Space Thread - Page 23

Space Thread

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Tyler_1 @ Tue Aug 20, 2013 10:50 am

DrCaleb @ Wed Aug 21, 2013 11:45 am

$1:

The August Perseid meteors were upstaged last week, when a bright nova made its presence known in the constellation of Delphinus the Dolphin.

First spotted by amateur astronomer Koichi Itagaki from Yamagata, Japan on Aug. 14, the nova quickly broke naked eye visibility limit of magnitude +6 within 24 hours of discovery to peak (thus far) at magnitude +4 on Friday, Aug. 16, making it easily visible to the naked eye

http://o.canada.com/2013/08/20/a-bright ... ern-skies/

To find Vega in the night sky, it's directly overhead and usually the brightest star. Polaris is currently the North Star, and Vega becomes the North Star every 10,000 years.

DrCaleb @ Fri Aug 23, 2013 9:19 am

Comet hits the sun, the same time as a Coronal Mass Ejection on Tuesday:

The 'pinwheel' graphics show the CME headed our way.

$1:

The solar eruption, called a coronal mass ejection, occurred yesterday at 1:24 a.m. EDT (0524 GMT) and sent charged particles streaking outward at 380 miles per second. That's just over 1.3 million mph (2.2 million km/h). The solar fallout from the sun storm is expected to reach Earth within the next three days.

"These particles cannot travel through the atmosphere to harm humans on Earth, but they can affect electronic systems in satellites and on the ground," NASA officials explained in a statement. [Solar Max Photos: Sun Storms of 2013]

http://www.space.com/22490-sun-unleashe ... earth.html

stratos @ Fri Aug 23, 2013 9:21 am

Dude that ... that is so awesome and scary and holly bat nuts batman type of thing all wraped up into one.

[B-o]

DrCaleb @ Fri Aug 23, 2013 9:52 am

stratos stratos:

Dude that ... that is so awesome and scary and holly bat nuts batman type of thing all wraped up into one.

[B-o]

The Sun and Jupiter are big time 'hoovers' of space debris. Their gravity is so strong they attract most ojbects, and they keep us safe from the 'Armageddon/Deep Impact' events. "Impacts" are actually fairly common (the sun and Juptier really have no surface to 'impact').

But yea, it's pretty freaky when it happens, because the explosions themselves are many time the size of the Earth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Shoe ... 0%93Levy_9

Jabberwalker @ Fri Aug 23, 2013 10:23 am

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

stratos stratos:

Dude that ... that is so awesome and scary and holly bat nuts batman type of thing all wraped up into one.

[B-o]

Jupiter must have some sort of solid core ... if nothing else, made up of rocky objects that have been "hovered up" over the last 4-1/2 billion years.

stratos @ Fri Aug 23, 2013 10:27 am

$1:

Jupiter must have some sort of solid core ... if nothing else, made up of rocky objects that have been "hovered up" over the last 4-1/2 billion years.

It's been years but from my one astronomy class back in my 1 year in collage I recall that Jumpiter is bleaved to have a hot liquid core simular to what the Earth has. Not the same material but simular. There is no hard crust on Jupiter nor Saturan. Not sure about Uranus the other gas giant.

DrCaleb keep on with these postings they are great.

DrCaleb @ Fri Aug 23, 2013 11:21 am

stratos stratos:

$1:

Jupiter must have some sort of solid core ... if nothing else, made up of rocky objects that have been "hovered up" over the last 4-1/2 billion years.

The core is mostly Metallic Hydrogen, which is hydrogen gas compressed so much that it acts as a liquid. There may be some hard bits in the center, but they would be fairly nominal compared to the about of hydrogen. The rotating metallic hydrogen generates such a huge magnetic field that if we could see it, it would be larger than the full moon.

Of course I'll keep it up! I love this shit!

Jabberwalker @ Fri Aug 23, 2013 11:32 am

It never occurred to me that hydrogen could form a crystal lattice with itself. it is an alkali metal, though, on the periodic table. Is it a full conductor or a semi-conductor? It must be a super oddball.

DrCaleb @ Fri Aug 23, 2013 11:47 am

Jabberwalker Jabberwalker:

It is theorized to be an excellent conductor. But we can't create it to test that yet, because it would theoritically take several GigaPascals of pressure. Basically, many times more pressure than the deepest ocean.

Heat and pressure do some pretty cool things to 'normal' elements and compounds. Take water up to 100,000 PSI, and it freezes at 100C. Take Carbon Dioxide, Arsenic and Iodine. They don't form liquids at any pressure we know of. They go straight from solid to gas.

DrCaleb @ Fri Aug 23, 2013 11:55 am

Hundreds of years ago, astronomers used ground glass lenses to view the stars. The only way to get stronger telescopes was to make bigger lenses, and that required longer telescopes.

Then one day, this smart guy named Isacc Newton built a telescope that was many times more powerful, but was no bigger than a tea pot.

Now, they are building the Magellan Telescope, that will be ground based, and several times more powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope.

$1:

Giant Telescope Mirror for Future Observatory to Be Cast Saturday

An enormous mirror will be cast inside a scorching-hot furnace Saturday (Aug. 24), marking a key milestone in the development of a future telescope that will collect more light than any instrument built to date.

The Giant Magellan Telescope mirror, the third of the seven primary mirrors planned for the observatory, will be 27 feet (8.4 meters) across and weigh 20 tons when complete. It will be forged from chunks of borosilicate glass subjected to temperatures of 2,140 degrees Fahrenheit (1,170 degrees Celsius) inside a rotating furnace Saturday at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory Mirror Lab in Tucson.

Once cast and polished, these seven mirrors will be arranged to function as a single mirror 80 feet (24.5 m) in diameter, giving the $700 million GMT a resolving power 10 times greater than that of NASA's famous Hubble Space Telescope once the new instrument is up and running in northern Chile in 2020. [See more images of the Giant Magellan Telescope (Gallery)]