Random FYM Thread

[LuckyNumber7]

Yeah most likely this. I don't expect more than that or like I said that they found life since the distances involved would make it impossible unless we send a probe there (also impossible with today's technology). The only other very very remote possibility (although I think winning the lotto is more possible) is that they picked up a signal from a known exo planet through seti but 99.999% is that they discovered a very earth like planet that could very well have life but we will never know until we can find a way to get there. This is not to say that there will not be some very exciting news! I can't wait!

Well this is my point. These aren't SETI folks on the panel. One's SST. One I believe had lots of work on Kepler. One is a the AD of NASA's science mission directorate I believe. They're all exoplanet folks. Kepler is the most popular exoplanet space instrument. Spitzer is certainly no small player in that as well. Arecibo is involved with that stuff in some light, but not as part of SETI.

Whatever it is, it should be big. My guess is the direct spectrographic imaging of water of a close earth-like planet occulting its host star.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

Some hope for common sense

https://www.thetrace.org/2017/02/assault-weapons-not-protected-second-amendment-maryland/

 

[dabiggestu2fan]

Well this is my point. These aren't SETI folks on the panel. One's SST. One I believe had lots of work on Kepler. One is a the AD of NASA's science mission directorate I believe. They're all exoplanet folks. Kepler is the most popular exoplanet space instrument. Spitzer is certainly no small player in that as well. Arecibo is involved with that stuff in some light, but not as part of SETI.

Whatever it is, it should be big. My guess is the direct spectrographic imaging of water of a close earth-like planet occulting its host star.

Yep that's what I expected! But very cool to see that they discovered a star with 7 earth size planets and three of which or in the Goldilocks zone and one potential watery world. I am at work so I didn't get a chance to see the whole announcement but will read more about it when I am off. Cool news! Only thing I saw is that they mentioned the planets might be tidely locked because of the close proximity to the star. Not sure how conducive to life that would be given that one side is always daylight and temperatures might be quite higher and really low in the dark side. I suppose there may be a zone in the terminator where the conditions could be pleasant.

 

[dabiggestu2fan]

Yep that's what I expected! But very cool to see that they discovered a star with 7 earth size planets and three of which or in the Goldilocks zone and one potential watery world. I am at work so I didn't get a chance to see the whole announcement but will read more about it when I am off. Cool news! Only thing I saw is that they mentioned the planets might be tidely locked because of the close proximity to the star. Not sure how conducive to life that would be given that one side is always daylight and temperatures might be quite higher and really low in the dark side. I suppose there may be a zone in the terminator where the conditions could be pleasant.

Ps: for those interested there is an iPhone app I have used for many years called exoplanet. It's a data base of all the exoplanets discovered and gets updated everytime new planets are discovered. You can do a database search on any of these planets and get lots of information about said planet and it's star! Certainly very cool and informative for those who love this stuff.

 

[LuckyNumber7]

Yep that's what I expected! But very cool to see that they discovered a star with 7 earth size planets and three of which or in the Goldilocks zone and one potential watery world. I am at work so I didn't get a chance to see the whole announcement but will read more about it when I am off. Cool news! Only thing I saw is that they mentioned the planets might be tidely locked because of the close proximity to the star. Not sure how conducive to life that would be given that one side is always daylight and temperatures might be quite higher and really low in the dark side. I suppose there may be a zone in the terminator where the conditions could be pleasant.

If a planet supports life, tidal locking really isn't a big player. It would only have serious implications of temperature with planets that don't have significant atmospheres... something complex life forms will need.

Given a low mass star that's only 500 million years old, I doubt those planets are all tidally locked anyways.

Either way, the most important thing for early life is that it's a spinning geologically active rock with the right stuff on it at the right temperature.

It's very exciting news - hopefully with advancements in instrumentation in the next few decades, we will be able to directly take spectra from objects like these.

 

[Moonlit_Angel]

Some hope for common sense

https://www.thetrace.org/2017/02/assault-weapons-not-protected-second-amendment-maryland/

Awesome .

Also, because I'm watching Colbert right now and am reminded of this, can I just say I'm LOVING the stories lately about Republican lawmakers being confronted by angry crowds at town hall meetings? That's an excellent thing to see.

On a non-political note, awesome news with all this science talk in here! Sounds like quite an exciting find, and I'm loving the discussion about it in here.

 

[dabiggestu2fan]

If a planet supports life, tidal locking really isn't a big player. It would only have serious implications of temperature with planets that don't have significant atmospheres... something complex life forms will need.

Given a low mass star that's only 500 million years old, I doubt those planets are all tidally locked anyways.

Either way, the most important thing for early life is that it's a spinning geologically active rock with the right stuff on it at the right temperature.

It's very exciting news - hopefully with advancements in instrumentation in the next few decades, we will be able to directly take spectra from objects like these.

