Space In General
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Dotini
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A galactic year should be the time it takes our solar system to complete one orbit around the galactic center.
IIRC, one such orbit takes ~240,000,000 years.
Interestingly, most of the stars in the Milky Way reside in one of the spiral arms. IIRC, Our solar system passes through each of the arms.
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#Selfie
Dotini
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SPRITES AND TROLLS AT THE EDGE OF SPACE: We all know what comes out of the bottom of thunderclouds: lightning. But rarely do we see what comes out of the top. On August 10th, astronauts onboard the International Space Station were perfectly positioned to observe red sprites dancing atop a cluster of storms in Mexico. They snapped this incredible photo:
This shows just how high sprites can go. The photo shows their red forms reaching all the way from the thunderstorm below to a layer of green airglowsome 100 km above Earth's surface. This means sprites touch the edge of space, alongside auroras, meteors and noctilucent clouds. They are a true space weather phenomenon.
A few minutes after the astronauts saw the sprites, they spotted a related creature--a "Troll." It jumped up to the left of the sprites:
"Trolls are also known as 'secondary transient luminous events," explains Oscar van der Velde, a member of the Lightning Research Group at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. "They are occasionally observed alongside big clusters of sprites, and they can reach 40-60 km high."
Van der Velde says that sprites can actually pull Earth's ionosphere down toward the thunderstorm. When the gap shrinks, and the local electric field intensifies, Trolls appear.
You don't have to be onboard a spaceship to see these exotic forms of lightning. "Sprite chasers" regularly photograph the upward bolts from their own homes. Van der Velde has photographed Trolls from ground-level, too. "I recorded thesetrolls last October over a storm over the Mediterranean Sea west of Sardinia and Corsica," he says. Browse the sprite gallery for more examples.
Realtime Sprite Photo Gallery
This shows just how high sprites can go. The photo shows their red forms reaching all the way from the thunderstorm below to a layer of green airglowsome 100 km above Earth's surface. This means sprites touch the edge of space, alongside auroras, meteors and noctilucent clouds. They are a true space weather phenomenon.
A few minutes after the astronauts saw the sprites, they spotted a related creature--a "Troll." It jumped up to the left of the sprites:
"Trolls are also known as 'secondary transient luminous events," explains Oscar van der Velde, a member of the Lightning Research Group at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. "They are occasionally observed alongside big clusters of sprites, and they can reach 40-60 km high."
Van der Velde says that sprites can actually pull Earth's ionosphere down toward the thunderstorm. When the gap shrinks, and the local electric field intensifies, Trolls appear.
You don't have to be onboard a spaceship to see these exotic forms of lightning. "Sprite chasers" regularly photograph the upward bolts from their own homes. Van der Velde has photographed Trolls from ground-level, too. "I recorded thesetrolls last October over a storm over the Mediterranean Sea west of Sardinia and Corsica," he says. Browse the sprite gallery for more examples.
Realtime Sprite Photo Gallery
- 31,545
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CodeRedR51
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Didn't they do this already months ago?
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I think that was a different mission, let me check.
Edit.
That was for Orions test flight.
CAMAROBOY69
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Not sure if this was posted. http://www.msn.com/en-us/video/news/scientists-discover-new-jupiter-like-planet/vi-BBlK6Es
Dotini
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The Twin Jet Nebula seen by the Hubble Space Telescope.
IMAGE: ESA/HUBBLE/NASA
http://mashable.com/people/miriamkramer/
CodeRedR51
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The only word that comes to mind with I see that:
BOOM.
BOOM.
Dotini
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How odd? I see it as static. It is speculated that the center is two suns orbiting each other, but no one really knows what the heck is really at work here. But it is mind-bogging. And beautiful.
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Looks like an aquatic, translucent creature (lost in space), to me.
CodeRedR51
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I just see a very large explosion, maybe it's just me.
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Volunteers are about to begin a year in isolation in a dome near a barren volcano in Hawaii.
This has to be preparation for either a trip to Mars or a house-move to Grimsby.
This has to be preparation for either a trip to Mars or a house-move to Grimsby.
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World’s Most Powerful Digital Camera Sees Construction Green Light
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope’s ‘Eye’ Will be Built at SLAC
August 31, 2015
Menlo Park, Calif. —The Department of Energy has approved the start of construction for a 3.2-gigapixel digital camera – the world’s largest – at the heart of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). Assembled at the DOE's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the camera will be the eye of LSST, revealing unprecedented details of the universe and helping unravel some of its greatest mysteries.
The construction milestone, known as Critical Decision 3, is the last major approval decision before the acceptance of the finished camera, said LSST Director Steven Kahn: “Now we can go ahead and procure components and start building it.”
Starting in 2022, LSST will take digital images of the entire visible southern sky every few nights from atop a mountain called Cerro Pachón in Chile. It will produce a wide, deep and fast survey of the night sky, cataloguing by far the largest number of stars and galaxies ever observed. During a 10-year time frame, LSST will detect tens of billions of objects—the first time a telescope will observe more galaxies than there are people on Earth – and will create movies of the sky with unprecedented details. Funding for the camera comes from the DOE, while financial support for the telescope and site facilities, the data management system, and the education and public outreach infrastructure of LSST comes primarily from the National Science Foundation (NSF).
The telescope’s camera – the size of a small car and weighing more than three tons – will capture full-sky images at such high resolution that it would take 1,500 high-definition television screens to display just one of them.
Clickie
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope’s ‘Eye’ Will be Built at SLAC
August 31, 2015
Menlo Park, Calif. —The Department of Energy has approved the start of construction for a 3.2-gigapixel digital camera – the world’s largest – at the heart of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). Assembled at the DOE's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the camera will be the eye of LSST, revealing unprecedented details of the universe and helping unravel some of its greatest mysteries.
The construction milestone, known as Critical Decision 3, is the last major approval decision before the acceptance of the finished camera, said LSST Director Steven Kahn: “Now we can go ahead and procure components and start building it.”
Starting in 2022, LSST will take digital images of the entire visible southern sky every few nights from atop a mountain called Cerro Pachón in Chile. It will produce a wide, deep and fast survey of the night sky, cataloguing by far the largest number of stars and galaxies ever observed. During a 10-year time frame, LSST will detect tens of billions of objects—the first time a telescope will observe more galaxies than there are people on Earth – and will create movies of the sky with unprecedented details. Funding for the camera comes from the DOE, while financial support for the telescope and site facilities, the data management system, and the education and public outreach infrastructure of LSST comes primarily from the National Science Foundation (NSF).
The telescope’s camera – the size of a small car and weighing more than three tons – will capture full-sky images at such high resolution that it would take 1,500 high-definition television screens to display just one of them.
Clickie
