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https://www.spacex.com/launches/
Astronomy, cosmology and space thread
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pharvey
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Re: Astronomy, cosmology and space thread
"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things" - Yma o Hyd.
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pharvey
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Re: Astronomy, cosmology and space thread
Unfortunately not visible from the UK..... 
https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/ge ... due-sunday additional @: - https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... a-and-asia
Partial Solar Eclipse Due Sunday
"A partial solar eclipse will be visible in Thailand on Sunday afternoon, while sky-gazers in some other parts of Asia and Africa will be treated to a spectacular “ring of fire” event.
For those in Bangkok, the moon will begin to move in front of the sun at 1.10pm local time, with maximum coverage reaching 40% at 2.48pm. The eclipse will end at 4.09pm.
Sunday’s event is known as an annular eclipse, in which the moon does not completely cover the sun as it passes between the star and Earth. Instead, a ring of sunlight will still shine around the outer edge, hence the “ring of fire” name.
Viewers along a narrow band from west Africa to the Arabian peninsula, India and southern China will witness the most dramatic “ring of fire” eclipse in years."
Hope you get to see in Hua Hin!
https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/ge ... due-sunday additional @: - https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... a-and-asiaPartial Solar Eclipse Due Sunday
"A partial solar eclipse will be visible in Thailand on Sunday afternoon, while sky-gazers in some other parts of Asia and Africa will be treated to a spectacular “ring of fire” event.
For those in Bangkok, the moon will begin to move in front of the sun at 1.10pm local time, with maximum coverage reaching 40% at 2.48pm. The eclipse will end at 4.09pm.
Sunday’s event is known as an annular eclipse, in which the moon does not completely cover the sun as it passes between the star and Earth. Instead, a ring of sunlight will still shine around the outer edge, hence the “ring of fire” name.
Viewers along a narrow band from west Africa to the Arabian peninsula, India and southern China will witness the most dramatic “ring of fire” eclipse in years."
Hope you get to see in Hua Hin!
"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things" - Yma o Hyd.
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dtaai-maai
- Hero
- Posts: 14302
- Joined: Mon Jul 30, 2007 10:00 pm
- Location: UK, Robin Hood country
Re: Astronomy, cosmology and space thread
I've had enough 'ring of fire' experiences to last me a lifetime...
This is the way
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pharvey
- Moderator
- Posts: 13988
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- Location: Sir Fynwy - God's Country
Re: Astronomy, cosmology and space thread
dtaai-maai wrote: ↑Sat Jun 20, 2020 11:13 pm I've had enough 'ring of fire' experiences to last me a lifetime...
Hope you're referring to dodgy curries rather than..... well never mind.
"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things" - Yma o Hyd.
Re: Astronomy, cosmology and space thread
Nasa sending robotic helicopter to Mars
https://www.bangkokpost.com/tech/193964 ... er-to-mars. (Photos at link)
NEW YORK: Nasa is about to take to the air on another planet.
As part of its next mission to Mars, leaving Earth next month, the space agency will attempt to do something that has never been done before: fly a helicopter through the rarefied atmosphere of Mars.
If it works, the small helicopter, named Ingenuity, will open a new way for future robotic explorers to get a bird’s-eye view of Mars and other worlds in the solar system.
“This is very analogous to the Wright brothers moment, but on another planet,” said MiMi Aung, the project manager of the Mars helicopter at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory over the past six years.
Flying on Mars is not a trivial endeavor. There is not much air there to push against to generate lift. At the surface, the atmosphere is just 1/100th as dense as Earth’s. The lesser gravity, one-third of what you feel here, helps with getting airborne. But taking off from Mars is the equivalent of flying at an altitude of 100,000 feet on Earth. No terrestrial helicopter has ever flown that high, and that is more than twice the altitude that jetliners typically fly at.
The copter will hitch a ride to Mars with Perseverance, which is to be the fifth robotic rover Nasa has sent there. The mission is scheduled to launch on July 20, one of three missions to Mars this year.
At a news conference last week previewing the Perseverance mission, Jim Bridenstine, the Nasa administrator, made a point to highlight Ingenuity. “I’ll tell you, the thing that has me the most excited as an Nasa administrator is getting ready to watch a helicopter fly on another world,” he said.
