Space In General

[Dennisch]

As the picture says. Should be visible with binoculars. And no clouds of course. Which there are plenty of here.

Found it with my scope.

And no way in hell that anyone within a city or just outside would be able to spot it with the naked eye. My finderscope could barely make it visible.

 

[ProjectWHaT]

A Pair of Black Holes Could Soon Collide And Destroy Their Galaxy

Astronomers have discovered what appears to be two supermassive black holes just one light-year apart, setting up a collision so massive it could be release as much energy as 100 million supernovas and destroy it's inside galaxy .

This Is a Fresh Scar on Mars's Surface

The red planet just took a hit. This image shows a new impact crater in Elysium Planitia, discovered by the HiRISE imager aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.


You can see a very distinct crater rim with ejecta that's much darker than the surroundings. NASA believes that the distribution of the ejecta suggests that whatever it was that hit the planet struck from the west.

Here Are Two Galaxies With Supermassive Black Hole Hearts Colliding

 

[TVR27]

Space doesn't make me feel small Because I don't think about it.

 

[Tired Tyres]

A Pair of Black Holes Could Soon Collide And Destroy Their Galaxy




This Is a Fresh Scar on Mars's Surface

Here Are Two Galaxies With Supermassive Black Hole Hearts Colliding

Any record of other Black Holes meeting or is this a first?

 

[FoolKiller]

Any record of other Black Holes meeting or is this a first?

It's actually quite common, but galaxies colliding doesn't quite explain it. There are great distances between stars. It has to be measured in light years. "Colliding" galaxies kind of pass through each other, with large gaps between most solid objects. There isn't a lot of crashing. Severe gravitational disturbances, yes. It is enough that planets and stars can have their orbits altered, sometimes even ejected from their system, or pulled into another system.

The two galaxies will either merge, creating a binary core, or one will siphon the mass off the other one and you can see an ejected galactic nucleus floating away.

Anyway, the official term is interacting galaxies.

One of the more famous cases are the Mice Galaxies. Two galaxies caught in a gravitational game of cat and mouse.

If you want to see more Wired has a pretty good gallery.

http://www.wired.com/2012/07/galaxy-collisions-gallery/?viewall=true

 

[CodeRedR51]

Falcon 9 + Dragon launch successful. Still waiting on word about the first stage landing.

Also, thought this was interested. What I think is video of inside the second stage fuel tank? When it got into zero gravity it started floating around inside the tank. Was pretty cool.

 

[Thematic]

First stage landed, but too much speed.

edit: Photos http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/01/11/photos-spacexs-rocket-landing-platform-back-in-port/

 

[CodeRedR51]

First stage landed, but too much speed.

Source?

 

[Thematic]

http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/01/05/spacex-5-mission-status-center/
Loads poorly at least for me.

Photos: http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/01/11/photos-spacexs-rocket-landing-platform-back-in-port/

 

[CodeRedR51]

I don't see anything on there. I was just curious because SpaceX said they wouldn't know right away.

 

[Dennisch]

Beagle 2 has been found after 11 year:

 

[CodeRedR51]

I like Musks wording for this. "Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly".

http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/16/7555633/falcon-9-barge-landing-images-released

 

[Dotini]

I like Musks wording for this. "Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly".

http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/16/7555633/falcon-9-barge-landing-images-released

All this needs is loud noises and stinking smoke, and it would be the greatest post ever made.

 

[Touring Mars]

Beagle 2 has been found after 11 year:

Quite incredible, and it is also quite amazing that it appears to have landed successfully and partially deployed... so close to being a complete success, and yet it will always be remembered for the fact that it was lost. That said, as the guy says in the video, the mission itself was a success insomuch as it paved the way for future space exploration and trained a generation of space scientists. The difference between complete success and failure might have been something incredibly small... it's certainly starting to look that way. It's a shame that Colin Pillinger didn't live long enough to see this!

 

[PeterJB]

I remember them doing a bit about it on Techno Games. Shows its age.

 

[Dennisch]

Planet X, and possibly Y might lurk in the outer Solar System, and are possibly larger than Earth.

And the New Horizons mission is ready to start. 👍 👍

Finally close ups of Pluto, on January 25 it will begin to capture long-range images of the Pluto system.

 

[Dotini]

OSIRIS wide-angle camera image acquired on 22 November 2014 from a distance of 30 km from Comet 67P/C-G. The image resolution is 2.8 m/pixel. The vertical line in the bottom right of the image, which seems to separate two regions of the coma with slightly different brightness, is the shadow of the nucleus cast onto the coma.
Credits: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fine structure in the comet's jets.
http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2015/01/16/fine-structure-in-the-comets-jets/

 

[CodeRedR51]

All this needs is loud noises and stinking smoke, and it would be the greatest post ever made.

Ask and ye shall receive.

 

[DK]

Quite incredible, and it is also quite amazing that it appears to have landed successfully and partially deployed... so close to being a complete success, and yet it will always be remembered for the fact that it was lost. That said, as the guy says in the video, the mission itself was a success insomuch as it paved the way for future space exploration and trained a generation of space scientists. The difference between complete success and failure might have been something incredibly small... it's certainly starting to look that way. It's a shame that Colin Pillinger didn't live long enough to see this!

IIRC, didn't some of Beagle 2's problems arise due to the British team using Imperial rather than SI measurements?

