Looking at faraway stuff - The Bear and Badger

GooberTheHat

That person is allowed to vote. We're all doomed.

Vela

You already were doomed without his input.

GooberTheHat

Just me?

Vela

No. Everyone, everywhere.

GooberTheHat

Phew. No, wait...

Vela

Cosmic perspective. Nothing personal

SpaceGazelle

SpaceX launch in 5 mins. The booster used on this has been used 5 times before.

Dinostar77

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/oct/20/talking-on-the-moon-nasa-and-nokia-to-install-4g-on-lunar-surface

Nokia gonna put a 4G network on the moon (so ET can phone home lol).

SpaceGazelle

Water on the Moon confirmed, using a modified 747 no less. Handy for a Moon base but a bit nippy at the poles. I think it's something like -230C there so extraction might be a problem.

SpaceGazelle

This is cool.

davyK

That Soyuz launch...

SpaceGazelle

Yeah it's great isn't it? I like the re-entry.

SpaceGazelle

Mars is a lovely sight right now. The bright red thing in the sky, it's hard to miss.

Armitage_Shankburn

It's amazing, isn't it. I used to be oblivious, but once you spot a planet, you always spot it. It just looks different.2020 has been great for that. Going to sleep with the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter shining at me, mars next to the moon crescent (rather like the Turkish flag). It's so peaceful, no matter what troubles us, in this moment, here are celestial objects, carrying on, timeless to us. I find it, calming, reassuring.

SpaceGazelle

Astronomy gives a perspective for sure. If you ever get a shot on a really good telescope the Moon just looks amazing. We had a great refractor at Glasgow Uni, which was open to yhe public once a month, and you can see inside the craters. It looks unbelievably old even to a noob, and you can feel the hairs on the back of your neck standing up. It's dizzying.

superflyninja

Armitage_Shankburn wrote:

It's amazing, isn't it. I used to be oblivious, but once you spot a planet, you always spot it. It just looks different.2020 has been great for that. Going to sleep with the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter shining at me, mars next to the moon crescent (rather like the Turkish flag). It's so peaceful, no matter what troubles us, in this moment, here are celestial objects, carrying on, timeless to us. I find it, calming, reassuring.

Yep once I saw it, Jupiter and Saturn stands out like a sore thumb. As does Mars, natch. Where I live Im quite lucky,Im outside the city, effectively in the countryside and its a very flat landscape. So going for a walk at night is pretty great, the spectacular sky seems to dominate, its all-encompassing.
I take ages when bringing stuff out to the bins sometimes, they are down the side lane of the house and its a fence to my right so I look up and get a fantastic view of the night sky with all street lights blocked etc from my peripheral vision. .
Talk about contrast.

Dinostar77

What age can you start a child with a telescope? Im looking forward to when my son is old enough for that activity.

GooberTheHat

Whenever, I'd like to start with isla (5) but not sure she'd have the attention span just now. Maybe in another year.

SpaceGazelle

I keep meaning to take Charie to the observatory the Uni own but have never got around to it, to my shame. It's a proper big dome with mechanical sliding doors. It's always bloody freezing as you can't have any heating because it interferes with the image, and the dark winters offered the best seeing conditions. Smoking weed and access to a telescope like that was ace back in my student days. We had a key and you could go up anytime you wished if it wasn't booked.

Dinostar77

Winchester science centre is the closest to us. The 360 degree viewing screen (like going to cinema but you look up instead of forwards) is awesome. Been a few times before son was born really enjoyed it.

hylian_elf

Boy pointed out Saturn yesterday... except it was Mars. Gotta get him a telescope. He might be keen on it.

Dinostar77

Im of the opinion that you have to let kids try out lots of different stuff and hope that one of them becomes something they are passionate about and can make and can make a decent career out of.

hylian_elf

What a novel, genius idea!

Dinostar77

Ohhh..a new space mystery that cant be explained by current theories. ORCs, Odd Radio Circles.

Short 2min video on BBC

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/55212727

Astronomy: 'Odd radio circles' in the sky a ‘genuine mystery’

A new high powered telescope in the Australian outback has led astronomers to an intriguing new discovery.

superflyninja

They think there is a galaxy in each orc...some huuuuuuge explosion....black hole related I wonder...

Dinostar77

We know what they’re not

We have ruled out several possibilities for what ORCs might be.

Could they be supernova remnants, the clouds of debris left behind when a star in our galaxy explodes? No. They are far from most of the stars in the Milky Way and there are too many of them.

Could they be the rings of radio emission sometimes seen in galaxies undergoing intense bursts of star formation? Again, no. We don’t see any underlying galaxy that would be hosting the star formation.

Could they be the giant lobes of radio emission we see in radio galaxies, caused by jets of electrons squirting out from the environs of a supermassive black hole? Not likely, because the ORCs are very distinctly circular, unlike the tangled clouds we see in radio galaxies.

Could they be Einstein rings, in which radio waves from a distant galaxy are being bent into a circle by the gravitational field of a cluster of galaxies? Still no. ORCs are too symmetrical, and we don’t see a cluster at their centre.

A genuine mystery.

So we need to explore things that might exist but haven’t yet been observed, such as a vast shockwave from some explosion in a distant galaxy. Such explosions may have something to do with fast radio bursts, or the neutron star and black hole collisions that generate gravitational waves.

https://theconversation.com/wtf-newly-discovered-ghostly-circles-in-the-sky-cant-be-explained-by-current-theories-and-astronomers-are-excited-142812

Dinostar77

Dinostar77 wrote:

GurtTractor wrote:

In terms of space travel I really think Europa/Enceledus should be top priority, learning that we are not alone will be a humbling experience, as would finding that we probably are alone, but we won't know unless we look.

Clipper_Europa is scheduled for 2025 i think. Though its a high orbit mission and not landing a probe to drill through the ice.

Personally i am hoping that NASAs Planetary Science Decadal Survey, which reports in 2022 will green light a visit to Uranus and Neptune. Theres a tight window in the early 2030s to visit both. Would be great to have new pictures of both of those.

"...The rare celestial alignment, between Neptune, Uranus and Jupiter, occurs next in the early 2030s, and would allow a spacecraft to slingshot around Jupiter on its way to the planets. This would reduce the travel time, and allow the craft to arrive well within the lifetimes of its instruments and power systems — usually around 15 years. It would also cut fuel mass, enabling the craft to carry a full suite of scientific instruments. To take advantage of the alignment, a mission to Neptune would need to launch by around 2031 and one to Uranus by the mid-2030s..."

Dinostar77

This is nuts, a planet thats 10 billion years old. A planet.

https://www.sciencealert.com/an-astonishing-super-earth-exoplanet-is-nearly-as-old-as-the-universe

Diluted Dante

What do you remember about it g.man?

g.man

It was all black & white.

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