Until 1997, all of the spacecraft sent to the surface of Mars had been stationery landers. But in 1997, the Pathfinder mission included something that was revolutionary for Nasa: a wheeled robot. That rover, Sojourner, was roughly the size of a short filing cabinet. That success was followed by two golf cart-size rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, arriving on Mars in 2004 and then Curiosity, about the size of a car, in 2012.
For a robotic explorer on another planet, the ability to move around offers great advantages. Planetary scientists are no longer stuck staring at one spot. A rover can drive across the landscape, stopping for closer looks at intriguing rocks. That freedom was key to gaining the current understanding of early Mars, that the planet, now cold and dry, was once wet and possessed at least some environments that were potentially habitable for life.
Ingenuity is in essence the aerial counterpart of Sojourner, a demonstration of a novel technology that might be used more extensively on later missions. The body of Ingenuity is about the size of a softball with four spindly legs sticking out. Two sets of blades, each about 4 feet from tip to tip, spin in opposite directions. It weighs just 4 pounds and stands about 18 inches high.
Bob Balaram, the chief engineer for the helicopter, started working with some colleagues on the idea back in the 1990s.
“It didn’t really go anywhere,” Balaram said. “We did run some small tests, but then it sat on the shelf till about six, seven years back.”
He said Charles Elachi, then the director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, became interested and provided money for further study. “And that got us going,” Balaram said.
Doing something that had never been done before was an engineering challenge that appealed to Aung, who joined as the project manager in the middle of 2014.
“About 20 years ago, it couldn’t have been possible, really, because of the math,” said Aung, who was a deputy manager of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s autonomous systems division before joining the Mars project.
But a number of advances, such as miniaturization of electronics, batteries that stored more energy and materials that could be shaped into lightweight blades, had finally made the dream of Mars flying machines into a technological possibility, Aung said.
Turning the possibility into a working helicopter took years of trial and error.
By the end of 2014, the engineers had built a small prototype. The little helicopter was placed in a chamber where most of the air was sucked out, replicating the density of the Martian atmosphere. Because they had yet to write the software for the helicopter to fly itself, a member of the team tried to guide its motion with a joystick, like a hobbyist flying a drone.
As the blades spun, the helicopter rose up. It immediately veered out of control.
They had lift but no control.
“It did kind of what we had to do at that point, which was say we can actually get off the ground,” said Havard Grip, the engineer who led work on aerodynamics and achieving controlled flight. “So in that way, it was a success. But it also was clear that there was a lot more work to be done here on understanding how this thing behaves.”
Balaram and Grip said one problem was that the blades bounced up and down as they spun at 2,000 to 3,000 revolutions a minute. On Earth, the pressure of the air pushing against the blades minimizes the bouncing. But in the thin Martian atmosphere, the bouncing created an instability that made it hard to control the motion of the helicopter.
The solution turned out to be making the blades slightly stiffer, but that added some weight.
- Try again -
In May 2016, the next prototype was ready. In the same chamber simulating the diaphanous Martian atmosphere, the helicopter rose, then hovered steadily and softly landed. For the first time, a helicopter prototype had flown under control in conditions that simulated the Martian atmosphere, although it was still connected to an external power source and computer.
The complete design, with the batteries, a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor that is the same as those in cellphones, communication systems and sensors all integrated, was ready in January 2018. To mimic the weaker gravitational pull of Mars, a pulley pulled upward to counteract part of Earth’s gravity. The density of air in the chamber was pumped down again. But this time, instead of leaving wisps of Earth air, a bit of carbon dioxide, the main constituent of Martian air, was pumped in.
The helicopter rose and flew.
Half a year later, Nasa gave the go-ahead for adding the helicopter to Nasa’s next Mars rover mission, Perseverance.
Ingenuity is now attached to the belly of Perseverance, which is undergoing final preparations for launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
In the meantime, Aung and her team are rehearsing what they will be doing once Ingenuity is on Mars. With the Jet Propulsion Laboratory largely shut down because of the coronavirus pandemic, all that work has been done via teleconferences, with all of the team members working at home.
About two months after Perseverance lands on Mars in February, the tests of Ingenuity will begin. The rover will find a suitably flat spot, drop the helicopter onto the ground, then drive at least 100 yards away. “The helicopter never returns to the rover,” Aung said.
