Astronomy thread

[The Ozzman]

turns out Ozz beat me to it... TEN FUCKING YEARS AGO

 

[rms]

My Astro Prof at Boulder was a lead on the MAVEN mission to Mars and that was a real treat to see photos and data from that before it hit the mainstream.

And had another one of the mission that went to Pluto and I think hopes to die in the Kuiper belt

 

[Master_Yoda77]

Fucking necroed

 

[no country for old wainds]

i own an astronomy telescope and have looked at various planets through it, seen the rings around saturn 'n shit.

i live like ten minutes away from an observatory that's home to the third largest space telescope in the world (the lovell telescope), which is cool looking and visible from many roads and railway lines i use in the nearby area. i visited there with school, i remember vomiting on the coach there and vomiting again because the canteen smelled so fucking rank.

i went to france for a total solar eclipse in 99 and we had one of those projection viewers and got a perfect view. there won't be another one here til 2090.

i've seen the space station pass over, saw the hale-bopp comet and watched meteor showers.

all these moments will be lost in time... like tears... in rain...

 

[Einherjar86]

Plus one for all those awesome experiences, and extra credit for a Blade Runner reference.

Alas, I don't own a telescope, so I have to rely on the internet most of the time. But I did get to visit the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico a few months ago while my wife was working there. But now China's testing this beast, so I guess I'll have to visit there sometime too...

 

[rms]

seems weird to have a telescope in england with the weather

 

[Einherjar86]

The Lovell telescope is a radio telescope, like the one in Arecibo. They observe radio waves, not light waves.

 

[rms]

that was a brainfart, but I thought clouds obstructed all waves regardless

 

[Einherjar86]

Nope, radio waves pass through clouds.

In addition, optical astronomers can only make observations in clear weather, since visible light is mostly absorbed by clouds. Radio astronomers, on the other hand, enjoy observing during cloudy, even stormy, weather, because radio waves pass through clouds as if they weren’t there.

https://amazing-space.stsci.edu/resources/explorations/groundup/lesson/eras/radio/page2.php

I believe that weather can contribute to "noise," or interference in the received signals, but I don't think it can block or absorb the signals themselves. There are probably specific instruments designed to help weed out noise.

 

[Einherjar86]

We discovered in the 1920s that the Universe has been expanding since the Big Bang. But about 20 years ago, astronomers found that this expansion was speeding up, driven by a force whose physical nature we do not understand, but to which we give the stop-gap name of ‘dark energy’. Dark energy operates on length- and time-scales of the Universe as a whole: how could we capture such a concept in a piece of fiction?

The story doesn’t stop there. We can’t see galaxies from those parts of the Universe for which there hasn’t been enough time since the Big Bang for the light to reach us. What lies beyond the observable bounds of the Universe? Our simplest cosmological models suggest that the Universe is uniform in its properties on the largest scales, and extends forever. A variant idea says that the Big Bang that birthed our Universe is only one of a (possibly infinite) number of such explosions, and that the resulting ‘multiverse’ has an extent utterly beyond our comprehension.

https://aeon.co/ideas/our-universe-is-too-vast-for-even-the-most-imaginative-sci-fi

This is old news, but it never fails to amaze me. I'm fascinated by issues of cosmological observation.

 

[AllShallFall]

My great uncle worked for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for decades, and if I remember correctly was involved in some of the major missions of the '70s. I've always thought that was fascinating.

 

[rms]

https://www.theringer.com/tech/2017...mission-scientists-pick-their-favorite-photos

 

[Einherjar86]

Sometimes when I look at those photos, I find it next to impossible to conceptualize the distances and vantages involved. Looking at "close-ups" of the rings, for example, I find it difficult to afford the image the proper scale.

 

[rms]

i enjoy the colonoscopy photo that made it in here

on the rings, yeah. and they are just tiny little rocks from either bombardment/didn't make it in time for planet formation. just chillin'

my astro prof had a nice time lapse gif of the portion of the rings on Saturn, wonder if that's popular or not. really cool watching it move