Astronomy, cosmology and space thread

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Big Boy
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Re: Astronomy, cosmology and space thread

Post by Big Boy »

Yep, it was quite clear here as well.
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Re: Astronomy, cosmology and space thread

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I saw it last night. I woke up in the early hours and there was a yellowy light shining into the bedroom. Got up and looked out of the window and there was the massive moon - very low in the sky, and very big. Looked like a scene from Melancholia - I thought I was dreaming...

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Re: Astronomy, cosmology and space thread

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Geminid meteor shower visible Thursday night

https://www.bangkokpost.com/news/genera ... recent_box

NAKHON RATCHASIMA: The annual Geminid meteor shower should be at its peak on Thursday night and the spectacle visible in all regions of the country well into the early hours of Friday, weather permitting, according to the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand (NARIT).

Star gazers are advised to find a spot with a clear and unpolluted sky and look towards the northeast. It should be visible to bare eyes from about 8.30pm on.

At its peak, the meteors are expected to stream across the sky at up to 120 an hour. The shower is arriving near the end of the waning moon, making it even easier to see.

The NARIT is also hosting activities for visitors, free of charge, at four observatories  - in Chiang Mai, Chachoengsao, Songkhla and Nakhon Ratchasima.

At the Regional Observatory and Planetarium in Nakhon Ratchasima activities start at 5pm and visitors will be able to observe other celestial objects through telescopes before the meteor shower.
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Re: Astronomy, cosmology and space thread

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Another Super Full Moon

The one in December was 357,973 kilometers away so this one will be a small bit closer
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http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/ ... l/30334945

"Thailand will see the biggest and brightest moon of 2018 on Tuesday night in a phenomenon known as the “Super Full Moon”.

National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand director Saran Poshyachinda said on Wednesday that the next Super Full Moon would appear in the night sky on January 2, as the moon approaches the Earth at a distance of only 356,595 kilometres.".............
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Re: Astronomy, cosmology and space thread

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'Out of control' space lab to become celestial fireball Monday: China

https://www.bangkokpost.com/news/world/ ... recent_box

BEIJING: A defunct space laboratory is set to become a celestial fireball as it re-enters earth's atmosphere in the next 24 hours, China's space authority said Sunday, hitting speeds of over 26,000 kilometres an hour before disintegrating.

The Tiangong-1 is expected to make an uncontrolled earthbound plunge Monday Beijing time, China Manned Space said in a statement, an estimate roughly in line with European Space Agency projections.

The abandoned eight-tonne craft is unlikely to cause any damage when it comes down, but its fiery disintegration will offer a "splendid" show akin to a meteor shower, Chinese authorities said previously.

The re-entry window remains "highly variable" and the debris from the lab could land anywhere between the latitudes of 43 degrees north and 43 degrees south -- from New Zealand to the American Midwest, the ESA said.

There is "no need for people to worry", the China Manned Space Engineering Office said earlier on its WeChat social media account.

Such falling spacecraft do "not crash into the Earth fiercely like in sci-fi movies, but turn into a splendid (meteor shower) and move across the beautiful starry sky as they race towards the Earth", it said.

Tiangong-1 -- or "Heavenly Palace" -- was placed in orbit in September 2011, an important step in China's efforts towards building its own space station.

The module -- which was used to practise complicated manual and automatic docking techniques -- was originally intended to be used for just two years, but ended up serving considerably longer.

It had been slated for a controlled re-entry, but ceased functioning in March 2016. Space enthusiasts have been bracing for its fiery return since.

Out of control?

During its brief lifespan, it hosted Chinese astronauts on several occasions as they performed experiments and even taught a class that was broadcast into schools across the country.

Beijing began its manned spaceflight programme in 1990 after buying Russian technology which enabled it to become the third country to send humans into space following the former Soviet Union and the United States.

China sent another lab, Tiangong-2, into orbit in September 2016 as a stepping stone to its goal of having a crewed space station by 2022.

It also plans to send a manned mission to the moon in the future.

Chinese media has downplayed comments by the ESA and others that the country's engineers have lost control of the lab, with reports saying that the idea it is "out of control" is an invention of the foreign media.

On Chinese social media, commenters criticised the government's reluctance to own up to the situation.
"Can you or can't you report that you've lost control of the situation?" one commenter wrote on the Twitter-like Weibo.

"It's not unusual that something this complicated would have a mishap."
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Re: Astronomy, cosmology and space thread

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China's space lab mostly burns up over South Pacific

https://www.bangkokpost.com/news/world/ ... recent_box

BEIJING: Chinese space authorities say the defunct Tiangong 1 space station mostly burned up on re-entry into the atmosphere over the central South Pacific.

The China Manned Space Engineering Office said the experimental space laboratory re-entered around 8.15am Monday.
Scientists monitoring the craft's disintegrating orbit had forecast the craft would mostly burn up and would pose only the slightest of risks to people. Analysis from the Beijing Aerospace Control Center showed it had mostly burned up.

Launched in 2011, Tiangong 1 was China's first space station, serving as an experimental platform for bigger projects, such as the Tiangong 2 launched in September 2016 and a future permanent Chinese space station.

Two crews of Chinese astronauts lived on the station while testing docking procedures and other operations. Its last crew departed in 2013 and contact with it was cut in 2016.

Since then, it has orbited gradually closer and closer to Earth on its own while being monitored.
Earlier forecasts had said only about 10% of the bus-sized, 8.5-tonne spacecraft would likely survive re-entry, mainly its heavier components such as its engines.
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Re: Astronomy, cosmology and space thread

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Oumuamua mystery: WA telescope helped identify interstellar space visitor

https://thewest.com.au/technology/space ... b88802270z

West Australian scientists have confirmed little green men were not behind the mysterious, cigar-shaped object spotted in our solar system late last year.

Named Oumuamua, astronomers thought they were looking at a comet or asteroid when the University of Hawaii spotted it in October.

But they soon realised its orbit and long, cylindrical shape meant it was our first known visitor from interstellar space.
Exactly what it is is not known.

The find triggered speculation Oumuamua, which is loosely translated from the Hawaiian as 'a messenger that reaches out from the distant past,' could be an alien spacecraft.

Lead researcher Steven Tingay said the Murchison Widefield Array telescope in remote central WA was used to check for radio transmissions coming from the object between the frequencies of 72 and 102MHz, similar to the frequency range in which FM radio is broadcast.

The telescope is made up of thousands of antennas attached to hundreds of "tiles" that dot the Murchison region, one of the most radio quiet areas on the planet.

"We didn't set out to observe this object with the MWA but because we can see such a large fraction of the sky at once, when something like this happens, we're able to go back through the data and analyse it after the fact," Professor Tingay said.

Although they failed to find signs of intelligent life, the research team from Curtin University's International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research has helped expand the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) from distant stars to objects close to home.

If advanced civilisations do exist elsewhere in our galaxy, they might develop the capability to launch spacecraft over interstellar distances and use radio waves to communicate, Prof Tingay said.

But he said the possibility of such advanced alien life was extremely low.

Researchers speculate there are more than 46 million Oumuamua-like interstellar interlopers cross the solar system every year.

While too far away to study with current technology, future telescopes such as the Square Kilometre Array are set to reveal more about these visitors.
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Re: Astronomy, cosmology and space thread

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I guess there were no ships or anything that got video or pictures of the Chinese Space
Station when it blazed its way back to Earth. Darn! I for one do not want to see any
of the real space ships with Aliens on board. I doubt that they will be very friendly,
but they will be a lot more intelligent than us, since they got the technology to build a
space ship and make it to our little corner of the Universe. Most likely though they will be
fellow beings from the Milky Way Galaxy as the distances are great just getting from A to B
here.
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Re: Astronomy, cosmology and space thread

Post by pharvey »

Could be worth a watch :thumb:

Go to https://www.nasa.gov/nasalive for details of the "Live Launch" (Est. 6:32pm UTC).

Nasa to Launch Tess on Hunt for 20,000 New Worlds

"If the vagaries of weather and rocket science do not intervene, the most ambitious search for alien worlds around the brightest stars in the sky will begin on Monday with the launch of Nasa’s newest planet-hunting spacecraft.

After final preparations at the weekend, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or Tess, is on course for take off as early as 6.32pm local time (11.32pm UK) from Cape Canaveral in Florida, the first opportunity mission controllers have to launch in a window that remains open until June.

The lofting of hardware high into space often calls for a holding of breath, but for those who have ploughed time and money into the $200m (£140m) Tess space telescope there is an extra frisson. Theirs is the first Nasa mission to hitch a ride on a Falcon 9, a rocket made by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company, and which was certified for such missions only in February.

Barring any mishaps, such as a “rapid unscheduled disassembly” – a glorious euphemism Musk used to describe the explosion of a Falcon 9 rocket stage in 2015 – Tess will be flung into a highly elliptical orbit around Earth that has never been attempted before. The space telescope will swing as far out as the moon as it scours the heavens for planets, then swoop back towards Earth to beam home its data. Each orbit will take nearly 14 days.

“Right now, everything is go for a launch on Monday,” said Stephen Rinehart, the Tess project scientist at Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. “Putting stuff up in space is not without risk, but at this point there is nothing more we can do. We think we’ve got a spacecraft that is ready to kick ass once it’s up in orbit.”

Tess comes hot on the heels of Nasa’s Kepler space telescope which transformed scientists’ understanding of planets beyond the solar system. When Kepler launched in 2009, astronomers knew that alien worlds circled faraway stars, but had little idea of their number and sizes. As of last month, Kepler had found more than 2,300 “exoplanets”; a similar number await confirmation.

Based on Kepler’s observations, astronomers now believe that the Milky Way is home to at least two billion potentially habitable planets where conditions are neither too hot nor too cold for life-sustaining water to flow. But for all Kepler’s success, it observed only a fraction of the sky and most of the stars it studied are extremely faint, making it hard for astronomers to look more closely at the planets that swing around them."


Full Article: - https://www.theguardian.com/science/201 ... new-worlds

Got to love the “rapid unscheduled disassembly” comment!! :D

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Re: Astronomy, cosmology and space thread

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SpaceX lifts off carrying new planet-hunter, TESS

https://www.bangkokpost.com/news/world/ ... recent_box

TAMPA - Nasa on Wednesday launched its newest planet-hunting spacecraft, TESS, a US$337 million satellite that aims to scan 85% of the skies for cosmic bodies where life may exist.

"Three, two, one and liftoff!" said Nasa commentator Mike Curie as the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) soared into the cloudless, blue sky atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida at 6.51pm (5.51am Thursday Bangkok).

The washing machine-sized spacecraft is built to search outside the solar system, scanning the nearest, brightest stars for signs of periodic dimming. These so-called "transits" may mean that planets are in orbit around them.

TESS is expected to reveal 20,000 planets beyond our solar system, including more than 50 Earth-sized planets and up to 500 planets less than twice the size of the Earth, Nasa said.

Its discoveries will be studied further by ground- and space-based telescopes for signs of habitability, including a rocky terrain, a size similar to Earth and a distance from their sun -- neither too close nor too far -- that allows the right temperature for liquid water.

"The stories of these planets will continue on, long after their detection," Martin Still, TESS program scientist, said on Wednesday.
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Re: Astronomy, cosmology and space thread

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More wasted tax dollars.
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Re: Astronomy, cosmology and space thread

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Incredible NASA video courtesy of the Hubble...

https://www.yahoo.com/news/nasa-release ... 14579.html
My brain is like an Internet browser; 12 tabs are open and 5 of them are not responding, there's a GIF playing in an endless loop,... and where is that annoying music coming from?
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Re: Astronomy, cosmology and space thread

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Nereus wrote: Thu Apr 19, 2018 11:18 am SpaceX lifts off carrying new planet-hunter, TESS

https://www.bangkokpost.com/news/world/ ... recent_box

TAMPA - Nasa on Wednesday launched its newest planet-hunting spacecraft, TESS, a US$337 million satellite that aims to scan 85% of the skies for cosmic bodies where life may exist.

"Three, two, one and liftoff!" said Nasa commentator Mike Curie as the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) soared into the cloudless, blue sky atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida at 6.51pm (5.51am Thursday Bangkok).

The washing machine-sized spacecraft is built to search outside the solar system, scanning the nearest, brightest stars for signs of periodic dimming. These so-called "transits" may mean that planets are in orbit around them.

TESS is expected to reveal 20,000 planets beyond our solar system, including more than 50 Earth-sized planets and up to 500 planets less than twice the size of the Earth, Nasa said.

Its discoveries will be studied further by ground- and space-based telescopes for signs of habitability, including a rocky terrain, a size similar to Earth and a distance from their sun -- neither too close nor too far -- that allows the right temperature for liquid water.

"The stories of these planets will continue on, long after their detection," Martin Still, TESS program scientist, said on Wednesday.
How are astrologers going to deal with all those planets? "Hi, what sign are you?" "I'm number 11,271, sorry, I don't have a name for it but I'm sure it has a great influence on me."
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Re: Astronomy, cosmology and space thread

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No telescope needed to see Saturn on June 27

Saturn, with its remarkable rings, will be visible to the naked eye on June 27 and astronomers are urging people to have a look.

The gas giant will be at its closest point to Earth this year and in opposition to the Sun, with Earth squarely in the middle, affording the best possible views throughout that night.

National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand director Saran Poshyachinda said Saturn will be 1.353 million kilometres from Earth, as close as it gets this year, and if the sky isn’t overcast, the planet and its rings will be clearly visible.

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/ ... l/30348359
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Re: Astronomy, cosmology and space thread

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How are astrologers going to deal with all those planets? "Hi, what sign are you?" "I'm number 11,271, sorry, I don't have a name for it but I'm sure it has a great influence on me."

The copout will be only the planets in our solar system can be used.
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