Over 30 days, the helicopter will make up to five flights. Much of the time will be spent sitting around waiting for solar panels to recharge the batteries.
The first flight is to go up a few feet and hover for up to 30 seconds, then land. Subsequent flights will be longer, higher, farther. On the fifth flight, if everything works, Ingenuity will go up about 15 feet, fly out 500 feet and then return to where it started. It has two cameras: a downward-facing, black-and-white one for keeping track of where it is; and a color one for oblique views of the landscape. The flight will last 90 seconds.
Once the flights are done, Ingenuity will be left at its final landing site, and Perseverance will drive off for the rest of its mission.
Aung said that the technology could be adapted to a bigger craft, up to about 30 pounds in weight instead of 4. That might be large enough to carry a couple of pounds of cameras and other instruments.
Already, Nasa has plans for sending a nuclear-powered rotorcraft, Dragonfly, to Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. But Titan has a thick atmosphere, so flying there does not pose the same technological challenges as Mars.
Even if future helicopters are headed to Mars, they will almost certainly never be a viable mode of transportation for astronauts there.
“You wouldn’t envision extending it to where you can fly humans like you can on Earth,” Aung said. “There just isn’t enough atmosphere.”
https://www.bangkokpost.com/tech/193964 ... er-to-mars. (Photos at link)
NEW YORK: Nasa is about to take to the air on another planet.
As part of its next mission to Mars, leaving Earth next month, the space agency will attempt to do something that has never been done before: fly a helicopter through the rarefied atmosphere of Mars.
If it works, the small helicopter, named Ingenuity, will open a new way for future robotic explorers to get a bird’s-eye view of Mars and other worlds in the solar system.
“This is very analogous to the Wright brothers moment, but on another planet,” said MiMi Aung, the project manager of the Mars helicopter at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory over the past six years.
Flying on Mars is not a trivial endeavor. There is not much air there to push against to generate lift. At the surface, the atmosphere is just 1/100th as dense as Earth’s. The lesser gravity, one-third of what you feel here, helps with getting airborne. But taking off from Mars is the equivalent of flying at an altitude of 100,000 feet on Earth. No terrestrial helicopter has ever flown that high, and that is more than twice the altitude that jetliners typically fly at.
The copter will hitch a ride to Mars with Perseverance, which is to be the fifth robotic rover Nasa has sent there. The mission is scheduled to launch on July 20, one of three missions to Mars this year.
At a news conference last week previewing the Perseverance mission, Jim Bridenstine, the Nasa administrator, made a point to highlight Ingenuity. “I’ll tell you, the thing that has me the most excited as an Nasa administrator is getting ready to watch a helicopter fly on another world,” he said.
Until 1997, all of the spacecraft sent to the surface of Mars had been stationery landers. But in 1997, the Pathfinder mission included something that was revolutionary for Nasa: a wheeled robot. That rover, Sojourner, was roughly the size of a short filing cabinet. That success was followed by two golf cart-size rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, arriving on Mars in 2004 and then Curiosity, about the size of a car, in 2012.
For a robotic explorer on another planet, the ability to move around offers great advantages. Planetary scientists are no longer stuck staring at one spot. A rover can drive across the landscape, stopping for closer looks at intriguing rocks. That freedom was key to gaining the current understanding of early Mars, that the planet, now cold and dry, was once wet and possessed at least some environments that were potentially habitable for life.
Ingenuity is in essence the aerial counterpart of Sojourner, a demonstration of a novel technology that might be used more extensively on later missions. The body of Ingenuity is about the size of a softball with four spindly legs sticking out. Two sets of blades, each about 4 feet from tip to tip, spin in opposite directions. It weighs just 4 pounds and stands about 18 inches high.
Bob Balaram, the chief engineer for the helicopter, started working with some colleagues on the idea back in the 1990s.
“It didn’t really go anywhere,” Balaram said. “We did run some small tests, but then it sat on the shelf till about six, seven years back.”
He said Charles Elachi, then the director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, became interested and provided money for further study. “And that got us going,” Balaram said.
Doing something that had never been done before was an engineering challenge that appealed to Aung, who joined as the project manager in the middle of 2014.
“About 20 years ago, it couldn’t have been possible, really, because of the math,” said Aung, who was a deputy manager of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s autonomous systems division before joining the Mars project.