Yes I guess having a dense enough atmosphere would have a moderating effect on the temperature of tidely locked planets. Even if the temperatures are still higher then the normal temperatures of earth, life could still exist in the form of microorganisms. If anything life here on earth has been shown to exist in some very extreame environments like those found in fumerals at the bottom of the ocean where temperatures are quite high by the fumerals. Also it's positive news that the evidence they have regarding their atmospheres would suggest these to be rocky planets. So exciting all around. I too look forward to the next couple decades for improved technology to dig deeper into these planets. I think the James Webb telescope to be launched next year will help answer a lot of the questions regarding these planets.

 

[dabiggestu2fan]

Ps: for those interested you can see a few of my astrophotos and planet shots.

Nicolas Carbajales | Astrophotography | Photo 4

 

[dabiggestu2fan]

here is another cool space news! Seems rather optimistic but if they can pull it off it would be awesome!


https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/spacex-plans-send-crewed-mission-223243787.html

 

[DaveC]

Ps: for those interested you can see a few of my astrophotos and planet shots.

Nicolas Carbajales | Astrophotography | Photo 4

wow, these are some really nice shots, i especially like the moon closeups. what do you use to take these?

 

[DaveC]

here is another cool space news! Seems rather optimistic but if they can pull it off it would be awesome!


https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/spacex-plans-send-crewed-mission-223243787.html

i see spacex has decided to go with the three-man capsule now. hope they have enough experience with the large rockomax launchers to make it work, the degree of difficulty goes up considerably with the extra size and weight. but as long as they use an experienced pilot like jeb or val they should be fine.

 

[LuckyNumber7]

This announcement comes as my masters project was announced... development of a lunar surface to orbiter transport system. How... coincidental.

 

[DaveC]

as in, designing a new LM for a manned apollo-style mission? or would this be more of a ship's tender kind of thing for an orbiting moon station to travel regularly to and from the surface?

this is all so exciting. i hope i'm around long enough to see these all these plans become reality.

 

[LuckyNumber7]

as in, designing a new LM for a manned apollo-style mission? or would this be more of a ship's tender kind of thing for an orbiting moon station to travel regularly to and from the surface?

this is all so exciting. i hope i'm around long enough to see these all these plans become reality.

The latter. Plans of the highest order are already in place for a lunar space station orbiter i.e. agreeable designs exist from the broadest level.

 

[DaveC]

 

[LuckyNumber7]

They're like "consider stuff like a rail gun" [emoji23]

 

[dabiggestu2fan]

wow, these are some really nice shots, i especially like the moon closeups. what do you use to take these?

Thanks so much Dave for the very kind comments! I use a variety of telescopes (I have 3 of them) and a few different cameras that I attach to the scopes where the eyepiece would go. For most of the planet shots, Jupiter, Mars, Neptune etc I use my largest scope (a 10" Schmidt cassegrain) and I use either a webcam like camera (actually a modified security camera) that I can get the image on the computer screen directly) or I use an old canon point and shoot with a special adaptor. For my wider field images of the moon and sun and stars or deep sky, I use either 5" maksutov cassegrain telescope or an 80 mm refractor telescope and my Canon DSLR. DSLRs are great for wide field because of their large sensor sizes but for close ups of planets providing the atmosphere is clear and steady, the more power the better! Also the very tiny sensors of webcams usually under 1 MP are great for planets. I'll write a bit more in depth later as my phone is about to die

Edit: ok I am back now with my phone plugged in! As for the planetary shots including the closeup moon photos I actually take videos of the planets usually around 60-120 frames per second depending on the brightness of the objects. I then convert and split the videos to individual still images (I try to get atleast 1000 frames or more). Since the atmosphere is very dynamic there are moments of complete steadyness or no turbulence in which the images come out very sharp while other times the images appear very blurry due to the air currents. I remove all the blurry images and only keep the best ones. I then stack them together which reduces the noise and increases the details. The more images you stack the better the signal to noise ratio is and the better the image turns out. Usually I try to get about 500-1000 good images from a video to get a single better stacked image. This works great but on some planets like Jupiter all your images must be taken within a very short period of time because Jupiter rotates very fast and if too much time elapses between images, you can loose a lot of detail. Well this is the very short and condensed explanation of how I get my planet shots. It is a bit time consuming but the results as compared to a single raw image are just amazing. I haven't done much astrophotography lately due to time and the fact that at this time of year, the weather is garbage here in the west coast. Also I don't seem to have the energy I used to back when I was in my 20's lol so I often get too lazy to haul out and set up all my equipment which can take quite a bit of time to set up, align and get the images. I hope though to get back into it this summer. There is an awesome total solar eclipse on the 21st of August! I will probably drive down to Oregon where it will be best seen and set up somewhere there weather permitting.

 

[dabiggestu2fan]

i see spacex has decided to go with the three-man capsule now. hope they have enough experience with the large rockomax launchers to make it work, the degree of difficulty goes up considerably with the extra size and weight. but as long as they use an experienced pilot like jeb or val they should be fine.

