than me:

There is a growing free-market view of human knowledge, according to which basic research should compete without government support with all the other institutions and claimants in the society. If they couldn’t have relied on government support, and had to compete in the free market economy of their day, it's unlikely that any of the scientists on my list would have been able to do their groundbreaking research. And the cost of basic research is substantially greater than it was in Maxwell's day-both theoretical and, especially, experimental.

But that aside, would free market forces be adequate to support basic research?  Only about 10 percent of meritorious research proposals in medicine are funded today.  More money is spent on quack medicine than on all of medical research.  What would it be like if government opted out of medical research?

A necessary aspect of basic research is that its applications lie in the future-sometimes decades or even centuries ahead.  What's more, no one knows which aspects of basic research will have practical value and which will not.  If scientists cannot make such predictions, is it likely that politicians or industrialists can?  If free market forces are focused only towards short-term profit-as they certainly mainly are in an America with steep declines in corporate research-is not this solution tantamount to abandoning basic research?

Cutting of fundamental curiosity-driven science is like eating the seed corn. We may harvest a little more to eat next winter, but what will we plant so we and our children will have enough to get through the winters to come?

[millahh]

It's alive!!!!

[adace]

The Pluto pics are awesome! Incredible moment for science and humanity.

[millahh]

In poking around NASA's website, I saw something that I'd somehow missed...we still ave two antennas pointing at (and receiving data from) Voyager 1!

Also, there's nothing that represents pure joy to me as much as seeing excited scientists.  I remember my couple of big breakthrough moments in my grad work, and jumping up and down pumping my fist in the air in the lab at 3:00 in the morning...and that must only be the tiniest fraction of what the mission team felt yesterday.  I'll admit my eyes got a little watery watching it.

[BlobVanDam]

In poking around NASA's website, I saw something that I'd somehow missed...we still ave two antennas pointing at (and receiving data from) Voyager 1!

I could have sworn that one of the Voyager missions had lost contact in the last few years, but I must be getting confused with something else. Maybe I'm thinking of a different probe, or just one function was shut down.
What I find most incredible is not that these old probes are still transmitting back data and we're receiving it, but that scientists are still able to interface with the old technology, and even modify and reprogram them successfully to fix problems remotely and adapt for new mission objectives. The ingenuity and ability to utilize technology of the time to its fullest potential impresses me so much.

[Chino]

In poking around NASA's website, I saw something that I'd somehow missed...we still ave two antennas pointing at (and receiving data from) Voyager 1!

I could have sworn that one of the Voyager missions had lost contact in the last few years, but I must be getting confused with something else. Maybe I'm thinking of a different probe, or just one function was shut down.
What I find most incredible is not that these old probes are still transmitting back data and we're receiving it, but that scientists are still able to interface with the old technology, and even modify and reprogram them successfully to fix problems remotely and adapt for new mission objectives. The ingenuity and ability to utilize technology of the time to its fullest potential impresses me so much.

If it's anything likeworking on a COBOL legacy system, I feel bad for them 

[millahh]

I think Voyager 2 lost contact a few years ago, I guess I just assumed the Voyager 1 had as well, but I was clearly wrong...