But a number of advances, such as miniaturization of electronics, batteries that stored more energy and materials that could be shaped into lightweight blades, had finally made the dream of Mars flying machines into a technological possibility, Aung said.
Turning the possibility into a working helicopter took years of trial and error.
By the end of 2014, the engineers had built a small prototype. The little helicopter was placed in a chamber where most of the air was sucked out, replicating the density of the Martian atmosphere. Because they had yet to write the software for the helicopter to fly itself, a member of the team tried to guide its motion with a joystick, like a hobbyist flying a drone.
As the blades spun, the helicopter rose up. It immediately veered out of control.
They had lift but no control.
“It did kind of what we had to do at that point, which was say we can actually get off the ground,” said Havard Grip, the engineer who led work on aerodynamics and achieving controlled flight. “So in that way, it was a success. But it also was clear that there was a lot more work to be done here on understanding how this thing behaves.”
Balaram and Grip said one problem was that the blades bounced up and down as they spun at 2,000 to 3,000 revolutions a minute. On Earth, the pressure of the air pushing against the blades minimizes the bouncing. But in the thin Martian atmosphere, the bouncing created an instability that made it hard to control the motion of the helicopter.
The solution turned out to be making the blades slightly stiffer, but that added some weight.
- Try again -
In May 2016, the next prototype was ready. In the same chamber simulating the diaphanous Martian atmosphere, the helicopter rose, then hovered steadily and softly landed. For the first time, a helicopter prototype had flown under control in conditions that simulated the Martian atmosphere, although it was still connected to an external power source and computer.
The complete design, with the batteries, a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor that is the same as those in cellphones, communication systems and sensors all integrated, was ready in January 2018. To mimic the weaker gravitational pull of Mars, a pulley pulled upward to counteract part of Earth’s gravity. The density of air in the chamber was pumped down again. But this time, instead of leaving wisps of Earth air, a bit of carbon dioxide, the main constituent of Martian air, was pumped in.
The helicopter rose and flew.
Half a year later, Nasa gave the go-ahead for adding the helicopter to Nasa’s next Mars rover mission, Perseverance.
Ingenuity is now attached to the belly of Perseverance, which is undergoing final preparations for launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
In the meantime, Aung and her team are rehearsing what they will be doing once Ingenuity is on Mars. With the Jet Propulsion Laboratory largely shut down because of the coronavirus pandemic, all that work has been done via teleconferences, with all of the team members working at home.
About two months after Perseverance lands on Mars in February, the tests of Ingenuity will begin. The rover will find a suitably flat spot, drop the helicopter onto the ground, then drive at least 100 yards away. “The helicopter never returns to the rover,” Aung said.
Over 30 days, the helicopter will make up to five flights. Much of the time will be spent sitting around waiting for solar panels to recharge the batteries.
The first flight is to go up a few feet and hover for up to 30 seconds, then land. Subsequent flights will be longer, higher, farther. On the fifth flight, if everything works, Ingenuity will go up about 15 feet, fly out 500 feet and then return to where it started. It has two cameras: a downward-facing, black-and-white one for keeping track of where it is; and a color one for oblique views of the landscape. The flight will last 90 seconds.
Once the flights are done, Ingenuity will be left at its final landing site, and Perseverance will drive off for the rest of its mission.
Aung said that the technology could be adapted to a bigger craft, up to about 30 pounds in weight instead of 4. That might be large enough to carry a couple of pounds of cameras and other instruments.
Already, Nasa has plans for sending a nuclear-powered rotorcraft, Dragonfly, to Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. But Titan has a thick atmosphere, so flying there does not pose the same technological challenges as Mars.
Even if future helicopters are headed to Mars, they will almost certainly never be a viable mode of transportation for astronauts there.
“You wouldn’t envision extending it to where you can fly humans like you can on Earth,” Aung said. “There just isn’t enough atmosphere.”
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Source
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pharvey
- Moderator
- Posts: 13988
- Joined: Sat Aug 29, 2009 10:21 am
- Location: Sir Fynwy - God's Country
Re: Astronomy, cosmology and space thread
"Video showing the comet Neowise, with its shimmering tail as it appears to fly over the Earth, is captured by cameras on the International Space Station.
Formally named C/2020 F3, the comet was discovered in late March by the NEOWISE space telescope and will be visible with the naked eye throughout July.