 

[Touring Mars]

IIRC, didn't some of Beagle 2's problems arise due to the British team using Imperial rather than SI measurements?

Only in the pub afterwards...

I think the great Metric v Imperial incident was a NASA Mars probe, but it wouldn't surprise me if it's happened more than once!

 

[eran0004]

Here's a cool gravity simulation. Like watching the formation of planets and moons, although it's only cubes and not that many objects.

 

[tarnheld]

Found it with my scope.

And no way in hell that anyone within a city or just outside would be able to spot it with the naked eye. My finderscope could barely make it visible.

Found it today, clear skies here after weeks of clouds and rain. Took a snapshot with a DSLR and a 100mm Objective on a Tripod, 3 sec. exposure. You can see the color, but not the tail, it's too dim. Beautiful.
The Plejades are in the upper right corner, Lovejoy is in the lower left. Warning, the image is big, could take a while to load. You don't see that with your eye, only a fuzzy grey patch with a binocular.



EDIT: to view it full size, click on the thumbnail, then right click and choose "open image in new tab", then click the image for full size and scroll and scroll and scroll...

 

[wfooshee]

I went out to the beach at our local state park last night (16th,) which is the darkest place I can get to without travelling 30 miles at least.

Wide view looking south (ish) about 8:30 local. 18-55 at 18mm, 2 seconds at f:4, ISO 3200.

Now that I found it (could not see it naked eye, but comparing Internet guides with that first frame I recognized it as the green dot) I put a 50mm f:1.8 lens on the camera for better speed. Pleaides at the top of the frame. Still ISO 3200 and 2 seconds, but now 50mm at f:1.8.

Full of confidence having found it at 50, I then mounted an 85mm 1.8 lens. Same exposure, now 85mm. I don't know if that's actually a suggestion of a tail or just camera noise. My D7000 isn't great at high ISO, I don't even like to use 800!! (These have been Noise Ninja'd, too.)

1-to-1 crop of the previous image. One pixel here was one pixel in the camera.

 

[tarnheld]

I went out to the beach at our local state park last night (16th,) which is the darkest place I can get to without travelling 30 miles at least.

Great pics, 👍 you can barely see the tail start, and thats with only 2sec exposure! The pics from the tail in the web were done with equatorial mounts (pretty expensive), so they can take many pics with longer exposure.

These DSLRs are really great for making astro pics, did my pic with the EOS 6D. I could easily focus manually by zooming on the screen before taking a picture, you see bright stars there. Try that in the viewfinder...

With this in mind I can only admire the astro pics they did before digital cameras. No high ISO, no preview focusing, no image stacking with the computer... they really had determination!

EDIT:

Hey, you can see the movement of the comet in one day if you compare our pics!
EDIT2: Here is a crop:

 

[PeterJB]

Dawn's getting closer!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30888818

 

[Touring Mars]

I've just got back from a talk by Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell. She discovered the first pulsars and her work led to her Ph.D supervisor and another co-author sharing the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1974... she was not included in the Nobel prize award, much to the outrage of many people at the time, including the eminent astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle.

Sadly, her talk was not really about astronomy, but was more about the role of women in science and gender equality (the talk was organised by a group at Glasgow University to promote gender equality). But it was fascinating to hear about her experiences and many of the issues she addressed apply to all struggling scientists (like myself), and she paid special homage to the downtrodden workhorse of the academic world, the postdoc, and much of her advice was genuinely insightful and useful. It's not every day you get to meet someone who has made such a monumental discovery about our universe. She came across as a typical science geek/astronomy geek - genuinely passionate and determined to be able (and in some respects, allowed) to do what she was passionate about - not to mention brilliant at.

 

[tarnheld]

Dawn's getting closer!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30888818

The German camera team on Dawn has made a little movie showing the 950km-wide world part-rotating on its axis.

Hey, they even managed to cram a camera team in there!

Sorry for the pun, really looking forward to March 6th!

 

[Touring Mars]

Super high-resolution image of our closest neighbouring spiral galaxy, M31 (The Andromeda Galaxy)

http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1502a/zoomable/

The full-size image is 4.3 GB in size...

Here's a video (available in 4K resolution) showing some of the detail of the image...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-ts=1421782837&x-yt-cl=84359240&v=udAL48P5NJU

For the first time it is now possible to image/see individual stars in a galaxy that is some 2.5 million light years away - that's 25 million million million kilometers in old money.

 

[tarnheld]

For the first time it is now possible to image/see individual stars in a galaxy that is some 2.5 million light years away - that's 25 million million million kilometers in old money.

Absolutely gorgeous, couldn't stop staring and scrolling! Stars everywhere!
You realize that the structures that look like coffee and milk stirred actually are areas that contain less stars!

 

[Dennisch]

Super high-resolution image of our closest neighbouring spiral galaxy, M31 (The Andromeda Galaxy)

http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1502a/zoomable/

The full-size image is 4.3 GB in size...

Here's a video (available in 4K resolution) showing some of the detail of the image...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-ts=1421782837&x-yt-cl=84359240&v=udAL48P5NJU

For the first time it is now possible to image/see individual stars in a galaxy that is some 2.5 million light years away - that's 25 million million million kilometers in old money.

Just checked that on my tv. Holy frikkin nerdgasm.