posted
All4N, that was beautiful in the twilight sky. I saw it for several nights in a row, with the moon in different locations.
Here's something else I think is really cool. It would have been nice to be back with Tycho in 1572 to put a spectrograph on that nova he observed, wouldn't it? Well, it turns out some astronomers have figured out how to get a spectrum of that nova over 400 years after it faded. They're taking the spectra of reflections from the event in which light had to travel an extra 436 light years to arrive here. See the full article on Sky and Telescope's Sky Tonight website.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Well, for an article for the masses who don't understand the difference, it's not an awful thing to say. But I imagine the Prof I have right not for Astronomy would have some choice things to say about it.
Noemon -
I missed that story before, but I too have mixed feelings about it. The idea of NASA being an independent civilian agency without ties to the military is appealing, but at the same time, if the Pentagon agency could help them achieve their aims faster and cheaper, that only makes them more effective. And at the same time, while I like to think of science for the sake of science as an honorable and necessary pursuit in and of itself, I'm forced to recognize the necessity of its use for our own defense.
And thus I'm led to hesitantly approve of such a move or at least, approve of the looking into of such a move, but with reservations as to where it could lead.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
I have a good science/space related thread that I want to put out there for all my lovely Hatrackers. To be fair, I'm a little biased, because my boyfriend writes for it, but I showed it to Lyrhawn, and he enjoys it as well. It's centered around physics, but many of the posts focus on space and cool discoveries/inventions associated with it.
The blog is called Physics Buzz and it's associated with the American Physical Society as part of education and outreach. It's really interesting. I suggest you all check it out.
Posts: 1789 | Registered: Jul 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
It's pretty cool. Very informative, interesting subject matter, and with an undertone of funny mixed in. I've taken to reading it on a daily basis, and not just because I'm taking a physics class.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
I got out the telescope and found Comet Lulin tonight. The moon was pretty bright and it was lightly overcast, but you could see the bit of fuzz, directly between two bright stars. No real evidence of either tail though.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Glenn Arnold: I got out the telescope and found Comet Lulin tonight. The moon was pretty bright and it was lightly overcast, but you could see the bit of fuzz, directly between two bright stars. No real evidence of either tail though.
We missed the comet due to this Pacific Coast storm. Another one comes in tonight, so no happy viewing for me.
Posts: 496 | Registered: Apr 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
"Did you mean to post that in this thread, aspectre?"
Thanks. Must have had two windows open on Hatrack, then posted a response meant for "Asteroid Impact..." in here.
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote:We missed the comet due to this Pacific Coast storm. Another one comes in tonight, so no happy viewing for me.
As it is, the moon is waxing right toward the location of the comet, so in a couple of days it will be next to impossible to see.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
Pretty cool! I had never heard the helix nebula called the eye of god before. It looks like an eye in that picture, but I wonder if they retouched it some. Usually it looks a whole lot more like a helix, hence the name.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
The International Space Station has been getting brighter. It used to be that -2.3 or so was the brightest; it must be the new solar arrays, because now it's up to -3.4 sometimes. (Venus is -4.0, so that's WAY bright!)
There's a lot of good viewing times here in Virginia right now, dunno about elsewhere, here's a good website to see them: heavens-above
After you've typed in your country and town info, go to the page for ISS -- Visible Passes, and it'll give you a list of upcoming sightings.
Posts: 2911 | Registered: Aug 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
So my boyfriend is actually covering this even for the American Physical Society, but I think this is really interesting. NASA is finally releasing the higher quality tapes of the moonwalk. This is pretty fantastic. Here is the press release info, and there is more info about the huge screwup that NASA had in terms of getting those tapes to the public: here. I think that Fox and ABC are also covering this event, so check for it tomorrow. It should be pretty amazing. Look at the difference of the two pictures on the second link. And to think, only a handful of people have actually seen this footage until now!
Posts: 1789 | Registered: Jul 2003
| IP: Logged |
Ruh-roh. Maybe it's really a whole bunch of monoliths and Jupiter is about to be transformed into a star! It's a year too soon, I know, but hey.
Posts: 1099 | Registered: Apr 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Speaking of space related news, there are a lot of articles out there dealing with the future of NASA, and more specifically, acting as a precursor to the hearings that will take place in I think October, at the request of the Obama administration.
The debates is between Mars and the Moon, and in where we go next. Will it be Mars first, or Moon then Mars? We might have an answer to that before the end of the year.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Yes, the International Space Station, with it's increased surface area, is quite visible. I just watched it fly overhead. Actually, I saw it fade starting at about 2/3 of its way across the sky, until it wasn't easily visible with the naked eye. (It passed into Earth's shadow.)