I agree, going to the moon is a whole different animal then just LEO and the amount of things that can go wrong are much greater then low earth orbit. So I hope they are not setting themselves up for failure or a tragedy but I guess we will learn more about their plans later this year. I am glad though that there seems to be a will to go especially by private companies. I think the future success of space travel will depend largely more on private companies rather than NASA, ESA etc. And unfortunately unlike the 60's where there was a huge political motivation to go to the moon and beat the Russians, there seems to be little motivation to really push hard these days to go back to the moon and go to Mars! Sure there are plans now and Oroin and the SLS are taking shape, but the money is just not there so this process is really slow. I think private funding and the private industry is the way to go now. So kudos to space-X. I just hope they realize the extreame challenges. When I heard the 2018 timeline I get a little skeptical that they will be able to pull it off in such short time frame.

 

[dabiggestu2fan]

Ps here is a few animations of A Venus transit, a lunar eclipse and Jupiter and it's moons. Nicolas Carbajales | Astronomy Animations

 

[LuckyNumber7]

I agree, going to the moon is a whole different animal then just LEO and the amount of things that can go wrong are much greater then low earth orbit. So I hope they are not setting themselves up for failure or a tragedy but I guess we will learn more about their plans later this year. I am glad though that there seems to be a will to go especially by private companies. I think the future success of space travel will depend largely more on private companies rather than NASA, ESA etc. And unfortunately unlike the 60's where there was a huge political motivation to go to the moon and beat the Russians, there seems to be little motivation to really push hard these days to go back to the moon and go to Mars! Sure there are plans now and Oroin and the SLS are taking shape, but the money is just not there so this process is really slow. I think private funding and the private industry is the way to go now. So kudos to space-X. I just hope they realize the extreame challenges. When I heard the 2018 timeline I get a little skeptical that they will be able to pull it off in such short time frame.

TBH, I'm not sure this really is a different beast in that sense. I'm pretty confident, given today's technologies, that a lunar flyby is virtually the same thing as putting humans in orbit around earth. Not actually the same thing, but similar. Quite frankly, I'm more worried about spacex putting humans on their rocket just yet. Gonna have to have a few less blow up upon launch before that's cool, IMO.

 

[LuckyNumber7]

Oh, and your photos are lovely. We should get a space nard thread rolling.

 

[bono_212]

I wouldn't mind that, if you'd all like to help encourage me to become the space nerd I've always wanted to be, and actually invest in a telescope

 

[DaveC]

Ps here is a few animations of A Venus transit, a lunar eclipse and Jupiter and it's moons. Nicolas Carbajales | Astronomy Animations

dude, these are great! the animations are really well done, you're very talented.

 

[dabiggestu2fan]

dude, these are great! the animations are really well done, you're very talented.

Thank you my friend! Astrophotography and well photography in general is a passion for me! It's like my escape drug when I am stressed out. I am happy that you like my humble Astro pics!

 

[dabiggestu2fan]

I wouldn't mind that, if you'd all like to help encourage me to become the space nerd I've always wanted to be, and actually invest in a telescope

Hi Bono_2012 I would be very happy to help as I am sure others here will be too! Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions regarding buying a telescope etc. Astronomy can be a fascinating thing especially when you have a look at the planets with your own eyes or a distant galaxy or nebula! It's just awesome. One first advice though, stay away from department store telescopes, they are usually junk and tend to discourage a budding astronomy hobby more than they encourage. Just let me know if you have any questions!

 

[dabiggestu2fan]

Oh, and your photos are lovely. We should get a space nard thread rolling.

Thanks so much LN7!! Yes I agree it would be great to have a thread for us astrogeeks hehe.

 

[Moonlit_Angel]

Adding on to the "awesome photo" compliments. Those are so cool.

Space is kind of a surreal-looking thing at times when you view it like that, isn't it ?

 

[dabiggestu2fan]

Adding on to the "awesome photo" compliments. Those are so cool.

Space is kind of a surreal-looking thing at times when you view it like that, isn't it ?

Thanks Moonlit!! yes you are right it can certainly be very surreal! It makes you almost feel tiny and insignificant but in a good way! Even looking just at the moon through high power in the telescope and seeing all the mountains, craters etc you can really get lost in all of it! I never really thought about astronomy until one day when I was a kid and my family was having a bbq one summer night in our backyard, our neigbour had a pretty impressive telescope set up and he was so awesome to show me Saturn and a few deep sky objects! Saturn almost looked fake with its rings and even a few moons visible. From that day on I was totally hooked and am so happy to be there just at the right time when he had his scope set up. Needless to say my neigbour and I spent many nights afterwards viewing and when I got my first scope he taught me a lot about amateur astronomy! I wish there was a way I could find him again but that was well over 20 years and both my neigbour and I have since moved from those houses.

 

[LuckyNumber7]

Thanks so much LN7!! Yes I agree it would be great to have a thread for us astrogeeks hehe.

We have a thread - join us, all, before the Civ banter goes overboard.


Spacefarer's Guide to Getting off this Planet

http://www.u2interference.com/forums/showthread.php?t=220809

 

[trojanchick99]

Glen Beck has fired suspended Conservative Barbie after she said the worst thing you could think of.

Gasp.... she's.... Pro-Choice!. *clutches pearls*

Link from the daily beast.

The stalwarts of free speech have of course suspended her for accidentally breaking character as Conservative Barbie.