A video of the 'interplanetary iceberg' was shared on social media by Seán Doran, who created the stunning clip by taking a time-lapse image sequence from ISS cameras and converted them into a real time video."
The comet "comes into play" around 3:25
The comet is visible to the naked eye throughout July.
Formally named C/2020 F3, the comet was discovered in late March by the NEOWISE space telescope and will be visible with the naked eye throughout July.
A video of the 'interplanetary iceberg' was shared on social media by Seán Doran, who created the stunning clip by taking a time-lapse image sequence from ISS cameras and converted them into a real time video."
The comet "comes into play" around 3:25
The comet is visible to the naked eye throughout July.
"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things" - Yma o Hyd.
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pharvey
- Moderator
- Posts: 13988
- Joined: Sat Aug 29, 2009 10:21 am
- Location: Sir Fynwy - God's Country
Re: Astronomy, cosmology and space thread
This is an interesting one IMHO, the below excerpts taken from: - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-53394737
Hope Probe: UAE Launches Historic First Mission to Mars
"The United Arab Emirates' historic first mission to Mars is under way, after a successful lift-off in Japan.
The Hope probe launched on an H2-A rocket from Tanegashima spaceport, and is now on a 500-million-km journey to study the planet's weather and climate.
Two previous attempts to launch the probe in the past week had to be called off because of adverse weather.
Hope's arrival in February 2021 is set to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the UAE's formation."
A huge step from launching satellites to Earth Orbit to launching to a Mars Orbit!!
.
.
.
Unlike previous missions from Europe, America, Russia and India, which have orbited the Poles (in a much closer orbit), Hope will make a "near-equatorial orbit" standing off further from the planet and thus giving far more coverage and hopefully far more information. I must admit, I had not realised that pretty much all previous missions had only orbited the Poles.
"To gather its observations, Hope will take up a near-equatorial orbit that stands off from the planet at a distance of 22,000km to 44,000km."
Hope Probe: UAE Launches Historic First Mission to Mars
"The United Arab Emirates' historic first mission to Mars is under way, after a successful lift-off in Japan.
The Hope probe launched on an H2-A rocket from Tanegashima spaceport, and is now on a 500-million-km journey to study the planet's weather and climate.
Two previous attempts to launch the probe in the past week had to be called off because of adverse weather.
Hope's arrival in February 2021 is set to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the UAE's formation."
A huge step from launching satellites to Earth Orbit to launching to a Mars Orbit!!
.
- Mars-Hope.png (61.63 KiB) Viewed 541 times
.
Unlike previous missions from Europe, America, Russia and India, which have orbited the Poles (in a much closer orbit), Hope will make a "near-equatorial orbit" standing off further from the planet and thus giving far more coverage and hopefully far more information. I must admit, I had not realised that pretty much all previous missions had only orbited the Poles.
"To gather its observations, Hope will take up a near-equatorial orbit that stands off from the planet at a distance of 22,000km to 44,000km."
"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things" - Yma o Hyd.
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pharvey
- Moderator
- Posts: 13988
- Joined: Sat Aug 29, 2009 10:21 am
- Location: Sir Fynwy - God's Country
Re: Astronomy, cosmology and space thread
For those that missed/can't remember the Apollo missions......
Taken From: - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-54246485
Nasa Releases Plan For Moon Return By 2024
"The US space agency (Nasa) has formally outlined its $28bn (£22bn) plan to return to the Moon by 2024.
As part of a programme called Artemis, Nasa will send a man and a woman to the lunar surface in the first landing with humans since 1972.
But the agency's timeline is contingent on Congress releasing $3.2bn for the agency to build a landing system.
Astronauts will travel in an Apollo-like capsule called Orion that will launch on a powerful rocket called SLS.
Speaking on Monday afternoon (US time), Nasa administrator Jim Bridenstine said: "The $28bn represents the costs associated for the next four years in the Artemis programme to land on the Moon. SLS funding, Orion funding, the human landing system and of course the spacesuits - all of those things that are part of the Artemis programme are included."
But he explained: "The budget request that we have before the House and the Senate right now includes $3.2bn for 2021 for the human landing system. It is critically important that we get that $3.2bn."
The US House of Representatives has already passed a Bill allocating $600m towards the lunar lander. But Nasa will need more funds to develop the vehicle in full.
Mr Bridenstine added: "I want to be clear, we are exceptionally grateful to the House of Representatives that, in a bipartisan way, they have determined that funding a human landing system is important - that's what that $600m represents. It is also true that we are asking for the full $3.2bn."
The new document outlines Phase 1 of the plan, which includes an uncrewed test flight around the Moon - called Artemis-1 - in the autumn of 2021.
Nasa's human spaceflight chief Kathy Lueders said that Artemis-1 would last for about a month to test out all the critical systems.
She said that demonstration flight would reduce the risk for Artemis-2, which will repeat the trip around the Moon with astronauts.
A new test has been added to this mission - a proximity operations demonstration. Shortly after Orion separates from the upper-stage of the SLS rocket - known as the interim cryogenic propulsion stage - astronauts will manually pilot the spacecraft as they approach and back away from the stage.
This will assess Orion's handling qualities, along with the performance of the spacecraft's hardware and software.
Artemis-3 will become the first mission to send astronauts to the lunar surface since Apollo 17 some 48 years ago."
Taken From: - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-54246485
Nasa Releases Plan For Moon Return By 2024
"The US space agency (Nasa) has formally outlined its $28bn (£22bn) plan to return to the Moon by 2024.
As part of a programme called Artemis, Nasa will send a man and a woman to the lunar surface in the first landing with humans since 1972.
But the agency's timeline is contingent on Congress releasing $3.2bn for the agency to build a landing system.
Astronauts will travel in an Apollo-like capsule called Orion that will launch on a powerful rocket called SLS.
Speaking on Monday afternoon (US time), Nasa administrator Jim Bridenstine said: "The $28bn represents the costs associated for the next four years in the Artemis programme to land on the Moon. SLS funding, Orion funding, the human landing system and of course the spacesuits - all of those things that are part of the Artemis programme are included."
But he explained: "The budget request that we have before the House and the Senate right now includes $3.2bn for 2021 for the human landing system. It is critically important that we get that $3.2bn."
The US House of Representatives has already passed a Bill allocating $600m towards the lunar lander. But Nasa will need more funds to develop the vehicle in full.
Mr Bridenstine added: "I want to be clear, we are exceptionally grateful to the House of Representatives that, in a bipartisan way, they have determined that funding a human landing system is important - that's what that $600m represents. It is also true that we are asking for the full $3.2bn."
The new document outlines Phase 1 of the plan, which includes an uncrewed test flight around the Moon - called Artemis-1 - in the autumn of 2021.
Nasa's human spaceflight chief Kathy Lueders said that Artemis-1 would last for about a month to test out all the critical systems.
She said that demonstration flight would reduce the risk for Artemis-2, which will repeat the trip around the Moon with astronauts.
A new test has been added to this mission - a proximity operations demonstration. Shortly after Orion separates from the upper-stage of the SLS rocket - known as the interim cryogenic propulsion stage - astronauts will manually pilot the spacecraft as they approach and back away from the stage.
This will assess Orion's handling qualities, along with the performance of the spacecraft's hardware and software.
Artemis-3 will become the first mission to send astronauts to the lunar surface since Apollo 17 some 48 years ago."
"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things" - Yma o Hyd.
Re: Astronomy, cosmology and space thread
its a long way to go for a Chinese takeaway. The race is on!
Re: Astronomy, cosmology and space thread
300 million potentially habitable planets in the neighborhood, then they ran out of fuel. 
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/05/worl ... index.html
(CNN)Our galaxy is filled with potentially habitable planets -- at least 300 million of them, according to NASA.
The US space agency's Kepler Space Telescope spent nine years on a planet-hunting mission, successfully identifying thousands of exoplanets in our galaxy before running out of fuel in 2018. But the original mission's core question remained: how many of these planets are habitable?
Scientists around the world pored over Kepler's data for years -- and they think they've found the answer. According to research released in The Astronomical Journal, there are roughly 300 million potentially habitable worlds in our galaxy, meaning rocky planets capable of supporting liquid water on their surface.
That figure is a rough estimate on the conservative side, and "there could be many more," said NASA in a news release. Some of these planets could be close enough to be considered "interstellar neighbors" -- the closest is around 20 light-years away.
"Kepler already told us there were billions of planets, but now we know a good chunk of those planets might be rocky and habitable," said NASA researcher and lead author Steve Bryson in the release.
"Though this result is far from a final value, and water on a planet's surface is only one of many factors to support life, it's extremely exciting that we calculated these worlds are this common with such high confidence and precision."
The study was a global collaboration between NASA scientists who worked on the Kepler mission, and researchers from international agencies ranging from Brazil to Denmark.
There are about 100 to 400 billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy, according to NASA estimates. Every star in the sky probably hosts at least one planet -- meaning there are likely trillions of planets out there, of which we have only discovered and confirmed a few thousand.
A lot of factors that influence whether a planet can support life, including its atmosphere and chemical composition. But to narrow down the trillions, the researchers in this study focused on a few basic requirements.
They looked for stars similar to our own Sun in age and temperature, so it wouldn't be too hot or active. They also looked for exoplanets with a similar radius to Earth, and singled out those that were likely to be rocky.
They also took into consideration each planet's distance from its star -- too close and the heat could vaporize any water, too far and any water could freeze.
A habitable planet needs to be in the "just right" zone, or the so-called Goldilocks zone, to support liquid water on its surface.
Previous estimates of the number of habitable planets did not reflect how a star's temperature and energy could be absorbed by its planets, said the NASA release. But this time, scientists were able to factor temperature into their analysis, thanks to additional data gathered by the European Space Agency's Gaia mission, which is charting a three-dimensional map of our galaxy.
"We always knew defining habitability simply in terms of a planet's physical distance from a star, so that it's not too hot or cold, left us making a lot of assumptions," said NASA scientist and study author Ravi Kopparapu in the release.
"Gaia's data on stars allowed us to look at these planets and their stars in an entirely new way."
After calculating these factors, researchers used a conservative estimate that 7% of Sun-like stars could host habitable worlds. But the rate could be as high as 75%, scientists said.
NASA said it and other space agencies will continue to refine the estimate in future research, which will help shape plans for the next stages of exoplanet discoveries and telescopes. Currently, NASA's TESS mission is the latest planet-hunter seeking out exoplanets.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/05/worl ... index.html
(CNN)Our galaxy is filled with potentially habitable planets -- at least 300 million of them, according to NASA.
The US space agency's Kepler Space Telescope spent nine years on a planet-hunting mission, successfully identifying thousands of exoplanets in our galaxy before running out of fuel in 2018. But the original mission's core question remained: how many of these planets are habitable?
Scientists around the world pored over Kepler's data for years -- and they think they've found the answer. According to research released in The Astronomical Journal, there are roughly 300 million potentially habitable worlds in our galaxy, meaning rocky planets capable of supporting liquid water on their surface.
That figure is a rough estimate on the conservative side, and "there could be many more," said NASA in a news release. Some of these planets could be close enough to be considered "interstellar neighbors" -- the closest is around 20 light-years away.
"Kepler already told us there were billions of planets, but now we know a good chunk of those planets might be rocky and habitable," said NASA researcher and lead author Steve Bryson in the release.
"Though this result is far from a final value, and water on a planet's surface is only one of many factors to support life, it's extremely exciting that we calculated these worlds are this common with such high confidence and precision."
The study was a global collaboration between NASA scientists who worked on the Kepler mission, and researchers from international agencies ranging from Brazil to Denmark.
There are about 100 to 400 billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy, according to NASA estimates. Every star in the sky probably hosts at least one planet -- meaning there are likely trillions of planets out there, of which we have only discovered and confirmed a few thousand.
A lot of factors that influence whether a planet can support life, including its atmosphere and chemical composition. But to narrow down the trillions, the researchers in this study focused on a few basic requirements.
They looked for stars similar to our own Sun in age and temperature, so it wouldn't be too hot or active. They also looked for exoplanets with a similar radius to Earth, and singled out those that were likely to be rocky.
They also took into consideration each planet's distance from its star -- too close and the heat could vaporize any water, too far and any water could freeze.
A habitable planet needs to be in the "just right" zone, or the so-called Goldilocks zone, to support liquid water on its surface.
Previous estimates of the number of habitable planets did not reflect how a star's temperature and energy could be absorbed by its planets, said the NASA release. But this time, scientists were able to factor temperature into their analysis, thanks to additional data gathered by the European Space Agency's Gaia mission, which is charting a three-dimensional map of our galaxy.
"We always knew defining habitability simply in terms of a planet's physical distance from a star, so that it's not too hot or cold, left us making a lot of assumptions," said NASA scientist and study author Ravi Kopparapu in the release.
"Gaia's data on stars allowed us to look at these planets and their stars in an entirely new way."
After calculating these factors, researchers used a conservative estimate that 7% of Sun-like stars could host habitable worlds. But the rate could be as high as 75%, scientists said.
NASA said it and other space agencies will continue to refine the estimate in future research, which will help shape plans for the next stages of exoplanet discoveries and telescopes. Currently, NASA's TESS mission is the latest planet-hunter seeking out exoplanets.
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Re: Astronomy, cosmology and space thread
North Taurid meteor shower visible from Thailand Night of November 12
https://thethaiger.com/news/national/no ... rrow-night
A North Taurid meteor shower will be visible from Thailand tomorrow around 7pm with a few, but very bright meteors expected to light up the sky, according to National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand. Around 5 meteors could shoot across the sky per hour and the ones that do could be bright meteors known as “fireballs.”
The Taurid meteor stream is debris left behind by comets and sheds much larger fragments than those shed by comets, according to Space.com. The large fragments are burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere, causing unusually bright “fireballs.” The annual meteor shower usually occurs during the last 3 months of the year.
SOURCES: Thai PBS| Space.com
https://thethaiger.com/news/national/no ... rrow-night
A North Taurid meteor shower will be visible from Thailand tomorrow around 7pm with a few, but very bright meteors expected to light up the sky, according to National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand. Around 5 meteors could shoot across the sky per hour and the ones that do could be bright meteors known as “fireballs.”
The Taurid meteor stream is debris left behind by comets and sheds much larger fragments than those shed by comets, according to Space.com. The large fragments are burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere, causing unusually bright “fireballs.” The annual meteor shower usually occurs during the last 3 months of the year.
SOURCES: Thai PBS| Space.com
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Re: Astronomy, cosmology and space thread
Black holes: Cosmic signal rattles Earth after 7 billion years
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-53993937
Imagine the energy of eight Suns released in an instant.
This is the gravitational "shockwave" that spread out from the biggest merger yet observed between two black holes.
The signal from this event travelled for some seven billion years to reach Earth but was still sufficiently strong to rattle laser detectors in the US and Italy in May last year.
Researchers say the colliding black holes produced a single entity with a mass 142 times that of our Sun.
This is noteworthy. Science has long traced the presence of black holes on the sky that are quite a bit smaller or even very much larger. But this new observation inaugurates a novel class of so-called intermediate-sized black holes in the range of 100-1,000 Sun (or solar) masses.
The analysis is the latest to come out of the international LIGO-VIRGO collaboration, which operates three super-sensitive gravitational wave-detection systems in America and Europe....
Photos, video, charts, and more story at the link.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-53993937
Imagine the energy of eight Suns released in an instant.
This is the gravitational "shockwave" that spread out from the biggest merger yet observed between two black holes.
The signal from this event travelled for some seven billion years to reach Earth but was still sufficiently strong to rattle laser detectors in the US and Italy in May last year.
Researchers say the colliding black holes produced a single entity with a mass 142 times that of our Sun.
This is noteworthy. Science has long traced the presence of black holes on the sky that are quite a bit smaller or even very much larger. But this new observation inaugurates a novel class of so-called intermediate-sized black holes in the range of 100-1,000 Sun (or solar) masses.
The analysis is the latest to come out of the international LIGO-VIRGO collaboration, which operates three super-sensitive gravitational wave-detection systems in America and Europe....
Photos, video, charts, and more story at the link.
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Re: Astronomy, cosmology and space thread
Space quiz! Take a guess what this is/these are?
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Source
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pharvey
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Re: Astronomy, cosmology and space thread
Not the recent alignment of Saturn and Jupiter anyway...
A Planet and it's moon.... Christ, who knows.
A Planet and it's moon.... Christ, who knows.
"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things" - Yma o Hyd.
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lindosfan1
- Deceased
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Re: Astronomy, cosmology and space thread
The moon and mars guessing.
Woke up this morning breathing that's a good start to the day.