Posts: 1813 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote:Citizen scientists have helped astronomers identify more than 900,000 galaxies.
Galaxy Zoo, a tool conceived and launched last July by an international team of physicists, harnesses humans’ natural pattern-recognition skills to determine whether never-before-seen images of galaxies taken by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey are elliptical or spiral.
quote:Originally posted by Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged: I think it should be Mars. We've already been to the Moon, let's explore strange new worlds.
Lets figure out a way to reliably and cheaply get people into orbit to get to space stations first. There isn't anything on the Moon or Mars that couldn't be done cheaper and safer by probes still. Eventually it's a great idea, but I don't see it happening in my lifetime (and as much as I love astronomy), and that's okay with me.
People do realize that NASA took up a ton of the federal budget when the lunar missions were being worked on? Those days ain't never coming back, short of Cold War 2: Hello China!
posted
I was reading up on the budget spent on the space race in America; it was massive, and virtually unlimited. We'd have to dramatically increase the NASA budget by tens of billions of dollars to reach the level of funding they had back then. But really, I don't think that's necessary. Time isn't really the issue it was back then.
I don't see why it can't happen in our life time. The new plan they have to get materials and people into space looks fairly promising. I can see the allure of putting a base on the moon first, to make sure that we can live in that kind of setting before moving on to Mars, but living on the Moon and living on Mars are two totally different things, so I also wonder what the point is. We've been doing it on the ISS for awhile now.
I think given what the budget is now for NASA, and how much of that is taken up by telescopes and probes, we could get to Mars on our current budget, it's just a matter of waiting 15 years. And that's fine with me.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Galactic Spiral Arms formed by the effect of Newtonian gravitation on elliptical orbits. The idea was so sufficiently simple..."that I had rejected it before because I thought that if it were right, it would already be known. In fact, it worked straightaway, giving a perfect fit with the data."
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Eta Carinae might actually blow up soon, meaning hopefully even during our lifetimes or at least in the next few thousand years. That would be so awesome to see!
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Tatiana: Eta Carinae might actually blow up soon, meaning hopefully even during our lifetimes or at least in the next few thousand years. That would be so awesome to see!
I love it because it is 7000 light years away, and if these guys' estimates are right, it either has or has not already exploded. Or, following the Schrödinger's cat idea, and giving that no other sentient being has seen it explode, it is currently both exploded and unexploded.
Oh, and although not exactly space related news (more along the lines of what you see when you look up at night), here's a neat phenomenon that seems to be most likely an errant Russian missile:
Observation in the quantum mechanics sense has nothing to do with sentience (or even being alive), fun as the idea would be. It might have already exploded, or it might have not. It is not in an entangled state until we see which one has happened.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Oh, that's not how I understood it. I thought that while it was unobserved, it was both, but when it is finally observed, it is one or the other.
(I've never really looked into this too closely so I wouldn't be surprised if my understanding is wrong.)
Posts: 1711 | Registered: Jun 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
What you say just there is true; the gap in understanding is that the observer doesn't have anything to do with intelligence (or life at all). You can 'observe' entangled light waves by constructing a mechanical device and placing it so it intersects their path. Those entangled light waves could similarly be 'observed' by certain natural physical occurrences in their way that never had any encounter with anything alive, much less sentient.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Much New Age nonsense might have been avoided if physicists in the first half of the twentieth century had used the brains of a lab rat and called it "interaction" rather than "observation".
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Much New Age nonsense might have been avoided if physicists in the first half of the twentieth century had used the brains of a lab rat and called it "interaction" rather than "observation".
It really gets my hackles up when people try to explain their totally ridiculous philosophies on interpersonal relationships, or astrology or some such by invoking the gods of quantum physics. Most people treat it like magic: something we don't understand and thus requires no logic, and serves as an explanation of everything. My theory is the same goes for electricity. Any good crack-pot theory on 'anti-gravity' always creates some kind of magnetic field (despite the fact that those are two fundamental, and thus different forces), in Harry Potter we find electricity doesn't work around magic (to bad for our central nervous systems!) etc...
posted
18SepO8 "By measuring how the stars orbit around each other, the researchers were able to calculate each one's mass, though the level of uncertainty is still quite high (the larger weighs 116 plus-or-minus 30 solar masses, while the smaller weighs 89 plus-or-minus 15 solar masses)... ...The heavyweight binary, called A1, is in the star cluster NGC 3603, which lies in the Carina spiral arm of the Milky Way, around 20,000 light-years away from our solar system."
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Talk about absent minded... Jupiter loses his belt. Wonder how he's gonna explain this one to Juno.
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged |